PEOPLE (Thither coming out of a region wherein disasters are met as if they were a jest), Whom You May Meet at the Fair By ADAIR WELCKERj GIFT OF PEOPLE (Thither coming out of a region wherein disasters are met as if they were a jest), Whom You May Meet at the Fair By ADAIR WELCKERo Copies to be had from ADAIR WELCKER, 508 Berkeley National Bank Bldg., Berkeley, California. From all American Book Jobbers and Booksellers. In Great Britain from the publishers selected to distribute the books in that country. In Germany, from stores selling to the English- speaking public of Germany. Copyright 1913. by Adair Welcker. The right is reserved to dramatize, make Comic Operas of, or use for the purpose of moving pictures, or other purposes, the contents of this book. Printed by~ Lederer, Street C& Zeus Company 2121 Addison St., Berkeley, Cal. Within the Fair, Find Them Notice to the Trade This book, because of its present relation to the coming Fair, the manner in which jt is going to become related to and connected later with the minds of the millions attending the fair, and be come a part of them ; the fact that it will be con nected with, and become a part of the history of the Fair, should cause copies of the work at once to be called for in quantities beyond all suddenly and extensively demanded in the case of any book before in the whole book publishing history of the world. It is therefore suggested that booksellers at once, in order that they may not have to be delayed in getting copies later, after the world-wide de mand for them commences, when they will not either, be able to obtain them wholesale on the terms that in the beginning will be granted, send in their wholesale orders, either to the author and publisher in America or to the publishing houses of great Britain and on the continent that at the same time are going to publish and distribute it. The retail price of the book, cloth bound, is 95 cents. For wholesale rates apply to Adair Welcker, 508 Berkeley National Bank Bldg., Berkeley, Cal. Within the Fair, Find Them The Following are Some of the Press Opinions of another work, by its writer, in some respects similar to this book, together with a review writ ten by him upon the ideas expressed in one of the opinions : Lloyds Weekly News (London, England) : "It is a book distinctly to be read, not merely for the amusement it affords, but because the author, like a true humorist, sets some of the hard facts of life before us in quite new lights." The Chicago Daily News, in connection with the work said: "The narrative seems confused in some not wholly comprehensible manner with Mr. Welcker s desire to be president of the United States, and the belief that in some way his brief and funny stories are to aid him in accomplish ing this entirely laudable ambition. The book is certainly better than others from the same hand that have preceded it," etc., etc., etc. The Dundee (Scotland) Advertiser, referring to the theory, of which the Chicago Daily News had spoken, that the author had within him the de sire to be president of the United States, after find ing "plenty of humor in the book," said, of the author s response made to the theory expressed: "It is notable for its common sense." The obser vation of the Chicago Daily News might now also Within the Fair, Find Them arouse consideration as to whether this question is not one that wise men should ponder: Can a man afford to be president of the United States for four, or eight years at a time when legis lators throughout those States are passing Niagaras of laws that, from every standpoint, putting shackles upon business, business, managed by men who have lived in, studied, and learned it, as have not those who, putting themselves forward as holier than are they, as legislators would regulate it tend to destroy that human liberty that the United States were established above all other lands to foster, if such a man has been found that through him a process has been furnished by which this officious officialdom may be checked in its operation, for many times years more than four thousand? As a corollary to the last paragraph it may be said that the day has come when there is but lit tle room left in the world for Law. For equity, in all of the centuries to come, too much room cannot be found. It will be well for every legisla tor in the world to commit to memory the follow ing words, in 1906 printed in a journal in Eng land: Referring to the recent street car strike in San Francisco, our lawyer friend, Adair Welck- er, writes to us from that city: The trouble is that, since the Code System has operated in America many lawyers, profoundly versed in law, forget and overlook equity, which such a thing as an earthquake can cause to become the more important of the two. The greatest lawyers have Within the Fair, Find Them kept in mind both equity and law. Why one is as vital as the other all of them do not know. The law is of the intellect; the intellect sees, and is satisfied with the letter of the bond, or agreement ; and cannot comprehend the absurdity that calls for heart and spirit wherefrom are the issues of life, or equity. To the bond or con tract, in the play of the "Merchant of Venice," the one in whose favor it was, would have the law applied. His intellect could not see any reason why it should not be carried out. But there is a heart in man, as well as a mind. In olden times men wished an eye for an eye, and the tooth for a tooth that the law gave. There was no reason against this. But a dispensation greater than the old law came into the world, through the heart. And this dispensation was the quality of mercy, not strained, which is Equity, given to the world by one who, in blessing the merciful, put an end to many an ancient contract. The law would leave the hearts of all men as cold, as dead, as the icebergs that come down from the north. But equity which is of the heart, has in it a quality that at the right time and un der circumstances that have altered, can melt them. Within the Fair, Find Them Table of Contents 1. The lunatic, on account of whose interven- ~(ion the course of true love was caused to run oth; the stern parent; the romantic daughter; tw enraptured husband ; who, all of them, will >M. seen at the Fair. 2. Two ladies, who, one always on one side oy tne other, and the other on the other side of a much married" ancient mariner, with him will be among those who will constitute the mighty gathering. 3. A Los Angeles County poet, (who is said to be about to start a new cult at Long Beach), whom you will not fail easily to recognize among those who will be at the Fair. 4. A dog, that can furnish instruction to a very large number of our U. S. Universities upon a matter wherein they have shown that they are lacking. 5. No boudoir (he prefers, considering him self to be his own very satisfactory dictionary, to pronounce it "boodwah" writer), a poet of a type differing from that of the bard of Los An geles, whom you will be able to see (descending out of the clouds that about Tamalpais have gath ered), down through Muir woods, and to the Fair. 6. An "Ancient Adonis," (every young woman who, on Saturday afternoon has walked along Market Street, will at once recognize him), who will not fail to be seen daily on parade. 7. A physiognomist, who knew not what others 8 Within the Fair, Find Them had been thinking of his own countenance and in consequence were going to do to him, who will be seen at the Fair. 8. Two, who having followed the advice of Greeley, and achieved in consequence in San Francisco a vast business success, that causes thousands to marvel, who will as together they are there many times be pointed out by others at the Fair. 9. A newspaper man who will not be there. 10. A dentist, whose twisted and sharpened steel instruments served to be his first aid in bringing to a successful conclusion a very remarkable woo ing, who, with his wife, will be seen at the Fair. 11. The Colonel, (whom any San Franciscan will be able to point out to you), to be seen there, who can explain to you the rules by which wom an may infallibly, and easily be won. 12. A young lady who successfully has played the part of tortoise in her race with the hare, who, having married the goal that her race won her, to his arm clinging, will be seen there. 13. A man whose ambition has been turned into the most complete of all forms of human ac complishment, who will be at the Fair. 14. The night of misadventures of a man, neith er Green, Yellow, nor Black, who therefore can easily be remembered as Brown, (that being his name), who certainly will not see two burglars at the Fair; not if they see him first. 15. What at one time, not far from its center, was San Francisco s inferno. 16. Afterword. Within the Fair, Find Them The Lunatic; The Stern Parent; The Romantic Daughter; The Lover Mr. Dooselap Toker belonged to the bustling class of little business men, who, busy about noth ing, are, while snapping their watches in your presence, always in a hurry to rush off and at tend to it. While full of gigantic schemes, they are busy, chiefly, in the attempt to make others believe in their delusions. Miss Virginia Carswallow, the daughter of a rich baker, in her own estimation, was a young lady. Her friends said that if she was a young lady she was rather an old one. Her age was 37. She was five feet and ten inches in height; had a face rich in color; and a head adorned by curls that had they been off her head, might have been mistaken for rope yarns. Her temper, which was a high one, had been developed by constant quar rels with a step-mother, with whom she stood on a sarcastic footing. She had that kind of a roman tic and uncouth disposition, which is sometimes formed in the mind of a lady of 37, by a constant study of those unhappiest of unhappy novels which deal generally with impossible duchesses and worthless dukes; novels which, by their importa tion from abroad, have done so much to retard the development of a literature in America; the 10 Within the Fair, Find Them country in which the dukes and duchesses of lit erature appear to be most admired. Dooselap Toker was 33 years of age and four feet eleven inches in height, but, notwithstand ing their difference in height he had, in time, ac quired the courage to look, first, up to Miss Car- swallow, and afterwards, while looking down at his own toes, to ask her hand in marriage. This she refused to grant, until, as a new argument, he informed her that he was a descen dant of the Pittridges, stopping at Wempy-on- Sketchen. This strong argument overcame the objection of Miss Carswallow. She did not even stop to ask what Pittridges, stopping at Wempy- on-Sketchen, might be. They might have been a species of wild ducks and Wempy-on-Sketchen the lake on which they swam, for all she knew; but, as she had read of duchesses and dukes who lived in places-on-places, even if it was so, with Mr. Toker s antecedents she was satisfied. During the visit which had terminated in their engagement, the father of Miss Carswallow, hav ing taken an unaccountable antipathy to the bust ling man of business, had, on several occasions, scrutinized him with anything but a lovable look in the corner of his left and most penetrating eye. At last, as IVJr. Toker was one day mounting the front steps to the door of the mansion in which dwelt his beloved, a rotund and self-important in dividual apepared in the doorway and opposed his entrance. The gentleman possessing the rotund figure surveyed him of the bustling manner from the top of his bustling head to his rather well de- Within the Fair, Find Them 11 veloped and bustling feet. Mr. Toker, upon return ing the gaze of Mr. Carswallow for it was he won dered whether it would be best to go between his legs, squeeze by him, or take to his own heels. The last absurd idea was of course abandoned as soon as it was formed. "Glad to see you, Mr. Carswallow," said Mr. Toker, with a smile ; a smile which, being artifi cial and prepared for the occasion, consisted chief ly in a show of teeth. "I must say you look it" ; remarked the parent of his sweetheart, who knew a sham smile when he saw it and did not believe at all in Mr. Toker s gladness at the meeting. "Fine day!" observed Mr. Toker, now bustling from one foot to the other, as, having the gen tleman in his way, he could no longer bustle for ward. "Tain t," said Mr. Carswallow, briefly express ing his views on the subject of the weather, in one word. "Ain t it?" Mr. Toker humbly asked. "No sir, it are not"; said the other. For once in his life Mr. Toker ceased to be busy. He stood still and was at a loss for something to say; but, feeling that under the circumstances a word would not be out of place he raised his head, as does a chicken when drinking, and said: "How s the price of wheat?" At this remark, a new idea flashed across the mind of Mr. Carswallow for he was a man full of suspicions,: and his firmly-fixed antipathy made him ready to believe anything evil, however evil 12 Within the Fair, Find Them of Mr. Toker. Could it be that the visits of this man to his daughter, were but as a blind? Could it be, as he now suspected, that he was a com mercial spy a spy trying to fathom a secret scheme, which was a pet one of his, in regard to wheat, and a method of causing a change in its price? So, while to Mr. Toker, his eyes seemed to expand to the size of saucers, he asked, fiercely: "Who sent you here to come, a-catechising me about wheat?" Mr. Toker being embarrassed by the belief that Mr. Carswallow would, on but small further provo cation, proceed to bite him, in his embarrassrr.ent mentioned the name of the first flour merchant that came into his head. It was a fatal blunder; for he had, by accident, mentioned the name of the very business sleuth hound believed by Mr. Carswallow to be on the track of his secret. "Look here, Do Slap Toker," he said, "which I believe is your name. You get off these prem ises ; and mark me well. If ever I see your sal low, pudding face here again, there s just one thing I ll do; I will slap Toker. And what s more, I ll kick Toker, too !" It is hardly necessary to say that after this the lovers, following the methods common to lovers, foxes and bandits, met by stealth, and not openly, as is the general custom of people whose intentions are honest. Because of the na ture of these meetings their ties of affection be came, of course, rivets, like rivets of brass, and the awful oaths which they took became chains which bound them to each other with such firm- Within the Fair, Find Them 13 ness, that even the storms produced by a storming parent could not disturb them. With them there was but one problem which was considered worthy of solution, and that was how to get married. In the meantime the eternal vigilance of the parent was the price, not of their liberty, but of their thralldom. Dooselap Toker formed soon the habit of pac ing the sidewalk, at night, in front of the house in which his sweetheart lived. This was worse than a bad habit, for the vigilant parent, upon seeing him there, hired three footpads to come along, on a night of unusual darkness, in the guise of footpads, and drub him soundly; and as they carried out their directions to the letter and did soundly drub him, Mr. Toker betook himself, with his meditations, to another and a less dangerous lo cality. Of course notes were sent and were intercepted, and their only result was a cursing for Mr. Toker the next time the parent met him upon the street. It is needless to say that, being a lover, Mr. To ker did at last get his note to his sweetheart. By this note it was arranged that they were to take the train and go to an interior town, stop at ho tels which faced each other on different sides of the same street, wait until after dark to avoid ac cidents, and then meet and be married. The whole matter was planned and arranged by Mr. Toker. He thought it not only the latest, but the best of his schemes. He arranged to have room No. 6, in one of the hotels, waiting for the lady, and room 6 in the other hotel kept vacant for himself. 14 Within the Fair, Find Them In communicating these facts in the hastily- written note which he sent to Miss Carswallow, he told her that they must, when at the hotels, communicate with each other only under assumed names ; but what those assumed names were to be, he neglected to say. The next day, the day which had been set for their departure. when Mr. Carswallow went down to breakfast he became angry at once, because he was hungry, because he was in a hurry, and because his daughter was not present. When the brass hands of his ebony clock marked ten min utes past the breakfast hour, and she had not ap peared, he paced the dining room floor and frigh tened the girl who waited on the table by giving expression to his wrath. It was no uncommon thing for Mr. Carswallow to be delayed in this manner by his daughter, for when deeply interest ed in a novel containing European aristocracy, which was described as being of a higher stand ing than usual, this lady would be late to break fast, and when princes and princesses were spoken of, it was not uncommon for her to forget that she had ever formed the habit of eating, and ne glect her breakfast altogether. A new cause for delay had of late been the extra efforts made to set her curls into those shapes that she believed would obtain from Mr. Toker his approval. But, as knows the reader, Miss Carswallow was, on the occasion referred to, away from home. After wait ing twelve minutes for his daughter, Mr. Carswal low, who had an important engagement at his office supposing that she had become interested Within the Fair, Find Them 15 in one of those novels, never dull to uneducated and aristocracy-worshipping American women, swallowed a biscuit whole, threw a cup of hot cof- down his throat, by the performance scalded it, jammed his hat viciously on his head, and fled to keep his engagement, when it was too late. In the meantime his daughter, on board of a train of cars in a romantic dream, for, as we have neglected to say, Miss Carswallow was a poetess, was be ing whirled towards the brink of matrimony. Dooselap Toker, when about to start upon the same journey, met with a misfortune. Following his custom of wasting no time, (which, as every body knows, is money), he started for the Oakland boat which connected with the train taken by the lady, so as to reach the boat just as the hand of the clock in the brown tower at the foot of Mar ket street would reach the last quarter of the last minute of the hour at which the boat was to start. Of course, when this is done as Mr. Toker had so often succeeded in doing, it shows that the time of the man who does it is valuable ; and it shows that the watch in regard to whose time keeping qualities every American is sensitive, is one of which to be justly proud. But instead of reaching his boat on this occasion at a quarter of a minute before the hour, Mr. Toker reached the wharf after the boat had been gone a quarter of a min ute. In consequence of this fact he had to take a train which did not reach the desired destina tion until 6 o clock in the evening. In the mean time, supposing that he was not coming the land- 16 Within the Fair, Find Them lord of the hotel in which he was to stop, had given No. 6 to a lunatic, there on his way to an asylum in charge of a deputy sheriff. The land lord thought, when Mr. Toker arrived, that it would save trouble to put him in No. 16, and, as an excuse for so doing, tell him that he had under stood from the messenger who had engaged the room, that 16 was the room desired. Mr. Toker was much put out; but at last accepted the situ ation and, followed by the porter who carried his valise, went up to his room. At the town which has been described, the dep uty sheriff in charge of them, was in the habit of turning his San Francisco lunatics over to a keep er, who then took them from there on to an asy lum. It so happened that while Mr. Toker was on his way to room 16, this keeper, who was a pow erfully made man, over six feet in height. was seen coming up the street by the deputy sheriff, who was gazing out of the window of room 6, which, as the room was in the front part of the hotel, opened out upon the street. He had been awaiting his arrival with some anxiety, as he hoped to take the train back to San Francisco upon which Mr. Toker had arrived. Believing that he could catch the train by running for it, he closed the door, leaving the lunatic inside of the room, and dashed down stairs. Passing the keeper on the stairway, he said: "He s in 6!" hurried on, and caught his train. The keeper made the mistake which the land lord had pretended to make. He paid but little at tention to the number of the room designated by Within the Fair, Find Them 17 the deputy sheriff, (as No. 16 was the room usu ally assigned to his prospective charges), and when the deputy sheriff, while hurrying by him on this occasion, said "six," he supposed that he as usual had said "sixteen." He went, therefore, to 16, and upon opening the door, found Mr. Toker in his shirt sleeves, before the looking glass ; and as, for the purpose of examining a mole on the side of his head, he was making a distorted face which the glass reflected, the keeper saw in this per formance satisfactory evidence of Mr. Tokers in sanity. The large keeper, whose name was Spar row, taking a seat on the bed, casually examined the small Toker for further indications, and as he did so he rolled a cigarette between his thumbs and forefingers. These proceedings caused Mr. Toker to look long and hard at Mr. Sparrow. "Now don t look at me in that tone of voice, or you ll surely hurt yourself," said Mr. Sparrow. "Who are you?" Mr. Toker asked, as he contin ued to examine the keeper with a look which was neither casual nor cordial. "I m Sparrow the man you ll fly with," re marked the other, giving additional effect to his witticism by a wink, as he felt in the pocket of his black vest for a match. "You will have the kindness to leave the room," said Mr. Toker, in a tone of voice which was meant to be satirical, when he added, "as I m not flying this week, nor next either, for that matter/ "No?" said Mr. Sparrow, as he scratched a match on the leg of his trousers ; "you re not flying this week or next? No telling, though, what you 18 Within the Fair, Find Them will be doing, or think you are, week after next." "You will have the kindness to leave the room," Mr. Toker again said, angrily. "I know I will. Not ready to start, though, yet," said Sparrow, "so don t be in a hurry." "Who are you?" demanded Mr. Toker again, and fiercely. "Sparrow, I told you. A man that most of your kind find to be a sort of bird of passage," was the reply. "Look here," he continued, as he tapped his forehead with his first two fingers "there s where your trouble lies ; so when we start, you bet ter come along with me without bother." On hearing this Mr. Toker became sick at the stomach. "You don t take me for a lunatic?" he almost screamed. "I don t know what I take you for," said Mr. Sparrow; but when I start, I ll take you as what ever you may be ; and that from your appearance, may be Cham of Tartary, or Emperor of China, or a pair of corpulent sugar tongs, or a nut cracker or however you introduce yourself; for you have got to remember you haven t introduced yourself to me, yet." "There s some awful mistake here," said the bewildered Toker. "I admit it. There always is," Sparrow said. "You get right out of this room or I ll kick you out!" said Mr. Toker, losing his temper. "Ah !" responded the keeper, "it seems ordinary clothes ain t maybe good enough for you. You re a ladedah and you want one of my nice close- Within the Fair, Find Them 19 fitting jackets on. I don t blame you either, as you d cut quite a figure in it." "My name." said Mr. Toker, "is Dooselap To- ker; and I m a real estate agent." "Real estate !" said Sparrow, "I didn t think you d condescend to that. I thought you d be nothing short, at least, of a mandarin. You look like a prince, or a cars of juggernaut, or a cockalorum, or something of that kind, you know. Well, you ll find lots of real estate men where you re going ; and they ll get into deals with you big enough to bank rupt the Bank of England in no time. So come along," and he seized Mr. Toker by the wrist and bore him, struggling, down to the street and got on board of a north bound train. In the meantime the romantic and poetic sweet heart of Mr. Toker had spent the day in her room in the third story opposite; pacing back and forth from the window, alongside of whose blind she would peep out to the street, to the mirror, where she kept giving additional touches to the "bang" on her brow as she waited for word from her chosen. He had told her, among other things, not to send a message to him until he had first sent one to her. "What had happened?" This was the question which, as she gazed in the mirror, she asked of her "bangs." "Had Mr. Toker and her papa met? If so, had the meeting resulted in a duel with pistols, or knives, or cobblestones, or worse? Had there been a railroad accident? Why, why did he not send word to her?" She was pacing the floor, half frantic, when she resolved, notwithstanding his in- 20 Within the Fair, Find Them junction, to send him word. As was said before, he had told her, under no circumstances, to use any but an assumed name ; but had neglected to mention the name by which she was to be desig nated. She knew, however, that he was to t>e in room 6 of the hotel opposite. Knowing this she addressed a note to "the gentleman in room 6," and sent it to him. It was in the following words : "My Own Own : I am nearly mad that I have not heard from you. Oh, my beloved, do not let me remain in this agony of mind; but let me hear from you on the receipt of this immediately. Your own own, VIRGINIA." "Oh, bless you, my child !" said the lunatic, when this note was handed to him by a messenger boy, and he placed the palm of his hand on the top of the boy s head. "Oh, you come off!" responded this native son of the golden west, who mistook the blessing for a piece of facetiousness on the lunatic s part ; and as soon as the back of the lunatic was turned, with his thumb at his nose, he extended his fingers at him. Having thus relieved himself of what, un der the circumstances, he considered to be a duty, he left the room. The crazy man wore a coat in shape somewhat like that generally worn by ministers of the gos pel. Beneath it was a vest of the "flashy" style often worn by gamblers, and his muddy-yellow-col ored pantaloons were, in appearance, like those which grasshoppers should, but do not wear. He had thin hair, which was light in color, and "blue eyes. Within the Fair, Find Them 21 After the note had been read, the mad-man stood on his head, and kicked his legs above him, a method peculiarly his own, of expressing mental satisfaction. After his mind had become, by this process, thoroughly satisfied, he got down, sat on the lounge, and laughed immoderately. He then rang the call bell so violently that the handle came off. "Pen and ink and a slice of bread and but ter you worm !" he said to the boy who respond ed to the call. The boy was even more astonished by this mixed order, and by the title of worm, conferred upon him, than he had been by the bless ing; and as he went after the pen and ink and bread and butter, he muttered demi-oaths wnich (like white lies), as they are not of the dangerous and corroding kind, may be called white curses. The letter in reply which the lunatic wrote and which Miss Carswallow received, was in the words following: "My Own, Much More than My Own!!!! You say that you are almost mad that you have not heard from me. Why almost why not wholly so??? Well, what s that to me? I m as mad as a young sky harrier ! ! ! ! You say that you have been waiting?? What of it? Don t you know that all things come to those who wait? and so will I: oh, won t I???? I will have a closed hack at the foot of the steps of the hotel, with the blinds down, so when I send up ! ! like a seasaw, you will come down ! ! and join me. I m a high roller, and nothing less, I am, Your own and all your own 22 Within the Fair, Find Them Birds among the bushes And love among the violets. He gave this to the boy and told him to hand it to the lady who had sent the note to him. The boy did so, and when Miss Carswallow opened it, she found in it food for thought and reflection. The madman, on entering the hack, told the driver to drive out of town and back before crossing the street, as he wished to increase the circulation of the horses. He believed that a very rapid drive would either kill them or increase it. In the mean time he would increase his own circulation while pretending that he was a monkey on a spring board, by turning handsprings inside of his hack. He wished fast horses, and it was his desire to test them before he took the lady into the hack. The driver, while wondering where he could have gotten the liquor, which he believed to be affecting his circulation more than anything else, smiled from ear to ear and from chin to topknot and obeyed di rections. In the meantime, while Miss Carswallow tried, and yet with but slight success to compre hend the note which she had received, the train carrying Mr. Toker from town had hardly started, when some friends coming into the car, the man in charge of Mr. Toker learned that a mistake had been made, for which he gave utterance to many apologies. So the keeper, in a penitent mood, got off with Mr. Toker, who was in a grouty one, at the next station. From this station, which was a mile from town, they walked back along the track. As they reached the town station another train was arriving, and a portly gentleman, recognized Within the Fair, Find Them 23 at once by Mr. Toker as the father of his betrothed, stepped from the cars. Their eyes met; and the stern parent, with an angry brow and apparently with murder in his heart, rushed at Mr. Toker. "Is that him, the lunatic?" asked Mr. Swallow. Mr. Toker, seeing no other way of protecting him self, replied that it was. The keeper advanced and before the enraged gentleman was close enough to put an end to the persistence of his wouldbe son- in-law, the keeper made a motion which caused Mr. Carswallow to throw down his hands to pro tect his stomach from the blow which seemed to have been aimed at it, and before he was aware of it handcuffs were upon him. Mr. Toker then went to the hotel in which his sweetheart was to be found. The length of his unaccountable absence made his appearance doubly welcome, and she fell into his arms. "My adored !" cried she. "My beloved !" was his response. The silence rang in their ears forty seconds, when Mr. Toker, who knew that his intended father-in-law was rich, and remembered his max im applicable to such cases, that "time is money," told his sweetheart to put on her hat; in his ex citement by way of assistance patted It down over her right eye; and then took her to the house of the nearest minister, where they were married. They then hired a carriage and were driven to a distant railway station and started upon a honey moon which was not to terminate until they had con cealed themselves in a small and obscure town in Rhode Island. 24 Within the Fair, Find Them Forgetting the engagement which he had made with Miss Carswallow, the lunatic spent the night in keeping up his circulation by giving utterance to wild and sensational shrieks from his hack win dow, as he was driven about the outskirts of the town. Mr. Carswallow was released from the asylum in a few days, vowing, as they released him, that if he were the father of 400 daughters, he would starve himself, if necessary, to raise money, with which to turn each one, in succession, into an as- sitsed emigrant. He was unrelenting in his refu sal to see his daughter, until an aunt of Mr. To- ker s, who was deaf, and tired of the society of people who had always to be urged in order to get them to speak loud enough to reach the standard which she had fixed upon flew into a passion one day on that account, and departed post haste from the world through the instrumentality of carbolic acid. This resulted in making Mr. Toker the proud proprietor of $250,000. When he offered to place this money in a partnership concern, of which he and his father-in-law were to constitute the members, the father-in-law condescended to be proud of him, and as friendly as he was proud. Within the Fair, Find Them 25 An Ancient Mariner, Apparently Much Married, Who Will Be Seen at the Fair There dwelt at one time, in Sonora, Tuolumne County, Cal., a couple, who, even in this world where everybody is noticeably queer, were queer to a remarkable degree. The two were brother and sister. The brother had been a seaman on an American man-of-war; and in a naval engage ment he had gained much glory and lost a leg. The loss of this leg made him melancholy and fond of grog, but at the same time it brought him a pension which paid for the luxuries of life; and for the mere necessaries he depended on cred it. Upon going to the mining town he had erect ed on its outskirts upon the side of a gulch, be neath tall Madrona trees, a house, in so far re sembling a man-of-war in outward appearance as it was possible for a house, so high above the sea, surrounded by chapparal and jack-rabbits, and hundreds of miles from the ocean s salt water, to resemble a one, a two, or a three-decker. This house had been paid for with prize money which came to him after the prize had ceased to be one. Over the door he placed in gilt let ters the name of this nautical establishment, call ing it, perhaps after the heroine of one of those romantic, love-at-first-sight affairs, which suscep- 26 Within the Fair, Find Them tible sailors have when in port, lasting for days or weeks, or until the command to heave anchor breaks love s fetters, the "Mary Jane of Bos ton." As soon as the name appeared and in the morn ing sunlight, dazzled their eyes, the miners gave him a title as well. Up to that time he had been simply "Mr. Crust." He was now made "Captain" Crust. For having a house which was as much like a ship as it was possible for anything with a pine door and shingled roof to be unless Noah s ark is to be taken into consideration it was nec essary for the house to have a commander; and who was better fitted to be her captain than the only man in town familiar with the ways of the sea her owner? It certainly needed a seafaring man at her helm ; for the mere sight of her black out side and her windows high upon her side and in a row, was enough to make a landsman "seasick." Capt. Crust next fitted up the inside of the Mary Jane himself in fact, nobody else in So- nora could have done it. He calked the floor, filled the seams with tar to keep the water out and the cracks in the walls with oakum. He wished for something which would not founder in a storm, when even the cook was aloft and no hands could be spared to man the pumps. He spent four days thereafter in unravelling ropes, and next in plaiting them together. After that he made a bedstead without legs, which hung like a hammock by four ropes from the ceiling. He then arranged a network of pulleys and ropes by which, when in bed he could swing it to any Within the Fair, Find Them 27 part of the room without getting out of it; a great convenience he said, and a ship-shape con trivance for those frosty winter mornings, when ice might be alow and aloft, and a man, if he got out of bed, had to scud along under bare poles ; and the sheet of your shirt paid out and gone ; and everything, because of the gale, in strips and rags. For example, to avoid cruising about in dis tress, you could, by pulling on a certain hawser, heave up alongside of the stove, make fast to a cleat on the wall, and light the fire from the bed; or, by heaving away with a will at another haw ser, you could work out into the stream and drop anchor by the cupboard ; and thus obtain, at any time of the day or night, a cold meal and glass of grog, without rising from bed. It is needless to say that, while the miners sur veyed these arrangements on the inside of the "Mary Jane of Boston" with open eyed wonder and some of them, the contrivance for obtaining the grog with envy as well as admiration, Capt. Crust himself surveyed them with what more closely re sembled unbounded pride. "Land lubbers," he observed, "know nothing, and never did know nothing about the conven iences of life. A man has got to have a knowl edge of them thumped into him with a well-tarred rope s end aboard a man- o-war; and when he gets ashore then he generally knows something about conveniences." Capt. Crust, after losing his leg, became religious almost as religious as he was superstitious. So one of the places to which he hauled himself daily 28 Within the Fair, Find Them while in his bed with his ropes and pulleys, was a shelf, on which he kept a Bible. This he read daily; and he had a method, peculiarly his own, of interpreting some of its passages, which would have raised a commotion in a church convention. Having found it impossible to drop a few nautical expressions of an emphatic kind from his discourse, altogether, he had discovered passages, for exam ple, in the shape of parables and allegories, excus ing sailors from punishment for the offence. He could show, also, that the Bible was in favor of sailors working on Sunday ; and was in favor of that day as a day of labor for mariners ; and he said that he had seen it pronounced somewhere in the Bible to be their lucky day, but had for gotten exactly where. He became the favorite of the small boys, who were taught by him to tie the great sailors knot, the "bow-line"; a knot, as he told them, of such wonderful characteristics that it was to be men tioned only with reverence, and never in the same category with the untrustworthy and dangerous knots which land-lubbers tied. He taught them how to make ships on their ringers and thumbs, with twine; he made for them wooden ships which floated on wooden seas painted an intense green ; or made halves of ships which were fastened to the sides of painted boards and had white sails of wood and rigging made of spool thread. Besides this he told them true stories about which they asked him many questions which he found it diffi cult to answer. These stories were about sea ser pents, and different, of course, from the untrue Within the Fair, Find Them 29 stories that land-lubbers tell to a long suffering public. He was stout, round faced, red-faced, side whis kered, hairy, tattooed and good natured. He was methodical to the last degree. At "eight bells" he hove alongside the stove, and lighted the fire. When "one bell" marked the passage of another half-hour, he placed the coffee on his rough table; hauled his knife out of his leather case, cut the bread and ate his breakfast. At eight bells again (at noon) he took the frying beefsteak sizzling from the stove, placed it on the table, sat down surrounded by the smoke that filled the hold of the "Mary Jane," and ate his dinner. When "four bells" came around, for supper he had tea and "hard tack." As Friday, as even land lubbers are aware, is an unlucky day, on that day he did noth ing; but on Sunday, the lucky day; the day of all others on which sailors prefer to go to sea; the day on which they prefer to work, he did his week s washing at the edge of the creek. At "two bells" in the forenoon of Monday of each week he started out on a cruise. These cruises lasted generally three days, and the port at which the cruise would terminate was always indefinite and uncertain. The cargo which he carried being invariably spirits, his helm often got out of order and some other craft had to take him in tow. Noticing his signs of distress the Con stable often put out of port after him, and acting the part of a tug, towed him into a room back of the Justice s Court. 30 Within the Fair, Find Them These cruises continued to be periodical until the arrival of his sister, Miss Crust. Miss Crust was a maiden lady of 44, with man ners much like those of a policeman on duty. Like some of them she seldom smiled. She looked like a person intended originally for a grenadier; but turned, by accident, by one of nature s apprentices into a maiden lady, whose disposition unconscious ly to herself, was soured always afterwards be cause of the mistake. She moved about as if her framework was of iron instead of bone, and kept well oiled ; her gray dress was loose and flowing, and the straw bonnet, the strings of which she kept tied always in a hard knot beneath her iron jaw, for some rea son had a terrifying effect on the ordinary man. She looked as if she might turn out, like the fa mous grandmother of Red Ridinghood to be, in stead of the ordinary amiable grandmother, a be ing capable of eating the person who came too close to her. The reader will now easily under stand why, instead of seeking for variety in the way of amusement by cruises to distant ports as of yore, Capt. Crust, after her arrival, confined him self to such innocent recreation as could be ob tained by hauling himself about by his ropes and pulleys, in his hanging bed. The time came at last, however, when this amusement became so dreadfully monotonous that, upon the mysterious plea of "business" business which his command of language seemed insuffi cient to explain he would make half-yearly cruises to the distant port of San Francisco. It took him, Within the Fair,- Find Them 31 as a rule, three weeks, unless the weather was severe, when it might be longer, to go there and back. It was customary for him to start out with money in the locker, but he came home, gener ally, with debts, for which he had given pledges to "land sharks" pledges which his sister, who had a larger income than he, thought it best to redeem. As long as these voyages continued, half a year apart she seemed not dissatisfied. One of these cruises terminated, however, with a seeming misfortune. When he came home it was observed that he had taken a "weaker vessel" in tow. Matrimony in San Francisco had made him the head of a family of his own. During his stay in that city he had kept himself stimulated; and with no apparent reason for doing so, he had per sistently announced himself to each person that he met to be a mine owner and a capitalist from Sonora. The result of this was that he found him self one morning he hardly knew why, both so ber and married ; and believing that the best place for a married man was at home, and aboard ship, in the bosom of his family, he started at once, with his wife, for the "Mary Jane of Boston"; for in stinctively he felt that home can do for an alarmed, disturbed and unsettled mind what nothing else can. His wife was a respectable, but hardly a refined widow lady, who kept a sailor s boarding house; and upon first making his acquaintance, she was about to have him shipped on a voyage to the North Pole or near it, while he was "half seas over"; but when he announced himself, as usual, 32 Within the Fair, Find Them to be a mine owner and capitalist, she put him in a hack, drove with him to a church and married him forthwith. It is needless to say that a widow who could handle even Jack Tars with this degree of ease was one possessing a will of her own in a high state of development, and it is as needless to say that if, upon meeting, Miss Crust and Mrs. Crust should happen to form unfavorable opinions of each other the spectators would "see sparks fly," and perhaps fly themselves ; for it would be a case in which hammer would come into contact with anvil. As Mrs. Crust disdained to ride upon the in side of the coach while on their journey to So- nora, she and the captain sat, as was most appro priate for a captain and a captain s wife, on the " deck " of the coach. Two Wells, Fargo & Co. s messengers, with sawed off and cocked shotguns sat beside them to protect the gold which the stage carried from the highwaymen, but as Mrs. Crust was not at all nervous, such a trifle as being shot at from out of the brush, or from behind a rock, did not at all disturb her. She was a sort of a fa talist, anyhow, and if a highwayman fired buckshot at her, why he fired buckshot at her, that was all ; and if she was not alive afterwards she would be dead ; and if she was not dead, she would be alive ; which, to her mind, was the whole matter in a nut shell. During the last twenty miles she kept asking the captain if they were near his mine yet, but hav ing a poor phrenological bump for localities his replies upon the subject were of the vaguest char- Within the Fair, Find Them 33 acter. Besides, in his mind, he was intently con sidering the question of how to bring about a meet ing between Miss Crust and Mrs. Crust, and he was in great dread of the possible last "chapter of accidents" ensuing upon the meeting. Alighting with her from the stage when the driver, leaning back, drew up by the post office, she took him by the arm and escorted him to his home, directing him to point out the way. When his sister, who was standing at the door of the "Mary Jane," saw her leading him like a culprit towards the house she marvelled much, and won dered what could have been his offense. Stopping at the steps, the lady explained the fact that she was Mrs. Captain Crust. The captain stood be hind and was ready to stump off towards the hills as soon as the battle commenced. The two stern faces looked unflinchingly at one another. "It s coming now!" thought the Captain, as he saw them drawing gradually closer together. "It s come!" shouted he, when they fell into each oth ers arms. "Sister!" one cried. "Sister!" the other responded. The report of a grenadier kiss after that fol lowed, and then they wept. This was too much for the mind of a seaman. For the time being the captain lost the godlike quality of reason; became dazed, and instead of stumping off to the hills he stumped down the road to town and went on another cruise. He was beginning to get well under way, with all sails set, as it were, when the two ladies hove in 34 Within the Fair, Find Them sight, and each taking an arm without asking for the privilege, they took him back and aboard of the "Mary Jane." It was his last cruise. Man-of-war discipline in its most rigid form now set in aboard the "Mary Jane." The two ladies, who had taken a great fancy to each other, were like a couple of wives to him. In a masculine sort of way, they hen pecked him into the condition of mind of a mere land lubber; and so thoroughly did they subdue him that the mere though of going on another cruise brought beads of perspiration out upon his brow. Within the Fair, -Find Them 35 The Los Angeles County Poet (Said to Be About to Start a New Cult at Long Beach), Who Will Be at the Fair \ In California is a county. In that county is a town. In the town is a white house. In this house are two people. These are the people with whom the critical reader shall play as does a cat with a mouse; with whom the good-natured shall form a friendship ; over whom the thoroughly sentimental reader shall be permitted, if he shall so prefer, to weep. The blinds of the white house were even as green as jealousy is supposed to be; as green as a philosopher can be in regard to affairs of the world; as green as are the blinds sometimes on a doll s house. A veranda was in front of the house, and on this veranda had been placed two red rocking chairs. Through the center of the house ran a hall way, upon which was oil cloth having on it octag onal-shaped figures. A door-way on the right of the hall opened into a parlor, and over the door, worked in worsted, was the motto, "God bless our home." Above a door on the opposite side of the hall rested a human skull. Though the skull was empty, the feeblest comprehension would at once recognize the fact that it was not there to convey the impression that those who passed be neath it were brainless. As this is clear, and as 36 Within the Fair, Find Them the door beneath it opened into a library, it must have had some significance ; but exactly what that significance was it would perhaps take the pens of at least four long-haired Samsons, all writing at once, to say. In the parlor a parlor which was rarely en tered by any one but Miss Tibletts, a maiden lady of thirty-nine was the usual family album, having in it, as usual, what seemed a rogue s gallery ; the usual center table, the portraits of half a dozen dead ancestors, whose eyes were in the habit of following you wherever you moved with a look of anxious suspicion ; a piece of coral in the corner ; a piano, which was never opened; and the general darkness, produced by keeping the blinds closed from one year s end to another. In the study were about two hundred of those richly bound books which publishers publish as furniture books which are readily sold for that purpose in spite of their contents those plaster casts of Dickens, Byron and Shakespeare, which are so generally appreciated because of their cheap ness ; a mahogany chair, with a brown leather seat and back, and a mahogany table, with a red cloth top. In the parlor everything was in perennial order; in the study it was evident that perennial disorder had been studied. Letters and papers had been purposely scattered upon the floor. The gentleman whose study it was displayed his reason for this in his Samson-like locks ; and often, as he was a child of genius, he wiped his literary nose but this time by accident with his pen. The reputa- Within the Fair, Find Them 37 tion of his collar was as often stained by his ink. This child of pentameters iambic and trochaic feet was Mr. Tibletts. Mr. Tibletts was a bachelor of forty. The lady, being a woman of ideas of her own which had been imported from abroad, pronounced marriage to be a woeful and even a ludicrous fail ure. Her brother, who was a very dogmatic child of song, went even further, and said that the men who were married were fools and the women worse. Recognizing the fact that reason is but the offspring of sentiment, this is easily explained. This gentleman s logic was but the result of his experiences. A lady had for five years expended her energies in the attempt to make him propose marriage ; for she had the folly to think that a poet was worth having. Although Mr. Tibletts had inclination enough even more than enough to propose, his courage, notwithstanding his locks was of the poorest known quality. The lady at last, with a sigh, gave him up. He saw it, was angered ; hated the other sex as bitterly as if he had been a passionate, instead of a compassionate female nov elist; and in imagination forgetting those grand qualities, of which the world is unworthy saw in women but the unnatural monstrosities, which the uncurried female essayist and novelist has por trayed; and told his friends that our better halves (if we are so fortunate as to have any), are without the valvular appendages so necessary to woman s gay existence. The sister, because of a similar experience, had come to the same conclusion and rightly, in re- 38 Within the Fair, Find Them gard to men. She no longer saw in them Greek gods, who were six bottle men, were wrecks at thirty, and blew their lack of brains out at forty. Neither of them went into society, the companion ship of the lady, outside of her brother, being con fined exclusively to the memory of the deceiver who had furnished her with her idea of mankind. She sat often for hours in the dark parlor, with her hands crossed and with his memory as her sole companion. Apparently with the idea that it might make this memory ashamed of itself, she was in variably dressed, on these occasions, in the same clothes which she had worn when she and the cruel one had parted. The brother spent half of his time on the veran da, creating for himself characters suited to be the associates of a man who believed women to be heartless the fiends of feminine fiction, its monstrous devils ; the worst yet conjured forth from the depths of ink. The rest of his time he spent in giving to these blue devils a local habita tion in verse ; for, as has been seen by his hair, he was a bard. These wounded hearts were sitting one day on the veranda in the red chairs when the lady, calling her brother by his surname, as was her custom, said: "Tibletts, if it were not for the fact that men are becoming so insipid, I d like you to take me to the seaside for a week." If boulders had commenced suddenly to grow upon the branches of a tree spreading above mm, and, becoming ripe, had fallen into his lap, Mr. Tibletts might have been less surprised. As it Within the Fair, Find Them 39 was, he tried to find a word which would properly express his astonishment, but finding none in his own tongue, which came up to the requirements of the occasion, he gave utterance merely to what appeared to be a Chinook gutteral sound, which, like other Chinook words, may or may not have been to the purpose. The first objection to the trip occurring to him he expressed by saying: "You speak of men. I d have to talk to females bathing in the surf, with water on the brain. Noth ing but sheep s eyes at me; waltzers hopping at me; pianos, on my account, turning the air into slivers of sound ; match-making mothers chasing me into a corner, like a yelping hound; fathers and brothers calling on me, and coming to ask my in tentions simply because I ve got none and don t propose to propose. Oh, no, Poll," said he, call ing his sister by a pet nickname which one of his ideas of the other sex suggested. Just let well enough alone. With my slippers and dressing gown I m comfortable. They won t raise a row. s With a wife in charge of them and me too she might create one." If the brother had only possessed that wisdom which a poet is supposed to possess, on account of the child-like simplicity which is attributed to a prophet and seer and genius, he would have at once agreed to go. She would then have turned upon him with a sufficient number of objections to have satisfied a married man. She would have added to these the strongest of reasons unreason ing persistence; that form of logic so commonly 40 Within the Fair, Find Them adopted by the keener mind of woman because \ she knows of its influence on the male mind, which is largely fond of repose. "Men," said the lady meditatively, but with an air of conviction, "are brutes." "Poll," said her brother, "you ve struck the key note of woman s opinion of man, if we judge by their conduct towards them. Did you ever notice," he continued, "what three men on a sidewalk will do if a woman is encountered? They will form in line and stand pigeon-toed, one behind the other, like Indians, and allow her to pass. What will three women do if a brute is encountered? Mis take him for his shadow, apparently, as, like three automatons walking abreast, they move over the spot where his substance has been, without even casting back a glance of compassion, as he scrapes from his shoes the mud, into which he stepped ankle deep, as they passed." By 9 o clock the next day the trunk of Mr. Tib- letts was packed and had been locked. By 4 o clock in the afternoon his sister, who had got ten four hundred pounds of material packed into her own trunk, by some occult process, compre hended by women only, and far beyond the fee bler powers of conception of great, big stupid man, proceeded to open his trunk ; or, rather, she made him open it, after which she spoiled his most cherished arrangements, and then, by mingling his clothes with trinkets, bonnets and corsets of her own, she managed to get three hundred pounds of compressed lead into his trunk. The purse, con taining nearly all of his money, which he had Within the Fair, Find Them 41 placed at the top of everything, inside of his trunk, she placed where robbers would not find it, at the bottom. Mr. Tibletts who, being absent-minded, like most men of genius, had a mind which was usually absent when he needed it, remembered only that he had placed the money where it could easily be found when he wished for it ; but notwith standing this recollection, found it a difficult un dertaking to find it. His sister s mind being given up, at the time of packing the trunk, to more im portant considerations as to what she would wear, the mere episode of concealing her brother s purse was forgotten. When he referred to the subject she said that if he would search long enough he would doubtless find it is one of his pockets. He had the pleasure of learning, besides, that this forgetfulness on his part was but one of many things of late which were convincing her that he was subject to intermittent fits of feeble-mindedness, that in time might and doubtless would become chronic. She hoped the sea air would improve him. Being disturbed in mind by this remark, as it corroborated some vague suspicions which had come to his own mind of late, it is not to be won dered at that he went down town in what may be called a day dream, and that upon awakening from his dream he found himself in the baker s shop, next door to the ticket office, purchasing bread tickets with which to convey himself and his sister to the seaside. Discovering his mistake he was even more confused to learn that it was from a young woman that he had attempted to purchase them, and that, upon noticing his embarrassment, the young woman 42 Within the Fair, Find Them showed her unsympathetic pleasure by a smile which might have acted as a connecting link be tween the tips of her ears. Rushing from the baker s shop Mr. Tibletts has tened into the ticket office, and in his haste threw a copper cent on the counter, supposing it to be a $5 piece, and demanded tickets. The clerk, while gradually expanding, told him that that game could not be played there, certainly not upon him. Mr. Tibletts looked down, saw his copper coin and, realizing the clerk s suspicions, for a time lost the power of speech. Upon regaining his voice he as sured the clerk, etc., but the clerk showed, never theless, by his unbending demeanor that he was a doubting Thomas ; that he was a man who, after forming first impressions, clings to them. After making a few more mistakes Mr. Tibletts and his sister succeeded in getting started on their journey. As Mr. Tibletts was in such a frame of mind that he saw nothing along the road, all real things being obliterated, and space left to be in habited by his gloomy views only, we will remark simply that they arrived safely and on time at one of the seaside hotels. The beach was crowded each day by bathers, by people walking, by children dashing about in carts drawn by donkeys, by donkeys dashing about in carts drawn by horses, and by people riding se dately in glittering carriages drawn by horses which grew restive at the sight of the waves, or more speedily moving about in their automobiles There was heard the everlasting sighing and dieaway sound which pervades the salt air, the lazy rising Within the Fair, Find Them 43 and falling of the swells on the distant sea ; the curve, the fall, the roar, the rush of tne white bounding waves up the beach. The afternoon breeze came always punctually; people promen aded on the porches; peddlers urged on their half- dead horses, which hauled wagons containing in them pineapples and oranges ; Italians had sick monkeys to show, and nurses sick children to nurse; flirtations were discoverable by sunlight, by lamplight, by moonlight, and possibly, Dy no light at all. The fact was noticed by Miss Tibletts, after five or six days, that her brother was wearing his best coat and his very best trousers, his best silk hat and his very best tie. Besides this, he wore on his face a sheepish look which, when he was acute ly suffering besides from a poetical inspiration, gave to his face that expression which is seen as a rule, only on the face of a genius when his por trait is about to be painted and he knows that it is to be looked upon by people who are so young that they have not yet been born, and that there fore he must have upon it a look which is suitable to very youthful powers of comprehension. Mr. Tibletts fell, after this, into the habit of having his shoes polished four times a day, and this was occasionally extended to six. His sister noticed, besides, that when his boots were not be ing polished he was himself being shaved or sham pooed by the barber; that when this was not hap pening his side whiskers were being caressed by his own nervous fingers and anxious hands. Be- 44 Within the Fair, Find Them sides this, a male Delilah had been allowed to clip away the chief evidence of his genius. If Mr. Tibletts had, instead of retiring so con stantly within himself, observed outward things, he might have observed marked changes in his sister as well. Costumes of the good old days previous to the episode of the deceiver and dresses of silk were brought forth from the trunk. If he had seen her in her room he would have noticed that she stood for periods of prolonged duration, and often before the glass as she arranged her locks with the degree of care with which an as tronomer adjusts his instrument when about to search for a new star among the myriads. The time at which they had agreed to return was up already. "This scenery is marvelous and enchanting," remarked Mr. Tibletts, one day, referring appar ently to an extensive tract of sand, which was between them and the sea, as they stood on the hotel veranda. "And the sea air," responded Miss Tibletts, "is so invigorating." "I think," Mr. Tibletts, with a guilty look ob served, "that it would be a pity to return yet a while." "A shame," answered the lady. That afternoon Miss Tibletts, dressed in a green silk dress, whose splendor defied the rainbows formed in the spray of the waves, went glittering down the beach on the arm of a bachelor who, being of an economical turn of mind, kept a box of blacking in his room, with which he had pol- Within the Fair, Find Them 45 ished the toes of his own boots. The heels had not been in like manner adorned as upon the sub ject, his conceptions did not differ materially from those of the ostrich, which, after burying its head in the sand, is of th opinion that its example has been adopted and followed by the rest of the uni verse. This gentleman had brown eyes, a turky gobbler head, and a long beard, which with ill- concealed gratification he stroked with his right hand when he did not stroke it with greater satis faction with both. A mile down the beach was a rock, twelve feet high, which was noted for the number of mar riages which had originated in its nighborhood ; and this gentleman and Miss Tibletts now sat down in what seemed, under the circumstances, dangerous proximity to it. What made the dan ger appear greater, was the fact that, for what was now weeks, the lady and gentleman had been constantly together . During the walk the gentle man gave utterance to a remark of the weightiest character to one who considered the male race to consist of brutes. He had said that if she would become his wife she would be an angel. The prospect of becoming an angel, through the intervention of matrimony, is one which is doubt less pleasant to man or w r oman; but, as the lady informed him, there stood in this instance an ob stacle in the way. She and her brother had both asserted, over and over again, that nothing would, might, could or should, ever induce them to mar ry. Now, if nothing could induce her to mar ry, the logical consequence would be that the 46 Within the Fair, Find Them gentleman with the beard, being included in noth ing, could not. However, she told him that she would consider it; and when a woman says that, the man who changes his mind and wishes to re cede afterwards, had better look out for himself. For the purpose of considering it she sat down with him by the side of the rock. Sitting there in silent and romantic meditation, they heard suddenly the sound of a mournful male voice coming from the other side of the rock, which said : "You see the gulls moving along the shore. Are they not in love?" This was not, as Falstaff once said, " a question to be asked," but rather a question, as it appeared, to be answered. They listened, therefore, for the the answer, and perhaps wondered if the speaker referred to the gulls simply because they were such, and therefore not in a satirical way. They soon saw that no tinge had embittered the remark, for the doleful speaker spoke again and said: "Are not the lambs, bleating on the mountain side, in love? Are not all of the sweet birds of the air in love? Is not the whole of one-half of the world in love with the other half?" "That voice why that voice seems," said Miss Tibletts, "although a little altered, to me extreme ly familiar." "That," continued the doleful and monotonous voice, "is what binds all things together. Love is knowledge. Away with sciences ! Away with chemistry, away with botany, away with geology ! These are all toys. Give me love, which lasts ! Within the Fair, Find Them 47 Having your promise to become my wife I am, my cherished one, the most enviable of men. The only trouble, which I fear is the trouble which will accrue when my sister hears of it, for, from the hair on her head to the soles on her shoes, she is opposed to marriage." "Foolish, oh, foolish," observed a female voice. "Utterly, utterly," the gentleman responded. Miss Tibletts sprang to her feet as suddenly, as if she had been approached by a mouse. "It is his voice," she cried. "Who s that?" came from the other side of the rock. "Me," said Miss Tibletts. "Who s me?" the doleful voice wished to know. "Poll," was the reply. "Ruined ! ruined !" exclaimed the voice. "Not at all so. Not by any means !" almost shouted Miss Tibletts. "Not in the least! Quite the reverse. On the contrary saved !" We close here, being satisfied that the reader will know intuitively, that another white cottage has sprung up as it was bound to do alongside of the one which has been described; that Miss Tibletts and the man with the beard and turkey gobbler head have become one ; that Mr. Tib letts and the lady adored by him are one; that one and one in this instance, notwithstanding the arithmetics, are four; and that, living in cottages, side by side, they are convinced that marriage not only is not, but never should be a failure. 48 Within the Fair, Find Them A Dog That Can Teach Some U. S. Universities That in Which They Have Proved to Be Lacking While sitting with a friend, before the earth quake in the corridor of the Palace Hotel of San Francisco, he related to me the following experi ence. He said : "When I came to California I brought with me letters of introduction to a pleasant family in San Jose, by the name of Bancroft, and after spending two days in that city, during which time I was constantly with the members of Mr. Bancroft s family, I came to Oakland and took rooms in one of the hotels. Miss Theresa Bancroft was the only daughter of this retired merchant and a man of means ; and was to me the most interesting mem ber of his family; and I made up my mind on leaving San Jose that it would not be long before I would again visit that city. I was uncertain as to whether I had made an impression upon her or not, but I was willing to take an oath, if need be, that she had made one on me. She was a hand some brunette, having a carriage that was grace itself; and her whole life seemed to be made up of cheeriness and laughter. Changes of fortune come at time to some of us with the suddenness of flashes of lightening: and in my case this now happened. Patti was here at that time ; and, not anticipating what was Within the Fair, Find Them 49 in store for me, going to the theater, and forming for three hours one of a long line of idiots-in- waiting, my turn came, and I purchased a ticket. Perhaps I had better say, before going further, that I had rented my room at the hotel in Oak land; had my trunk taken to it, containing every thing that I possessed, except the clothes on my back, in the shape of a wardrobe; and had rushed off to San Francisco to procure this seat before all had been taken. I, as has been said, succeeded ; and, as I did not care to return to Oakland that night I obtained a room at a San Francisco ho tel. After having paid for the theater ticket I had left on hand money enough to pay what would be my hotel bill, and a few dimes over. I was, at the time, expecting a draft, which I had directed an uncle to send me at San Francisco. It was too late that evening to attempt to get it from the express office, but I expected the next morning to do so. "That night I went to the Opera House, and was bored somewhat, as I do not care to watch Romeos in panteletts, as they fight duels to what I believe musicians call semi-quavers. After the opera, I tossed a "night-cap" down my throat, and, without putting another upon my head retired, as did Thanatopsis, (whoever he was), in the last verse of a poem, to sleep and pleasant dreams. The next morning, twirling my cane between my thumb and fingers, I walked leisurely down the street to the express office, after spending my last quarter of a dollar for a breakfast to receive there a letter which, when I read it, made me feel 50 Within the Fair, Find Them as if I were about to be turned inside out. My Uncle wrote that he had no money to send to me, as both he and I had been made paupers by the failure of our bank. Do not try to imagine my feelings, because you know you cannot. I walked around the block trying to fix a comprehension of the situation in my head before my obstinate head would consent to receive it. I went to a nearby park in order to rest on a bench and, as I drew figures with my cane in the gravel, still further study my status. To the nurse girls there engaged in wheeling babies in carriages I was evidently an interesting pauper, for they gazed, with consid erable curiosity upon me. However, that was not my day for noticing the looks of nurse girls, how ever good looking the girls thought themselves to be, or however calculated their glances might be deemed to be to charm. "Then, (as I did long before my usual time), I became unnaturally hungry and I began to be convinced that something had to be done. After, for some further time studying, I concluded that, as to "beg I was ashamed, I had better meta phorically begin at once to dig. I walked to a neighborhood redolent of bad odors except those of pork, and made picturesque by a certain class of Jews and old clothes. I there put myself up for sale like a slave in the market place, and one of them purchased me or rather my clothes at what I considered an exorbitantly low figure. Then I, out of the money obtained, purchased from him a seedy suit, the only one near my size, at what then appeared to be an exorbitantly high figure. Within the Fair,- Find Them 51 The Jew rubbed his hands ; I sighed ; we parted. The next thing, having my hand in, was to return to Oakland, get from the Oakland hotel my trunk, and sell (on as extensive a scale as I could), more clothes. There was, however, at the hotel a new clerk, I doubt if the other would have known me, and when I asked for the key to my room as he scorned to soil his hands on me, or on my account disturb the awe-inspiring serenity of his shirt front, he tapped on a bell and a porter came, and put me out. I then went back to San Fran cisco. "After returning to that city and for a time wandering about the streets in search of work, night came and, utterly wearied I went into an office building, hoping under a stairway in it to find a place to sleep. A policeman (ambitious to rise in his profession upon the credit of the num ber of arrests made), observed and followed me. While I was feeling along the dusty top of a coal box to see whether it would serve as a sub stitute for a bed of down, holding his club in one hand, with the other he suddenly caught hold of my coat collar. Coin to steal their coal, was yer? Tempt at burglary, was it? Oh! I m just onto you/ he said. "I tried to explain. But, he didn t want my kind of an explanation. The sort of explanation that he urgently sought for was the kind that would convict. It was a clear case of attempt at burglary/ he said. Another policeman besides had observed me enter; and he had himself caught me in the 52 Within the Fair, -Find Them act as I was trying to get into the coal box. He would clearly now be one step nearer to the "up per office," so he thought. "For three days I had been trying to keep the bubble of my courage high up in my body, but I saw that this was a cold day for me, and the mercury, as it were, of the blood that was In me, dropped down to my boots. I was in despair. "But there are lots of good-hearted policemen, even among the ambitious. This one heaven bless him, changed his mind, and became one of them, or I would today be in a felon s cell. We had been standing by a lamp post and, by the light falling on it he had observed the utter despair of my face. " It was a coal-bin, yes, sure, he meditatively said; and it had a padlock, and, although you are quite guilty enough, it will be hard to prove without some stretching, as easy enough, the boys can do, when they want to, so don t you now be getting altogether too gay too much of a sudden. Now, if it had been anything at all but a coal-bin I would just hold you, and put you through. So now, you move right on, and if ever I see you around here again, through you are going to be put. No man ever accepted an invitation with a greater degree of pleasure than I did this one from him even though, pushing the end of something hard between my shoulder blades, he had accelerated my departure. "Being the next day desperately weary, and having almost lost heart to search for work, I aimlessly spent the day in investigating windows Within the Fair, Find Them 53 in the delicatessen, or bakery shops. Night came at last again. Standing near the kitchen of Cam- pi s a cook who had observed me came forward and, without asking me a question, handed me a stale loaf of bread. I had shortly before observed in a neighboring alley among some boxes an emp ty barrel, its open end being close to a wall and its closed end to the street. To this I went, en tered it, and lay upon the straw that was in it. Hardly had I done so when the hungriest looking thing having in it the breath of life upon which I had ever looked, in abject humility presented it self at the barrel s open end. There remained light enough to examine it by; and I saw that this was a dog, what there was of it. Having a counten ance full of misery and despair, on four emaciated brown legs, it stood at the entrance to my pres ent abode and tried, gazing at it, to hypnotize the loaf out of them that my two hands clutched. Then, with such strength as it still had, it proceed ed, while its great hollow eyes gazed on the loaf, to wag its tail, and thereafter to lick its chops. But the strain and exertion of continuously wag ging its tail proving, for the condition of Its strength, too great, it fell over on one side. Had it confined its exertions merely to licking its chops this apparent collapse and catastrophe might not have happened. "Breaking my bread I gave to the beast its share. We each of us ate in a manner, in har mony with our surroundings, very much alike; our bread going down with great gulps; at least such was my thought at the time. Then together 54 Within the Fair, Find Them we slept. Sleep brought to us both relief; and yet I noted the next morning that a change had come over my only apparent friend. I saw that he would brave clubs and cobble stones to remain nearby me. Well, he is with me still. "That day we were in the park again. Suddenly I felt as if I would like to sink through the earth; for, having committed poverty I had committed something that, at that time, seemed more like a crime than anything that I had ever before heard or read of; and coming towards me, and not far from me in the park was Miss Theresa Bancroft. "More I will not say. That happened a good while ago. We have since been married. There became after the marriage, not two made one, but almost three of us ; and one of the three is our dog. Within the Fair,- Find Them 55 No Boudoir (His Own Private Dictionary Would Give the Pronunciation "Bood- wah") Writer, Who, Surrounded by Clouds as He Comes, Will Descend from Tamalpais, to Be at the Fair Shooting from fields covered with hay-stacks into dark tunnels ; dashing from their darkness out into the blue glass-colored air of canyons, having in them motionless, dark, tall trees, beneath which foaming waterfalls are here and there seen in a shaded stream a stream which whirls, leaps and rushes between massive gray boulders, damp with its spray or the moisture of night, or stops at times as if for a rest and breath in deep eddying pools, in which were at one time trout for which fishermen still fish (and which they say they still catch), and from these shaded canyons being borne with a leap, and along with the locomotive s shriek, out into dry and brown and dusty valleys, along the roads of which creep wagons loaded and slowly moving. I was on a train, coming down the coast and towards Sausalito. A friend who had just gone into the next car behind for I was in the smoking car had been telling me of an organization of tramps, dwelling at one time in that vcinity. A velvet, wrought from sunbeams, would be no 56 Within the Fair, Find Thorn softer than is the air that, after traveling long, as it were, over the ocean, seems to rest here in the mountains, and wild flowers are its perfume. Upon the sloping sides of these valleys and canyons that artist, the sun, has painted his most gorgeous works; and the moon, a coquet though she is to the rest of the world, is in love with them ; and for that reason always resplendent when she glances down on them. The man who dwells here needs no house ; and the tramp whose taste is epi curean in the matter of scenery, has, for that rea son, announced the fact that this place may be paradise now. The members of the organization referred to would, when they needed what was not to be had from the hands of nature, ride on the brakebeams of passing trains until they saw their opportunity to take it from men. The members of the organi zation by long practice had become as skilful in darting about, and in and out, among the wheels and brakebeams of a moving train, as a fish is in water. If discovered by a conductor or brakeman in the act of stealing from the valise or pocket of a sleeping passenger, inside of a car, they would satirically smile, walk sedately to the rear plat form and vanish from sight and from the earth, apparently, with a degree of expertness which could not have been excelled even by tne most skilful of expert ghosts. Perhaps some passenger, whose heart would jump into his mouth at the sight, would see the tramp dive from the plat form like a didapper duck, a duck which, so say some huntsmen, finds it a leisurely performance Within the Fair, Find Them 57 to dodge a Winchester bullet, and as speedily lost to view. A broad-shouldered young man of ruddy coun tenance, wearing a broad-brimmed gray hat, a blue and white checked shirt, a red silk handker chief around his neck, and a coat, now green, which had once been black, while sitting in the seat in front of me had been listening to my friend s de scription of this organization; and when my friend left me he seemed nervous and anxious to add something to what had been said. Pointing, some moments later, to a cabin on the mountain side he said, as we passed it: "That shack you see there s where Casey Scrog- gins lived." In order to gain if possible, from the dwelling to which he pointed, some idea of what kind of a man Casey Scroggins might be, upon glancing in the direction indicated by his thick brown fore finger, I observed a small redwood hut. Through its roof grew, and above it spread, the branches of a madrona in which, at the time, sat a medi tative hawk. "So," said I, "And that s where Casey lives, is it?" "Well, no, I should guess not," said the man in the gray hat; "or, if he does, he s the first dead man I ever heard of living anywhere." "Oh, then his not living there accounts for the tree growing through the roof," I said. Yes, I see." "Sure," said my companion, as he turned around further in his seat to look hard and straight in my face. He seemed to be satisfied after this 58 Within the Fair, Find Them tiny that I had more intelligence than he had at first suspected, for he winked at me slowly and with a grin said : "Come off." Seeming to think, however, that I deserved some sort of punishment for whatever I had been trying to do, he drew from his pistol pocket a package of cigarettes and offered me one ; but, as I believed the punishment would be altogether disproportion ate to my innocence, I politely refused to suffer. "My name," said he, "is Joe Barder. Drove on the Lakeport stage once, and everybody in the north half of the state knows me ; but as I have not been driving since I have been down here, nobody here knows me. But, of course, you know Casey Scroggins, though?" I had to blush for myself. I had not known him. "Well," said Mr. Barder, "that s shore a wonder. Now he was this kind of a man ; too polite to work and didn t, and that s one of the ways he made his reputation. Oh, he was remarkable. Nobody but could see that with his eyes shut. For instance, if you had a horse he wanted, all he had to do was to ask you for it no necessity to steal it; not the least little bit and it was his. It was as easy to him as falling off a log." "Do you mean to say," said I, "that if he had asked you for one of your leaders, you would have given the horse to him?" "Why, sure," said the speaker. "Couldn t have helped it, as you ll see. All he had to do was just to mention the matter and you d be the one to Within the Fair, -Find Them 59 beg him for to accept. Oh, he was a prince, was Scroggins, and no mistake. If he wanted a ranch no necessity for him to buy it, for give him time and he d have it for nothing. In his easy going, casual way, unless he saw something better in sight that took his fancy, he d refer to it and you d take him in as partner. If you went with a club or gun, to remonstrate with him for something he d done, no, you wouldn t; for at the first sight of him you d melt away into a jubilee of joy, and in the end go off his life-long friend, just harping away on his praises like you d been turned into a small sized cherub, just come into possession of his harp, who had learned but one tune. Oh, don t you believe it, but he was a dan dy; and there s no use disputing a fact when it s not made out of statistics. "I could show you many a man who has gone in a towering rage to chaw him up and knock sixteen if not seventeen kinds of daylight out of him, who has come back with a silly smile, only to swear by him. What was it? Oh, something beats all ancient armor. Where d he get it? Well, sir, you won t believe it; but he stole the idea clean from the Bible. Great head? Oh, you bet! What was it? His radiant politeness. That s what ! "Why, if a cuss word was to touch him he would melt away like an icicle on a red hot stove. Casey was no church member don t mistake me ; but if a man started out to murder him, that man s friend would be more n likely to hear he d committed suicide from being made ashamed of 00 Within th Fair, Find Them himself and remorse beforehand instead. To show you just what kind of a man Casey Scroggins was ; he once delivered a sermon to a lot of horse thieves up in Siskiyou, and got em all to weeping like in fants ; and the next morning, before daylight, he had walked off with their only ham, which they had looked forward to the use of for breakfast. They tell this following story on him which, though it isn t true, shows you also what he was. That he once run off with another man s wife and that the man, with tears in his eyes, only thanked him. Oh, yep. "You see he was so utterly polite he d even for give all his enemies as he made them. He was just a dandy in a duster and not a doubt. For what he d done he d always soon show his enemies they only were to blame, till they d nod their heads in acknowledgement that it was so; and then how fast he d wade in and forgive them ! "A point of his, when they d rush at him for some piece of his rascality, for you d better believe me he was a rascal, one who never had an equal in low-downness, except, maybe, in high-class poli tics was to rush out at them with extended hand and get in the first word, and that first word was always: Old man, God bless you! and while his face would beam like the sun when first bursting through the clouds of a foggy morning, he d tell them how happy the sight of them had made him. As they d not come there to be blessed themselves, or with the intention of arousing such over power ing happiness in him, seeing they d done so would just amaze them and they d be stunned on the Within the Fair, Find Them 61 start. Before they d had time to get breath for a reply he d give them his hand, and in their dazed condition, up and down like a pump handle, they d shake it. Now a man whose going to annihilate another don t like to start in by shaking hands. That is, in those days, when it wasn t the old Cali fornia way. It then was to tell your enemy you d come for a row, and if he wasn t armed, go and get armed ; and when he said he was so, strike him in front; not shake his hand first and shoot him next when he had no weapons on. "Well, sir; after they d done slowly and doubt fully shaking his hand, which in their dazed con dition they d a kep up to the middle of next week maybe, unless he d stopped it, he d drag them into his hut to see the bow and arrow or something of that kind (which he always had ready), which for six weeks he d been whittling on as a present for their child, which most re sembled his father. On learning this the revolu tion in their feelings would be so great the ground would seem to slip from under them, and they d fall forward on his breast and weep. Bringing about such a little performance as that was just no trick at all to him. "Now, no doubt you ll agree with me, a man who could turn a person inside out and upside down and wrong end foremost, who had come perhaps to murder him, and all in three shakes of a lamb s tail, was somebody and had got no use to work. He had genius. Now, of course, you know what that is. Well, a man, if he has it, just holds four aces when the whole earth Is in 62 Within the Fair, Find Them the pot, and he gambles with his legs hanging down over . But a man who had genius I don t mean like those hot-house dude writers, for ex ample, in lavender pants, which, while wearing kid gloves to write in, do their scribbling in a silver-mounted chair ; no, sir, not them with a gold lap pad and a bib to keep the ink off, and a marble topped table, in the East, to write on, but the real stuff, is bound to drink. Liquor, whether it s good or bad, or the material with a thousand and one streaks in, he must have, and he will have, he shore will, for he s like a fish out of water for the want of it. And so it was, Casey he drank. But in time he overdone it; and you know by the old maxim you can t overdo noth ing, or words to that effect. Well, he had to hold up, and a good and plenty. Now," continued the man with the gray hat and red handkerchief, as he looked at me with a look of certainty expressed in his eyes that my answer would be in the affirm ative ; "You ve heard of the Muir Woods Bard. Misfortunes never come singly. For a second time I was compelled to show my ignorance, for I had not. "Well," Mr. Barder continued, "he roosts and warbles up on the top of the highest mountain back of them woods; for he s a bird, he is. and there s not a fly upon him. He don t need a bib to keep his ink off; not he. A carpenter s pencil is good enough for him to write with any day; and as for paper; well, oh, everything goes. Usu ally its yellow paper bags from the store down below. He s no commonplace, everyday poet Within the Fair, Find Them 63 neither, for he s a seafaring poet and he once was a sailor. Down at Sausalito, if you will hear me, we re proud of him. He says the poems of these dude poets makes him just like a landlubber sea sick to read them. Mostly it is he writes about the sea. Up there in his shake cabin, in the middle of a thicket, surrounded by pine trees and poison oak, he writes ; and in the morning, when the tops of the glittering clouds are spread out like a sea rippling silver below him, then he imagines himself aboard ship, and writes epics and son nets to the mermaids and so forth. Yes, sir, when he s ravin around in an inspiration, with his red beard closely resembling the shadow of the whirl ing, foaming, fiery sword put at the garden of Eden to keep out intruders, then he s somebody. "Then it is that you see the bluejays and cat birds in the trees creepin up and crowdin round to listen. For he s a wild wood warbler just by himself, and they all of them know it. His cabin is chuck full of sonnets up to the shakes on the roof. I d suppose the supply he has on hand is worth $1,000,000, maybe, if he d choose to print; but he s far above that sort of thing, waiting for posterity. It s the way of his kind. It s not their way to write with gold pens, always shod with diamonds, while sipping at mild tea in a pink cup with a yellow handle, with a chinee made saucer, on a marble topped writing desk, with the cor ners all gilt, in a "boodwah. oh, gosh ! No, siree ! Not at all his style, by no means. Just go out and read em to an audience of jays and cat birds and wait for posterity, ah, yes, that s his style ! Yep. 64 Within the Fair, Find Them "But all poetry writers has got to have sym pathy. I once heard a Dago fiddler say he couldn t ever fiddle on one string, not without sympathy. So, if -even a Dago had to have it, it s natural a poet should. Casey Scroggins, he knew that point of human nature just as he knew all ; so he thought he d go and stop awhile with the poet and give him a lift. "Well, sir; he was the man who could put in spiration out into anything. I ve seen him rub a cat s fur the wrong way and make her purr that way easier than ever you could the other. Oily? Why, man, grease was only a rasp to him! He shook hands all round when he left us down at Sausalito, and said he was going off to be the poet s temporary public. Then we saw the patch in his trousers commence winking at us, as he went up the hill, until he was lost to view in the brush. "The poet, looking from the roof for he had a trap door through it from which he could climb into the branches of the tree overhead and gaze at the stars in the night-time, or jot down poet ical points in the day-time saw him coming. The sight of his rascally good humored eyes and his give-away face, which, notwithstanding, was glow ing all over, made the poet, who d for several days had a bad cold, feel cured already, and as cheer ful as any young skylark when it s caught its first worm. But when Casey crept along the tun nel cut in through the thicket to the bard s cabin and grasped his honest hand and wrung it and Within the Fair, Find Them 65 shook it, and then escorted him inside and made him feel easy and at home, the poet simply said: r< Casey Scroggins, old man, my home s yours ! "Casey shook his other hand and remarked that he was hungry. That set the poet moving like the machinery of a clock with its breakbeam gone. He bustled around and sawed wood and peeled potatoes and drove up the cow and lighted the fire and got dinner. While dinner was cooking his future public stepped outside, with his hands in his pockets, and took a long observation of the chimney, which was made out of layers of logs and clay, saw it didn t draw, and showed the poet how he could make it draw almost like a prize fight. The poet saw what he said was true and was as happy in consequence as an infant when it says googoo ! Then Scroggins he point ed out still more improvements which, if carried out, would make the shanty go one better on a California street nob hill palace. This was one of Casey s ways of paying at places where he lived without work. Then after dinner he told the poet more about himself than ever before he knew. He also told him things some of them that va rious people had said about his writings. This made the bard see he was known in places he d never thought at all of being known. After this preliminary talk Casey expressed his willingness to hear him read. The poet, his mouth a grad ually increasing semi-circle of rippling smiling de light, brought out an armful of epics . Did Cas ey s countenance fall at that? No, sir. The ex pression on his face, instead, seemed only whoop- 66 Within the Fair, Find Them ing it up for more ! The kind of man, as you ll admit, to suit a poet. "Then to hear Casey critercise, it was a caution. There was nothing that man couldn t do from one extreme to the other. I know he could have served in the penitentiary a term, and he might almost have served one in the legislature. Yep. On the other hand, so varied was his talent, that he could have made a first-class running com mentary on the Old Testament also. If, by this time, he hasn t argued his most majestic hoofs, out of pulling him in, which I s pose he has, for he s dead, now, I believe he could take a stand on the tesslated floor, down there, and in two hours induce the red-tailed inhabitants, all of them, to go with him on a strike or get up a re bellion, or reduce the temperature; or something. "When at last the poet stopped reading Casey commented on old Sophocles and Plato and com pared him to them. He didn t say so, it wasn t his way, but the bard could see for himself, from what he said, that those old minnesingers were mere pigmies to what he could do and had writ ten. They both were happy, but his delight was genuine. For when he wished to see a thing a certain way. that way he saw it which may have been his charm. Some parts he insisted on hear ing twice ; and then on reading some of them him self, while the bard did the smiling act, and listen ing. So you can imagine those were all very, very large days, for the poet. "Well, the poet chopped wood in the meantime, day after day, and the chips flew over the tree Within the Fair, Find Them 67 tops ;and the way Casey lay in bed and looked on satisfied, was quite well worthy to be written. Happy, happy days they were ! The potatoes which the bard in his delight peeled for dinner would drop out of his hands as if from a hopper. He d fish for hours in the stream nearby, and if but one trout was caught it was his public who ate it. His public smoked the poet s pipe, too; and when the tobacco ran low the suggestion of the public that one of them should temporarily smoke dried alder leaves was followed, and the poet he done it. "But it s the arrangement of the world that no joys last. Casey about this time felt the need of a trip to the city. So borrowing the poet s watch and his holiday clothes, and his calfskin boots, which had come around the horn, he went off to San F ncisco. There he somehow got on the Barbary Coast and started out to make an impression. You ve heard or read about Bar bary Coast bug juice, or perhaps you ve had it pointed out to you from a place of safety, and yes, I see you re familiar with it. Well, to de scribe it in a sad, quiet kind of way, and with no intention of hurting its feelings, or those who make it, it s a sort of mixture or highway rob bery, burglary, delirium tremens, suicide, insanity and murder. Casey before that had been used merely to mixed and mingled different kinds of rays of lightening, seasoned with the poison of the rattlesnake, such as we re provided with down here; but had never tasted any of the stuff up there. He did so. 68 Within the Fair, Find Them "It took hold, and one of the many things it did first was to relieve him of the poet s watch. Then it started in and tattooed a couple of rings round his eyes, just as if playfully to give him a pair of ebony spectacles to look on his surround ings and whisked the rim off; and lastly, while he was asleep resting himself in a doorway, it took the poet s coat from his back and pawned it. "One night Casey started home on the break- beam of a freight car. It was against his prin ciples to pay; but if it hadn t been for the Bar- bary Coast stuff still in him he d, of course, found a more genteel way of doing it, with the appear ance of coming down like a paymaster in his own private car. Now comes the sad part. Half a mile or more out on the train running up North he fell asleep. His fingers must have gradually loos ened loosened loosened as you ve seen it when men are asleep, spasmodically, more ana more, from the bar to which they were holding, and then well, if he wakened, it came too late. Poor Ca sey ! The train was crossing a bridge at the time it happened. Perhaps he was wakened. Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he was wakened by the roar it made crossing the bridge. Perhaps he still slept on. At any rate, if he did wake it wasn t for long. Of course the brakeman lying on their faces on the tops of the cars did not know what had happen ed ; and so the long train, twisting and turning like a serpent, was drawn on bythe two puffing and panting engines up into the mountains and was lost in the darkness. Then fell silence. "Next morning his body was found. A live oak Within the Fair, Find Them 69 of unusual size grows up by the bridge out of the creek ; and between two of its large roots was Casey. Upon a white boulder, close at hand, stood a bluejay, with his head on one side peering cu riously down at him. What he saw I will not say. A bluejay might be able to gaze on that sight, for a bluejay is a pretty tough bird; but I hardly think you would. The poet being his greatest friend was sent for and took him in charge. A preacher out of San Rafael was called in and he planted him. Casey lies buried on the top of the mountain. The bard wrote on a white board a few lines by way of explanation, as an obituary; and he s at rest where there are but few but the wild cats and coyotes to read it. Such," said Mr. Barder, as he arose from his seat with a sigh: "such is life"; and then saying: "So long!" with a wave of his hand, he left me. 70 Within the Fair, Find Them An "Ancient Adonis," Who Will Not Fail to Be Seen on Parade In a San Francisco street are three large and fashionable lodging houses in a row. In one of these identical lodging houses the most expen sive and fashionable of the three once lived Mrs. Theresa Lembkin, the widow of a deceased and bankrupt stock broker. One of her rooms had, between it and the next lodging house, a window opening upon an intervening space, three teet in width. On a "what not" in the corner of her parlor were pictures of two or three actresses for Mrs. Lembkin had dreamed of the stage dressed in costumes almost as scanty as those worn by belles of society; costumes, which judging from appear ance, were intended for a perpetual summer. The chairs and lounge were covered with yellow linen bordered with red tape. Up to within a month of the time of the com mencement of this recital, history, relation, yarn- fiction, true story, report, scandal, or whatever the reader may be disposed to call it, Mrs. Lemb kin had lived with Mr. Lembkin in the state which in contradistinction to what is called "single bless edness" we will, for the want of a better term designate double blessedness. And in truth, to those who are unfamiliar with the occult meanings Within the Fair, Find Them 71 by the initiated given to such terms as "tootsy," "turtle," "sweetness," "lovekin," "my ownest own," "sugar plum," and other technical matrimonial terms, the constant use of those terms by Mr. and Mrs. Lembkin would have led such an unitiated person to presume that their blessedness was something far more than doubled ; that the amount of blessedness which had come to them from what is by no means a negative, wedlock s knot, might be better represented by multiplying the former singleness of each by the combined number of ringers and thumbs that were fin gers and thumbs now by them owned in common. But Mr. Lembkin did the one thing in the do ing of which we can all be equally expert, not withstanding the obstacles thrown in the way : he died; and thus their partnership, of apparent blessedness was dissolved, and poor Mrs. Lemb kin, while dissolving herself, as a solution in salt tears, had as a widow, to content herself with what may perhaps be called the "widow s mite" of single blessedness again. Such are the sudden changes of the world. As Mrs. Lembkin sat at her window gazing at the unchanging scenery of a brick wall three feet away, day after day, utterly disconsolate, as she thought of one who, without any idea of tardi ness being connected with the expression is called the " late departed," it was but a step to think of a prospective, a new and a possible arrival ; somebody to fill the void caused by the late Lembkin s absence. Now, do not blame her. Widows are a part of human nature; 72 Within the Fair, Find Them human nature is nature ; and nature, as infallible science, in its passionless manner remarks, ab hors a vacuum. But where, in the lottery of the world s changes, was the arrival to come from? And if he came, what would he be like? And what, in the way of temper, good or bad, would his be ; or would he, if she saw him first afterwards, dare to have one? And who,, in the all important beginning, would get the upper hand? And to her more important still : What in the way of things which moths and rust corrupt ; what in the way of messuages, farms, tenements, lands, hereditaments, goods, chattels, assets would he have to adorn him? What stocks or bonds or deposits would he have to make him lovable? Such dreams in the form of questions came to her during the loneliness of widowhood ; for widows have their silent medita tions as well as maidens "fancy free," in which it is the grand privilege of that magician thought, to be as free as it pleases with the persons to whom the meditation applies. It was while in this frame of mind, that one morning, while absentmindedly gazing at the ad vertising columns of a daily paper, beneath which her patient hands had been crossed, she saw be fore her a perfect prose poem in agate type. Its hero, a gentleman whose birth and breeding had relieved him of all unnecessary embarrassment, announced himself "to be one of the four hundred and a middle aged Adonis." His crest appeared not to be ancient; for of a miniature size and placed at the poem s beginning, it may be said Within the Fair, Find Them 73 to have looked like a salmon s head rampant and four fingers under it reaching out for a bag con taining such things as mints make. He said that he was amiable in the extreme; distinguished in deportment; grave in manner when not otherwise; and that his heart would be a garden of Eden during his hours away from home to the cher ished memory of the face of the one who, during his hours at home would preside at his hearth stone. If by his advertisement such a one could be found, the Church should make them both as speedily as possible blest. Knowing that such opportunities do not occur daily to the poor in purse, if proud in heart, Mrs. Lembkin, for fear that the opportunity might be lost, replied at once. In her estimation, next to a foreign prince, one of the four hundred was a be ing to be desired. Do not scorn her, oh you among the proud, who having purses, have the pocket money wherewith many kinds and assortments of husbands may be bought. The next day came the Adonis limping into the room. Clearly he was of the opinion that he be longed to a long lived family; for, unless appear ances were as deceitful as often they are, if mid dle-aged now, he would die at the good and ma ture age of one hundred and sixty. He was seedy, and his face was as wrinkled as is a poor nega tive of a worse photograph. Mrs. Lembkin told him that he had either mistaken his own identity or else was an imposter, and showed him the door. He said, in reply, that although she was unkind to him now, he was sure that the impres- 74 Within the Fair, Find Them sion which he had made upon her would cause her to send for him to come back : Yet, if she did not, it would be of little importance, as whether she sent for him or not, he would come anyhow. He then gave her his card, and asked her to allow him to correspond. She said that he could cor respond occasionally in fact, could correspond even hourly if he liked, but he would get no reply. It is perhaps well to say that it is not the wish of the writer to have Mrs. Lembkin considered a heroine, or perfection. or a Minerva ; and that before giving her address she had, in compliance with a request, made in the advertisement, from which she learned that Adonis was a perfect gen tleman and familiar with the latest fads of the four hundred, sent him a photograph of herself. Adonis now refused to return it; said that his heartstrings would snap if he parted with it ; that the original was superior to this, or any other, and then he limped away with a sigh and with the remark that he "still had hope." "It s a shame !" said Mrs. Lembkin, as she look ed at her Sunday clothes which had been put on for the occasion. "It s a shame !" thought she, as she remembered the bills which she had ex pected Adonis to pay for rooms in the richest and most fashionable of the lodging houses of the city. "It s a shame," she had said, as she remem bered that the late Lembkin, who had been a rich broker, had had the audacity to die bankrupt. But often where our arduous labors are seeming ly wasted they prove in this world of greatest ben- Within the Fair, Find Them 75 efit; and labors, apparently well bestowed, are bestowed as often without advantage. A handsome gentleman residing in the house, whose whiskers, the young ladies said, were "loves," had often noticed her with admiration as he passed her in the hallway; and that day he said to himself: I now must furbish up my heart breaking whiskers, for if that is not a princess in other respects she certainly is one in looks. He sought for and succeeded in obtaining an intro duction. Having obtained it, with a lady friend, he called on Mrs. Lembkin. From discussing the weather they soon turned to a discussion of the late Lembkin. According to the better half which he left in this world af ter taking his own worse half to another, the worse half had not been all that he should, by any means. She did not wish to imply that he was such a very bad half that any certainty could be placed on the route which he had taken hence ; but she implied merely that to have been a half of herself was an honor reaching a good deal above his desserts. After listening wisely and saying little, and after several other visits, Mr. Paul Di visor, the gentleman who, as she lamented, listened began to agree with her that the honors conferred on the late Lembkin had been to great for him ; and had in one way perhaps begun to turn his head. In fact, in his desire to please her he went so far as to say, although in different words, that so far from having been worthy of having been the whole half of such a joint community, he was convinced that the share of the late Lembkin 76 Within the Fair,- Find Them might have been better represented by a decimal fraction. Not only was his discernment pleasing to Mrs. Lembkin, but she saw in his manly side-whiskers, and his shoe-brush hair, more than in the begin ning, to admire. She determined therefore to woo him, and to let him win her. Unfortunately, it happened that at this time an older and wiser lady, who had had two experiences as a widow, and had acquired such worldly knowl edge as it is the lot of widows to possess, dis covered the fact that Mr. Divisor had what, in her eyes, was not at all to his discredit, but, as the books of a bank with truth remarked, thirty- two thousand dollars to his credit on deposit. As this discovery awakened in this lady s breast sen sations of love she determined to take Mrs. Lemb- kin s undertaking off her hands. In this, she had two objects. One was to win Mr. Divisor for her self, and having the feminine desire, which is often as great to mar a match, after it is made, as to make one to mar, she wished to mar this one. A dreadful battle, in which the deadly weapons were words of politeness, and in which Mr. Divisor was the unconscious cause of war, ensued. It would be hard to say how the matter would have terminated but for the unconscious interference of Mr. Reginald Bradford, the "Adonis" who set the cog-wheels of this history in motion. Being a lover full of hope, he had kept his word and had written to the lady daily. The let ters, with a sort of car of juggernaut careless- Within the Fair, Find Them 77 ness for a breaking heart which "Adonis" an nounced his to be were thrown, unread, into a "catch all," where the eye of the jealous Divisor, one evening saw one, when left for a moment alone, commencing "My dear Mrs. Lembkin." Fixing his suspicious eye more closely upon it, he saw that it had been dated the day before. We are sorry, because of his whiskers, to say that he seized the letter and hastily read it. "Adon is," who had written the letter, had a glowing imagination ; he spoke in what he considered a good cause ; and he was acquainted with all of the technicalities by which suit ought to be car ried on in Cupid s court. He was a most ardent adorer. He got on his knees, pen in hand, and he begged and prayed and made himself ridiculous, as a true lover should, on paper. From his lan guage the enraged and frantic Divisor imagined him to be a handsome youth with whiskers cap able of doing more execution, perhaps than his own. He was evidently a rival worthy to be hated, to be feared, and. if possible, outwitted. Mr. Divisor, by way of stimulating himself, read yet more letters. They had the desired effect. In one of them "Adonis" spoke of himself as a man of fortune. When anything, worthless to us be forehand, is wanted by others, that degree to which others want it, is the estimate of value which we place upon it. A play of Shakespeare s, a comedy of Molreres, the Kohinoor diamond are all worthless to us till others want them. Were the play of Hamlet presented for the first time to any manager in the land today, he would say 78 Within the Fair, Find Them that because it lacked "action" it was worthless; if the Kohinoor were presented to an African lady she would scorn it ; greatest classic plays to modern managers would appear "talky." All these things would be true until some one else wanted the Kohi noor; a new Lear, a new Hamlet. So Mr. Divisor, finding her by another sought, wished Mrs. Lemb- kin for himself. That evening, after having been as nervous all day as a boy can be with a dime in his pocket, and no opportunity to spend it, he proposed and was well rewarded for the courageous act. He was accepted. But, under the circumstances, this was not enough. He wished to marry at once, but could assign no reason. The astonished lady at last consented and the next day it was an nounced that at a certain San Francisco church, at a given hour and a given day they would be married; and so came it to pass. As the happy pair were departing from the church a decrepit man with tears in his eyes stop ped them, as Mr. Divisor imagined, with the pur pose to bless them. The lady, in her then frame of mind, had a kindly feeling for all of the world; would have refrained from stepping on the hum blest of worms and she introduced to her husband, unconscious of the fact that he had ever heard his name, the rival from whom he had won her. We will stop here and in a later report will give a full and detailed account of Mr. Divisor s surprise when, for the first time, he saw who had been the rival, from the power of whose charms the lady had been wrested. Within the Fair, Find Them 79 A Phgsiognomist, Who Knew Not What Others Were Going to Think of His Own Face and in Con sequence Do to Him "Physiognomy?" said the lawyer, while con versing with me, as we walked along the street. "I once saw an example of what most men know on the subject there." He pointed to a building constructed of granite blocks, with an iron stair way leading up to an iron door having a peep-hole in it, in front of whose windows were iron bars the county jail. "Wait till you get to my office, and I ll tell you about it." With his latch-key he opened the lock of his office door, a few moments later. On a shelf in the office a dozen calf-skin bound books stood. A dus ty round clock, that was not running, was between them; and a few faded engravings of judges wear ing horse hair wigs hung on the wall. On a flat table by a window were scattered blotted and dog eared papers ; a bottle of ink was half covered by them ; and several pens and pen-holders were scattered about on it. Seating himself in the oak chair behind the table and throwing his feet up on it, my companion commenced his story. "At his request," said he, "I gave one of your professors as they call themselves, of physiognomy and phrenology, a letter to the officer on watch, 80 Within the Fair, Find Them so that this learned man could go along the cor ridor of the county jail and look, to his phrenologi cal heart s content, through the little iron pigeon holes at the hundred and ten prisoners then in the different cells. "The officer was unfamiliar with my hand writing; and being a physiognomist himself to that extent that he was on the lookout for a re ward for the arrest of the accomplice of a bank robber then in jail, he took the professor in charge, because a photograph of the accomplice referred to in his possession exactly coincided with his ap pearance. The professor displayed a variety of expressions on his own face thereupon character istics of which would have greatly interested him and perhaps aided him, as a physiognomist, if he could only have seen them. I happened along at the jail about that time, and by an explanation, set matters right. The officer had of course supposed that my letter was a forgery, and that my friend, (whose real business was playing tunes with his fingers on the bumps of men s heads), was there to communicate with his accomplice who had been jailed; and to arrange a probable story for both to tell in case he was afterwards arrested. "But this is merely incidental. After staring in the faces of prisoners with whom he had no busi ness, and after he, in return, had also been well blackguarded for it, I left the prison with him. When on the street, I asked him which of the prisoners in the jail to him had appeared to have had the worst face. He replied at once that it was the man in number six. He said that he was Within the Fair,- Find Them 81 evidently educated and intelligent, and, therefore, because of his mental powers, the worst criminal there. Now the man in number six had been my own client ; and I ll tell you what I know about him, so that you can make up your own mind as to whether or not the physiognomist was right. This is the story of the inmate of cell number six: "He had lived in a miserable room in the back of a house from which the paint on the walls in side that had dried up in cakes, was dropping away. Half of the outside shutters were broken and gone ; many of the pickets in the front fence were miss ing; and the sandy front yard was filled with rags and brown papers, which the breezes playfully carried in small whirlwinds about it. The stair way leading up to his room had on it a ragged carpet. The two rooms in which he, his wife and his invalid daughter, had lived, looked out on a back yard, the counterpart of the front one. "Well, in that room the little family had at last found a lodgment, after going down, down, down, because of their poverty, from their old home, to the hotels, first; next, from the hotels to the lodging-houses ; then from the best class of lodg ing-houses to the worst. Here they were stranded at last. After their money had gone, the quality of their misfortunes had changed. First, in her anxious attempt to make a mere living, the man s wife, by sewing until one or two o clock in the morning, went blind. She then sought an oculist who was benevolent, for her charged nothing for his services, but being unskilful, he made her blindness hopeless. 82 Within the Fair, Find Them "In the meantime, the man, who showed his vil lainous countenance at cell number six, by way of an opening to this story, was walking about the streets, watched by the suspicious eyes of the police, because of worn out shoes and worn out clothes which would have destroyed the business chances of any man in search of work. It is need less to say that when he applied for it, instead of listening to his request, the persons to whom he applied gave all their attention to their umbrella- stands, or hat-racks. "In the meantime his pretty daughter, a young girl of thirteen, was earning twelve dollars a month by working from dawn to dark in a cellar, where the poisonous gases were gradually impregnating her system with death. One evening she came home with heavy leaden feet. The blind mother, whose other senses, as she had lost the sense of sight, were acquiring additional keenness, noticed her step and said, Belle, my child, what is the matter? Tin a little tired, responded the girl, that s all. "The next day her fingers grew numb at her work; a dreadful weariness was upon her. and she accomplished less than usual. The foreman, noticing the amount of work done by her, said : We will not need you, Miss Bartlett. You need not return tomorrow. The poor girl looked at her work and then at him, but because of her emo tion unable to speak, reeled out from the place. When she reached the street, the houses, the street cars and the people, seemed whirling round and round. She tottered like a drunken woman. Within the Fair, Find Them 83 She wondered if she would ever reach home. Sev eral young men, passing, seeing her unsteady steps, laughed. Noticing their laughter, a crowd of small boys followed and jeered her; and barking dogs soon ran in and out of the gathering crowd. She looked back at them occasionally with a va cant look. At last she reached the room where sat in silence the mother who was blind. The girl s manner being strange, her mother noticed it. My child! My child! she cried, You are sick! Belle passed her hand slowly over her brow. Not sick, but weary, very weary, she said. A moment later she fell from her chair to the floor. The blind woman gave a cry and sprang towards her. "For three weeks the child was out of her mind. During that dreary period she was nursed by the blind mother and by the father, whose whole soul was wrapped up in her. A neighboring physician, a young practitioner, without practice, attended her. Everything that they had that could be pawn ed or sold, they pawned. The dawn to their night of woe came at last. The delirium had passed away. Do you know me? the father asked. Yes, said the daughter. God bless you! the mother cried and burst into tears. Now, said the doc tor, when they were in the next room : She must go to the country as soon as possible for a change of scene, or she will weaken and die. This is her one remaining hope. "What could they do? The doctor s words seemed to have in them the cruelty of a death warrant. Oh, thought the mother, for the good 84 Within the Fair, Find Them days of human slavery, when, blind as I am, I could have been sold from the block for enough at least to save her. "The father, searching for work with desper ate eagerness, walked the streets and saw gilded coaches in which rode women with dogs in their arms or upon their laps, who at the first store that they reached, would throw away on what for the moment attracted the fancy, the value of his child s life. He saw men purchasing fireworks, and knew that on the approaching holiday they would turn into smoke what could save her from death. He heard men making bets on coming races ; saw others buying diamonds in stores ; heard men laughing merrily over money, which they had lost on prize fights, which would have kept the breath of life in her body and saved her from a shroud. He thought of the coffin in which he soon must place her, as he saw dogs with costly collars, swollen with good food, trot ting gaily and contentedly along the streets. "Wealth was everywhere. It was all around him. It was pressing against him ; under his feet ; over his head; and, strain as he would, he could not touch it. And yet for the want of the mere dust from wealth, which to his anxious eyes seemed floating in the air, more ten thousand times more than his own life was in the balance. Can any man endure this long without either going mad. or acquiring in that face which mirrors his storm tossed soul, what phrenologists in the shallows of the surface (not down in the depths) read ing, mistake for crime! But the phrenologist af- Within the Fair, Find Them 85 ter all had been right. He might well be said to have had on his face the look of a criminal, for on that night he committed a crime. "He did not go, like a thief, stealthily about his work. He went boldly to stand at the front door of a store ; and while an officer who was looking on supposed that he was the proprietor of the place, pushed the door open ; opened a drawer be hind a counter, and looked for gold. The drawer was utterly empty. The policeman, who had in part, changed his first opinion, returned to see if a second thought of his had been correct, and saw the man was a stranger to him. He seized on and bore him away to jail. "Metaphorically speaking, there are many seas, such as the ancient mariner saw, with water, wat er everywhere and not a drop to drink/ The doc tor told the blind woman, as he had told her hus band, that without a change of air and a change of scene, the daughter was doomed. The science of medicine could pronounce that fact with the certainty of mathematics. The mother determined to go forth to the streets and beg. She tottered to the crowded streets ; and feeling along the fences, hurriedly and with trembling in her eager ness, moved down the streets, and beg she did; earnestly, piteously, and with the redoubled eager ness of despair. Shall I describe her heartbreak ing experiences, as she afterwards related them? No; I am not trying to describe things that words may not: it is beyond me. She met with but little success at first; but at last she came into the presence of a good Samaritan who believed her 86 Within the Fair, Find Them story, and furnished the money to save her daugh ter s life. Eagerly, anxiously, nervously, blindly, with a smile on the sightless face she worked her way back to the house. Entering her child s room, she spoke. But there was no answer; no sound but the pulled down curtain slowly napping at the open window. She had returned too late. Her child had now no need for the gold which in her hand she held. All of the wealth of the mines of the earth would not for the ten thou sandth part of one poor moment, bring back the bloom of life to the still, white and motionless face. "I had been that morning to the jail, and had come to bring a message from her father a mes sage of love, a message of hope. All would be right he said soon. I entered and found the blind woman sitting in the darkened room, for the blind was down ; but a golden ray of sunlight passing its side, fell on them both; fell on the gray-haired mother, and delicately across the quiet face of the child. I did not speak, nor did the blind woman. The room was silent, save for the laugh ter and voices of people conversing in a neighbor ing yard, or the jarring sound of a wagon rolling, rolling, rolling, never ceasing to roll, slowly down the street. "When I afterwards heard the physiognomist s judgment, I thought of the one who (first himself having borne the burdens of which only those who have not been willing to go and become expe rienced in any of them, will lightly speak), had then said Judge not. " Within the Fair, -Find Them 87 Two, Who Following the Advice of Greeley, Will Be Seen at the Fair As this is not the first time that rogues, a brace of them, have been presented to the reader no one will suspect the author of endorsing any part of the conduct of the two described in the following sketch . Compliance with truth to nature prevents him from informing his readers, as some readers perhaps might wish, that their careers ended with punishment by the authorities ; for it did not. They obtained what they would perhaps have defined as "prosperity" as have done so many others who have been engaged in similar ventures : "It begins," remarked one of two gloomy-look ing youths, who, following the advice of Horace Greeley, had gone West, as they mourned togeth er in a room on the fifth floor of a San Francisco lodging house, "it begins to seem like a case of prospective suicide for two." "It does look blue," said the other; "let s glance again over the ads." He took from the uncarpeted floor a newspaper which he had previously thrown upon it. While sitting together on the edge of the rickety yellow bedstead, with their four eyes on the advertising columns, they searched in them for some opportu nity to better their condition. They readily found 88 Within the Fair, Find Them opportunities offered to every or anybody to make, through the investment of insignificant sums in partnership concerns. as an offset to that expe rience which others had previously gained, doubt less by the same process, three, four, or even five thousand per cent on the money invested. Evi dently the brains which were to act as asests to offset the money invested, were active and valu able organs; for these large percentages were to be made by the person investing the money, with ease, without physical exertion, without much mental labor, and without loss of sleep. The man who modestly offered to offset the money thus invested with brains, and with experience, might have to labor; might possibly have to pass sleepless nights ; might even have, notwithstand ing his brains, to think. The would-be-partner, was, however, silent upon that part of the subject. Of splendid opportunities of this kind the paper was full. But brilliant talents, or good business habits, were received with enthusiasm exactly as they had been in the East only when the individ ual possessing them had, on hand besides, capital to invest. The man who, upon reading it, was cap tivated by the offer made in the advertisement, might put his brains into the business along with the other man s brains. To this there appeared, at least, to be no objection ; but he was expected, not withstanding, to furnish the capital, which would make up the difference between a brain which had had, and another which had not had, experience. To judge from the language of the advertisement the person furnishing the brains and experience Within the Fair, Find Them 89 would, besides, look upon the investment of capi tal by the other as a matter of good faith, on his part, and as a clear proof of the fact that the man of money was not a designing stranger, moved by a sinister intention to take an unfair advantage of the brains and experience which the advertiser offered in such perfect good faith. "Now, McDonald, I ve got it," suddenly said one of the young men. "Got it? Got what?" sourly asked the other. "Oh, I see; fidgets!" His companion seemed not to notice the remark. "I m in the drug business," he said. "Odd I didn t think of it before. Yes, sir; mark me. With one dollar for material I can make a hundred dollars worth of very dire disturbance and tribulation for the bacillus weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, there will be, throughout the whole land of the bacillus." "Oh, yes that s so?" said McDonald; "but where s the dollar?" "Ah !" exclaimed the first speaker, "it s never on hand when you want it, is it? I d forgotten all about it. It s always my way; imagination, when it gets started, runs away with me. You, though, can keep as cool as a cucumber sitting on ice. Nothing in you to enthuse: no imagination." "It s got to come some time ; I ll enthuse, for you ; so here goes," said McDonald, and he took from his neck a locket, in which was the miniature picture of a laughing , red-lipped and rosy-faced young 90 Within the Fair, Find Them woman. The next day the locket had been pawned. In the back room of a rickety building, which had been rented by them, the window blinds of which were broken and covered with cobwebs and dust, the young men stood in their shirt sleeves over a tin wash boiler, which had been borrowed. In this boiler which was on the top of a rusty stove, was bubbling a brown liquid. This liquid was to grow into their "great remedy." "What do you suppose it s going to cure?" Mc Donald asked. "I don t suppose at all," his companion, whose name was Gale, answered. "It won t ever do either for a drug to be suspected, or for a doctor to sup pose. It will cure anything, just the same as any other good, harmless remedy will, provided the patient gets well and don t die. This is a harmless medicine, don t suppose I d brew anything else. What s more, it s a first rate A No. 1 varnish ; and it might be used as a diet. Try it." "No," said McDonald, "not now. I ve smelt it. My nose is one that is faithful in the perform ance of its duties ; and, for a time, I ve as big a dose of your remedy as I can stand that way. I should think, before he could take it any other way, the patient would have to be very feeble, who took the drug one without strength to fight the per son off who undertook to administer it. Then, as for the bacillus who wouldn t run the moment he heard it coming, I wouldn t hardly be willing to say, except behind his back or at a safe distance, what I thought of him." Within the Fair, Find Them 91 "You do think, then," remarked Gale, "that it s strong enough to cure people?" "Oh, yes, it s quite strong enough to cure them," answered McDonald. "It will cure them, I should think, of a good many things. All bad habits ; sieep- ing late in the morning; going to lodge; buying clothes ; eating all of these, and many more friv olities. Oh, yes, of course it will cure them !" "Bah !" responded Gale, "it s as harmless as dis tilled water." After consultation they discovered that their knowledge of Latin consisted, between them, of three whole words. "We will use them," said Gale, and call it Mc Donald s Bacillus Hie Jacet. " "Whose did you say?" McDonald asked. "McDonald s." "Oh, no," said the other young man, solemnly, "possibly some other, but not this McDonald s." "Why, where s the harm?" Gale asked. "If it s a great discovery you ll get the glory." "And," added McDonald, "if the patient gets it, too, or, what s the same thing, goes to it, Mc Donald, whose Hie Jacet did it. will get to jail, and you, my friend, will escape. That s one of those curious propositions that don t quite suit me. Try another something else." "Well, then," Gale said, "we ll have to use a dummy. Dr. Harrington s Hie Jacet Bacillus it shall be." The following announcement to go with each bottle was prepared by them : 92 Within the Fair, Find Them PROLONGED LIFE GUARANTEED! or YOUR MONEY RETURNED. We make this offer as a guarantee of our Good Faith. Another offer we make is this : Any one dying under Dr. Harrington s treatment who will come back, bringing the bottle with him, will re ceive our magnificent lithograph chromo, and a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars. We mean business. This offer is made to all alike, without favoritism, regardless of sex, color, or parentage, including children. DR. HARRINGTON S BACILLUS HIC JACET! A Marvel to Microbes. Since the days of Hippocrates medicine has been empyricism. Regular (sic !) Irregular physicians admit it is no science. Hence, therefore, they ad mit themselves to be quacks. But these sheep in wolves clothing nevertheless have the impudence to call us (sic !) quacks ! Now, what have these highly professional gentry (except driving up and down the street when they have no patients) been doing for ages? What, but stabbing you with probes ; titillating you with saws, and ex perimenting on you, without your knowledge, with poisons? Flee, then, to your true friend, Dr. Har rington, with his great medicine of life. Think of it! How long have you to live? Do Within the Fair, Find Them 93 you dare to guess? Minutes; hours, months? Lis ten! Do you hear the ringing in your ears? How do you know that that mournful sound is not the clock striking your own funeral knell? Are you weak in mind or body? And, if you are, do you know the appalling significance of that awful fact? No! But, if you do not, be assured that Dr. Har rington does. It all depends upon the speed with which the destroyers within you are working. And let me tell you they do not sleep! Microbes by thou sands are now destroying your life. See them ! They rush up its battlements ! They are tearing your vitals down ! But Dr. Harrington can save you ; save you by throwing his Hie Jacet, like a guardian angel, into the enemy s camp. Never fails. .Try it! Cures tumor, cancer, night sweats, bone ache, scald head, hay fever, fits, warts and coughs ; and makes a fine varnish! READ! Japhet Kidney, 5 Wall street, writes : "Your wonderful Bacillus Hie Jacet came to hand. I had got to be known round here, before using, as Sick Japhet. Hie Jacet, though, done wonders ! Three doctors had. before that, been eating me up for years. Hie Jacet, though, done wonders, for it changed all that. Hearing of the marvels of your remedy I tried it. Completely cured." Mrs. Whistler, Dunkirk, Bethlehem road, Milpi- tas, Scotland, writes : 94 Within the Fair, Find Them "I ve had a medulla oblongata, as I ve been in formed, for four long years. Completely done away with by your great, grand, good cure." For other cases write to J. E. Lock Box, Marsh- mallow, El Dorado Co., Cal. ; J. Jones, New York, Lord Carrington, London, E. C., and many others. Their answers will satisfy the most credulous. The remedy was carried by Messrs. Gale and McDonald from house to house, and, as nearly all of the men who go West are born orators, they succeeded in selling a number of bottles. By the end of the month several testimonials, of a most flatering character, had been obtained from pa tients, unable themselves to write, for whom they were drawn up. When their names were written below these testimonials they themselves complet ed formalities by "touching the pen." The energetic firm next advertised under the firm name and style of the "Bacillus Hie Jacet Co." They received one day, a few months later, a package containing five thousand dollars, in pa per currency, and a letter. A lady three score and ten years of age had sent it; and their rem edy had done for her, she said, what three doc tors had failed, in forty years, to do. She added that, for their services to her, she knew that no money could pay, but she hoped that the money thus sent would be of some slight benefit to them, and help them on in their grand, good purpose. She said that she did not endorse "sitting down" as she believed the expression was on people while alive, and then helping them after they were Within the Fair, Find Them 95 dead ; but she believed in doing good herself with her money, while still alive, as, after death who knows she might not have the opportunity. The young men, after they had finshed reading her note, first looked, while resting their respec tive hands on their knees, with a dazed stare, each into the countenance of the other, after which, upon recovering themselves, they dissolved part nership. They learned, upon inquiry, that their benefactress was a maiden lady of great wealth, whose fortune, by a will at one time existing but later destroyed by her, had been left, after her death, to a society for the protection of orphaned and abandoned kittens. Upon dissolving the firm McDonald took a look at the face in the locket, which had been previous ly recovered from the . pawn shop ; and he went East with twenty-five hundred of the $5000 and married the lady whose picture in the locket had been so long worn next to his heart. Mr. Gale, with the remaining $2500 concealed in the leg of a boot, which he did not take off during the journey, started two days later for home, thankful to the former editor of the great New York daily for his extremely satisfactory ad vice. 96 Within the Fair, Find Them One, Who Will Not Be at the Fair Where stand ten-story buildings now were, fifty years ago, in some of our large cities, ash heaps. The ground upon which stood these ash heaps was almost worthless. Today because of the pa tient waiting, privations and labors of those who owned the land on which the ash heaps stood, the grains of sand constituting that land are al most as valuable as are grains of gold. Their long years of deprivation and of labor have induced others to come and join them ; the owners have, after such long years of waiting, received their compensation. It is for this reason that in some of our larger cities buildings used for lodging houses, which are absurdly narrow and ridiculously short, are raised to such a height that you are almost in clined to believe that if any human being at all is inside of them he, or possibly she, is a chimney sweep ; one who is there on business, and will be dpwn just as soon as the business is over, if not before. In a small room in the top story of a brick lodging house a building more likely to be tak en, however, by a stranger, for the square chim ney of a factory or brewery sat up not long since in his bed a sick man. Behind him a chair up side down, and a pillow between him and it, served as a support. Within the Fair, Find Them 97 From the one window of the room, which was open, roofs of houses were to be seen far below. As the tall lodging house was on a hill, even the gilded domes of public buildings and the spires of churches were to be contemplated within the pan orama of buildings beneath it. Next to the build ing was one of these church spires ; and through the latticed openings of the steeple, and in and out of the open space where hung the bell, swal lows could be seen to flash almost with the speed of light. Some distance below the window of the room referred to was the roof of a brown house. A back porch was behind this house, on which was seen a stout woman, whose head was bobbing up and down like the head of a toy figure, made of wood, before a blue tub, containing the week s washing. But the man with the kindly blue eyes, of the silver gray hair, of the hollow, sunken cheeks, who was propped up in his bed by pillows, as he was not at the window, saw nothing of these things. He saw only the blue expanse of sky, be yond the window. Below him he heard the rat tling and jolting sound of wagons, the general dull roar and moan of the life of a great city, but all that he could see was as much as any of us can with our physical eyes see of what is be yond this earth. His thin and wasted hands rested on the cover let. On the bed, in front of him. was a lead pen cil and brown paper on which he had been writ ing. Upon a table near the head of his bed, stood a bottle of medicine, of a yellow color; a silver 98 Within the Fair, Find Them teaspoon, the bowl of which had been turned black by the drug; a plate of toast and a cup oi tea, which were untouched and had grown cold. Trying on one or two occasions to continue his writing, the invalid at last gave up the attempt and turned, with a sigh, toward the window, to gaze out upon the blue dome of heaven which was cloudless. To his acquaintances the sick man was gener ally known by the name of Bohemian Bob. His real name some of them knew, but, as it did not sound as if it belonged to him, it was but seldom made use of. He had had, two years before, a wife and four children. Within the two years three children and the wife had passed away in rapid succession. Six months before the last of his family but one had been laid away to rest. This one was a dark-eyed girl of seventeen, by the name of Josephine, but called more generally by those who intimately knew her "J oe " simply. She was light-hearted, full of jollity, and always at the door to meet her father and throw her arms about his neck on his return home after his day s labors ; for he worked on one of the city papers. When his friends visited Bob they would, as a rule, find the two at the window, in the twilight or after dark, gazing at the long lines of street lights ; at the black roofs ; at the stars, dimmed by the vault of pink light cast up by thousands of street lamps of the city to the sky overhead. The work which he had of late been able to at tend to was of little worth. In fact, because of his many troubles, he lost the power to concentrate Within the Fair, Find Them 99 his mind continuously on any subject. And if it was for a moment fixed on a subject it was more likely to be some memory of the past than a real ity of the present. His work was given to him, therefore, rather as a matter of charity than be cause of any benefit to be derived from it. He was as regularly at his desk, however, as if the whole work of the day was to rest upon his shoulders. If at any time he had a momentary suspicion of the truth and carried this suspicion home with him, he found one there who was always ready to cheer him by laughing at his idea as an absurd one. But on this occasion to which we refer, one of the reasons why Bob placed his pencil on the bed, one of the reasons why he gazed so long out of the window, and one of the reasons why his eyes looked dull and hopeless, arose from the fact that "J oe " was now lying in the next room motionless but not asleep ; with eyes widely opened, but not awake. The soft, white hand which had so often driven care from his brow now could drive care from nothing could soothe it no more. She was at rest; but hers was that rest which is not to be broken, no matter how loving the earthly voice to call upon her to listen. I had entered Bob s room and had found him as I have described him. He had been trying to prepare his usual amount of "copy" for the paper upon which he was employed. "For thirty years," he said, "I ve done it," as he fixed his eyes on me. "I think of that that griefs, 100 Within the Fair, Find Them losses, misfortunes, never before stopped me. But now I ve tried and tried, and its useless. Well, it s because it s Joe," he added, in something like a whisper as he motioned toward the next room. "The thought of her could cheer me to do almost anything before : but its pretty hard to think of her now and perform the work I ve never failed at. Never, never has a day been missed. But now, today, for the first time the forms will be locked up and the paper will go to press ; nothing of mine in it. I won t be missed ; and my record is broken." He was for some moments seemingly lost in thought and then he continued : "The world changes, daily. The future, as it appears to a youth of twenty, is not the future imagined by a young man of twenty-four a man of fifty. How very different the first part from the last. What high hopes at first! The world was before me then, and what wonderful prospects seemed ahead! What wonderful things were to come to pass in the great world, which (although I did not know it), was only in my own head; things which never do come to pass in the real world, if there is one. But, when it was too late I, too, learned like the rest, the great lesson, and saw what alone is worth having. But that knowledge is now be hind me, and in the past, and with it is all that made hope. "For a year past I have been beyond all love for delusions ; I no longer have cared for what younger men wish for, and there were no other children, no family, for whom to provide. But Within the Fair, Find Them 101 there was Joe and why, Joe, she was all the world to me ! I could bear it having her. She took the place of hope; she took the place of com forts ; she took the place of everything. She was my sunlight. Joe was my consolation in despair. When I w^s about as blue as indigo can be made to be she would proceed with her pretty way to mock me until I would almost roll from my chair to the floor, like a bundle of something which had been ignited with smiles, and which, like Greek fire, couldn t be put out I was roaring with laugh ter. She was my life ! "Look at these pieces of paper on the bed, on which I ve been trying to keep up my daily rec ord for thirty years. Look at them ! You ll see that I ve written on this day but one name "J oe" all over them. Nothing else. If I tried to think of anything else, what came into my mind? Joe, Joe, Joe always Joe; and naturally, my pencil wrote it, and kept writing it. When I saw that it was useless, that the record was broken, I laid the paper down." He was for some moments silent. Neither did I speak. I saw that, while talking and half un conscious of what he was saying, as he gazed out on the blue sky, he was thinking of Joe, as she had been; Joe, when alive; not of Joe as she now was Joe in the next room with her hands crossed on her breast; Joe with the reflection of her old self in the smile on her face; Joe, with the smiles of angels, which the earth had caught as they were passing, and had wrough into the flowers, now lying on her breast; that his thoughts could 102 Within the Fair, Find Them not harm him ; so it was for this reason that I did not speak; that I sat silent and motionless. "What was that?" he asked me after a while. I listened and heard the low strains of a negro mel ody borne upon the air from some house in the neighborhood. "That is the one," said Bob. "The Frenchman in room 18, next house, plays it. Some times he used to come here and play until Joe, with her comic way of singing to his music, would get us both to laughing until he had to stop." The next day, hearing that he was failing rapid ly, I went to Bob s room at the earliest opportu nity, which was after nightfall. The window being open, I was about to close it. "No," said Bob ; feebly, "don t close it. I wish for it, having heard it so long." He referred, I thought, to the continuous but subdued sounds of a great city after sundown. "For thirty years," he continued, "I ve heard the rough sounds of city life, and I like them. Have the birds in the steeple yet gone to rest?" he a little later asked. I answered that I did not see them about. "No ; they have gone now," he remarked. I did not understand his meaning. "Couldn t you sleep? It will rest you," I then said. "Yes," said Bob, "I will try now, for I know that I need it," and he closed his eyes. Five minutes later the moon rose above the distant mountains, and as its beams began to stream through the windows they fell upon a form that was motionless. At the same moment that Within the Fair, Find Them 103 it began to rise above the hills I heard soft strains of music stealing upward into the air of night. The Frenchman in the next house, of whom Bob had spoken, was playing an accompaniment to some one having a magnificent tenor voice, who sang. It was a negro melody and these words I caught: "Oh,, I ve lef de Ian ob trubble ; yes, I ve lef de Ian ob sorrow, an-n-n I ve started out to fin de road to home." I looked at Bob, but Bob did not move. I spoke to him, but he did not hear. The moonlight fell upon a face which was statute-like. He, too, had "lef de Ian of trubble, an had started out to fin de road for home." 104 Within the Fair, Find Them A Dentist Who, with the Wife That His Instruments Helped to Win-Will Be at the Fair Poverty sometimes to a sensitive mind, is like a chain to a sensitive dog s leg. It takes away a man s better feelings ; he drops his disguise as an angel if he, wore one ; it makes him worse than ill natured. When he talks, instead of talking as if his words had been first sent through the rose water of prosperity, they come out of him as does a dog which is in a hole, and after a rat, upon being pulled out by the tail snarling and growl ing; he is malicious, vindictive and ready to do any desperate deed. Poverty had thrown Dr. Pullholler into these conditions, and, being in a desperate frame of mind, he determined to marry. His first thought was of suicide, but seeing how cowardly it is, when you become your own en emy, to kill yourself without giving yourself a chance to fight back, he determined that mar riage was the most courageous and manly re venge on himself, and adopted it instead. We are, in saying this, reflecting the views of Dr. Pull- holler; for if the views of any other man were given he would say that to him marriage appeared in the light of the most blessed of states, and that he would gladly resign all of his worldly pos sessions, and all of his hopes of future contin- Within the Fair, Find Them 105 gencies, limited or unlimited, for the privilege of getting married. Dr. Pullholler had started dentist studios in several parts of the city, and with patience waited for patients at each "studio," until creditors were no longer to be pacified by mere offers to pull their teeth free of charge, and he had to move. The same offer was made to the people who took up his carpets from under him, which he had agreed to purchase on the installment plan. He had fitted up his fourth office and was on the eve of having his fourth carpet taken up from under him, and already he saw himself, in imagin ation, like Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, in his office, surrounded by scraps of old paper, the carpet being gone and dust being in the air, while the sunlight sent its beams through it with any thing but a cheerful gleam. In consequence of this fact, as was said previously, he felt utterly desperate, remorseless, vindictive and heartless. He looked at the gleaming weapons of his dental inquisition and he wished that he only had the whole world at hand to torture. It is in such mo ments and in such ideas that we find relief from our worst afflictions. It is in such ideas that we find the disguised dawn which peeps in rapturous colors above the horizon of our long night of misfortune. He had for months been making love to Miss McTusk, a rich coquette of thirty-five, who had made his poverty more unbearable by casting him over and over again, and all in a moment, from the highest heaven of hope down to the lowest 106 Within the Fair, Find Them deep of all of the depths of darkness. He might have made others suffer when seated on the plush colored throne in his office ; but, as a coquette, she had given many a wrench and twist to his feelings which made him suffer more. This lady had, in the days when he was well enough off to indulge in objections, what seemed to him a very objectionable poll parrot nose and a habit, which was displeasing to Dr. Pullholler, of dressing in a green silk bonnet and a green dress of a vivid poll parrot hue. Her eyes were of that light blue color which makes the glass eyes of wax dolls so attrac tive in appearance. But in his present condition nothing was objectionable to him but the one characteristic from which the lady was happily free, and that was the only weak point which he saw in himself. It was poverty. He had spoken to her about a black spot on her front tooth ; had described the awful conse quences of leaving it alone; had told her how much would be added to her personal appearance if it was removed; and had told her, besides, how much he would feel honored if she would only pick him out of the "madding crowd" of dentists as the man to remove it. But all people are sus picious of men in his profession, and notwith standing his past ardent protestations of love the lady was so cruel as to mistrust him when he as sured her that the sensation produced in banish ing the slight discoloration, so far from being pain ful, would be highly soothing and as enjoyable as an entertainment given for that special pur pose. She had at last consented to grant the fa- Within the Fair, Find Them 107 vor for which he had so earnestly pleaded, in tending thus in her coquettish way to raise his hopes high, in order to have the pleasure of dash ing them low to the earth again. As a new idea now occurred to him in relation to the tooth, he called on her, and urged her to come to his office at once, as he had a prepara tion, whose properties would be lost by time, and he wished to use it before any of its properties were lost by evaporation. An ardent lover who is persistent will make an impression even upon a coquette. Besides having love to inspire him Dr. Pullholler had poverty to put spurs and very sharp ones to the heels of his argument. He was thus impelled by the two most powerful forces which operate on the human mind in combina tion. The result was that his lady love, with a simper, consented; and he had the pleasure of es corting her to his office. After considerable giggling and pouting, Miss McTusk took her seat in the chair, made "sheeps eyes" at him ; gave her head a coquettish toss and waited for the doctor to come forward with his soothing appliances. It was not long before he came forward, and when she saw on his face the look of resolve, superinduced by poverty, and in his hand the deadly instrument of torture with a steel glitter on it, as deadly as the gleam in the eye of the cobra, she ceased to giggle and pout and gave utterance to a heart-rending shriek of terror. "Be calm!" said Dr. Pullholler as he played a "tattoo" on each successive tooth with his in- 108 Within the Fair, Find Them strument. "But," said the coquette, after he had withdrawn his instrument, "you are only going to remove the speck on the outside of the front tooth?" "You never know," said the doctor, "what a dentist is going to do after you get into his chair, until he has done it," and he fumbled among his instruments until he found the one capable of doing the greatest execution. Hardly had it been found when it was drumming away and skipping and hopping from tooth to tooth. She was just wondering how things were going to terminate when it hopped out of her mouth, bearing a tooth with it. The doctor waved it in triumph in the air while the lady shrieked an ac companiment. "You know that, with my love for you. I wouldn t hurt you," he said. "You did hurt me, and you don t love me !" said the lady with streaming and flashing eyes. "I do love you," said the doctor reproachfully. "So much so, that if you will accept me as your husband, I will be your devoted slave for life." "Never!" exclaimed the lady. "If you treat me this way now, what wouldn t you do if you were married?" "It is all for your own good, and only because of my abundant love for you," said the doctor as he began to fumble among his instruments again. "What are you doing now?" asked Miss McTusk with a look of terror. "Don t be alarmed," said her companion. "It is with the tenderest feelings that I shall touch Within the Fair, Find Them 109 you, so I won t hurt you. With my love for you I couldn t, although you are so cruel as to scorn me." "But I don t," said the coquette. "Do you love me, as in the past you have said that you did?" asked the doctor. "More!" shrieked the lady, as a new instru ment, twisted like a serpent ready to strike, raised its glittering head above the horizon of her vision. "Will you be mine?" asked Dr. Pullholler. "I ll think about it," Miss McTusk answered. "Well, then, think quick," said the doctor, as his instrument prepared to strike. "I do !" said the lady, drawing back with a shud der. "Do what?" asked the doctor. "Will you be my wife?" The lady hesitated. The instrument approached. "I will!" she shrieked. "Now?" asked the doctor. "Whenever you like !" she screamed. "Sign that!" said Dr. Pullholler, handing her a paper stained with blood. It was a contract of marriage. He placed a pen in her hand and she signed it. "We are now husband and wife under the laws of the State," said Dr. Pullholler; "and, as my wife, it is your duty to love, fear and obey me ; and, as my wife, I order you to come to church with me and get married." 110 Within the Fair, Find Them After the peculiar manner in which she had been wooed and won, Miss McTusk was in no frame of mind to resist; and the doctor with his poverty staring him in the face, was not either in a frame of mind to meet with a defeat. She saw this and obeyed him ; and going to the vestry of a neighboring church, the minister who was found there made them man and wife. Within the Fair, Find Them 111 How, According to the Colonel, Women Can Certainly Be Won Said the Colonel to his young friend : "With the occult information that I am about to place be- for you, in regard to what I verily believe the Egyptians must have meant by the Sphinx; name ly, all that there is of woman, lying back of her words that she constantly uses; the something that she either will not, or cannot speak; with the information that I am about to give you, about our eternal and everlasting mystery, woman, you ought certainly be able to win your lady when ever you may, falling under her spell, care to. Mark me now very closely. Woman invariably is a variable compound. And the various ele ments of this extraordinary compound are each curiosity. Thus, in order to make plain this prop osition, to make use of the language of algebra: If curiosity be represented by "a," then the sum of all of the various elements of curiosity forming woman may be represented by "a" plus "aa" plus "aaa" plus "a" to the Nth power. Each element, as you will perceive, is curiosity, nevertheless at various times in a different degree of intensity, and the sum total, as you find after they all of them have been multiplied together is woman. Now it is for the foregoing cause that, when a city youth comes into a country town, the young ladies of the village close the green blinds and then u 112 Within the Fair, Find Them peep between the shutters in order to find out ex actly what a city made man may happen to be like. As can readily be imagined, curiosity in this instance has been developed almost to the Nth power. Had one of their unmarried townsmen, on the other hand, happened to have gone along the street, curiosity, not having been raised by his proximity to one of its higher powers, from be hind concealing blinds, bewitching eyes would not have made of him a study. Catching but a glimpse of him as he approached "A," or curiosity, would not have been raised to a higher degree; and in dicating possibly but a toss of the head and a look of disdain, might even have been indicated by a negative, or A, carried, in possibly one or two instances, as a means of indicating great dis satisfaction, even below her freezing point, and down to the Nth degree. Woman, although to the unitiated puzzles, are, (because of the various degrees of curiosity, so spoken of, out of which they have been created), themselves, perhaps more than any man ever can become, fond of puzzles. Ever are they craving, as you are going to discover after you have become as you may think, lord and master of one of them, for knowledge; and it will be wholly useless for you to make the effort to keep a secret from your wife; for I know, having tried it; and I candidly confess that, in the effort I have failed. Do not even strive to keep from giving to your wife some kind of an account of what the ladies have worn at a dinner party at which you have been pres ent. Make, even though it be a bungling one, Within the Fair, Find Them 113 some kind of an effort to describe them. After you have done so, without much further disturb ance, to be caused by any kind of a direct exam ination, you may be permitted to sleep, which otherwise would not have been the case. You will be permitted to sleep for the same reason that the young gentlemen of a country town do not arouse greatly the curiosity of the young ladies in it. You are all of you as are oranges after they have been squeezed; are as was Samson after his hair had been taken off. No longer are you of any interest. Secrets hold you not any longer. Upon the other hand, the city man arouses a burning and morbid curiosity; for from head to foot is he still, to the feminine nature, a great big and a splendid secret. A belle of the village will marry him, and quickly finding him out, will be able to forget the ennui that the city, when he takes her to it, will create, by joining others in some organization established to consider thought called "New," but to become weary, when she learns, if she can that thought that is not old and decrepit, may not, ever have an organization, coming not from organization, but ever alone and to disorganize. "Now," continued the Colonel, "if you wish to enter upon a course that will win for you your lady, conceal from her the whole of your past; by keeping your mouth shut about yourself, tan talize her into a state of distraction; and you will find then that you will not be able to escape her. You have observed how a fine colt, with his nose against his master s coat, can hardly be driven 114 Within the Fair, -Find Them away from him because of the sugar that in his coat pocket has been concealed. It can prove to be the same with you." The youth had been greatly impressed by the explanation of these mysteries in regard to sphinx- like woman ; and he could have been found, a year later, in a far city engaged in putting his knowl edge into practice. A young Belle of Society was caused, after a short time, to look upon him to be, in some vague sort of way, a disconsolate exile. Helping to form such a picture, was his complex ion ; his hair, of a hue like india ink, or "raven," and his moustache, waxed at the ends, protruding and reaching out like an ocean wave when it is about to fall and then run far up the beach. Be sides this upon his countenance was worn the sad and poetical look attributed to the dreamer; a look loudly of troubles heavy and hard to con ceal ; concealed misery of some strange and for eign political sort, such as can aid in making im pressions upon any romantic young lady s heart. speaking. The dark eye of the young woman, who already adored him, bore in it deep pity for him whenever he spoke, which (on account of the advice that had been given to him), was but seldom. She ob served to him that she was convinced that he had gone through a great deal and wished, with all of her heart, that he would only confide what had been his manifold troubles to her; but he, by way of reply, merely more firmly closed his lips, and with a profounder sadness slowly shook his head. This, on his part was heartless conduct; for it Within the Fair, Find Them 115 served but to add fuel to the flame of "A," or curiosity, up to the Nth power, of which the Colo nel had spoken. As a consequence, the young lady was, as it were, on tip toe, in her readiness to say yes, and thereby own him and his secret, as soon as he proposed to her and asked of her her hand. During the process of his almost silent court ship, there had all the time been a rival, whom the successful suitor had come almost to overlook. Joshua Rupert was the name of the Rival. The young lady s father, General Crouch, from the beginning had been in his favor. For the General, long accustomed to the practice of scrutinizing checks (he being a banker), had closely scrutinized also the face of the young man, who bore about with him a manner of mystery that, to the ordinary banker serves not at all as a recommendation. In fact, because of this mystery, romantic ideas were not permitted to find in the banker s head a place of lodgement, as they had been in the case of the daughter. He did not think that he was an exile at all ; and, if he had done so, he was quite as ready as would have been any other man to sug gest that the government should send him back to the country from which he came. That the serious side of this story may more quickly appear, let us at once say that both the rival and his friend, the father, had come to the conclusion that the past of the one so uncommu nicative about himself, when found would prove to be unsatisfactory in its character. The rival going a step farther than did the parent in the way of investigation, made use of his month s sal- 116 Within the Fair, Find Them ary, to employ a detective to find out what it had been. Now, as human beings can frequently be mistaken for one another, in the rogues gallery a picture was found by the detective of a forger, very closely resembling the young man who was so mysterious about himself. The father of the young lady, and the rival at once together under took to, and succeeded, much to his astonishment, in having the silent one arrested and thrown into jail. This, in so far as the hopes of the rival were concerned, proved to be a fatal step; foi thereafter upon the rival the young lady looked with hatred, and upon her exile as more than an exile, a martyr besides. She now daily visited him at his jail, and took to him flowers by the basketful. She, in fact, showed him as much at tention as was shown even to the murderer in the next cell and, at his request, consented that the marriage ceremony should, if he wished, take place in his cell. It was arranged that it should occur immediately upon his departure from the jail. The reader may desire to know how it was that the young man could have been locked in the jail when no complaint had been filed, no warrant issued against him. Simple is the answer. As we have of late, not raised a protest throughout the land whenever such a thing has occurred, even now, within this liberty-loving land, that has her form standing at our gates can such a thing sometimes happen. While still in jail, the youth finding the place to be one of monotony, wrote to his friend whose Within the Fair, Find Them 117 advice he had followed, in wooing. The Colonel wrote back that he was overjoyed to learn that he had been locked up in jail, as the bonds there by established, between himself and the lady could never be broken. He, however, sent him a suffi cient number of attested documents to establish for all concerned his good character. He was at once released. When, as a genuine martyr he marched forth from the prison, the young lady weeping on his arm, his rival gave up hope; and the parent, seeing that he might as well relent now as later when he would have to, did so with much paternal grace. 118 Within the Fair, Find Them The Human Feminine Tortoise, Who, in a Race, Outran the Hare No doubt history has reached its second child hood, for it is in the habit of repeating itself. The following is to be another case of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise, in this case, had a fringe of small brown curls about her forehead, deep- sunken eyes, which were large and dark ; hollow cheeks, a thin nose, of the color of wax; a broad, straight mouth beneath it, and a chin almost as broad. This, I say, was the tortoise. The body of the tortoise was not strong, she was not tall; had a wearied look, and she wore in her eyes an expression which seemed to indicate a desire to cling to something a desire to have a mas sive oak of a man to, as it were, have her branches grow about ; as an intellectual lord for her a man of massive brain and giant brawn. While cling ing to, and looking up into the face of a Samson of a kind such as this, a great giant in brain and brawn, who had not obtained his desserts from the world, those deep and ivy-hued and sun ken eyes would make a speech without words, to that effect, to the human oak. The hare had been created after another pat tern. She had a high forehead; kinky and short cut hair, of the beautiful color of "fool s gold"; large eyes, between blue and gray in color; a nose almost straight, but very slightly bowed outwards; Within the Fair, Find Them 119 rosy lips and cheeks ; teeth like pearls ; a "get thee behind me, Satan," expression of countenance for the benefit of young adorers, who were graciously permitted, nevertheless, to look from a distance at this goddess. Such was the hare. As the tortoise and the hare have both been described, we will next proceed to show how his tory repeats itself. But before so doing the goal must first be described. The goal was a rancher, aged thirty-eight, with a shock of hair which was almost as shocking as were some of his hab its that is to say, shocking to the intensely exact in those great things to little men, matters of etiquette. Burbank, the name of the goal, was, and this goal had that which, with these small men, overrides or alters their matters of etiquette. He possessed vast wealth. He could, therefore, eat his meals with a knife having attached to the handle a blade sharper even than is "a serpent s tooth," if he felt so disposed, notwithstanding etiquette. He might pick his teeth with a hay fork or even a hand-saw, if he wished to ; and he could wear his shock of hair as long as he wished to wear it, without a shock. This was the state of affairs when Miss Med- way, the tortoise, and Miss Spencer, the hare, be gan their notable run for the goal. Of course, the hare at first shot ahead. Her mother gave teas and euchre parties, and all sorts of parties, to which the gentleman with the hair was invited. But the hare, like the hare of old, when close to the goal would rest. She would rest and pose in a large arm-chair and while, in response to what 120 Within the Fair, Find Them he said, she gave utterance at times to a yawn, she would look straight down at the goal with a look of contempt. This a good deal disheartened the goal and led him to feel like getting up and planting himself farther away. The goal had large, hairy, freckled and bony hands; and the eyes of the young lady were so constantly fixed upon them with a meditative look that these ap pendages of his appeared to become nervous, and seemed anxiously to wish to hide themselves. The mother of Miss Spencer noticed this con duct on the part of her daughter; and as she was herself working like a conscientious day la borer to bring about a marriage between the daughter and this very rich young man, she was displeased with the apathy of her child. "Have you any fault to find with him?" she inquired. "Oh, mamma!" said the young lady, "do leave me alone." "But, my child," responded her mother, "such opportunities are not quite as plentiful as grains of wheat." "I can marry him just whenever I please," re sponded the young lady, "and he d crawl all around the house on his hands and knees and beg for the chance. So there!" "You know the old maxim, my daughter, about counting your chickens before they are hatched?" "Oh, mamma, now why will you? Besides he s no chicken. There, now! be a good mamma, and I ll marry him soon. So don t look so blue, you good, dear old thing you!" and she kissed her Within the Fair, Find Them 121 mother on the cheek with the report of a small boy s toy pistol. In the meantime the poor tortoise, who had no mother to help her; the tortoise who was not like the hare as beautiful as an angel but, on the contrary, was more inclined apparently to be as ugly as sin, had made gradual and slow but sure progress. She had told the goal how lonely she was, how utterly unprotected; how she envied girls who had brothers like giants, with hard com mon sense; brothers to look up to; brothers to slave for; brothers to worship. She then described the man, like an oak tree, that she could cherish and worship ; and while she did so, a thrill of self- satisfaction ran through the head which had a shock upon it. For Burbank felt that he and that brother described by her might have been mis taken for each other at least ten times in one day. Another thing which pleased him much, in the tortoise, was the fact that she seemed oblivious of his hands and his feet; while with those deep set, and speaking eyes, she looked up and only into his own. She did not believe in men of education, she remarked, without lungs or chests. She believed in noblemen of nature who, having been educated by the mountain breezes, were made of brawn and had lungs, and to spare. He in this agreed with her fully. He had a chest of which he was and she might be proud. He was surprised to see in fact, how much their ideas were alike. In the meantime the hare continued to scorn him, but, having found a very good substitute for 122 Within the Fair, Find Them her, the goal would stand contempt no longer. He told the tortoise of his visits to the hare, and of her looks of contempt. This caused the tor toise to gaze back at him with so much of en raptured admiration in her eyes that he could not resist the sudden impulse that came over him to fall on his knees before her and did so. It was thus that the tortoise outstripped the hare ; that the goal had been won ; that history again had been repeated. Within the Fair, Find Them 123 The Man of an Accomplished Am bition Who Will Be at the Fair Mr. Tellship was a young man possessed of two burning ambitions ; one to become a butcher, and the other to gain the hand of Mrs. Rose Sedg- wick in marriage. His first ambition, which he carried with him during his early manhood, both in meditations by day and in dreams by night, came to be at last happily accomplished ; and as with an apron stained by mutton chops and choice steaks, cleaver in hand he stood before the marble- topped counter, between the two blocks, in front of his shining scales, he seemed to be happy; and if not, as he supposed, the "observed of all observ ers," at least firmly fixed in the pleasing delusion that he was so. But the other ambition was not one so easy of accomplishment; for the obstacles in the road which runs through the valley of true love to ter minate at the shore of the ocean of matrimonial bliss, were many and were various ; and Mr. Tell ship happened to be his own chief obstacle. He was bold enough as a butcher, and could cut up chops with a courage worthy of remark, but as a lover he was, alas! a coward. When he made love, the boldness which sustained him while making sausage or skewering a roast van ished into thin air and left him with a palpitating heart and no more stamina than is possessed by 124 Within the Fair, Find Them an ordinary mortal; or, to speak more exactly, not by any means as much. The love which was penetrating his heart s core and burning his life to ashes, was for the Mrs. Sedgwick referred to; a little widow with blue eyes who made a living by raising canary birds for the market. Besides this, she had a small assist ing income from the accumulations of a deceased grocer, whose memory she cherished by keeping his picture in a brooch at her neck. Mr. Tellship had an idea that a lady who lived by raising canaries was perhaps too high up in society to be courted otherwise than by surrepti tious glances, and from a distance, as she was on her way to purchase bird seed, or passed his shop on Sundays to church. For many months he continued in this frame of mind; and although his lovemaking was conducted with the greatest ardor, and in the most frantic of the various styles adopted by lovers if we may so express ourselves the lady remained as unconscious of his wasted energies in that direction as could be a babe un born. His passion was a flower whose sweet ness was, as it were, wasted upon the desert air. And how could she be aware of his love when the evidence of it consisted in watching the side of her house for hours after dark, and being tak en, in consequence, by passing night watchmen for a burglar, who, dreading accomplices, worked alone? How could she be aware of it when an other proof of his passion consisted merely in a change in the tunes which he practiced on his con certina from comic to sentimental, and a change Within the Fair, Find Them 125 of his habit of neglecting church to one of ex treme religious devotion? Quick as the other sex may be in recognizing the signs of true love, can any one blame the little widow for showing noth ing but coldness to these indefinite advances? But Mrs. Sedgwick had her attention other wise engaged. The canary birds took up part of her time, and a gentleman having auburn side whiskers the rest. That gentleman was Mr. Thom as Thompson, a genial undertaker, who was not too proud to drive his own hearse, which he did with the manners of a Chesterfield; and about this time he developed a burning curiosity about canary birds, which it was so difficult to satisfy that even daily visits to Mrs. Sedgwick s little dwelling were insufficient for the purpose. It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Tellship, who had an alert mind, took very particular notice of these visits, and was aware of this curiosity; and when it is said that Mr. Thomas Thompson, being unaware of Mr. Tellship s burning ardor, increased and aggravated it by always passing his shop when on his way to make them, the state of Mr. Tellship s mind can be imagined. He abandoned comic and sentimental tunes, which he had until now practiced on his concertina, and substituted compositions of his own, wild, weird, barbaric and bloodthirsty in tone ; airs which seem ed to fill the circumambient heaven with imaginary butcher knives, saws and cleavers, intended, if the intonation of the instrument be rightly in terpreted, to turn the body of Mr. Thomas Thomp son into sausages and human chops. 126 Within the Fair, Find Them As Mr. Thompson progressed with the canary birds Mr. Tellship became in his gloom Byronic, and had indistinct fancies in his mind of a few things that a young man of his character and vigor might later on come to be up and doing to one called Thompson. It was while these fancies were coming thick and fast to his mind that, gazing one day at the books in the window of a store without seeing them, he heard one of two men remark to the other that the book in the win dow which professed to point out the way by which a courtship could be carried to a success ful termination was a good one. Mr. Tellship, feeling the need of such a guide if it really was such, stepped into the store and purchased the book. Taking it home, he read it to find that the author was profoundly impressed with the belief that while love potions, music and poetry were excellent in their way, and aided greatly in love making, presents were far above them in value, and would win any woman. Mr. Tellship adopted the hint and purchased a watch charm and, after writing "from T. T." on the outside of the package, he left it, after dark, on the window sill of his sweetheart s room. He also ordered his errand boy, after enjoining strict secrecy upon him, to leave a roast on Mrs. Sedg- wick s back steps whenever the lady was away from home. In the meantime he himself continued to leave presents on the window sill. The result was that Mrs. Sedgwick began to be lieve that she either lived in fairyland, or that the dear fellow, "T. T." which she interpreted as Within the Fair, Find Them 127 Thomas Thompson was the most ardent of all ardent adorers. It is needless to say that she was as much in the dark in regard to the real T. T. as critics are in regard to the identity of the T. T. of Shakespeare s sonnets. Believing, from the fact that the presents were left on the window sill, and the roasts only when she was absent from home, that Mr. Thomas Thompson did not wish because of modesty, not otherwise apparent, to have any direct reference made to these gifts, Mrs. Sedgwick, when with him, only referred to them in the vaguest manner. One evening, while Mr. Tellship stood in front of the house in which the widow lived, watching the smiling faces of the widow and Mr. Thomas Thompson reflected on the blind, and meditated over the subject of steaks dipped in aqua regia for delivery to Mr. Thompson, the widow, speak ing to the undertaker said : "I received another token today." "A roast?" asked Mr. Thompson, determined to humor her; for he had come to the conclusion that her vague references were merely a piece of pleasantry. "Oh, no; a bracelet." "Marked T. T.?" asked Mr. Thompson. "Yes," replied the widow. "Ha ! ha !" Mr. Thompson cried, throwing a clear cut shadow of two rows of teeth on the curtain for the careful scrutiny of Mr. Tellship; an act which caused the latter to rush back and forth until for the third time that night he nearly knocked over the night watchman. 128 Within the Fair, Find Them The night watchman, being this time greatly angered, and taking him for a would-be burglar, fired a shot which carried away a lock of Mr. Tellship s hair. A number of young men who had been serenading their sweethearts with ac- cordeons and harmonicas, took both men into custody. The next morning the matter was brought up in court. Mr. Tellship was the first witness, but he bore his trials like a Spartan, and suffered for contempt for refusing to give tes timony; but when his errand boy was put on the stand the story came out. The result was that the mystery of the beef steaks and roasts and of the presents left on the window sill of the widow s house made the next day sensational articles for the two town papers. And here was shown the majesty and power of the press. The whole community accepted Mr. Tellship as the lover of Mrs. Sedgwick, and the only one entitled to stand in that relation to her, and, with a good natured smile, gazed towards the widow s front door, expecting to see him en tering and departing. When instead they saw the Chesterfieldian Thompson entering the community frowned. Pub lic sentiment grew strong on the subject. Watched by the Argus-eyed public, even jeered at by the youthful element, which felt strong with public sentiment behind it> Mr. Thompson in time came to think that something was not, perhaps, going to be. Feeling the same powerful sentiment in his fa vor, Mr. Tellship s courage rose. Not many can Within the Fair, Find Them 129 stand against public sentiment when that sentiment is a unit and for the right. Mr. Tellship did not, the widow did not, and Mr. Thomas Thompson did not. Besides, the widow had lost all interest in Mr. Thomas Thompson when she saw or be lieved she saw that he had accepted the credit gained by the presents given by another. In the end Mr. Thompson abandoned his visits (doubt less having learned all that could be learned about canary birds), and Mr. Tellship, who had become personally acquainted with the lady to whom he had long made love on the concertina took his place. Need we say that the climax was reached when a minister of the gospel pronounced the two one, and public sentiment was satisfied. 130 Within the Fair, Find Them The Night of Misadventures of a Man Who Will Be at the Fair My name is Brown. As I get married at the end of this recital, and as people who get mar ried are especially in the eyes of women people who constitute subjects of interest, I mention it at once. Don t forget it it s Brown. By re membering that I am neither a Black nor White, nor Green, you can know that I am Brown. As my marriage has proved to be the most serious step taken in my life, I make mention of it also, both for my own benefit and that of the reader. I have a friend who owns a seed store, who pos sesses, as far as my observation goes, a marve lous faculty for never selling his seeds ; for I have never seen him sell even a grain of mustard seed, as you know, the least, among seeds. Well, as I was just about to remark, I went to see my friend a few years ago at the time at which this story opens expecting to see him standing, as usual, in the doorway of his place of business, while disposing of his seeds by the only method which I have known him to adopt that is to say, by standing there and eating them when I was surprised to find the doorway vacant. I discovered inside of the store a small man whose cheeks were red, behind whose ear was a pen, perched on a high stool at a desk and half concealed from view by the darkness in the back Within the Fair, Find Them 131 of the store. After half falling, half springing from his stool, he rushed up to me, and while rubbing his hands he said: "Seeds?" "Where is Mr. Burton?" I asked, referring to the proprietor. "I ll do just as well, Seeds," he answered. "No, you won t," said I. "Yes," he replied, "I will." "Ah, will you?" exclaimed I, somewhat aston ished at the persistence of the manikin. "Just as well," said he, rubbing his hands hard er than ever. "Then," said I, you may lend me $50." He ceased to rub his hands. My remark was one calculated to dampen the ardor of even the oldest friend. Then, while something resem bling a look of recognition came over his face, he reached down into his pocket for $50, which he handed to me. At my look of surprise, he heartily laughed. "It s been explained," he said. "I m Burton s brother-in-law. He told me how to recognize you, as the man who would call for $50 by a straw berry mark, which I didn t see at first, or else I wouldn t have spoken about seeds." It struck me that Burton might have chosen a method of identification which savored less of fairy tales, or of the times of knight errantry. I was about to go to one of the interior towns of the state, and to my astonishment the manikin who told me that his name was Wellington Zig- ger said that he was going with me. Although our acquaintanceship had extended over a period 132 Within the Fair, Find Them of but fifty seconds. I remembered his loan, and made no objection. It was then winter time, and at 6 o clock, while being whirled on the train to our destination, it was already dark. Mr. Zigger and I were seated together but a short distance from the front end of the car. We were, by the time table, to reach our destination at 7 o clock. Mr. Zigger had half covered himself and myself with bundles which, for some mysterious reason, he was taking with him. We had been on the cars an hour and a half when examining my watch I observed that it was a quarter to 7. During the hour and a half Mr. Zigger had been in an unbroken state of re verie, into which he had fallen. At a quarter to 7 a deep sigh, followed by a movement under the bundles, led me to believe that the reverie had come to an end. From that time on, instead of being a man in a reverie, Mr. Zigger reminded me more of a mon key on a spring board. He kept rushing, at short intervals, to the door, which he held open long enough to chill the passengers and get his eyes filled with the cinders, which, after concealing himself again beneath the bundles, he would pro ceeded to extract from them. After the first three or four visits to the door, he began to give utterance to childish cries, which I at first attrib uted to the cinders, but which later on proved to have been cries of delight. I discovered soon that these cries were uttered only when houses, having lights shining in " their windows, were passed. Within the Fair, Find Them 133 In time he began to point these houses out to me as the houses in which "She" lived. We passed, in succession, six at least, of these houses in which she lived. I did not know who "She" was ; but was glad to learn, first, that "She" was such an extensive property owner, and second, that she possessed in addition the somewhat remarkable faculty of being able to live in six houses at once. The train stopped and the lights of six hacks were noticed, and the eloquent voices of six men who said "Whants a ack?" showed us, as I thought that our journey was at an end and that my stom ach, which was making an outcry for that kind of satisfaction which outraged stomachs will demand, was about to be pacified. But no. My friend, with his form curved backward beneath the weight of the armful of packages which he bore in front of him, pushed me into a hack, threw his pack ages on top of me, and, after giving directions in a tremulous voice to the driver, himself fell in upon the top of his bundles. "Are you going to a distant hotel?" I asked with astonishment. "Going to see her," he responded. "And where does she live?" I then asked. "Oh, only just six miles out," he answered. Now this was more than I was willing to stand, even on her account; so I ran my neck out of the hack window and was about to tell the driver, in the tone of a hungry man, to drive me, with the small lunatic inside, to the nearest hotel. Mr. Zigger, however, pulled me back by the coat tails and said: 134 Within the Fair, -Find Them "But I m engaged to her." "Well," said I, "I m not; and. although your engagement may make you lose your appetite, mine remains almost feverish." "Tut, tut," Mr. Zigger answered, "I intend this as a treat." "How do you mean?" I asked, not all all see ing the pleasurable part of his entertainment. "I telegraphed up to her we were coming to dinner," he said. Stepping upon his toes I climbed back into a corner of the hack, where I reclined, with the de termination to make the best of a bad situation. We drew up in front of an orchard, having a farm house behind it. The light of the hack showed me a handsome young girl standing at the gate. We had hardly stopped when Mr. Zigger, after his fashion, fell out with his bundles and was, as I thought, about to take her in his arms, when he drew suddenly back. "Jennie Grunstadt you?" he said. "Yes, Sophy s at my house," was the reply. "You get out here, Mr. Zigger said, turning to me, "and I ll drive after her." Because of Mr. Zigger s excited conduct on the train my curiosity had been aroused about "her," so I answered : "No, my dear Zigger; look after your bundles. They need your attention. I ll go after her." Without caring or waiting to hear an argu ment, the driver, who had doubtless visions of a dinner waiting for him at his home, started his horses at once and drove to the next farm house. Within the Fair, Find Them 135 I explained to Sophy when she came out to the hack that her peculiar lover had sent me after her. This evidently led her to believe that he was as peculiar as I considered him to be. Miss Merwin I afterward learned her name to be, was a charming young lady. Whether dur ing our ride back in the hack she found me a charming companion or not, I need not say, as modesty will not permit me to say that of which I am convinced. Upon entering the dining room on our return, I think that instead of doing justice I may say with perhaps more truth that I did injustice to the roast of beef. I managed, also, without great effort to conceal some of the other viands beneath my vest. We adjourned after dinner to the sitting room. The walls of this room were made of boards, which were painted pink. The ceiling was low. Opposite the mantel piece stood a clock, in a ma hogany case, having inside of it at the end of a long cord a brass weight. On the walls, in frames which were made of straws, were photographs of relatives, and ancestors of the family, to whom, if they were males, the photographer had given the aspects of cutthroats, and when females, an idea of pokers down their backs was conveyed by the artist. Doubtless to display a family like ness, the eyes of all were crossed. A lounge, sunken in several places where the springs were gone, was under the clock; a sewing machine, with a "work basket" on top of it, by the window; a dappled rocking horse in the corner, and rag 136 Within the Fair, Find Them carpets were on the floor which was no longer level. A lean old gentleman, bald-headed, and wearing slippers, who, with his thin lips closed, was con stantly chewing something, proved to be Miss Merwin s father, and a stout lady, who may have been bald, as well, her mother. A number of children were the recipients of the presents which Mr. Zigger had brought in his boxes. Our elders soon betook themselves, with kind ly forethought, to their night caps, and to bed; and, notwithstanding the consequent outcry, Miss Merwin hurriedly wedged the children into their cribs. We commenced the evening then by playing whist. At this game the ladies of course cheated so openly that the gentlemen, as is usual, tired soon of the amusement. Mr. Zigger then told the fortunes of the ladies and played a few tricks for their edification with the cards, and after that started a conversation upon the subject of travel ing. "You have traveled a good deal yourself, Mr. Zigger." observed Miss Grunstadt; and she called my attention to the remark by tapping my most cherished corn forcibly with the sole of her shoe. The expressive face which I made led her to be lieve that I had seen the point, but it was evident ly not clear to her which point, for a little later she again called my attention to what Mr. Zigger was saying by a more violent tap upon what at the time seemed the center of my nervous system. "I have traveled much. I " Within the Fair, Find Them 137 "Mr. Zigger," said Miss Grunstadt, "has been closer than any one to the North Pole and has been through the swamps of South America. It was there, was it not, that you swam miles across a flooded land, rilled with poisonous reptiles?" "Fourteen hundred feet," responded Mr. Zigger. Miss Merwin took but little part in the con versation. I came to the conclusion during the evening from casual remarks and because of va rious taps on my corn that the engagement be tween Mr. Zigger and Miss Merwin had not been altogether serious on the lady s part in the first instance. I concluded, however, that later she had come to look upon it more seriously. There was something odd both in the manner and appear ance of Mr. Zigger; and Miss Gunstadt, who had evidently considered the engagement from the beginning in the light of a joke, continued to con sider it so. In explanation of this condition of affairs it should be said that Miss Merwin had been ad dressed by Mr. Zigger three days after he had made her acquaintance. She, hardly know ing whether he was a madman or not, in a mo- ment of thoughtlessness and for her own amuse ment, had answered "yes" to his request for her hand in marriage. His evident earnestness afterward, and his persistent attention to her parents and the children, had of late prevented her from joining her friend, as she at first had, in making fun of him and his pretensions. When Miss Grunstadt, on the evening referred to, took Mr. Zigger aside and handed him a let- 138 Within the Fair, Find Them ter which was written in a back hand, something in it caused him to gnash his teeth and pace the floor. Miss Merwin, being unable to conceal her mirth, excused herself and left the room. Upon hearing her coughing Mr. Zigger. turning to the others, hoped that the cough was not serious. "What will you do to him?" asked Miss Grun- stadt of Mr. Zigger, after he had ceased to frown upon the letter which he held in his hand. "I d like to cut his heart out; and, if he had two," said the little man, fiercely, "cut out both! Come," said he, turning to me, "we must go." As it was getting late, I was willing enough to depart. A horse and buggy were hitched up, and as we drove rapidly over the muddy road back to town clods of dirt flew from the wheels. In that neighborhood practical jokers often sent people down the country roads in search of an imaginary character called "Wash White," for one purpose or another. As I was a stranger I knew nothing of this fanciful "Wash White." Nor had Mr. Zigger heard of him. When I was about to retire Mr. Zigger came to my room, with a serious face, and placed in my hands the note which Miss Grunstadt had given him, saying, "Read that." It proved to be a letter signed "Wash White," in which the mythical White proposed an elopement to Miss Merwin, saying that if she would not consent he would start the most scandalous re ports about her. "What do you think of it?" asked Mr. Zigger. "That hanging would be much too good for him," I responded. Within the Fair, Find Them 139 "I ll take his life !" said the very fierce manikin. "I ve got my carnage ordered already." "What?" I said, "you are not going to search for him tonight?" "I am," he said, firmly. Finding that argument had no effect upon him, I allowed him to have his own way. Besides, it began to dawn upon me that the whole thing might be a hoax; but feeling sure that to express this belief would only get me into trouble, I re mained silent. All that night and until 4 o clock in the morn ing, my friend drove to places previously de scribed to him, by people who, having the usual reason for being up later than they should have been, were disposed to be facetious, as the resi dences of "Wash White." The driver of the hack in which we rode, notwithstanding his extra com pensation, was in ill humor, and drove wherever he told him to go, without explaining the situation to us. To the intense disgust of the inmates, Mr. Zigger woke up the people at half a dozen houses to ask for "Wash White." Instead of re plying, they either abused him. or slammed the door in his face, telling him that he was drunk and would better go home. Despairing at last of finding his imaginary en emy, he told the driver to start for town. In order to make a short cut the driver started over a road across a marsh. The night was a dark one and the lights of the hack had burnt out. We had journeyed about half a mile when we reached a slough, over which there had been un- 140 Within the Fair, Find Them til that day a bridge. But on that day it had been taken away in order that a new one might replace it. The consequence was that before we knew it the horses and hack were half buried in the soft mud of the slough ; for, the tide being low, the creek was almost without water in it. The horses soon scrambled through the mud and managed to get up on the bank, leaving the car riage, as the traces were broken, in the mud behind them. With difficulty Mr. Zigger managed to get the hack door open and crawl out, and I did the same. On reaching the firm ground the body of Mr. Zigger to the armpits was covered with blue mud ; his hands and arms were covered, as well ; and his face splashed with it. As it would be necessary to run this story as a serial if the driver s oaths were given, we will not even stop to tell the reader that they seemed to produce a fog which crept over the surrounding land. Suffice it to say that he left the hack in the slough,, and mounting one of the horses, leav ing the other in our charge, started for town. Mr. Zigger, encased in a coat of mail of mud, waded off to the right across the marsh, a distance of half a mile, to a house which he recognized, or thought he recognized, as the one in which his sweetheart lived. Upon reaching it he entered the gate, and going down the pathway between the rose bushes, sud denly stopped short, for through the darkness the outlined forms of two men were seen. They were beneath the window of the room in which his sweetheart slept. One of them, who was stand- Within the Fair, Find Them 141 ing on what was probably the head of a barrel, was opening the window slowly and noiselessly. The other, with his hand pressed against the back of the first, stood at his side. Now, even if Mr. Zigger did sometimes lack discretion, there was one thing which he never had been known to lack and that was a degree of courage which was altogether out of proportion to his size. Knowing that one of the rose bushes was held in an upright position by a pick handle, he searched for it, found it, and with that in his good and small right hand, he advanced upon the burglars. Hearing his step on the gravel and seeing him approaching, the burglar at the win dow allowed it to drop with a bang, and then banging his pistol with a still louder report he carried away the tip of Mr. Zigger s ear. Whether or not the loss of this small portion of his anatomy led Mr. Zigger to believe that he would thenceforth seem less comely in the eyes of his lady love it would be hard to say ; but either for that or some other reason the loss of his ear seemed to fill him with wrath for he now advanced upon the burglars with fury and eagerness. The other burglar, upon turning the light of his dark lantern upon him, observed something like a cone-shaped mass of blue mud moving forward and in his direction, on two legs the most extra ordinary figure upon which the light of a dark lantern had ever fallen. It was too much for their nerves and the robbers fled. Mr. Zigger. after chasing them over a back fence, returned to the house. The young ladies, 142 Within the Fair, Find Them of course, Miss Merwin and Miss Grunstadt were sleeping in the same room had at the time the pistol was fired, given utterance to shrieks. The children on the floor above them, had followed their example. Mr. Zigger, with his muddy body, muddy hands, muddy face and bleeding ear, now knocked at the door. "Who are you?" Mr. Merwin, the father of Miss Sophy, in a tremulous voice asked. "I m Zigger," was the response. Upon opening the door the elderly gentleman staggered back. Miss Merwin, dressed in her wrapper, peered over her father s shoulder. "Good heaven ! What have you been doing to yourself?" she asked. "Oh, lots of things," said Mr. Zigger, briefly. Seeing from his manner that he was not, as she had at first supposed, under the influence of li quor, and noticing his bleeding ear, she said, with a cry: "What s the matter with you?" "Never mind," he said, "but give me a gun, quick!" Suspecting now that he had attempted suicide on her account, and having gotten so far as car rying away part of his ear and no further, he wished to renew the attempt, the gun was refused him. Later, when the truth was learned, the young ladies were filled with chagrin at the outcome of their foolish joke, which they had supposed would produce no such result as that which had followed ; Within the Fair, Find Them 143 and for saving their lives, as they believed he had done, they were full of the deepest gratitude. Because of their conduct, and because of the se rious scolding received from their elders, they at once proceeded to exhaust the supply of tears which they had on hand. Hot water was prepared, and when Mr. Zigger appeared after a bath in the pantaloons which Mr. Merwin had loaned him, as the legs were almost entirely rolled up, they were more like a bag with holes in the lower end than anything else ; and the tails of the coat which he wore, as he walked around, seemed to be doing the work ordinarily performed by a broom. Remembering his courage ous conduct, however, his sweetheart was proud of him, even in this costume. The two burglars who had been attacked by him with a mere pick han dle were soon caught by the police and proved to be old offenders and the most dangerous of their class. Is it necessary to say that from that time on the engagement between Miss Merwin and Mr. J. Wellington Zigger was looked upon as one entered into in sober earnest by all parties ; that the marriage which soon followed was the proof of this fact, and that Mr. Wellington Zigger was the happiest of happy husbands, myself alone ex- cepted? For, of course, as the reader has seen, after the various attacks upon the tenderest part of my organism by Miss Grunstadt I. Brown, was destined to become her breadwinner, and she my helpmeet and additional rib. As a husband, I have since been perfection, and Zigger almost so. 144 Within the Fair,- Find Them What of a City at One Time, (and at No Great Distance Away from Its Center), Was Its Inferno A British young lady, in 1906, was visiting in Berkeley, California. During the night of April 16th, she, in the center of San Francisco in vision saw a brass plate upon which was inscribed : "The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head stone of the corner." Then around, and about it, from out of the earth, arose a vast volume of smoke that clouded the sky above, and with the smoke rushed flames far up into it. The next morning to two others, she described that vision, and expressed dread and unwillingness to go into the vision city, as on that day she previously had promised to do. Urged to, she nevertheless went, and on April 18th, 1906, she in the city of San Francisco, was one of hundreds of thousands to experience what, in vision, on the night of April 16th, 1906, had been set before her. Not very far from the center of San Francisco existed, (but is not now longer visible), what, in the time before the earthquake and fire had been San Francisco s inferno. Matters, at a distance, either of time or space Within the Fair, Find Them 145 become clothed with mystery; terror; close at hand often seem commonplace ; natural ; seem not mysterious. We must read if we are to feel the greatest sensation of horror because of them, of cruelties in Russia, thugs in India, be horrified at barbarism in Africa; barbarism in San Francisco will not do. We must go back 1600, 1800 years and express our dissatisfaction with the condition of affairs then existing in Rome ; and yet a condi tion of affairs no better has of late existed within the limits of very confined parallelogram in one of the largest of American cities. There has late ly been in others, there was formerly, in the cen ter of San Francisco, barbarism nowhere exceed ed. We read of thugs stealthily creeping through the leaves and passing from branch to branch of the trees in the dark and dense forests of India to drop finally behind the unsuspecting foot pas senger, encircle his throat with their arms and choke him to death. We read of doings of societies formed in the days of Machiavelli in the times of the Doges of Venice, for secret murder. In a narrow district in San Francisco existed once, several societies or ganized for murder. Forty thousand men as some have estimated it defying all laws of health, and defying the courts once lived within it. The nostrils, when Chinatown was approached, were outrageously offended by an odor, which was altogether Asia tic. This marked characteristic of the habitation of the "little brown men" discounted and double discounted what could be done by the wigwam of 146 Within the Fair, Find Them noble "Lo ! the poor Indian." When your eye sight had once been offended by what could be seen within that murderous "little brown man s" district, you would be quite ready to say to your self: "I d rather be a toad and live upon the va pors of a dungeon than have the largest kind of corner on the life of such a celestial. " But it would either be better for your stomach that you had never been born, or else born without one, than to see all that there was to be seen. True, you might look upon the outside ; see red Chinese lanterns ; Chinese idols almost black, hav ing moustaches like rat-tail files, and eyes each inspecting their nose tips ; Chinese pork, so- called ; Chinese mutton that once, perhaps, could bark; hear misery expressed in sharps and flats called music and think that you know something of the elder day Chinatown life. But do not look on the inside, that is. if there is an inside, or if you can find it. There was an inside and the sights there to be seen would be to you, in your present state of mind what Niagara is to a large portion of the people of Europe : something in which, perhaps, you could not be induced to believe. Children were born there on the edge of a slow running stream and that stream was an underground sewer, one that had broken from its surround ings. On the banks of such a stream, in the pas toral underground regions of the spider and the rat, could you find the body of the leper; the living man, whose body had been turned a grave yard of flesh. Where slime is, or in the dens where Within the Fair, Find Them 147 smoke of opium had darkened the rafters, women were woo d and won by the time honored and only method there known by the intervention of the metal that, saying "In God we trust," was congealed metallic distrust ; which, having "liberty" inscribed upon it has made every slave since the time when Venus began to rise up out of the ocean. And the wife when purchased, was woo d and won, not, perhaps, for the man who bought her, but for another or others. Here, where was heard the mournful, hopeless and despairing cry as it seems, of a mysterious being who goes from street to street crying like the leper of the desert; voicing, as it seemed the condition of this earthly purgatory, was a small, ancient China on modern American soil. The hid eous figures of idols; the more than hideous chi- rography of "John" himself; such music as makes you wish for blinkers upon your ears; devil wor ship ; a system of government carried on by a grand council of Thugs, enforced by assassination and, acting in open defiance of American law, all attested this. Murderers having their heads shaved not for the penitentiary, but in compliance with the rigid demands of fashion were to be seen often in un derground barbershops. Murderers in blue coats, having sleeves long enough for a bishop, by their presence, graced nearly every "tan" game. Murderers whose black, braided queues hung nearly down to their heels, who wore dress re form blue bloomer costumes, walked in Indian file through the smoke and black, sticky mud of 148 Within the Fair, Find Them every loathsome, leprosy-infected and foul and odorous alley. Let the white beauty paint an inch a foot, yes a mile deep, and she will not find herself painted as the heads of female slaves, peering through a network of iron from Chinese slave prisons, in the country that lies behind the Goddess of Liberty, were painted. Let a soul in torture, in the realms of Satan, give utterance to all of the misery that it has learned there, and its cry will not in any greater degree lack the quality of hope than did the cry of tearless de spair heard at times to issue forth from these painted living human tombs, which had in them souls immortal that may not ever find out a way to die. It is a fact susceptible of demonstration that the mind of Dante could not have imagined, and that his inferno contained no horrors such as exist ed in the more awful inferno that was San Francisco s center. If an artist wished to achieve fame, instead of copying the old masters, he ought to have painted that. And yet the people of San Francisco then went to listen to a lecture on the horrors of the West Coast of Africa. See ing, men saw not. Men as bold as any that have ever lived, have been assigned to duty in that murder-hatching, foul-smelling, immoral, Joss forsaken, God-forsak en pest district. If these men knew what fear was, their deeds never have shown it. They went where secret assassins swarmed; assassins secretly arm ed with knives resembling swords, hatchets and bulldog revolvers, went often alone; and their Within the Fair, Find Them 149 duty they always performed. Outside of their serv ices, they aught to have been in those days paid $1000 a month simply for smelling that unclean atmosphere. Surrounding this district were Christian churches, Chinese gin shops and buildings upon which had fallen the pest blight of the presence of the bacillus that then wore a queue. Their doors were closed and dust covered them. Upon them was the sign "For Sale," or "To Let"; in front of broken window frames wooden bars were nailed; and from broken hinges shutters hung. Many rats had made them haunted houses, wherein were heard the ghostly raps produced by their small feet when they jumped. The Chinese liquor shops above referred to were hells in basements. Mingling with the sweet bells of churches surrounding the district, and causing them to seem "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh," were the cries and shouts at times rising up from these hells. Going up into the churches were long streams of people in silks and velvets and perfumes and gold. Going down into the hells were "fiends" (men and women who "shoot" themselves with opium "guns," or smoke something that burns with a sound like brim stone) ; "bums," "vags." Those preaching in the churches told about what ought to be, and gave utterance to what Hamlet called "Words, words, words!" Those who had descended into the hells, performed there, Chinese liquor bottle in hand, what may be called, "deeds, deeds, deeds." Before attempting to describe "fiends" and such 150 Within the Fair, Find Them "vags" and such liquor, (liquor that would cause a shark, if one could appear in Chinatown, put on a white apron, and sell liquor), to shed such co pious tears for having sold it that it would soon have its own grief-created pond to swim in. There used to be another drink which came into exis tence first in the district of San Francisco, called "Barbary Coast" ; and it was sold only to the "coaster" in distress, or about to be. It is not now to be had in other parts of the city and was called the "bonanza." The man who took it regu larly for twelve months could then have presented to him an opportunity to drop dead and "push clouds." The man who had taken it steadily for a shorter period of time would have thrown his system into an excellent condition to accept death at the hands of the underground, queued and blue- bloomer-costumed bar tender. To see the inside of a Chinese liquor hell may or may not have been worth any man s while. It may not have been worth while to make a study of the presiding genius, in loose flowing garments, having brown bony arms, and wearing long, white stockings, whose queue was fashionably coiled af ter the manner of a serpent about to strike. We know, however, that such a study could impress upon your mind at least one fact that there are more nightmares in the world than the ghost of a Thanksgiving turkey can whisper to you by way of revenge for having as the wolf grandmother did, eaten him up, than are to be seen with your eyes shut. If you have any pity, beyond words, for the "looped and windowed" "has beens," who Within the Fair,- Find Them 151 are not; for the "poor piteous wretches" with dull ed eyes, who while living, are walking about dead, you will then, in this inferno, be able to have seen nightmares with your eyes wide open. Wretched, ragged, hopeless and craving for death, for a few cents a glass they buy it here, and they drink it. Homeless and hopeless, man forsaken, and as it seems to human eyes, God-forsaken, they are standing upon the stage in the last act of the drama of life, and with their glasses in their trembling hands they salute one another as they see the black curtain beginning to come down. Their swollen faces men with battered silk hats, or any kind of hats, or no hats ; coats, or vests, or no vests ; with scraps of faded lining hanging beneath the tails of their slick and greasy and patched and stained and worn-out garments, that are pinned about their bare throats ; standing with freezing naked feet in open or worn out shoes ; having hands that shake until they are about to spill the precious liquor, upon which their dead- looking eyes are gazing; with mouths that babble, and have gone back to childhood; and brains that reel, and are ruins all this, as they stand in the half darkness of the place, tell but one story. And as you stand and look and listen you will perhaps hear the sounds of church bells drifting from afar, overhead, and as if from out of another world. If at the moment you are inclined to be fanciful, you will perhaps imagine that the bells, voicing the words of ghostly tragedians from the world beyond, are saying to them, these "walk ing shadows," sometimes low, sometimes loud, 152 Within the Fair, Find Them as the wind varies: "Out, out, brief candle; out, out, brief candle, out ! out ! out ! out ! But this congregation of people with uncombed heads, faces unshaven and shaking hands, hears it not. Dulled to that, those senses that are left make them wake just long enough to drivel a laugh; to shout, from defiance : and they reel and drink and are dying and are about to go. The thing with a head like a toad s, having eyes in it, that had been placed there without any regard for perspective, continued in the meantime, to sell his murder to these "white devils" at two cents and a fraction a glass. A woman standing in the corner showed what she had been by draw ing up the front of her ragged dress, so as to dis play her stringless shoes, as she driveled a song and danced for that crowd a clog. A man, whose actions were those of a lunatic, showed as in a frenzied manner, he stabbed the white washed brick wall with a knife, how he would probably end if he had not been born to first be drowned in liquor. Another woman whose hair, beneath the brim of her torn straw hat, hung down over her brown eyes, whose tongue seemed as she shrieked at the China man, charging him with having robbed her of a drink, to have acquired a sudden mastery over all that was foul in language, showed by this foulness of tongue, and the whiteness of skin where the cross threads of her black dress had worn away and left holes in it, that she once was more re fined than the rest. Curses coming from a heart that had bled, and passing over arched lips that were once beautiful, proved how in falling she Within the Fair, Find Them 153 came from a state that once almost touched heav en, before she reached this hell, in search of a liquor which served as a temporary respite from the acquired and irresistible demands of the sys tem for the great will and soul-eradicating drug. It is hard to believe that this woman had fallen far; but when a drug enters the system and puts out of the way the will, the body will fall any dis tance to any hell. Thus, the master anarchist of drugs tears down, not buildings on earth, but souls out of heaven. Do you know what that poor living corpse had been? One against whose knees the brows of in fants, with heads of curled golden hair, had once pressed. One of the policemen above referred to, assigned to duty in this nest of Mongolian copperheads and human rattlesnakes, was, not long since, standing in that part of Chinatown in which murders were oftenest committed, and in which one of his com panions had just been killed, when, telling me of these shops in which white wrecks are given a li quor which soon ends their misery, he took me where I saw what has just been described. It was evening, cold and gloomy, and the sounds of the chimes of St. Patrick s church, calling sinners to prayer and all "white devils" to their repentance, were borne down upon the night wind. As we stood at the hells entrance and looked upon the Chinese Satan whose white soled shoe with a blue top to it caused his foot to resemble a Mongolian hoof, and at the dead-eyed "fiends" around him, we were, as was natural enough, cursed for our cu- 154 Within the Fair, Find Them riosity by the woman who had been dancing the clog. The other woman was, at the moment, resting with her back against the wall and her head and face that had the smile upon it of a mind that day by day was becoming more and more vacant, was inclined forward. Did you ever, in the space of two moments, see a person s age in creased twenty years or more? See a face for the time so changed that, if a woman, she looked as if she might have become her own grandmother? A sudden and all absorbing sensation of despair can do it. Such a look had spread over the face of that poor outcast. Music had caused it. The Salvation Army, on its outskirts, and somewhere in the neighborhood, had come on what seemed a forlorn hope and was making a sudden and enthu siastic attempt to reform this miniature China. Borne down on the breeze came the tones of a melodious voice, and the strain sung by that voice, she had caught. The words coming to us through the darkness of the night were those words by Cardinal Newman which, in the Episcopal church, are sung often, over the bodies of the dead : Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on ; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on ; With a shudder, but not from cold ; with a shud der, but not for herself; with a shudder, one caused by the liquor, she moved wearily and slowly from where she had been standing and Within the Fair, Find Them 155 reeled up the steps. She brushed by us, went out and down the street, and into the darkness. Upon her face, as she passed, was the dazed look caused by the sleep-producing, death-producing drug that was in her. While nodding her head as she passed, as if affirmatively to something that she imagined she had heard, half audibly she said: "Yes, yes; Lead Thou me on," and then wandering on into the encircling gloom of the night as we watched her the night closing around, hid her. 156 Within the Fair, Find Them Afterword One that, differing from others, (while appear ing to many thousands in all lands not to be one), will notwithstanding be believed by numbers even yet greater not to be,: anything more than a jest. E Pluribus Unum Through labors performed for the help of the race during thirty-three years by the writer of this book, the boundaries of scientific knowledge, be yond where they before were, have very widely been extended. In the work of placing farther ahead and at a point from which they cannot be set back, the boundaries of a life furnishing Em pire, compared with which those that Caesar, Alexander or Napoleon have sought to establish were bubbles that rise upon but to vanish into eternity s tide, no hosts have been butchered; no sons of woman have been sold to death ; no con queror has succeeded in having the world s wealth and honors conferred upon himself because the torch that he carried was made use of to light the roofs that had served to be the protection above the heads of women and babes. During thirty-three years engaged in the per formance of those, the most difficult of human la bors, through which (as have the profoundest of mankind ever had knowledge), alone can the per manent advancement of human thought ever be Within the Fair, Find Them 157 brought about, the evidences of what were those points to which human understanding and man kind s welfare were being, by those labors carried forward, year after year were placed in the hands of the chief institutions, in countries in all parts of the world, founded and established, and cre ated as trusts to give encouragement to, and to promote learning. Before referring to what was the consequence of so doing, it is but just and a matter of honor that is not going to be forgotten, to say of one human being, (of the male sex of the human race), that, during the course of those thirty-three years, he to the writer mailed one dime to aid and encourage him, and that, while engaged in the performance of those labors, it so did . Out side of this one endowment of his work came there not back during those thirty-three years, from any man or institution either engaged in the work of, or founded to promote and encourage knowledge, (except earnest words from two of Great Britain s writers, and two men noted for their work in leading German universities, that to the writer were of worth more than a national endowment), any sound of a voice that offered encouragement, other than that which a man can himself extract out of derision, coming from insti tutions, (their existence gained out of work such as was his, the chief cause for their existence), established to give to such work encouragement. Not in connection with that, but other work came there, to the writer, from the League of American Pen Women, Washington, D. C., a rep resentative with the request that he would tell 158 Within the Fair, Find Them them all about himself. Only too glad would he have been to have replied to this request confer ring upon him honor, if he had been certain that they, each of them, would have been willing to be come in character so much like himself, that it would have been possible for him to have com plied with their request. The works of the destroyers of cities and men, may the world s learned institutions without effort be able to comprehend. But this work, of another sort, that has gone to them was of the character that must ever at first appear to have been sent, forth, (before the time), to torment. Nevertheless, with these institutions, and preserved among the records of some of them, is now one of the great est of all of the forms of work of the latter sort, that through any man can be accomplished. For must the lever that can move the world, be ever one thing A WORK : not a philosophy, that can no more do so than can a squirrel that dashes for ward inside of a cage, that has been formed into the shape of a revolving wheel within which it has been imprisoned. Exactly what this means has every endowed and philosophising institu tion of learning on earth got in time to come to know. For out of the labors that during thirty- three years, unhonored by any such, as institu tions, have been performed, has there gone, (and, from the rock upon which they have been found ed), out into the world, for them as well as for the rest of mankind, LIFE; which life, in the true sense in which the word is here used, is not only the cause of the continued existence of man s Within the Fair, Find Them 159 body, but for the soul its food. more necessary to it than is the ordinary food of which the body makes use, to maintain it. Further than this there may be made a statement that, to any true scientists ought not to have in it matter for doubt. There is, for the planet, a life, more than food, from the lack of which, (if, by those labors that must be, at long intervals performed, it be not sup plied), the grains of the earth, the barley, the wheat from which man makes his bread, will not continue to grow; from lack of which fish that he now gets out of the ocean would, from that time on, cease there to be found. Having performed those ancient labors, set down before the world was founded as the most difficult among all of those that, on occasion after occasion, some one of the race was, with enlighten ment as to why it was and knowledge of what during long years was for him to be the conse quence of having entered upon them ; in his mind, (during those long years through which, from their commencement, he had known that this was to be one of the elemets of his labors : That not anywhere in the world would an institution found ed to encourage and promote learning raise a lit tle finger to aid the one engaged in the work) ; sometimes questioning whether the work that, dur ing centuries to follow, was to feed those of that volatile race that seriously went on with their occupation of creating pageants and shows, while such a question as bread and life were dependent upon whether or not, derided and unaided by any part of the whole earth s machinery establish- 160 Within the Fair, Find Them ed to promote and encourage, the man perform ing the labors that were largely to aid in keeping them from ceasing to be, would ever succeed in carrying his labors on to the point where, of them it could be said that they had been finished), the writer is now at last at leisure to turn from them ; and, throuh the publication of a work of a very different character ; this one ; to begin to pay off mortgages that have accumulated upon the land in Berkeley, upon which those labors were in large part performed : ground to which, since it is upon it that those labors were carried on, hosts will, (as to other and less important shrines they, in times past, have done), travel during the cen turies hereafter to follow, in order in front of that ground to stand, on it to gaze and thereafter before it to ponder, (as must some of the hosts of readers of this book that are to be), and wonder. ADAIR WELCKER. January, A. D. 1913. The appendix will certainly not be left out of the United States editions of the book until after the first million copies have been sold, and probably will be left in it until after the tenth million or twentieth have been. The following is part of the: Appendix Before the publication of this work in the United States was begun, the proposition contained in letters, a copy of which is given below, was submitted to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco; to the Portland, Oregon, Commercial Club; and to the Chambers of Commerce of Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, and New Orleans, (going in the latter instance into the hands of the New Orleans Board of Trade Ltd). With the letter given below printed proofs have been sent to the bodies named. If the proposition should not be speedily accepted by Pacific Coast or Gulf cities, it is the intention of the author, (only step by step, and gradually allowing the work to get before the general United States public), placing the proposition before their Chambers of Commerce, to grant to all United States cities, from the greatest to the least, the same advantage that the others above named have had the opportunity placed before them to grasp. And that which will hereafter determine the size of the city be fore which it goes will be no uncertain census, but the capacity of those before whom the opportunity comes to determine whether or not it is one, through which a small city can be made one that thereafter, and through the ages to come, shall stand and be first among the great. Should some one of these United States cities not quickly accept the opportunity, then to those Govern ments that have arranged for representation at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, on the same terms offered to American cities, will the opportunity be offered, in order that they may have the way before them to remain vivdly still remembered, in connection with that greater Exposition whereof this book consti tutes only one of the parts, after the memory of the other, within which they have already arranged for space wherein to have representation, shall have waned and grown dim. THE FOLLOWING IS THE LETTER THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PLACED BEFORE THE BODIES ABOVE NAMED: Gentlemen: I have seen the statement that the Brit ish Government, for his services rendered in a history that they thought would be of value to his country, paid a British writer $400,000.00. It was well worth the price. But, in the whole world is there not a gov ernment that has at any time shown itself in greater degree capable of understanding the value of the serv ices of men who write than has done Great Britain. Yet the service referred to was not such as is going to be rendered to the Pacific Coast City that becomes the first to accept the offer now placed before you. There remains the possibility that the proposition, if it be not at once accepted by one of the cities that appear to be most concerned, may also be placed before the Cham bers of Commerce, or other commercial bodies of other citeis not now here named. At the same time that this letter is deposited in the mail there are, pasted in a blank book, sent to you the proofs of a book about to be published, of 162 pages, the running head above which is "Within the Fair, Find Them," the title of the Book being: PEOPLE, (thither coming out of a region wherein disasters are met as if they were a jest), WHOM YOU MAY MEET AT THE FAIR. The book is one that will, itself, in the beginning, be an International Expo sition and, after that, after careful consideration by the minds of the thinkers of the world has been given to it, be recognized to be something that, going out and among the people of all lands, will do among them work of such a kind that, out of the many, will there be seen to have arisen, and within them, (though of them) be, and stand, but one. The United States Bureau of Education published in 1909 a list of over 2000 libraries of the United States possessed of over 5000 volumes. These libraries will accept in every instance, (I do not believe that any ex ception to the rule will be found), and gladly catalogue, and carefully preserve any book by an American au thor, a previous work by whom any foreign publisher has to such an extent esteemed as, at his own ex pense, to publish it, whereof journals of foreign lands that are leaders of thought have then well spoken. At the end of the book about to be published to you is offered the opportunity to have ten pages, upon which, in type of any size that may be preferred, to have printed, (following this letter, and the statement that you have accepted its terms), an account of what may be considered to be the features of the city first to accept the proposition, that would serve to make it at tractive to the population that they would care to have come from other lands to become residents of their city. At the beginning of the ten pages, setting forth the fact that the city has been the first to accept the offer and pay Fifty Thousand Dollars, the amount required to secure this right, and, (having been first), having se cured it, the matters desired to be set forth can fol low. Of the books containing at the end this matter, 2000 will by me be presented to that number of libraries named in the United States list referred to. One thousand copies besides, containing the ten-page addi tion, will be sent to one thousand of the leading maga zines and newspapers of the United States. After that, in all copies sold in the United States after the first edition, whatever the number, up to one million copies, the same ten-page addition, ( following this letter and the statement of acceptance of its proposition), will be placed. There are yet other matters that I may possi bly do. I may come to, and from the electrotype plates, print the publication and publish it from the city accept ing first this offer. For having obtained this opportu nity the city obtaining it will, in my opinion, be rewarded well, and many times the cost of it be the return to that city. For, through accepting it, will the city have displayed the capacity of the class of men that she se lects to pass upon such propositions; and afterwards will the attention of the thinkers of the race upon that city be concentrated; in the "spot-light" before all of the other cities of the earth will the accepting city stand. Among all of the cities that cover the earth will that city then come to be, and stand, unique. It will be a city thereafter living and acting within the daily thought and contemplation of men throughout the world; and within the memory of the race, that does not alter, will it have found a place where it will as firmly stay, as is a star that is sometimes spoken of as being so, fixed. Among the cities mentioned (the one that, through thus having more promptly than others made up its mind and accepted the offer, will have gained an ad vantage), will have had a new quality added to it. For it will now be more easily recognizable, in the kind of crowd that will consist of cities, because it will have obtained something by which, in that crowd, mankind can distinguish it, that before it had not, of which for another no duplicate can ever be created. Beyond, by this act having become the proper subject for consider ation in the literary columns of the world, those of greatest value among the editorials of the world s jour nals will give, not one time, but many times, to it consideration. And the city ,in such a manner having become connected with what is deathless in the world s thought, of it will the text-books of the schools of all countries speak, and in all books of reference in all of the world s great libraries will there a never-dying record of that city be kept. The undersigned reserves the right to refuse to ac cept any offer accepting the terms above set forth, (if the acceptance shall not come within a time by him deemed to be sufficiently soon and therefore not satisfac tory to him, because it will not enable him to carry out several purposes that he now has in mind). Therefore, the time within which the offer will stand open may be of but brief duration. Very respectfully, ADAIR WELCKER. [Ten pages, from this point on, is to be utilized by the United States City that rising up to a place of vast dis tinction among the others, offering first to accept the advantage of the foregoing opportunity, obtains it.] Mr. Ada I went zine se to coii May 166 had the view an had bee find th bringin paid fo who the The Be some ot Radstc view ii] on sale to me i x x xl THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. LD 21-100m-7, 33 362079 (, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY