GIFT OF 
 Yoshi S. Kuno 
 
OPTIONS 
 
a 
 
OPTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 O. HENRY 
 
 Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the 
 
 City" "The Trimmed Lamp," "Strictly 
 
 Bunnw," "Whirliffigt" 
 
 PTTBLTBHED BT 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 FOB 
 
 REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO. 
 3P18 
 
Copyright, 1909, 5y 
 HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
 All rights reserved, including that qf 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scandinavian. 
 
g 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MM 
 
 "THE ROSE OF DIXIE" 3 
 
 THE THIRD INGREDIENT 20 
 
 THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 38 
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 56 
 
 THIMBLE, THIMBLE 72 
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 89 
 
 BURIED TREASURE 104 
 
 To HIM WHO WAITS 119 
 
 HE ALSO SERVES I 34 
 
 THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 
 
 THE HEAD-HUNTER 
 
 No STORY 185 
 
 THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 
 
 BEST-SELLER 
 
 Rus IN URBE 
 
 A POOR RULE 
 
OPTIONS 
 
OPTIONS 
 
 "THE ROSE OF DIXIE" 
 
 \VlIEN The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a 
 stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never 
 but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the 
 minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for 
 the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, 
 and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and 
 logical editor. So, a committee of the patriotic Georgia 
 citizens who had subscribed the founding fund of $100,000 
 called upon Colonel Telfair at his residence, Cedar 
 Heights, fearful lest the enterprise and the South should 
 suffer by his possible refusal. 
 
 The colonel received them in his great library, where he 
 spent most of his days. The library had descended to 
 him from his father. It contained ten thousand volumes, 
 some of which had been published as late as the year 1861. 
 When the deputation arrived, Colonel Telfair was seated 
 at his massive white-pine centre-table, reading Burton s 
 "Anatomy of Melancholy." He arose and shook hands 
 punctiliously with each member of the committee. If 
 
 f 
 
4 Options 
 
 you were familiar with The Rose of Dixie you will remem 
 ber the colonel s portrait, which appeared in it from time 
 to time. You could not forget the long, carefully brushed 
 white hair; the hooked, high-bridged nose, slightly twisted 
 to the left; the keen eyes under the still black eyebrows; 
 the classic mouth beneath the drooping white mustache, 
 slightly frazzled at the ends. 
 
 The committee solicitously offered him the position of 
 managing editor, humbly presenting an outline of the field 
 that the publication was designed to cover and mentioning 
 a comfortable salary. The colonel s lands were growing 
 poorer each year and were much cut up by red gullies. 
 Besides, the honor was not one to be refused. 
 
 In a forty-minute speech of acceptance, Colonel Telfair 
 gave an outline of English literature from Chaucer to 
 Macaulay, re-fought the battle of Chancellorsville, and 
 said that, God helping him, he would so conduct The 
 Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would 
 permeate the entire world, hurling back into the teeth 
 of the Northern minions their belief that no genius or 
 good could exist in the brains and hearts of the people 
 whose property they had destroyed and whose rights they 
 had curtailed. 
 
 Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and fur 
 nished in the second floor of the First National Bank build 
 ing; and it was for the colonel to cause The Rose of Dixie 
 to blossom and flourish or to wilt in the balmy air of the 
 land of flowers. 
 
 The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor- 
 
"The Rose of Dixie 79 5 
 
 Colonel Telfair drew about him was a peach. It was a 
 whole crate of Georgia peaches. The first assistant editor, 
 Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father killed during 
 Pickett s charge. The second assistant, Keats Unthank, 
 was the nephew of one of Morgan s Raiders. The book 
 reviewer, Jackson Rockingham, had been the youngest 
 soldier in the Confederate army, having appeared on the 
 field of battle with a sword in one hand and a milk-bottle 
 in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a 
 third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia 
 Terhune, the colonel s stenographer and typewriter, had 
 an aunt who had once been kissed by Stonewall Jackson. 
 Tommy Webster, the head office boy, got his job by hav 
 ing recited Father Ryan s poems, complete, at the com 
 mencement exercises of the Toombs City High SchooL 
 The girls who wrapped and addressed the magazines were 
 members of old Southern families in Reduced Circum 
 stances. The cashier was a scrub named Hawkins, from 
 Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a 
 bond from a guarantee company filed with the owners. 
 Even Georgia stock companies sometimes realize that it 
 takes live ones to bury the dead. 
 
 Well, sir, if you believe me, TJie Rose of Dixie blossomed 
 five times before anybody heard of it except the people 
 who buy their hooks and eyes in Toombs City. Then 
 Hawkins climbed off his stool and told on em to the stock 
 company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been used to having 
 his business propositions heard of at least as far away as 
 Detroit. So an advertising manager was engaged 
 
6 Options 
 
 Beauregard Fitzhugh Banks a young man in a lavender 
 necktie, whose grandfather had been the Exalted High 
 Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan. 
 
 In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out 
 every month. Although in every issue it ran photos of 
 either the Taj Mahal or the Luxembourg Gardens, or 
 Carmencita or La Toilette, a certain number of people 
 bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor- 
 Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jack 
 son s old home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving 
 of the second battle of Manassas, entitled "Lee to the 
 Rear!" and a five-thousand- word biography of Belle Boyd 
 in the same number. The subscription list that month 
 advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue 
 by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the 
 Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thomp 
 son, nephew of one of the stockholders. And an article 
 from a special society correspondent describing a tea- 
 party given by the swell Boston and English set, where a 
 lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests 
 masquerading as Indians. 
 
 One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a 
 mirror, he was so much alive, entered the office of The 
 Rose of Dixie. He was a man about the size of a real- 
 estate agent, with a self -tied tie and a manner that he must 
 have borrowed conjointly from W. J. Bryan, Hacken- 
 schmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the 
 editor-colonel s pons asinorum. Colonel Telfair rose and 
 began a Prince Albert bow. 
 
"Tlie Rose of Dixie" 7 
 
 "I m Thacker," said the intruder, taking the editor s 
 chair "T. T. Thacker, of New York." 
 
 He dribbled hastily upon the colonel s desk some cards, 
 a bulky manila envelope, and a letter from the owners of 
 The Rose of Dixie. This letter introduced Mr. Thacker, 
 and politely requested Colonel Telfair to give him a con 
 ference and whatever information about the magazine he 
 might desire. 
 
 "I ve been corresponding with the secretary of the 
 magazine owners for some lime," said Thacker, briskly 
 "I m a practical magazine man myself, and a circulation 
 booster as good as any, ii I do say it. I ll guarantee an 
 increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred 
 thousand a year for any publi atirn that isn t printed in a 
 dead language. I ve had my e*-3 on The Rose of Dixie 
 ever since it started. I know every end of the business 
 from editing to setting up the classified ads. Now, I ve 
 come down here to put a good bunch of money in the 
 magazine, if I can see my way clear. It ought to be made 
 to pay. The secretary tells me it s losing money. I don t 
 see why a magazine in the South, if it s properly handled, 
 shouldn t get a good circulation in the North, too." 
 
 Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished his 
 gold-rimmed glasses. 
 
 "Mr. Thacker," said he, courteously but firmly, "The 
 Rose of Dixie is a publication devoted to the fostering and 
 the voicing of Southern genius. Its watchword, which 
 you may have seen on the cover, is Of, For, and By thr 
 
8 Options 
 
 "But you wouldn t object to a Northern circulation, 
 would you?" asked Thacker. 
 
 "I suppose," said the editor-colonel, "that it is custom 
 ary to open the circulation lists to all. I do not know. I 
 have nothing to do with the business affairs of the maga 
 zine. I was called upon to assume editorial control of it, 
 and I have devoted to its conduct such poor literary tal 
 ents as I may possess and whatever store of erudition I 
 may have acquired." 
 
 "Sure," said Thacker. "But a dollar is a dollar any 
 where, North, South, or West whether you re buying 
 codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, 
 I ve been looking over your November number. I see 
 one here on your desk. You don t mind running over it 
 with me? 
 
 "Well, your leading article is all right. A good write- 
 up of the cotton-belt with plenty of photographs is a 
 winner any time. New York is always interested in the 
 cotton crop. And this sensational account of the Hat- 
 field-McCoy feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Gov 
 ernor of Kentucky, isn t such a bad idea. It happened so 
 long ago that most people have forgotten it. Now, here s 
 a poem three pages long called The Tyrant s Foot, by 
 Lorella Lascelles. I ve pawed around a good deal over 
 manuscripts, but I never saw her name on a rejection 
 slip." 
 
 "Miss Lascelles," said the editor, "is one of our most 
 widely recognized Southern poetesses. She is closely re 
 lated to the Alabama Lascelles family, and made with her 
 
"The Rose of Dixie" y 
 
 cwn hands the silken Confederate banner that was pre 
 sented to the governor of that state at his inauguration." 
 
 "But why," persisted Thacker, "is the poem illustrated 
 with a view of the M. & O. Railroad freight depot at 
 Tuscaloosa?" 
 
 "The illustration," said the colonel, with dignity, 
 ^ shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old home- 
 ttead where Miss Lascellcs was born." 
 
 "All right," said Thacker. "I read the poem, but I 
 couldn t tell whether it was about the depot or the battle 
 of Bull Run. Now, here s a short story called Rosie s 
 Temptation, by Fosdyke Piggott. It s rotten. What is 
 a Piggott, anyway?" 
 
 "Mr. Piggott," said the editor, "is a brother of the 
 principal stockholder of the magazine." 
 
 "All s right with the world Piggott passes," said 
 Thacker. "Well, this article on Arctic exploration and 
 the one on tarpon fishing might go. But how about this 
 write-up of the Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, and 
 Savannah breweries? It seems to consist mainly of statis 
 tics about their output and the quality of their beer. 
 What s the chip over the bug? 
 
 "If 1 understand your figurative language," answered 
 Colonel Telfair, "it is this: the article you refer to was 
 handed to me by the owners of the magazine with instruc 
 tions to publish it. The literary quality of it did not 
 appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to con 
 form, in certain matters, to the wishes of the gentlemea 
 who are interested in the financial side of The Rose." 
 
\0 Options 
 
 "I see," said Thacker. "Next we have two pages of 
 selections from Lalla Rookh, by Thomas Moore. Now, 
 what Federal prison did Moore escape from, or what s the 
 name of the F. F. V. family that he carries as a handicap? * 
 
 "Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852," said 
 Colonel Telf air, pityingly. "He is a classic. I have been 
 thinking of reprinting his translation of Anacreon serially 
 in the magazine." 
 
 "Look out for the copyright laws," said Thacker, flip 
 pantly. "Who s Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the 
 essay on the newly completed water-works plant in Mil- 
 kdgeville?" 
 
 "The name, sir," said Colonel Telf air, "is the nom de 
 guerre of Miss Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor of 
 knowing the lady; but her contribution was sent us by 
 Congressman Brower, of her native state. Congressman 
 Brower s mother was related to the Polks of Tennessee." 
 
 "Now, see here, Colonel," said Thacker, throwing down 
 the magazine, "this won t do. You can t successfully 
 run a magazine for one particular section of the country. 
 You ve got to make a universal appeal. Look how the 
 Northern publications have catered to the South and 
 encouraged the Southern writers. And you ve got to go 
 far and wide for your contributors. You ve got to buy 
 stuff according to its quality, without any regard to the 
 pedigree of the author. Now, I ll bet a quart of ink that 
 this Southern parlor organ yoa ve been running has never 
 played a note that originated above Mason & Hamlin v ? 
 fine. Am I right?" 
 
"The Rose of Dixie" 11 
 
 "I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all 
 Contributions from that section of the country if I 
 understand your figurative language aright, * replied the 
 coloneL 
 
 "All right Now, I ll show you something." 
 
 Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and 
 dumped a mass of typewritten manuscript on the editor s 
 desk. 
 
 "Here s some truck," said he, "that I paid cash for, and 
 brought along with me." 
 
 One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed 
 their first pages to the colonel. 
 
 "Here are four short stories by four of the highest 
 priced authors in the United States three of em living 
 in New York, and one commuting. There s a special 
 article on Vienna-bred society by Tom Vampson. Here s 
 an Italian serial by Captain Jack no it s the other 
 Crawford. Here are three separate exposes of city gov 
 ernments by Sniffings, and here s a dandy entitled * What 
 Women Carry in Dress-Suit Cases a Chicago news 
 paper woman hired herself out for five years as a lady s 
 maid to get that information. And here s a Synopsis of 
 Preceding Chapters of Hall Caine s new serial to appear 
 next June. And here s a couple of pounds of vers de 
 society that I got at a rate from the clever magazines. 
 That s the stuff that people everywhere want. And now 
 here s a write-up with photographs at the ages of four, 
 twelve, twenty-two, and thirty of George B. McClellan. 
 It s a prognostication. He s bound to be elected Mayor 
 
12 Options 
 
 of New York. It ll make a big hit all over the country. 
 He " 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Colonel Telfair, stiffening 
 in his chair. "What was the name?" 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Thacker, with half a grin. "Yes, he s 
 a son of the General. We ll pass that manuscript up. 
 But, if you ll excuse me, Colonel, it s a magazine we re 
 trying to make go off not the first gun at Fort Sumter. 
 Now, here s a thing that s bound to get next to you. It s 
 an original poem by James Whitcomb Riley. J. W. him 
 self. You know what that means to a magazine. I 
 won t tell you what I had to pay for that poem; but I ll 
 tell you this Riley can make more money writing with 
 a fountain-pen than you or I can with one that lets the 
 ink run. I ll read you the last two stanzas: 
 
 * Pa lays around n loafs all day, 
 
 N reads and makes us leave him be. 
 He lets me do just like I please, 
 
 N when I m bad he laughs at me, 
 N when I holler loud n say 
 
 Bad words n then begin to tease 
 The cat, n pa just smiles, ma s mad 
 N gives me Jesse crost her knees. 
 I always wondered why that wuz 
 I guess it s cause 
 Pa never does 
 
 ""N after all the lights are out 
 
 I m sorry bout it; so I creep 
 Out of my trundle bed to ma s 
 
 N say I love her a whole heap, 
 N kiss her, n I hug her tight. 
 
"The Rose of Dixie" 13 
 
 N it s too dark to see her eyeg. 
 But every time I do I know 
 
 She cries n* cries V cries V cries. 
 I always wondered why that wuz 
 I guess it s cause 
 Pa never does/ 
 
 "That s the stuff," continued Thacker. "What do you 
 think of that?" 
 
 "I am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley," said 
 the colonel, deliberately. "I believe he lives in Indiana. 
 For the last ten years I have been somewhat of a literary 
 recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the books in the 
 Cedar Heights library. I am also of the opinion that a 
 magazine should contain a certain amount of poetry. 
 Many of the sweetest singers of the South have already 
 contributed to the pages of The Rose of Dixie. I, myself, 
 have thought of translating from the original for publica 
 tion in its pages the works of the great Italian poet Tasso. 
 Have you ever drunk from the fountain of this immortal 
 poet s lines, Mr. Thacker?" 
 
 "Not even a demi-Tasso," said Thacker. "Now, let s 
 come to the point, Colonel Telfair. I ve already invested 
 some money in this as a flyer. That bunch of manuscripts 
 cost me $4,000. My object was to try a number of them 
 in the next issue I believe you make up less than a 
 month ahead and see what effect it has on the circula 
 tion. I believe that by printing the best stuff we can get 
 in the North, South, East, or West we can make the 
 magazine go. You have there the letter from the owning 
 company asking you to co-operate with me in the plan. 
 
14 Options 
 
 Let s chuck out some of this slush that you ve been 
 publishing just because the writers are related to the 
 Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. Are you with 
 me?" 
 
 "As long as I continue to be the editor of The Rose" 
 said Colonel Telfair, with dignity, "I shall be its editor. 
 But I desire also to conform to the wishes of its owners if 
 I can do so conscientiously." 
 
 "That s the talk," said Tnacker, briskly. "Now, how 
 much of this stuff I ve brought can we get into the Jan 
 uary number? We want to begin right away." 
 
 "There is yet space in the January number," said the 
 editor, "for about eight thousand words, roughly esti 
 mated." 
 
 "Great!" said Thacker. "It isn t much, but it ll give 
 the readers some change from goobers, governors, and 
 Gettysburg. I ll leave the selection of the stuff I brought 
 to fill the space to you, as it s all good. I ve got to run 
 back to New York, and I ll be down again in a couple of 
 weeks." 
 
 Colonel Telfair slowly swung his eye-glasses by their 
 broad, black ribbon. 
 
 "The space in the January number that I referred to," 
 said he, measuredly, "has been held open purposely, 
 pending a decision that I have not yet made. A short 
 time ago a contribution was submitted to The Rose of 
 Dixie that is one of the most remarkable literary efforts 
 that has ever come under my observation. None but a 
 faster mind and talent could have produced it. It 
 
"TJw Rose of Dixie" 15 
 
 would about fill the space that I have reserved for its 
 possible use." 
 
 Thacker looked anxious. 
 
 "What kind of stuff is it?" he asked. "Eight thou 
 sand words sounds suspicious. The oldest families must 
 have been collaborating. Is there going to be another 
 secession?" 
 
 "The author of the article," continued the colonel, 
 ignoring Thacker s allusions, " is a writer of some reputa 
 tion. He has also distinguished himself in other ways. 
 I do not fed at liberty to reveal to you his name at least 
 not until I have decided whether or not to accept his con 
 tribution." 
 
 "Well," said Thacker, nervously, "is it a continued 
 * story, or an account of the unveiling of the new town 
 pump in Whitmire, South Carolina, or a revised list of 
 General Lee s body-servants, or what?" 
 
 "You are disposed to be facetious," said Colonel Tel- 
 fair, calmly. " The article is from the pen of a thinker, a 
 philosopher, a lover of mankind, a student, and a rheto 
 rician of high degree." 
 
 "It must have been written by a syndicate," said 
 Thacker. "But, honestly, Colonel, you want to go slow. 
 I don t know of any eight-thousand-word single doses of 
 written matter that are read by anybody these days, ex 
 cept Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder trials. 
 You haven t by any accident gotten hold of a copy of one 
 of Daniel Webster s speeches, have you?" 
 
 Colonel Telfair swung 9 Uttie \n his chair and looked 
 
16 Options 
 
 steadily from under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine 
 promoter. 
 
 "Mr. Thacker," he said, gravely, "I am willing to segre 
 gate the somewhat crude expression of your sense of humor 
 from the solicitude that your business investments un 
 doubtedly have conferred upon you. But I must ask 
 you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon the 
 South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be 
 tolerated in the office of The Rose of Dixie for one moment. 
 And before you proceed with more of your covert in 
 sinuations that I, the editor of this magazine, am not a 
 competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted 
 to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some 
 evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, 
 shape, or form relative to the question in hand." 
 
 "Oh, come, Colonel," said Thacker, good-naturedly. 
 "I didn t do anything like that to you. It sounds like 
 an indictment by the fourth assistant attorney-general. 
 Let s get back to business. What s this 3,000 to 1 shot 
 about?" 
 
 " The article," said Colonel Telf air, acknowledging the 
 apology by a slight bow, "covers a wide area of knowledge^ 
 It takes up theories and questions that have puzzled the 
 world for centuries, and disposes of them logically and 
 concisely. One by one it holds up to view the evils of 
 the world, points out the way of eradicating them, and 
 then conscientiously and in detail commends the good. 
 There is hardly a phase of human life that it does not dis 
 cuss wisely, calmly, and equitably. The great policies 
 
"The Rose of Dixie" 17 
 
 of governments, the duties of private citizens, the obli 
 gations of home life, law, ethics, morality all these im 
 portant subjects are handled with a calm wisdom and 
 confidence that I must confess has captured my admira 
 tion." 
 
 "It must be a crackerjack," said Thacker, impressed. 
 
 "It is a great contribution to the world s wisdom," said 
 the colonel. "The only doubt remaining in my mind as 
 to the tremendous advantage it would be to us to give it 
 publication in The Rose of Dixie is that I have not yet suf 
 ficient information about the author to give his work 
 publicity in our magazine." 
 
 "I thought you said he is a distinguished man," said 
 Thacker. 
 
 "He is," replied the colonel, "both in literary and in 
 other more diversified and extraneous fields. But I am 
 extremely careful about the matter that I accept for pub 
 lication. My contributors are people of unquestionable 
 repute and connections, which fact can be verified 
 at any time. As I said, I am holding this article 
 until I can acquire more information about its author. I 
 do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide 
 against it, I shall be much pleased, Mr. Thacker, to sub 
 stitute the matter that you are leaving with me in its 
 place." 
 
 Thacker was somewhat at sea. 
 
 "I don t seem to gather," said he, "much about the 
 gist of this inspired piece of literature. It sounds more 
 like a dark horse than Pegasus to me." 
 
18 Options 
 
 "It is a human document," said the colonel-editor, con 
 fidently, "from a man of great accomplishments who, in 
 my opinion, has obtained a stronger grasp on the world 
 and its outcomes than that of any man living to-day." 
 
 Thacker rose to his feet excitedly. 
 
 " Say ! " he said. " It isn t possible that you ve cornered 
 John D. Rockefeller s memoirs, is it? Don t tell me that 
 all at once." 
 
 "No, sir," said Colonel Telfair. "I am speaking of 
 mentality and literature, not of the less worthy intri 
 cacies of trade." 
 
 "Well, what s the trouble about running the article, 1 
 asked Thacker, a little impatiently, "if the man s well 
 known and has got the stuff?" 
 
 Colonel Telfair sighed. 
 
 " Mr. Thacker," said he, "for once I have been tempted. 
 Nothing has yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has not 
 been from the pen of one of its sons or daughters. I know 
 little about the author of this article except that he has 
 acquired prominence in a section of the country that has 
 always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I 
 recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have in 
 stituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it 
 will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that 
 is finished, I must leave open the question of filling the 
 vacant space in our January number." 
 
 Thacker arose to leave. 
 
 "All right, Colonel," he said, as cordially as he could. 
 *You use your own judgment. If you ve really got $ 
 
"The Rose of Dixie" 9 19 
 
 scoop or something that will make em sit up, run it in 
 stead of my stuff. I ll drop in again in about two weeks. 
 *Good luck!" 
 
 Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands. 
 
 Returning a fortnight later, Thackcr dropped off a very 
 rocky Pullman at Toombs City. He found the January 
 number of the magazine made up and the forms closed. 
 
 The vacant space that had been yawning for type waa 
 filled by an article that was headed thus : 
 
 SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS 
 
 Written for 
 THE ROSE OF DIXIE 
 
 BY 
 
 A Member of the Well-known 
 BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA 
 T. ROOSEVELT 
 
THE THIRD INGREDIENT 
 
 iHE (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not 
 an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fash 
 ioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The 
 parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and headgear 
 of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical 
 promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You 
 may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may 
 have one for twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa s 
 roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers, shop 
 girls, space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and 
 other people who lean far over the banister-rail when the 
 door-bell rings. 
 
 This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Val- 
 lambrosians though meaning no disrespect to the others. 
 
 At six o clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back 
 to her third-floor rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with 
 her nose and chin more sharply pointed than usual. To 
 be discharged from the department store where you have 
 been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in 
 your purse, does have a tendency to make your features 
 appear more finely chiselled. 
 
 And now for Hetty s thumb-nail biography while she 
 climbs the two flights of stairs. 
 
 
 
The Third Ingredient 21 
 
 She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four 
 yrs before, with seventy-five other girls, applying for a 
 A b behind the waist department counter. The phalanx 
 of wage-earners formed a bewildering scene of beauty, 
 carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to have 
 justified the horseback gallops of a hundred Lady Godivas. 
 
 The capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald- 
 headed man, whose task it was to engage six of the con 
 testants, was aware of a feeling of suffocation as if he were 
 drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, 
 hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail 
 hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, 
 with small, contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate- 
 colored hair, dressed in a suit of plain burlap and a com 
 mon-sense hat, stood before him with every one of her 
 twenty-nine years of life unmistakably in sight. 
 
 "You re on! * shouted the bald-headed young man, and 
 was saved. And that is how Hetty came to be employed 
 in the Biggest Store. The story of her rise to an eight- 
 dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories of Hercules, 
 Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. 
 You shall not learn from me the salary that was paid her 
 as a beginner. There is a sentiment growing about such 
 things, and I want no millionaire store-proprietors climb 
 ing the fire-escape of my tenement-house to throw dy 
 namite bombs into my skylight boudoir. 
 
 The story of Hetty s discharge from the Biggest Stor 
 is so nearly a repetition of her engagement as to b 
 monotonous. 
 
28 Options 
 
 In each department of the store there is an omniscient, 
 omnipresent, and omnivorous person carrying always a 
 mileage book and a red necktie, and referred to as a 
 " buyer." The destinies of the girls in his department 
 who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics) so much 
 per week are in his hands. 
 
 This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, im 
 personal, young, bald-headed man. As he walked along 
 the aisles of his department he seemed to be sailing on a 
 sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, machine-embroid 
 ered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring sur 
 feit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper s homely counte 
 nance, emerald eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a 
 welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying beauty. In 
 a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm kindly, three 
 inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet away 
 with one good blow of her muscular and not especially 
 lily-white right. So, now you know why Hetty Pepper 
 came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty minutes notice, 
 with one dime and a nickel in her purse. 
 
 This morning s quotations list the price of rib beef at 
 Six cents per (butcher s) pound. But on the day that 
 Hetty was " released" by the B. S. the price was seven and 
 one half cents. That fact is what makes this story pos 
 sible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have 
 
 But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world 
 is concerned with shorts who were unable to cover; so 
 you can find no fault with this one. 
 
 Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor 
 
TJie Third Ingredient 23 
 
 back. One hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night s 
 good sleep, and she would be fit in the morning to apply 
 again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una. Job, 
 and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. 
 
 In her room she got the graniteware stew-pan out of 
 the 2 x 4-foot china er I mean earthenware closet, 
 and began to dig down in a rat s-nest of paper bags for the 
 potatoes and onions. She came out with her nose and 
 chin just a little sharper pointed. 
 
 There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what 
 kind of a beef -stew can you make out of simply beef? 
 You can make oyster-soup without oysters, turtle-soup 
 without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee, but you can t 
 make beef-stew without potatoes and onions. 
 
 But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an 
 ordinary pine door look like a wrought-iron gambling- 
 house portal to the wolf. With salt and pepper and a 
 tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold 
 water) twill serve tis not so deep as a lobster a la 
 Newburgh, nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 
 twill serve. 
 
 Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor 
 hall. According to the advertisements of the Vallarn- 
 brosa there was running water to be found there. Be 
 tween you and me and the water-meter, it only ambled or 
 walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no 
 place here. There was also a sink where housekeeping 
 roomers often met to dump their coffee grounds and glare 
 at one another s kimonos. 
 
84 Options 
 
 At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, 
 artistic hair and plaintive eyes, washing two large " Irish * 
 potatoes. Hetty knew the Vallambrosa as well as any 
 one not owning "double hextra-magnifying eyes" could 
 compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her ency 
 clopaedia, her "Who s What?" her clearing-house of news, 
 of goers and comers. From a rose-pink kimono edged 
 with Nile green she had learned that the girl with the 
 potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of attic 
 or "studio," as they prefer to call it on the top floor, 
 Hetty was not certain in her mind what a miniature was; 
 but it certainly wasn t a house; because house-painters, 
 although they wear splashy overalls and poke ladders in 
 your face on the street, are known to indulge in a riotous 
 profusion of food at home. 
 
 The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled 
 her potatoes as an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who 
 is cutting teeth. She had a dull shoemaker s knife in her 
 right hand, and she had begun to peel one of the potatoes 
 with it. 
 
 Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of 
 one who intends to be cheerfully familiar with you in the 
 aecond round. 
 
 "Beg pardon," she said, "for butting into what s not my 
 business, but if you peel them potatoes you lose out. 
 They re new Bermudas. You want to scrape em. Lem- 
 ine show you." 
 
 She took a potato and the knife, and began to dem? 
 castrate, 
 
The Third Ingredient 25 
 
 "Oh, thank you," breathed the artist. "I didn t know. 
 And I did hate to see the thick peeling go; it seemed such 
 a waste. But I thought they always had to be peeled. 
 When you ve got only potatoes to eat, the peelings count, 
 you know." 
 
 "Say, kid," said Hetty, staying her knife, "you ain t up 
 against it, too, are you?" 
 
 The miniature artist smiled starvedly. 
 
 " I suppose I am. Art or, at least, the way I 
 interpret it doesn t seem to be much in demand. 
 I have only these potatoes for my dinner. But they 
 aren t so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and 
 salt." 
 
 "Child," said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her 
 rigid features, "Fate has sent me and you together. I ve 
 had it handed to me in the neck, too; but I ve got 
 a chunk of meat in my room as big as a lap-dog. And 
 I ve done everything to get potatoes except pray for em. 
 Let s me and you bunch our commissary departments and 
 make a stew of em. We ll cook it in my room. If we 
 only had an onion to go in it! Say, kid, you haven t got 
 a couple of pennies that ve slipped down into the lining 
 of your last winter s sealskin, have you? I could step 
 down to the corner and get one at old Giuseppe s stand. 
 A stew without an onion is worse n a matinee without 
 candy." 
 
 "You may call me Cecilia," said the artist, "No; I 
 spent my last penny three days ago." 
 
 "Then we ll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing 
 
26 Options 
 
 it in," said Hetty. "I d ask the janitress for one, but J. 
 don t want em hep just yet to the fact that I m pounding 
 the asphalt for another job. But I wish we did have an 
 onion." 
 
 In the shop-girl s room the two began to prepare their 
 supper. Cecilia s part was to sit on the couch helplessly 
 and beg to be allowed to do something, in the voice of a 
 cooing ring-dove. Hetty prepared the rib beef, putting 
 it in cold salted water in the stew-pan and setting it on 
 the one-burner gas-stove. 
 
 "I wish we had an onion," said Hetty, as she scraped 
 the two potatoes. 
 
 On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, 
 gorgeous advertising picture of one of the new ferry-boats 
 of the P. U. F. F. Railroad that had been built to cut down 
 the time between Los Angeles and New York City one 
 eighth of a minute. 
 
 Hetty, turning her head during her continuous mono 
 logue, saw tears running from her guest s eyes as she gazed 
 on the idealized presentment of the speeding, foam-girdled 
 transport. 
 
 " Why, say, Cecilia, kid," said Hetty, poising her knife, 
 "is it as bad art as that? I ain t a critic, but I thought it 
 kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a manicure- 
 painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. I ll 
 take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Pot- 
 luck we had an onion." 
 
 But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, 
 gobbing, with her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery 
 
The Third Ingredient 7 
 
 of the ooach. Something was here deeper than the artistio 
 temperament offended at crude lithography. 
 
 Hetty knew. She had accepted her role long ago. 
 How scant the words with which we try to describe a 
 single quality of a human being! When we reach the 
 abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the bab 
 bling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. 
 Figuratively (let us say), some people are Bosoms, some 
 ire Hands, some are Heads, some are Muscles, some are 
 Feet, some are Backs for burdens. 
 
 Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy shoul 
 der; but all her life people had laid their heads upon it, 
 metaphorically or actually, and had left there all or half 
 their troubles. Looking at Life anatomically, which is as 
 good a way as any, she was preordained to be a Shoulder. 
 There were few truer collar-bones anywhere than hers. 
 
 Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet out 
 lived the little pang that visited her whenever the head of 
 youth and beauty leaned upon her for consolation. But 
 one glance in her mirror always served as an instantane 
 ous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the crinkly 
 old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned 
 down the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and 
 potatoes, went over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia s head 
 to its confessional. 
 
 "Go on and tell me, honey," she said. "I know now 
 that it ain t art that s worrying you. You met him on a 
 ferry-boat, didn t you? Go on, Cecilia, kid, and tell your 
 your Aunt Hetty about it." 
 
28 Options 
 
 But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus 
 of sighs and tears that waft and float the barque of 
 romance to its harbor in the delectable isles. Presently, 
 through the stringy tendons that formed the bars of the 
 confessional, the penitent or was it the glorified com 
 municant of the sacred flame? told her story without 
 art or illumination. 
 
 " It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the 
 ferry from Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art dealer, 
 told me of a rich man in Newark who wanted a miniature 
 of his daughter painted. I went to see him and showed 
 him some of my work. When I told him the price would 
 be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said 
 an enlarged crayon twenty times the size would cost him 
 only eight dollars. 
 
 "I had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back 
 to New York. I felt as if I didn t want to live another day. 
 I must have looked as I felt, for I saw him on the row of 
 seats opposite me, looking at me as if he understood. He 
 was nice-looking, but, oh, above everything else, he looked 
 kind. When one is tired or unhappy or hopeless, kind 
 ness counts more than anything else. 
 
 " When I got so miserable that I couldn t fight against it 
 any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear door 
 of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I slipped 
 quickly over the rail, and dropped into the water. Oh, 
 friend Hetty, it was cold, cold ! 
 
 "For just one moment I wished I was back in the old 
 Vallambrosa, starving and hoping. And then I got 
 
The Third Ingredient 29 
 
 numb, and didn t care. And then I felt that somebody 
 else was in the water close by me, holding me up. He had 
 followed me, and jumped in to save me. 
 
 "Somebody threw a thing like a big, white doughnut at 
 ns, and he made me put my arms through the hole. Then 
 the ferry-boat backed, and they pulled us on board. Oh, 
 Hetty, I was so ashamed of my wickedness in trying to 
 drown myself; and, besides, my hair had all tumbled down 
 and was sopping wet, and I was such a sight. 
 
 "And then some men in blue clothes came around; and 
 he gave them his card, and I heard him tell them he had 
 seen me drop my purse on the edge of the boat outside the 
 rail, and in leaning over to get it I had fallen overboard. 
 And then I remembered having read in the papers that 
 people who try to kill themselves are locked up in cells 
 with people who try to kill other people, and I was 
 afraid. 
 
 "But some ladies on the boat took me downstairs to 
 the furnace-room and got me nearly dry and did up my 
 hair. When the boat landed, he came and put me in a 
 cab. He was all dripping himself, but laughed as if he 
 thought it was all a joke. He begged me, but I wouldn t 
 tell him my name nor where I lived, I was so ashamed." 
 
 "You were a fool, child," said Hetty, kindly. "Wait 
 till I turn the light up a bit. I wish to Heaven we had an 
 onion." 
 
 "Then he raised his hat," went on Cecilia, "and said: 
 Very well. But I ll find you, anyhow. I m going to 
 daim my rights of salvage. Then he gave money to the 
 
30 Options 
 
 cab-driver and told him to take me where I wanted to go, 
 and walked away. What is salvage, Hetty?" 
 
 "The edge of a piece of goods that ain t hemmed," said 
 the shop-girl. "You must have looked pretty well 
 frazzled out to the little hero boy." 
 
 "It s been three days," moaned the miniature-painter, 
 "and he hasn t found me yet." 
 
 "Extend the time," said Hetty. "This is a big town. 
 Think of how many girls he might have to see soaked in 
 water with their hair down before he would recognize you. 
 The stew s getting on fine but, oh, for an onion! I d 
 even use a piece of garlic if I had it." 
 
 The beef and potatoes bubbled merrily, exhaling a 
 mouth-watering savor that yet lacked something, leaving 
 a hunger on the palate, a haunting, wistful desire for some 
 lost and needful ingredient. 
 
 "I came near drowning in that awful river," said Cecilia, 
 shuddering. 
 
 "It ought to have more water in it," said Hetty; "the 
 stew, I mean. I ll go get some at the sink." 
 
 "It smells good," said the artist. 
 
 "That nasty old North River?" objected Hetty. "It 
 smells to me like soap factories and wet setter-dogs oh, 
 you mean the stew. Well, I wish we had an onion for it. 
 Did he look like he had money? " 
 
 "First he looked kind," said Cecilia. "I m sure he 
 was rich; but that matters so little. When he drew out 
 his bill-folder to pay the cabman you couldn t help seeing 
 hundreds and thousands of dollars in it. And I looked 
 
The Third Ingredient 31 
 
 over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry station in a 
 motor-car; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin to put 
 on, for he was sopping wet. And it was only three days 
 ago." 
 
 "What a fool!" said Hetty, shortly. 
 
 "Oh, the chauffeur wasn t wet," breathed Cecilia. 
 "And he drove the car away very nicely." 
 
 "I mean you," said Hetty. "For not giving him your 
 address." 
 
 "I never give my address to chauffeurs," said Cecilia, 
 haughtily. 
 
 "I wish we had one," said Hetty, disconsolately. 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "For the stew, of course oh, I mean an onion." 
 
 Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end 
 of the hall. 
 
 A young man came down the stairs from above just as 
 she was opposite the lower step. He was decently dressed, 
 but pale and haggard. His eyes were dull with the stress 
 of some burden of physical or mental woe. In his hand 
 he bore an onion a pink, smooth, solid, shining onion, 
 as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm clock. 
 
 Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was 
 something Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the 
 look and pose of the shop-lady she had cast off the r6les 
 of Job and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The young man 
 stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distract 
 edly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, 
 levied upon, sacked, assessed, panhandled, browbeaten. 
 
32 Options 
 
 though he knew not why. It was the look in Hetty s eyes 
 that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the 
 masthead and an able seaman with a dirk between his 
 teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. But as yet 
 he did not know that the cargo he carried was the thing 
 that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the 
 water without even a parley. 
 
 "Beg your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute 
 acetic acid tones permitted, "but did you find that onion 
 on the stairs? There was a hole in the paper bag; and 
 I ve just come out to look for it." 
 
 The young man coughed for half a minute. The in 
 terval may have given him the courage to defend his own 
 property. Also, he clutched his pungent prize greedily, 
 and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim waylayer. 
 
 "No," he said huskily, "I didn t find it on the stairs. 
 ; It was given to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If 
 you don t believe it, ask him. I ll wait until you do." 
 
 " I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes 
 books and things up there for the paper-and-rags man. 
 We can hear the postman guy him all over the house when 
 he brings them thick envelopes back. Say do you lire 
 in the Vallambrosa?" 
 
 " I do not," said the young man. " I come to see Bevens 
 sometimes. He s my friend. I live two blocks west." 
 
 "What are you going to do with the onion? begging 
 your pardon," said Hetty. 
 
 "I m going to eat it." 
 
 "Raw?" 
 
The Third Ingredient 33 
 
 "Yes: as soon as I get home." 
 
 "Haven t you got anything else to eat with it?" 
 
 The young man considered briefly. 
 
 "No," he confessed; "there s not another scrap 
 of anything in my diggings to eat. I think old Jack 
 is pretty hard up for grub in his shack, too. He hated 
 to give up the onion, but I worried him into parting 
 with it." 
 
 "Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient 
 eyes, and laying a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, 
 "you ve known trouble, too, haven t you?" 
 
 "Lots," said the onion owner, promptly. "But this 
 onion is my own property, honestly come by. If you will 
 excuse me, I must be going." 
 
 "Listen," said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. 
 "Raw onion is a mighty poor diet. And so is a beef -stew 
 without one. Now, if you re Jack Sevens friend, I guess 
 you re nearly right. There s a little lady a friend of 
 mine in my room there at the end of the hall. Both of 
 us are out of luck; and we had just potatoes and meat be 
 tween us. They re stewing now. But it ain t got any 
 soul. There s something lacking to it. There s certain 
 things in life that are naturally intended to fit and belong 
 together. One is pink cheese-cloth and green roses, and 
 one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish and trouble. And 
 the other one is beef and potatoes with onions. And still 
 another one is people who are up against it and other 
 people in the same fix." 
 
 The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of 
 
34 Options 
 
 coughing. With one hand he hugged his onion to his 
 bosom. 
 
 "No doubt; no doubt," said he, at length. "But, as I 
 said, I must be going because " 
 
 Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly. 
 
 "Don t be a Dago, Little Brother. Don t eat raw 
 onions. Chip it in toward the dinner and line yourself 
 inside with the best stew you ever licked a spoon over. 
 Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and drag 
 him inside for the honor of dining with em? No harm 
 shall befall you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into 
 line." 
 
 The young man s pale face relaxed into a grin, 
 
 "Believe I ll go you," he said, brightening. "If my 
 onion is good as a credential, I ll accept the invitation 
 gladly." 
 
 " It s good as that, but better as seasoning," said Hetty. 
 "You come and stand outside the door till I ask my lady 
 friend if she has any objections. And don t run away 
 with that letter of recommendation before I come out." 
 
 Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The 
 young man waited outside. 
 
 "Cecilia, kid," said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw 
 of her voice as well as she could, "there s an onion outside. 
 With a young man attached. I ve asked him in to dinner. 
 You ain t going to kick, are you?" 
 
 "Oh, dear!" said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her 
 artistic hair. She cast a mournful glance at the ferry 
 boat poster on the wall. 
 
The Third Ingredient 35 
 
 "Nit," said Hetty. "It ain t him. You re up against 
 real life now. I believe you said your hero friend had 
 money and automobiles. This is a poor skeezicks that s 
 got nothing to eat but an onion. But he s easy-spoken 
 and not a freshy. I imagine he s been a gentleman, he s 
 so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I 
 bring him in? I ll guarantee his behavior." 
 
 "Hetty, dear," sighed Cecilia, "I m so hungry. What 
 difference does it make whether he s a prince or a burglar? 
 I don t care. Bring him in if he s got anything to eat 
 with him." 
 
 Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was 
 gone. Her heart missed a beat, and a gray look settled 
 over her face except on her nose and cheek-bones. And 
 then the tides of life flowed in again, for she saw him lean 
 ing out of the front window at the other end of the hall. 
 She hurried there. He was shouting to some one below. 
 The noise of the street overpowered the sound of her foot 
 steps. She looked down over his shoulder, saw whom he 
 was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled him 
 self in from the window-sill and saw her standing over him. 
 
 Hetty s eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets. 
 
 "Don t lie to me," she said, calmly. "What were you 
 going to do with that onion?" 
 
 The young man suppressed a cough and faced her 
 resolutely. His manner was that of one who had been 
 bearded sufficiently. 
 
 "I was going to eat it," said he, with emphatic slow 
 ness; "just as I told you before." 
 
6 Options 
 
 "And you have nothing else to eat at home?** 
 
 "Not a thing." 
 
 "What kind of work do you do?" 
 
 "I am not working at anything just now." 
 
 "Then why," said Hetty, with her voice set on it* sharp* 
 est edge, "do you lean out of windows and give orders 
 to chauffeurs in green automobiles in the street below?" 
 
 The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to 
 sparkle. 
 
 "Because, madam," said he, in accelerando tones, "I 
 pay the chauffeur s wages and I own the automobile 
 and also this onion this onion, madam." 
 
 He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty s nose. 
 The shop-lady did not retreat a hair s-breadth. 
 
 "Then why do you eat onions," she said, with biting 
 contempt, "and nothing else?" 
 
 "I never said I did," retorted the young man, heatedly. 
 "I said I had nothing else to eat where I live. I am not a 
 delicatessen storekeeper." 
 
 "Then why," pursued Hetty, inflexibly, "were you 
 going to eat a raw onion?" 
 
 "My mother," said the young man, "always made me 
 eat one for a cold. Pardon my referring to a physical 
 infirmity; but you may have noticed that I have a very, 
 very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion and go to 
 bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing 
 to you for it." 
 
 "How did you catch this cold?" went on Hetty, 
 piciously. 
 
The Third Ingredient 37 
 
 The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme 
 height of feeling. There were two modes of descent open 
 to him a burst of rage or a surrender to the ridiculous. 
 He chose wisely; and the empty hall echoed his hoarse 
 laughter. 
 
 "You re a dandy, "said he. "And I don t blame you for 
 being careful. I don t mind telling you. I got wet. I 
 was on a North River ferry a few days ago whem a girl 
 jumped overboard. Of course, I " 
 
 Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story. 
 
 " Give me the onion," she said. 
 
 The young man set his jaw a trifle harder. 
 
 " Give me the onion," she repeated. 
 
 He grinned, and laid it in her hand. 
 
 Then Hetty s infrequent, grim, melancholy smile 
 showed itself. She took the young man s arm and 
 pointed with her other hand to the door of her room. 
 
 "Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little 
 fool you fished out of the river is there waiting for you. 
 Go on in. I ll give you three minutes before I come. 
 Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in, Onions." 
 
 After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty 
 began to peel and wash the onion at the sink. She gave 
 a gray look at the gray roofs outside, and the smile on 
 her face vanished by little jerks and twitches. 
 
 " But it s us," she said, grimly, to herself, " it s nt 
 that furnished the beef." 
 
THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 
 
 A LANK, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak 
 and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on 
 the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to 
 and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, 
 and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the 
 appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a rever 
 sible coat seamy on both sides. 
 
 "Ain t seen you in about four years, Ham," said the 
 seedy man. "Which way you been travelling?" 
 
 "Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold 
 in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I ll 
 tell you about one hot spell I went through there. 
 
 "One morning I steps off the International at a water- 
 tank and lets it go on without me. J Twas a ranch coun 
 try, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. 
 Only out there they build em twenty miles away so you 
 can t smell what they ve got for dinner, instead of running 
 em up two inches from their neighbors windows. 
 
 "There wasn t any roads in sight, so I footed it cross 
 country. The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite 
 timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much 
 like a gentleman s private estate that every minute you 
 expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 39 
 
 But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in 
 sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big 
 as an elevated railroad station. 
 
 "There was a little man in a white shirt and brown 
 overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling 
 cigarettes under a tree in front of the door. 
 
 " Greetings, says I. Any refreshment, welcome, emol 
 uments, or even work for a comparative stranger? 
 
 " Oh, come in, says he, in a refined tone. Sit 
 down on that stool, please. I didn t hear your horse 
 coming. 
 
 "He isn t near enough yet, says I. I walked. I 
 don t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three 
 or four gallons of water handy. 
 
 "You do look pretty dusty, says he; *but our bathing 
 arrangements 
 
 " It s a drink I want, says I. Never mind the dust 
 that s on the outside. 
 
 "He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging 
 up, and then goes on : 
 
 " Do you want work? 
 
 "For a time, says I. This is a rather quiet section 
 of the country, isn t it? 
 
 " It is, says he. Sometimes so I have been told 
 one sees no human being pass for weeks at a tune. 
 I ve been here only a month. I bought the ranch from 
 an old settler who wanted to move farther west. 
 
 " It suits me, says I. Quiet and retirement are good 
 for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend 
 
40 Option* 
 
 bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle 
 weight slugging, and play the piano. 
 
 " Can you herd sheep? asks the little ranchman. 
 
 *"Do you mean have I heard sheep? says I. 
 
 " Can you herd em take charge of a flock of em? 
 says he. 
 
 " Oh, says I, now I understand. You mean chase 
 em around and bark at em like collie dogs. Well, I 
 might, says I. I ve never exactly done any sheep- 
 herding, but I ve often seen em from car windows masti 
 cating daisies, and they don t look dangerous. 
 
 "I m short a herder, says the ranchman. You 
 never can depend on the Mexicans. I ve only got two 
 flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons there 
 are only eight hundred of em in the morning, if you 
 like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations 
 furnished. You camp in a tent on the prairie with your 
 sheep. You do your own cooking, but wood and water 
 are brought to your camp. It s an easy job. 
 
 " I m on, says I. I ll take the job even if I have 
 to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear 
 a loose effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do 
 in pictures. 
 
 "So the next morning the little ranchman helps me 
 drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two 
 miles out and let em graze on a little hillside on the 
 prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not 
 letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driv 
 ing em down to a water-hole to drink at noon. 
 
The Hiding of Black BiR 41 
 
 "Til bring out your tent and camping outfit and 
 rations in the buckboard before night/ says he. 
 
 " Fine, says I. And don t forget the rations. Nor 
 the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. 
 Your name s Zollicoffer, ain t it? 
 
 "My name, says he, is Henry Ogden. 
 
 " All right, Mr. Ogden, says I. Mine is Mr. Percival 
 Saint Clair. 
 
 "I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; 
 And then the wool entered my soul. That getting next 
 to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than 
 Crusoe s goat. I ve seen a lot of persons more entertain 
 ing as companions than those sheep were. I d drive em 
 to the corral and pen em every evening, and then cook 
 my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a 
 tent the size of a tablecloth, and listen to the coyotes and 
 whip-poor-wills singing around the camp. 
 
 "The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but 
 uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-houae 
 and stepped in the door. 
 
 " Mr. Ogden, says I, you and me have got to get 
 sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and 
 furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table- 
 talk and fireside companions they rank along with five- 
 o clock teazers. If you ve got a deck of cards, or a 
 parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get em out, and 
 let s get on a mental basis. I ve got to do something in 
 an intellectual line, if it i only to knock somebody s 
 brain* out. 
 
4 Options 
 
 "This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. 
 He wore finger-rings and a big gold watch and careful 
 neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles 
 was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw 
 hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for 
 him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would 
 have taken to be his brother. I didn t care much for 
 him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship and 
 communion with holy saints or lost sinners anything 
 sheepless would do. 
 
 " Well, Saint Clair, says he, laying down the book he 
 was reading, *I guess it must be pretty lonesome for you 
 at first. And I don t deny that it s monotonous for me. 
 Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they won t 
 stray out? 
 
 "They re shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire 
 iurderer, says I. And I ll be back with them long 
 before they ll need their trained nurse. 
 
 " So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. 
 After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a 
 toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as 
 excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when 
 H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the 
 lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes. 
 
 "That showed what a comparative thing life is. A 
 man may see so much that he d be bored to turn his head 
 to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic 
 Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you ll see 
 him splitting his ribs laughing at Curfew Shall Not Ring 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 43 
 
 To-night, or really enjoying himself playing cards with 
 ladies. 
 
 **By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, 
 and then there is a total eclipse of sheep. 
 
 "Do you remember reading in the papers, about a 
 month ago, says he, about a train hold-up on the M. K. 
 & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder 
 and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it s said that 
 only one man did the job. 
 
 " Seems to me I do, says I. But such things happen 
 so often they don t linger long in the human Texas mind. 
 Did they overtake, overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon 
 the despoiler? 
 
 "He escaped, says Ogden. And I was just reading 
 in a paper to-day that the officers have tracked him down 
 into this part of the country. It seems the bills the 
 robber got were all the first issue of currency to the 
 Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they ve 
 followed the trail where they ve been spent, and it leads 
 this way. 
 
 "Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves nu, 
 the bottle. 
 
 " I imagine, says I, after ingurgitating another modi 
 cum of the royal booze, that it wouldn t be at all a disin 
 genuous idea for a train-robber to run down into this part 
 of the country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch, now/ 
 aays I, would be the finest kind of a place. Who d ever 
 expect to find such a desperate character among these 
 Bong-birdfl and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the 
 
44 Options 
 
 way, says I, kind of looking H. Ogden over, was there 
 any description mentioned of this single-handed terror? 
 Was his lineaments or height and thickness or teeth fillings 
 or style of habiliments set forth in print? 
 
 " Why, no/ says Ogden; they say nobody got a good 
 sight of him because he wore a mask. But they know it 
 was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always 
 works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in 
 the express-car that had his name on it. 
 
 " All right, says I. I approve of Black Bill s retreat 
 to the sheep-ranges. I guess they won t find him. 
 
 " There s one thousand dollars reward for his capture, 
 says Ogden. 
 
 " I don t need that kind of money, says I, looking Mr. 
 Sheepman straight in the eye. The twelve dollars a 
 month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I cats 
 save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, 
 where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill, I goes 
 on, looking significantly at Ogden, was to have come 
 down this way say, a month ago and bought a 
 little sheep-ranch and 
 
 " Stop, says Ogden, getting out of his chair and look 
 ing pretty vicious. Do you mean to insinuate 
 
 " Nothing, says I; no insinuations. I m stating a 
 hypodermical case. I say, if Black Bill had come down 
 here and bought a sheep-ranch and hired me to Little- 
 Boy-Blue em and treated me square and friendly, a* 
 you ve done, he d never have anything to fear from me. 
 A. man is a man, regardless of any complicationa he may 
 
The Hiding oj Black BUI 45 
 
 k*rt with sheep or railroad trains. Now you know 
 where I stand/ 
 
 "Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine tocond*, 
 and then he laughs, amused. 
 
 "You ll do, Saint Clair, says he. If I wa* Black BUI 
 I wouldn t be afraid to trust you. Let s have a game or 
 two of seven-up to-night. That is, if you don t mind 
 playing with a train-robber. 
 
 " Tve told you, says I, my oral sentiments, and there s 
 no strings to em. 
 
 "While I waa shuffling after the first hand, I asks 
 Ogden, as if the idea was a kind of a casualty, where he 
 was from. 
 
 " Oh, says he, from the Mississippi Valley. 
 
 " That s a nice little place, says I. I ve often stopped 
 over there. But didn t you find the sheets a little damp 
 and the food poor? Now, I hail, says I, from the Pacific 
 Slope. Ever put up there? 
 
 "Too draughty, says Ogden. But if you re ever in 
 the Middle West just mention my name, and you ll get 
 foot- warmers and dripped coffee. 
 
 " Well, says I, I wasn t exactly fishing for your private 
 telephone number and the middle name of your aunt that 
 carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It 
 don t matter. I just want you to know you are safe in 
 the hands of your shepherd. Now, don t play hearts 
 on spades, and don t get nervous. 
 
 " Still harping, says Ogden, laughing again. Don t you 
 Suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected 
 
46 Options 
 
 me, I d put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my 
 nervousness if I had any? 
 
 " Not any, says I. A man who s got the nerve to 
 hold up a train single-handed wouldn t do a trick like that. 
 I ve knocked about enough to know that them are the 
 kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I can 
 claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden, says I, being 
 only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious cir*- 
 cumstances we might have been. 
 
 " Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg, says Ogden, 
 and cut for deal. 
 
 "About four days afterward, while my muttons was 
 nooning on the water-hole and I deep in the interstices of 
 making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a 
 mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to 
 represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas 
 City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of 
 Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn t molded on fight 
 ing lines, so I knew he was only a scout. 
 
 " Herdin sheep? he asks me. 
 
 " Well, says I, to a man of your evident guniptional 
 endowments, I wouldn t have the nerve to state that I 
 am engaged in decorating old bronzes or oiling bicycle 
 sprockets. 
 
 *"You don t talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,* 
 says he. 
 
 " But you talk like what you look like to me, says I. 
 
 "And then he asks me who I was working for, and I 
 shofws him Rancho Chiquito, two miles away, in the 
 
The Hiding of Black BUI 47 
 
 shadow of a low hill, and he tells me he s a deputy 
 sheriff. 
 
 "There s a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to 
 be somewhere in these parts, says the scout. He s been 
 traced as far as San Antonio, and may be farther. Have 
 you seen or heard of any strangers around here during 
 the past month? 
 
 " I have not, says I, except a report of one over at 
 the Mexican quarters of Loomis ranch, on the Frio/ 
 
 "What do you know about him? asks the deputy. 
 
 "He s three days old, says I. 
 
 " What kind of a looking man is the man you work for? 
 he asks. Does old George Ramey own this place yet? 
 He s run sneep here for the last ten years, but never had 
 no success. 
 
 t The old man has sold out and gone West, I tells him. 
 Another sheep-fancier bought him out about a month 
 ago. 
 
 " What kind of a looking man is he? asks the deputy 
 again. 
 
 " Oh, says I, a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long 
 whiskers and blue specs. I don t think he knows a sheep 
 from a ground-squirrel. I guess old George soaked him 
 pretty well on the deal, says I. 
 
 "After indulging himself in a lot more non-communi 
 cative information and two thirds of my dinner, the 
 deputy rides away. 
 
 "That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. 
 . ""They re drawing the tendrils of the octopus around 
 
48 Options 
 
 Black Bill, says I. And then I told him about the deputy 
 sheriff, and how I d described him to the deputy, and 
 what the deputy said about the matter. 
 
 " Oh, well, says Ogden, let s don t borrow any of 
 Black Bill s troubles. We ve a few of our own. Get 
 the Bourbon out of the cupboard and we ll drink to his 
 health unless, says he, with his little cackling laugh, 
 you re prejudiced against train-robbers. 
 
 " I ll drink, says I, to any man who s a friend to a 
 friend. And I believe that Black Bill, I goes on, would be 
 that. So here s to Black Bill, and may he have good luck." 
 
 "And both of us drank. 
 
 * About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The 
 sheep had to be driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy- 
 headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them with 
 back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the barbers 
 were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the 
 hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to 
 the ranch-house, where I penned em in a corral and bade 
 em my nightly adieus. 
 
 "I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. 
 Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess 
 he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness 
 or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. 
 His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a 
 second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave 
 vent to just a few musings. Imperial Caesar, says I, 
 * asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep 
 the wind awav, 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 49 
 
 "A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. 
 What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, 
 influence, and family connections? He s at the mercy of 
 his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he s about 
 as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropol 
 itan Opera House at 12.30 A. M. dreaming of the plains 
 of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. 
 No matter how she looks, you know it s better for all 
 hands for her to be that way. 
 
 "Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, 
 and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his 
 nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous 
 subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical 
 culture and some tobacco, which seemed more to 
 the point. 
 
 "After I d smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial 
 breathing of H. O., I happened to look out the window 
 toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a 
 road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a 
 creek farther away. 
 
 "I saw five men riding up to the house. All of em 
 carried guns across their saddles, and among em was the 
 deputy that had talked to me at my camp. 
 
 "They rode up careful, in open formation, with their 
 guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinion 
 ated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order 
 cavalry. 
 
 " Good-evening, gents, says I. Won t you light, and 
 tie your horses? 
 
50 Options 
 
 "The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till 
 the opening in it seems to cover my whole front eleva 
 tion. 
 
 " *Don t you move your hands none, says he, *till you 
 and me indulge in a adequate amount of necessary con 
 versation. 
 
 " I will not, says I. I am no deaf-mute, and 
 therefore will not have to disobey your injunctions in 
 replying. 
 
 " We are on the lookout, says he, for Black Bill, the 
 man that held up the Katy for $15,000 in May, We are 
 searching the ranches and everybody on em. What is 
 your name, and what do you do on this ranch? 
 
 " Captain, says I, Tercival Saint Clair is my occu 
 pation, and my name is sheep-herder. I ve got my 
 flock of veals no, muttons penned here to-night. 
 The searchers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair 
 cut with baa-a-rum, I suppose. 
 
 " Where s the boss of this ranch? the captain of the 
 gang asks me. 
 
 " Wait just a minute, cap n, says I. Wasn t there a 
 kind of a reward offered for the capture of this desperate 
 character you have referred to in your preamble? 
 
 " There s a thousand dollars reward offered, says the 
 captain, but it s for his capture and conviction. There 
 don t seem to be no provision made for an informer. 
 
 " It looks like it might rain in a day or so, says I, in 
 a tired way, looking up at the cerulean blue sky. 
 
 ***J1 you know anything about the locality, diapoei- 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 51 
 
 tion, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill, says he, in 
 a severe dialect, you are amiable to the law in not report 
 ing it. 
 
 " I heard a fence-rider say, says I, in a desultory kind 
 of voice, that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over 
 at Pidgin s store on the Nueces that he heard that Black 
 Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a sheepman s cousin 
 two weeks ago. 
 
 " Tell you what I ll do, Tight Mouth, says the captain, 
 after looking me over for bargains. If you put us on so 
 we can scoop Black Bill, I ll pay you a hundred dollars 
 out of my own out of our own pockets. That s 
 liberal, says he. *You ain t entitled to anything. Now, 
 what do you say? 
 
 " Cash down now? I ask. 
 
 " The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, 
 and they all produce the contents of their pockets for 
 analysis. Out of the general results they figured up 
 $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco. 
 
 * Come nearer, capitan meeo, says I, and listen/ He 
 so did. 
 
 " I am mighty poor and low down in the world/ says 
 I. I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to 
 keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems 
 to be to get asunder. Although/ says I, I regard myself 
 as some better than the State of South Dakota, it s a 
 come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep 
 only in the form of chops. I m pretty far reduced in the 
 world on account of foiled ambitions and ram and a kind 
 
52 Options 
 
 of cocktail they maKe along the P. R. R. all the way from 
 Scranton to Cincinnati dry gin, French vermouth, one 
 squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If 
 you re ever up that way, don t fail to let one try you. 
 And, again, says I, I have never yet went back on a 
 friend. I ve stayed by em when they had plenty, and 
 when adversity s overtaken me I ve never forsook em. 
 
 " But, I goes on, this is not exactly the case of a friend. 
 Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance 
 money. And I do not consider brown beans and corn- 
 bread the food of friendship. I am a poor man, says I, 
 and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will 
 find Black Bill, says I, lying asleep in this house pn a cot 
 in the room to your right. He s the man you want, as I 
 know from his words and conversation. He was in a 
 way a friend, I explains, and if I was the man I once 
 was the entire product of the mines of Gondola would not 
 have tempted me to betray him. But, says I, every week 
 half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood 
 in camp. 
 
 " Better go in careful, gentlemen, says I. He seems 
 impatient at times, and when you think of his late pro 
 fessional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if 
 he was come upon sudden. 
 
 "So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, 
 and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and 
 tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when 
 she set the Philip Steins on to Samson. 
 
 "The leader of the pospe -shakes Ogden and wakes hinr 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 53 
 
 up. And then he jumps up, and two more of the reward- 
 hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty tough with all 
 his slimness, and he gives em as neat a single-footed tussle 
 against odds as I ever see. 
 
 " What does this mean?* he says, after they had him 
 down. 
 
 " You re scooped in, Mr. Black Bill, says the captain. 
 That s all. 
 
 " It s an outrage, says H. Ogden, madder yet. 
 
 "It was, says the peace-and-good-will man. The 
 Katy wasn t bothering you, and there s a law against 
 monkeying with express packages. 
 
 "And he sits on H. Ogden s stomach and goes through 
 his pockets symptomatically and careful. 
 
 " I ll make you perspire for this, says Ogden, perspir 
 ing some himself. I can prove who I am. 
 
 "So can I, says the captain, as he draws from H. 
 Ogden s inside coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the 
 Second National Bank of Espinosa City. Your regular 
 engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-card wouldn t 
 have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than 
 this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to 
 go with us and expatriate your sins. 
 
 "H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no 
 more after they have taken the money off of him. 
 
 " A well-greased idea, says the sheriff captain, admiring, 
 to slip off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where 
 the hand of man is seldom heard. It was the slickest 
 hide-out I ever see, says the captain. 
 
4 Options 
 
 "So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts 
 up the other herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and 
 he saddles Ogden s horse, and the sheriffs all ride up close 
 around him with their guns in hand, ready to take their 
 prisoner to town. 
 
 "Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies 
 bands and gives him orders about the shearing and where 
 to graze the sheep, just as if he intended to be back in a 
 lew days. And a couple of hours afterward one Percival 
 Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito, 
 might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars 
 wages and blood money in his pocket, riding south 
 on another horse belonging to said ranch. " 
 
 The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle 
 of a coming freight-train sounded far away among the 
 low hills. 
 
 The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his 
 frowzy head slowly and disparagingly. 
 
 " What is it, Snipy ? " asked the other. " Got the blue* 
 again?" 
 
 "No, I ain t, " said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But 
 I don t like your talk. You and me have been friends, 
 off and on, for fifteen year; and I never yet knew or 
 heard of you giving anybody up to the law not no one. 
 And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at 
 whose table you had played games of cards if casino 
 can be so called. And yet you inform him to the law and 
 take money for it. It never was like you, I say. " 
 
 "This H. Ogden, " resumed the red-faced, man," through 
 
The Hiding of Black Bill 55 
 
 a lawyer, proved himself free by alibis and other 
 legal tenninalities, as I so heard afterward. He never 
 suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated to 
 hand him over. " 
 
 "How about the bills they found in his pocketi 
 
 the seedy man. 
 
 "I put em there," said the red-faced man, "while 1 
 was asleep, when I saw the posse riding up. I was Black 
 Bill. Look out, Snipy, here she comes! We ll board 
 her on the bumpers when she takes water." 
 
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 
 
 OLD Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar 
 house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down 
 town broker, so rich that he could afford to walk for 
 his health a few blocks in the direction of his office 
 every morning and then call a cab. 
 
 He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named 
 Gilbert Cyril Scott could play him nicely who was 
 becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze 
 the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the house 
 hold was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to 
 trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he 
 took up the burdens of others. 
 
 Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There 
 was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the 
 two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, 
 and promise the minister to keep old Jerome s money in 
 a state of high commotion. But at this point compli 
 cations must be introduced. 
 
 Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young 
 Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick. Dick 
 went West to seek his or somebody else s fortune. Noth 
 ing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a 
 
 56 
 
Schools and Schools 57 
 
 letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled 
 paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The 
 writing was asthmatic and the spelling St. Vitusy. 
 
 It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune 
 to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and 
 made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter 
 disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a 
 complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to 
 check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted 
 him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, 
 whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome 
 to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for the rest 
 of her natural life or until matrimony should them part. 
 
 Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that 
 the world is supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that 
 Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and that the rail-fence is 
 built on a turtle s back. Now, the turtle has to stand 
 on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like 
 old Jerome. 
 
 I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; 
 but if not so, I would like to know when men like old 
 Jerome get what is due them? 
 
 They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a 
 little girl, deeply sunburned and wholesomely good-look 
 ing, with a manner that was frankly unsophisticated, yet 
 one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude upon 
 without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you 
 would expect to see her in a short skirt and leather leg 
 gings, shooting glass balls or taming mustangs. But in 
 
58 Options 
 
 her plain white waist and black skirt she sent you guessing 
 again. With an easy exhibition of strength she swung 
 along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried 
 in vain to wrest from her. 
 
 "I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Bar 
 bara, pecking at the firm, sunburned cheek. 
 
 "I hope so," said Nevada. 
 
 "Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as 
 irelcome to my house as if it were your father s own." 
 
 "Thanks, "said Nevada. 
 
 "And I am going to call you cousin, " said Gilbert, 
 with his charming smile. 
 
 "Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs 
 a million pounds. It s got samples from six of dad s old 
 mines in it," she explained to Barbara. "I calculate 
 they d assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but 
 I promised him to bring them along. " 
 
 II 
 
 It is a common custom to refer to the usual complica 
 tion between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two 
 men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or well, any 
 of those problems as the triangle. But they are never 
 unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles 
 never equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada War 
 ren, she and Gilbert and Barbara Ross lined up into such 
 a figurative triangle; and of that triangle Barbara formed 
 the hypotenuse. 
 
 One morning old Jerome was lingering long after break- 
 
Schools and Schools 59 
 
 fast over the dullest morning paper in the city before 
 setting forth to his down town fly-trap. He had become 
 quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of his dead 
 brother s quiet independence and unsuspicious frankness. 
 
 A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren. 
 
 "A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please," 
 she said. "He s waiting for an answer." 
 
 Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between 
 her teeth, and watching the carriages and autos roll by 
 in the street, took the envelope. She knew it was from 
 Gilbert, before she opened it, by the little gold palette 
 in the upper left-hand corner. 
 
 After tearing it open she pored over the contents for 
 a while, absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went 
 and stood at her uncle s elbow. 
 
 "Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn t he?" 
 
 "Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his 
 paper loudly; "of course he is. I raised him myself." 
 
 "He wouldn t write anything to anybody that wasn t 
 exactly I mean that everybody couldn t know and 
 read, would he?" 
 
 "I d just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a 
 handful from his newspaper. " Why, what " 
 
 "Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you 
 think it s all right and proper. You see, I don t know 
 much about city people and their ways. " 
 
 Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet 
 upon it. He took Gilbert s note and fiercely perused it 
 twice, and then a third time. 
 
60 Options 
 
 "Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, 
 although I was sure of that boy. He s a duplicate of his 
 father, and he was a gilt-edged diamond. He only asks 
 if you and Barbara will be ready at four o clock this 
 afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island, 
 I don t see anything to criticise in it except the stationery. 
 I always did hate that shade of blue. " 
 
 "Would it be all right to go?" asked Nevada, eagerly. 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it 
 pleases me to see you so careful and candid. Go, by all 
 means. " 
 
 "I didn t know, " said Nevada, demurely. "I thought 
 I d ask you. Couldn t you go with us, uncle?" 
 
 "I? No, no, no, no! I ve ridden once in a car that 
 boy was driving. Never again! But it s entirely proper 
 for you and Barbara to go. Yes, yes. But I will not. 
 No, no, no, no!" 
 
 Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid: 
 
 " You bet we ll go. I ll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell 
 the boy to say to Mr. Warren, You bet we ll go." 3 
 
 "Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, 
 but wouldn t it be as well to send him a note in reply? 
 Just a line would do. " 
 
 "No, I won t bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. 
 "Gilbert will understand he always does. I never 
 rode in an automobile in my life; but I ve paddled a 
 canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse 
 Caiie r and if it s any livelier than that I d like to 
 know! * 
 
Schools and Schools 61 
 
 HI 
 
 Two months are supposed to have elapsed. 
 
 Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand- 
 dollar house. It was a good place for her. Many places 
 are provided in the world where men and women may 
 repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers 
 difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering- 
 places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyers offices, beauty- 
 parlors, air-ships, and studies; and the greatest of these 
 are studies. 
 
 It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover 
 that it is the longest side^of a triangle. But it s a long 
 line that has no turning. 
 
 Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had 
 gone to the theatre. Barbara had not cared to go. She 
 wanted to stay at home and study in the study. If you, 
 miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every day 
 that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting 
 hobbles and a lasso on the young man you wanted for 
 yourself, you, too, would lose taste for the oxidized silver 
 setting of a musical comedy. 
 
 Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her 
 right arm rested upon the table, and her dextral fingers 
 nervously manipulated a sealed letter. The letter was 
 addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper left-hand 
 corner of the envelope was Gilbert s little gold palette. 
 It had been delivered at nine o clock, after Nevada had 
 left. 
 
6 Options 
 
 Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know 
 what the letter contained; but she could not open and 
 read it by the aid of steam, or a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, 
 or any of the generally approved methods, because her 
 position in society forbade such an act. She had tried 
 to read some of the lines of the letter by holding the 
 envelope up to a strong light and pressing it hard against 
 the paper, but Gilbert had too good a taste in stationery 
 to make that possible. 
 
 At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a 
 delicious winter night. Even so far as from the cab to 
 the door they were powdered thickly with the big flakes 
 downpouring diagonally from the east. Old Jerome 
 growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and 
 blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with 
 sapphire eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the moun 
 tains around dad s cabin. During all these wintry 
 apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood the 
 only appropriate thing she could think of to do. 
 
 Old Jerome went immediately upstairs to hot-water- 
 bottles and quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the 
 only cheerfully lighted room, subsided into an armchair, 
 and, while at the interminable task of unbuttoning her 
 elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits of 
 the "show." 
 
 "Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing some 
 times, "said Barbara. "Here is a letter for you, dear, 
 that came by special delivery just after you had gone. " 
 
 "Who is it from?" asked Nevada^Jugging at a button. 
 
Schools and Schools 63 
 
 "Well, really, "said Barbara, with a smile, "I can 
 only guess. The envelope has that queer little thing 
 in one corner that Gilbert calls a palette, but which 
 looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a schoolgirl s 
 valentine. " 
 
 " I wonder what he s writing to me about," remarked 
 Nevada, listlessly. 
 
 "We re all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try 
 to find out what is in a letter by studying the postmark. 
 As a last resort we use scissors, and read it from the 
 bottom upward. Here it is. " 
 
 She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the 
 table to Nevada. 
 
 "Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These 
 centre-fire buttons are a nuisance. I d rather wear buck 
 skins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide off that letter 
 and read it. It ll be midnight before I get these gloves 
 off!" 
 
 "Why, dear, you don t want me to open Gilbert s 
 letter to you? It s for you, and you wouldn t wish any 
 one else to read it, of course!" 
 
 Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from 
 her gloves. 
 
 "Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn t 
 read," she said. " Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants 
 us to go out in his car again to-morrow." 
 
 Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if 
 emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to 
 feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world 
 
64 Options 
 
 catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an indulgent, 
 slightly bored air. 
 
 "Well, dear," said she, "I ll read it if you want me to." 
 
 She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift- 
 travelling eyes; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd 
 glance at Nevada, who, for the time, seemed to consider 
 gloves as the world of her interest, and letters from rising 
 artists as no more than messages from Mars. 
 
 For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada 
 with a strange steadfastness; and then a smile so small 
 that it widened her mouth only the sixteenth part of an 
 inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than a twentieth 
 flashed like an inspired thought across her face. 
 
 Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to 
 another woman. Swift as light travels, each penetrates 
 the heart and mind of another, sifts her sister s words of 
 their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden desires, 
 and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs 
 from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her 
 thumb and fingers before letting them float away on the 
 oreezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago Eve s son rang 
 the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park, 
 bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. 
 Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic 
 eyebrow. 
 
 "The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting 
 the leaf of a palm. "I suppose you ve been there, of 
 course?" 
 
 "Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. 
 
Schools and Schools 65 
 
 "Don t you think the apple-sauce they serve over there 
 is execrable? I rather like that mulberry -leaf tunic effect, 
 dear; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be had 
 over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while the 
 gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar- 
 holes have made your dress open a little in the back.* 
 
 So, then and there according to the records was 
 the alliance formed by the only two who s-who ladies in 
 the world. Then it was agreed that women should 
 forever remain as clear as a pane of glass though glass 
 was yet to be discovered to other women, and that she 
 should palm herself off on man as a mystery. 
 
 Barbara seemed to hesitate. 
 
 "Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of 
 embarrassment, "you shouldn t have insisted on my open 
 ing this. I I m sure it wasn t meant for any one else 
 to know." 
 
 Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment. 
 
 "Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you ve already 
 read it, what s the difference? If Mr. Warren has written 
 to me something that any one else oughtn t to know, that 
 is all the more reason why everybody should know it. " 
 
 "Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says: Dearest 
 Nevada Come to my studio at twelve o clock to-night. 
 Do not fail. " Barbara rose and dropped the note in 
 Nevada s lap. "I m awfully sorry," she said, "that I 
 knew. It isn t like Gilbert. There must be some mis 
 take. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will you, 
 dear? I must go upstairs now, I have such a headache. 
 
6 Options 
 
 I m sure I don t understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert 
 has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night! " 
 
 IV 
 
 Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara s door 
 close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the 
 hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly 
 to the front door, and let herself out into the snowstorm. 
 Gilbert Warren s studio was six squares away. 
 
 By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm 
 attacked the city from beyond the sullen East River. 
 Already the snow lay a foot deep on the pavements, the 
 drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders against the 
 walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet 
 as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past 
 like white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less 
 frequent motor-cars sustaining the comparison 
 hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats 
 on their jocund, perilous journeys. 
 
 Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on 
 her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud- 
 capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by 
 the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab 
 ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so 
 like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she 
 felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollai 
 house had seldom brought her. 
 
 A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by 
 his eye and weight. 
 
Schools and Schools 67 
 
 -Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be 
 out, ain t it?" 
 
 "I I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, 
 hurrying past him. 
 
 The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisti 
 cated. Does it prove that woman never progresses, or 
 that she sprang from Adam s rib, full-fledged in intellect 
 nd wiles? 
 
 Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada s 
 speed one half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; 
 but she was as tough as a pifion sapling, and bowed to it 
 as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed be 
 fore her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some 
 well-remembered cation. The haunt of business and its 
 hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. The ele 
 vator stopped at ten, 
 
 Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and 
 rapped firmly at the door numbered "89. " She had been 
 there many times before, with Barbara and Uncle Jerome. 
 
 Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in 
 one hand, a green shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his 
 mouth. The pipe dropped to the floor. 
 
 "Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I 
 could. Uncle and me were at the theatre this evening. 
 Here I am, Gilbert!" 
 
 Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed 
 from a statue of stupefaction to a young man with a 
 problem to tackle. He admitted Nevada, got a whi&k- 
 hroom, and began to brush the snow irom her clothes. A 
 
68 Options 
 
 great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where 
 the artist had been sketching in crayon. 
 
 "You wanted me," said Nevada simply, "and I came. 
 You said so in your letter. What did you send for me 
 for?" 
 
 "You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for 
 wind. 
 
 "Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 
 *Come to my studio at twelve to-night, and do not fail.* 
 I thought you were sick, of course, but you don t seem 
 to be." 
 
 "Aha!" said Gilbert, irrelevantly. "I ll tell you why 
 I asked you to come, Nevada. I want you to marry me 
 immediately to-night. What s a little snowstorm? 
 Will you do it?" 
 
 "You might have noticed that I would, long ago," 
 said Nevada. "And I m rather stuck on the snowstorm 
 idea, myself. I surely would hate one of these flowery 
 church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn t know you 
 had grit enough to propose it this way. Let s shock 
 em it s our funeral, ain t it?" 
 
 "You bet!" said Gilbert. "Where did I hear that 
 expression?" he added to himself. "Wait a minute, 
 Nevada; I want to do a little phoning." 
 
 He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called 
 upon the lightnings of the heavens condensed into 
 unromantic numbers and districts. 
 
 "That you, Jack? You confounded sleepy-head! 
 Yes, wake up; this is me or I oh, bother the differ- 
 
Schools and Schools 69 
 
 snce in grammar! I m going to be married right away. 
 Yes! Wake up your sister don t answer me back; 
 bring her along, too you must. Remind Agnes of the 
 time I saved her from drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma 
 I know it s caddish to refer to it, but she must come with 
 you. Yes! Nevada is here, waiting. We ve been 
 engaged quite a while. Some opposition among the 
 relatives, you know, and we have to pull it off this way. 
 We re waiting here for you. Don t let Agnes out-talk 
 you bring her! You will? Good old boy! I ll order a 
 carriage to call for you, double-quick time. Confound 
 you, Jack, you re all right!" 
 
 Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited. 
 
 "My old friend, Jack Peyton, and his sister were to 
 have been here at a quarter to twelve," he explained; 
 "but Jack is so confoundedly slow. I ve just phoned 
 them to hurry. They ll be here in a few minutes. I m 
 the happiest man in the world, Nevada! What did you 
 do with the letter I sent you to-day?" 
 
 "I ve got it cinched here," said Nevada, pulling it out 
 from beneath her opera-cloak. 
 
 Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked 
 it over carefully. Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully. 
 
 "Didn t you think it rather queer that I should ask 
 you to come to my studio at midnight?" he asked. 
 
 "Why, no," said Nevada, rounding her eyes. "Not 
 if you needed me. Out West, when a pal sends you a 
 hurry call ain t that what you say here? we get there 
 first and talk about it after the row is over. And it s. 
 
TO Options 
 
 ttsually snowing there, too, when things happen. So I 
 didn t mind." 
 
 Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back 
 burdened with overcoats warranted to turn wind, rain, 
 or snow. 
 
 "Put this raincoat on," he said, holding it for her. 
 "We have a quarter of a mile to go. Old Jack and his 
 sister will be here in a few minutes." He began to 
 struggle into a heavy coat. "Oh, Nevada," he said, 
 "just look at the headlines on the front page of that 
 evening paper on the table, will you? It s about your 
 iection of the West, and I know it will interest you. " 
 
 He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in 
 the getting on of his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada 
 had not moved. She was looking at him with strange 
 and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on them 
 beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind 
 and snow; but her eyes were steady. 
 
 **I was going to tell you," she said, "anyhow, before 
 you before we before well, before anything. Dad 
 never gave me a day of schooling. I never learned to 
 ead or write a darned word. Now if " 
 
 Pounding their uncertain way upstairs, the feet of 
 Jack, the somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were 
 beard 
 
 V 
 
 When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning 
 softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, 
 Gilbert said; 
 
Schools and Schools H 
 
 "Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote 
 you in the letter that you received to-night?" 
 
 "Fire away!" said his bride. 
 
 "Word for word," said Gilbert, "it was this: *My 
 dear Miss Warren You were right about the flower. 
 It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac. " 
 
 "All right," said Nevada. "But let s forget it. The 
 joke s on Barbara, anyway!" 
 
THIMBLE, THIMBLE 
 
 THESE are the directions for finding the office of Carteret 
 & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting: 
 
 You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass 
 the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, 
 and come to the Big Canons of the Moneygrubber Tribe, 
 Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart 
 and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray, and hop, 
 skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty- 
 one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the 
 twelfth story is the office of Carteret & Carteret. The 
 factory where they make the mill supplies and leather 
 belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities to say 
 nothing of Brooklyn not being of interest to you, let 
 us hold the incidents within the confines of a one-act, one- 
 scene play, thereby lessening the toil of the reader and 
 the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the 
 courage to face four pages of type and Carteret & Carter- 
 et s office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair 
 in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the 
 Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the 
 Open-Faced Question mostly borrowed from the late 
 Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude. 
 
 First, biography (but pared to the quick) must inter- 
 
 7E 
 
thimble, Thimble 73 
 
 vene. I am for the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill 
 the bitter on the outside. 
 
 The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College pro 
 fessors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time 
 ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles 
 and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had 
 slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their 
 holdings. (Of course you can perceive at once that this 
 flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, 
 in spite of the "et" after "Carter.") Well, anyhow: 
 
 In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you 
 farther back than the year 1620. The two original 
 American Carterets came over in that year, but by differ 
 ent means of transportation. One brother, named John, 
 came in the Mayflower and became a Pilgrim Father. 
 You ve seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving 
 magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a 
 blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, 
 crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the 
 Virginia coast, and became an F. F. V. John became 
 distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; 
 Blandford for his pride, juleps, marksmanship, and vast 
 slave-cultivated plantations. 
 
 Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this 
 historical interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; 
 Lee surrendered; Grant toured the world; cotton went 
 to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim Crow cars 
 were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volun 
 teers returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves/ 
 
74 Options 
 
 the battle flag of Lundy s Lane which they bought at a 
 second-hand store in Chelsea, kept by a man named 
 Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound 
 watermelon and that brings us up to the time when 
 the story begins. My! but that was sparring for an 
 opening! I really must brush up on my Aristotle. 
 
 The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York 
 long before the war. Their house, as far as Leather 
 Belting and Mill Supplies was concerned, was as musty 
 and arrogant and solid as one of those old East India 
 tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens, 
 There were some rumors of a war behind its counters^ 
 but not enough to affect the business. 
 
 During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F. F. V., 
 lost his plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He 
 bequeathed little more than his pride to his surviving 
 family. So it came to pass that Blandford Carteret, the 
 Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the leather-and-mill- 
 supplies branch of that name to come North and learn 
 business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the 
 glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his impover 
 ished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and, at 
 the age of twenty-five, sat in the office of the firm equal 
 partner with John, the Fifth, of the blunderbuss-and- 
 turkey branch. Here the story begins again. 
 
 The young men were about the same age, smooth of 
 face, alert, easy of manner, and with an air that promised 
 mental and physical quicknesg. They were razored, 
 blue-eerged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned Efce 
 
Thimble, Thimble 75 
 
 other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires 
 or bill clerks. 
 
 One afternoon at four o clock, in the private office of 
 the firm, Blandford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk 
 had just brought to his desk. After reading it, he 
 chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John looked 
 around from his desk inquiringly. 
 
 " It s from mother, " said Blandf ord. " I ll read you the 
 funny part of it. She tells me all the neighborhood news 
 first, of course, and then cautions me against getting my 
 feet wet and musical comedies. After that come vital 
 statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate of the 
 wheat crop. And now I ll quote some: 
 
 " And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was 
 seventy-six last Wednesday, must go travelling. Noth 
 ing would do but he must go to New York and see his 
 "young Marster Blandf ord." Old as he is, he has a 
 deal of common sense, so I ve let him go. I couldn t 
 refuse him he seemed to have concentrated all his hopes 
 and desires into this one adventure into the wide world. 
 You know he was born on the plantation, and has never 
 been ten miles away from it in his life. And he was 
 your father s body servant during the war, and has been 
 always a faithful vassal and servant of the family. He has 
 often seen the gold watch the watch that was your 
 father s and your father s father s. I told him it was to 
 be yours, and he begged me to allow him to take it to you 
 and to put it into your hands himself. 
 
 "*So he has it, carefully enclosed in a buckskin case, 
 
76 Options 
 
 and is bringing it to you with all the pride and impor 
 tance of a king s messenger. I gave him money for the 
 round trip and for a two weeks stay in the city. I wish 
 you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters 
 Jake won t need much looking after he s able to take 
 care of himself. But I have read in the papers that 
 African bishops and colored potentates generally have 
 much trouble in obtaining food and lodging in the Yankee 
 metropolis. That may be all right; but I don t see why 
 the best hotel there shouldn t take Jake in. Still, I 
 suppose it s a rule. 
 
 " I gave him full directions about finding you, and 
 packed his valise myself. You won t have to bother with 
 him; but I do hope you ll see that he is made comfortable. 
 Take the watch that he brings you it s almost a decor 
 ation. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there 
 isn t a stain upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. 
 Bringing it to you is the crowning joy of old Jake s 
 life. I wanted him to have that little outing and that 
 happiness before it is too late. You have often heard 
 us talk about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, 
 crawled through the reddened grass at Chancellorsville 
 to where your father lay with the bullet in his dear 
 heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it 
 from the "Yanks." 
 
 " So, my son, when the old man comes consider him 
 as a frail but worthy messenger from the old-time life 
 and home. 
 
 " You have been so long away from home and so long 
 
Thimble, Tltimbk 77 
 
 among the people that we have always regarded as aliens 
 that I m not sure that Jake will know you when he sees 
 you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I rather be 
 lieve that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I 
 can t conceive that even ten years in Yankeeland could 
 change a boy of mine. Anyhow, I m sure you will know 
 Jake. I put eighteen collars in his valise. If he should 
 have to buy others, he wears a number 15-J. Please see 
 that he gets the right ones. He will be no trouble to you 
 at all. 
 
 " If you are not too busy, I d like for you to find him a 
 place to board where they have white-meal corn-bread^ 
 and try to keep him from taking his shoes off in your 
 office or on the street. His right foot swells a little, and 
 he likes to be comfortable. 
 
 " If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs 
 when they come back from the wash. I bought him a 
 dozen new ones before he left. He should be there about 
 the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go straight 
 to your office when he arrives." 1 
 
 As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, 
 something happened (as there should happen in stories 
 and must happen on the stage). 
 
 Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the 
 the world s output of mill supplies and leather belting, 
 came in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside 
 to see Mr. Blandford Carteret. 
 
 "Bring him in," said Blandford, rising. 
 
 John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to 
 
78 Options 
 
 Percival : " Ask him to wait a few minutes outside. We ll 
 let you know when to bring him in. " 
 
 Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, 
 slow smiles that was an inheritance of all the Carterets, 
 and said: 
 
 "Bland, I ve always had a consuming curiosity to under 
 stand the differences that you haughty Southerners be 
 lieve to exist between *y u a ^ an d the people of the 
 North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves 
 made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a 
 collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don t know why. 
 I never could understand the differences between us. " 
 
 "Well, John," said Blandford, laughing, "what you 
 don t understand about it is just the difference, of course. 
 I suppose it was the feudal way in which we lived that gave 
 us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of superiority." 
 
 "But you are not feudal, now, " went on John. "Since 
 we licked you and stole your cotton and mules you ve 
 had to go to work just as we Mamyankees, as you call us, 
 have always been doing. And you re just as proud and 
 exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war. 
 So it wasn t your money that caused it. " 
 
 "Maybe it was the climate," said Blandford, lightly, 
 "or maybe our negroes spoiled us. I ll call old Jake in, 
 now. I ll be glad to see the old villain again. " 
 
 "Wait just a moment," said John. "I ve got a little 
 theory I want to test. You and I are pretty much alike 
 in our general appearance. Old Jake hasn t seen you since 
 you were fifteen. Let s have him in and play fair and 
 
Thimbk, Thimble 79 
 
 see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surely 
 ought to be able to pick out his y un g marster without 
 any trouble. The alleged aristocratic superiority of a 
 *reb ought to be visible to him at once. He couldn t 
 make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a 
 Yankee, of course. The loser buys the dinner this 
 evening and two dozen 15 J collars for Jake. Is it a go?* 
 
 Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, 
 and told to usher the "colored gentleman" in. 
 
 Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. 
 He was a little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and 
 bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously 
 short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There 
 was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him: his black 
 suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat 
 was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In hi? right hand he 
 curried something carefully concealed by his closed fingers. 
 
 Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two 
 young men sat in their revolving desk-chairs ten feet 
 apart and looked at him in friendly silence. His gaze 
 slowly shifted many times from one to the other. He 
 felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of 
 the revered family among whose fortunes his life had 
 begun and was to end. 
 
 One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the 
 other had the unmistakable straight, long family nose. 
 Both had the keen black eyes, horizontal brows, and thin, 
 niling lips that had distinguished both the Carteret of 
 Mayflower and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had 
 
80 Options 
 
 thought that he could have picked out his young master 
 instantly from a thousand Northerners; but he found him 
 self in difficulties. The best he could do was to use 
 strategy. 
 
 "Howdy, Marse Blandford howdy, suh?" he said, 
 looking midway between the two young men. 
 
 "Howdy, Uncle Jake?" they both answered pleasantly 
 and in unison. "Sit down. Have you brought the 
 watch?" 
 
 Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful 
 distance, sat on the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully 
 on the floor. The watch in its buckskin case he gripped 
 tightly. He had not risked his life on the battlefield 
 to rescue that watch from his "old marster s" foes to 
 hand it over again to the enemy without a struggle. 
 
 "Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I m gwine give 
 it to you right away in jus a minute. Old Missus told 
 me to put it in young Marse Blandford s hand and tell 
 him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was 
 a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make 
 ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi ginia, suh. 
 You ve growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn t 
 have reconnized you but for yo powerful resemblance 
 to the old marster. " 
 
 With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes 
 roaming in the space between the two men. His words 
 might have been addressed to either. Though neither 
 wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign. 
 
 Blandford and John exchanged winks. 
 
Thimbk, Thimble 81 
 
 "I reckon you done got you ma s letter," went on 
 Uncle Jake. "She said she was gwine to write to you 
 bout my comin along up this er-way. " 
 
 "Yes, yes, Uncle Jake," said John briskly. "My 
 cousin and I have just been notified to expect you. We 
 are both Carterets, you know. " 
 
 "Although one of us," said Blandford, "was bora and 
 raised in the North. " 
 
 "So if you will hand over the watch " said John. 
 
 "My cousin and I " said Blandford. 
 
 "Will then see to it " said John. 
 
 "That comfortable quarters are found for you," said 
 Blandford. 
 
 With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, 
 high-pitched, protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked 
 up his hat and bent the brim in an apparent paroxysm 
 of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded him a 
 mask behind which he could roll his eye impartially 
 between, above, and beyond his two tormentors. 
 
 "I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You 
 gen lemen is tryin to have fun with the po old nigger. 
 But you can t fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse 
 Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po 
 skimpy little boy no mo than about fo teen when you 
 lef home to come No th; but I knowed you the minute 
 I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old mars- 
 ter. The other gen leman resembles you mightily, suh; 
 but you can t fool old Jake on a member of the old Virginia 
 family . No suh." 
 
82 Options 
 
 At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and 
 extended a hand for the watch. 
 
 Uncle Jake s wrinkled, black face lost the expression 
 of amusement into which he had vainly twisted it. He 
 knew that he was being teased, and that it made little 
 real difference, as far as its safety went, into which of 
 those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. 
 But it seemed to him that not only his own pride and 
 loyalty but much of the Virginia Carterets was at stake. 
 He had heard down South during the war about that other 
 branch of the family that lived in the North and fought 
 on "the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. 
 He had followed his "old marster s" fortunes from stately 
 luxury through war to almost poverty. And now, with 
 the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by * old missus, * 
 and entrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten 
 thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands 
 of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it 
 and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked 
 the lives of the Carterets of Virginia. 
 
 His experience and conception of the Yankees had been 
 an impression of tyrants "low-down, common trash" 
 * in blue, laying waste with fire and sword. He had 
 seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as 
 grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern 
 skies. And now he was face to face with one of them 
 and he could not distinguish him from his "young mars- 
 ter" whom he had come to find and bestow upon him the 
 emblem of his kingship even as the arm. "clothed in 
 
Thimbk, Thimble 83 
 
 white samite, mystic, wonderful" laid Excalibur in the 
 right hand of Arthur. He saw before him two young 
 men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either of whom 
 might have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewildered, 
 sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake 
 abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated 
 against the buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply 
 humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his promi 
 nent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young 
 men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of 
 but one difference between them. One wore a narrow 
 black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The other s "four- 
 hand " was a narrow blue one pinned with a black pearl. 
 
 And then, to old Jake s relief, there came a sudden 
 distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious 
 knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama 
 peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights. 
 
 Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, 
 which he handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, 
 to Blue-Tie. 
 
 " Olivia De Ormond, " read Blue-Tie from the card. 
 He looked inquiringly at his cousin. 
 
 "Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring 
 matters to a conclusion?" 
 
 "Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you 
 mind taking that chair over there in the corner for a 
 while? A lady is coming in on some business. We ll 
 take up your cae afterward. " 
 
 The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and, 
 
84 Options 
 
 petulantly, decidedly, freshly, consciously, and intention^ 
 ally pretty. She was dressed with such expensive plain 
 ness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as mere 
 tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she 
 wore would have marked her anywhere in the army of 
 beauty as the wearer of the merry helmet of Navarre. 
 
 Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue- 
 Tie s desk. Then the gentlemen drew leather -uphol 
 stered seats conveniently near, and spoke of the weather. 
 
 "Yes," said she, "I noticed it was warmer. But I 
 mustn t take up too much of your time during business 
 hours. That is," she continued, "unless we talk busi 
 ness. " 
 
 She addressed her words to Blue-Tie, with a charming 
 smile. 
 
 "Very well," said he. "You don t mind my cousin 
 being present, do you? We are generally rather confi 
 dential with each other especially in business matters. " 
 
 "Oh, no," carolled Miss De Ormond. "I d rather he 
 did hear. He knows all about it, anyhow. In fact, he s 
 quite a material witness because he was present when 
 you when it happened. I thought you might want to 
 talk things over before well, before any action is taken, 
 as I believe the lawyers say. " 
 
 "Have you anything in the way of a proposition to 
 make?" asked Black-Tie. 
 
 Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of 
 cne of her dull kid pumps. 
 
 "I had a proposal made to me," she said. "If the 
 
Thimbk, Thimble 85 
 
 proposal sticks it cuts out the proposition. Let s have 
 that settled first. " 
 
 "Well, as far as " began Blue-Tie. 
 
 "Excuse me, cousin," interrupted Black-Tie, "if you 
 don t mind my cutting in. " And then he turned, with a 
 good-natured air, toward the lady. 
 
 "Now, let s recapitulate a bit," he said cheerfully. 
 "All three of us, besides other mutual acquaintances, 
 have been out on a good many larks together. " 
 
 " I m afraid I ll have to call the birds by another name, " 
 said Miss De Ormond. 
 
 "All right," responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired 
 cheerfulness; "suppose we say squabs when we talk 
 about the proposal and larks when we discuss the prop 
 osition. You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. ; 
 Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor 
 car for a day s run into the country. We stopped at a 
 road-house for dinner. My cousin proposed marriage to 
 you then and there. He was influenced to do so, of 
 course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny 
 that you possess." 
 
 "I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," 
 said the beauty, with a dazzling smile. 
 
 " You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond, " went on 
 Black-Tie. "You have had, doubtless, many admirer*^ 
 and perhaps other proposals. You must remember, too, 
 that we were a piirty of merrymakers on that occasion. 
 There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal 
 of marriage was made to you by my cousin we cannot 
 
86 Options 
 
 deny. But hasn t it been your experience that, by 
 common consent, such things lose their seriousness when 
 viewed in the next day s sunlight? Isn t there something 
 of a code among good sports I use the word in its 
 best sense that wipes out each day the follies of the 
 evening previous?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, " said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very 
 well. And I ve always played up to it. But as you 
 seem to be conducting the case with the silent consent 
 of the defendant I ll tell you something more. I ve 
 got letters from him repeating the proposal. And they re 
 signed, too. " 
 
 **I understand," said Black-Tie gravely. "What s 
 ^our price for the letters? " 
 
 "I m not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But 
 I had decided to make you a rate. You both belong to a 
 swell family. Well, if I am on the stage nobody can say 
 a word against me truthfully. And the money is only a 
 secondary consideration. It isn t the money I was after. 
 I I believed him and and I liked him. " 
 
 She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from un 
 der her long eyelashes. 
 
 "And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably. 
 
 "Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly. 
 
 "Or " 
 
 "Or the fulfilment of the engagement to marry.** 
 
 **I think it is time,," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to 
 be allowed to say a word or two. You and I, cousin, 
 belong to a family that has held its head pretty high* 
 
Thimble, ThimUe 87 
 
 You have been brought up in a section of the country 
 very different from the one where our branch of the famil j 
 Ived. Yet both of us are Carterets, even if some of our 
 ways and theories differ. You remember, it is a tradition 
 of the family, that no Carteret ever failed in chivalry 
 to a lady or failed to keep his word when it was given. " 
 
 Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his 
 countenance, turned to Miss De Ormond. 
 
 "Olivia," said he, "on what date will you many me?** 
 
 Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed. 
 
 "It is a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth Rock 
 to Norfolk Bay. Between the two points we find the 
 changes that nearly three centuries have brought. In 
 that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn 
 witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread 
 our cloaks on the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat 
 them to the ducking-stool. It is the age of common 
 sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of us ladies, 
 gentlemen, women, men, Northerners, Southerners, lords, 
 caitiffs, actors, hardware-drummers, senators, hod-carriers 
 and politicians are coming to a better understanding. 
 Chivalry is one of our words that changes its meaning 
 every day. Family pride is a thing of many constructions 
 it may show itself by maintaining a moth-eaten arro 
 gance hi a cobwebbed Colonial mansion or by the prompt 
 paying of one s debts. 
 
 "Now, I suppose you ve had enough of my monologue. 
 I ve learned something of business and a little of life; and I 
 somehow believe, cousin, that our great-great-grandk 
 
88 Options 
 
 fathers, the original Carterets, would endorse my view 
 of this matter. " 
 
 Black-Tie wheeled around to his desk, wrote in a check 
 book and tore out the check, the sharp rasp of the perfo 
 rated leaf making the only sound in the room. He laid 
 the check within easy reach of Miss De Ormond s hand. 
 
 " Business is business, " said he. " We live in a business 
 age. There is my personal check for $10,000. What do 
 you say, Miss De Ormond will it be orange blossoms 
 or cash?" 
 
 Miss De Ormond picked up the check carelessly, folded 
 it indifferently, and stuffed it into her glove. 
 
 "Oh, this ll do," she said, calmly. "I just thought 
 I d call and put it up to you. I guess you people are all 
 right. But a girl has feelings, you know. I ve heard 
 one of you was a Southerner I wonder which one of 
 you it is?" 
 
 She arose, smiled sweetly, and walked to the door. 
 There, with a flash of white teeth and a dip of the heavy 
 plume, she disappeared. 
 
 Both of the cousins had forgotten Uncle Jake for the 
 time. But now they heard the shuffling of his shoes as 
 he came across the rug toward them from his seat in the 
 corner. 
 
 "Young marster," he said, "take yo watch." 
 
 And without hesitation he laid the ancient timepiece 
 in the hand of its rightful owner. 
 
SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 FlNCH keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you- 
 "wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. 
 Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his 
 secret process, but every four days your hat needs to be 
 cleaned again. 
 
 Finch is a leathern, sallow, slow-footed man, between 
 twenty and forty. You would say he had been brought 
 up a bushelman in Essex Street. When business is slack 
 he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned even oftener than 
 it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some of the 
 secrets of the sweatshops. 
 
 One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He 
 began to anoint my headpiece de Panama with his mys 
 terious fluid that attracted dust and dirt like a magnet. 
 
 "They say the Indians weave em under water, * said 
 I, for a leader. 
 
 "Don t you believe it," said Finch. "No Indian or 
 white man could stay under water that long. Say, do 
 you pay much attention to politics? I see in the paper 
 something about a law they ve passed called the law of 
 supply and demand. " 
 
 I explained to him as well as I could that the reference 
 was to a politico-economical law, and not to a legal statute. 
 
 89 
 
90 Options 
 
 "I didn t know," said Finch. "I heard a good deal 
 about it a year or so ago, but in a one-sided way. " 
 
 "Yes," said I, "political orators use it a great deal. 
 In fact, they never give it a rest. I suppose you heard 
 some of those cart-tail fellows spouting on the subject 
 over here on the east side. " 
 
 "I heard it from a king," said Finch "the white 
 king of a tribe of Indians in South America. " 
 
 I was interested but not surprised. The big city is 
 like a mother s knee to many who have strayed far and 
 found the roads rough beneath their uncertain feet. At 
 dusk they come home and sit upon the door-step. I know 
 a piano player in a cheap cafe who has shot lions in Africa, 
 a bell-boy who fought in the British army against the 
 Zulus, an express-driver whose left arm had been cracked 
 like a lobster s claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian canni 
 bals when the boat of his rescuers hove in sight. So a 
 hat-cleaner who has been a friend of a king did not 
 oppress me. 
 
 "A new band?" asked Finch, with his dry, barren 
 smile. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "and half an inch wider." I had had 
 a new band five days before. 
 
 "I meets a man one night, w said Finch, beginning his 
 story "a man brown as snuff, with money in every 
 pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in SchlageFs. That was 
 two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No. 08. 
 His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that 
 certain mountains in a country down South that he call* 
 
Supply and Demand 91 
 
 Gaudy mala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it out 
 <rf the streams in plural quantities. 
 
 " Oh, Geronimo! says I. Indians! There s no In 
 dians in the South, I tell him, except Elks, Maccabees, 
 and the buyers for the fall dry-goods trade. The Indians 
 are all on the reservations, says I. 
 
 " I m telling you this with reservations, says he. 
 "They ain t Buffalo Bill Indians: they re squattier and 
 more pedigreed. They call em Inkers and Aspics, and 
 they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was king of 
 Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain 
 streams, says the brown man, and fill quills with it; 
 and then they empty em into red jars till they are full; 
 and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba 
 each an arroba is twenty-five pounds and store it 
 in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled 
 hair, playing a flute, over the door. 
 
 " How do they work off this unearth increment? I asks. 
 
 " They don t, says the man. It s a case of "HI fares 
 the land with the great deal of velocity where wealth 
 accumulates and there ain t any reciprocity. " 
 
 "After this man and me got through our conversation, 
 which left him dry of information, I shook hands with 
 him and told him I was sorry I couldn t believe him. And 
 month afterward I landed on the coast of this Guady- 
 mala with $1,300 that I had been saving up for five years. 
 I thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself 
 accordingly. I loaded down four pack-mules with red 
 woollen blankets, wrought-iron pails, jewelled side-combs 
 
92 Options 
 
 for the ladies, glass necklaces, and safety-razors. I hired 
 a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule-driver and 
 an interpreter too. It turned out that he could interpret 
 mules all right, but he drove the English language much 
 too hard. His name sounded like a Yale key when you 
 push it in wrong side up, but I called him McClintock, 
 which was close to the noise. 
 
 "Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the 
 mountains, and it took us nine days to find it. But one 
 afternoon McClintock led the other mules and myself 
 over a rawhide bridge stretched across a precipice five 
 thousand feet deep, it seemed to me. The hoofs of the 
 beasts drummed on it just like before George M. Cohan 
 makes his first entrance on the stage. 
 
 "This village was built of mud and stone, and had no 
 streets. Some few yellow-and-brown persons popped 
 their heads out-of-doors, looking about like Welsh rabbits 
 with Worcester sauce on em. Out of the biggest house, 
 that had a kind of a porch around it, steps a big white 
 man, red as a beet in color, dressed in fine tanned deerskin 
 clothes, with a gold chain around his neck, smoking a 
 cigar. I ve seen United States Senators of his style of 
 features and build, also head-waiters and cops. 
 
 "He walks up and takes a look at us, while McClintock 
 disembarks and begins to interpret to the lead mule while 
 he smokes a cigarette. 
 
 " Hello, Buttinsky/ says the fine man to me. How 
 did you get in the game? I didn t see you buy any chips. 
 Who gave you the keys of the city? 
 
Supply and Demand 93 
 
 **Tm a poor traveller, says I. Especially mule-back. 
 You ll excuse me. Do you run a hack line or only a bluff? 
 
 " Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine quad 
 ruped, says he, and come inside. 
 
 "He raises a finger, and a villager runs up. 
 
 " This man will take care of your outfit, says he, and 
 I ll take care of you. 
 
 "He leads me into the biggest house, and sets out the 
 chairs and a kind of a drink the color of milk. It was the 
 finest room I ever saw. The stone walls was hung all 
 over with silk shawls, and there was red and yellow rugs 
 on the floor, and jars of red pottery and Angora goat skins, 
 and enough bamboo furniture to misfurnish half a dozen 
 seaside cottages. 
 
 " In the first place, says the man, you want to know 
 who I am. I m sole lessee and proprietor of this tribe of 
 Indians. They call me the Grand Yacuma, which is to 
 say King or Main Finger of the bunch. I ve got more 
 power here than a charge d affaires, a charge of dynamite, 
 and a charge account at Tiffany s combined. In fact, 
 I m the Big Stick, with as many extra knots on it as there 
 is on the record run of the Lusitania. Oh, I read the 
 papers now and then, says he. Now, let s hear your 
 entitlements, he goes on, and the meeting will be open. 
 
 " Well, says I, I am known as one W. D. Finch. 
 Occupation, capitalist. Address, 541 East Thirty- 
 second 
 
 "New York, chips in the Noble Grand. I know, 
 says he, grinning. It ain t the first time you ve seen it 
 
94 . Options 
 
 go down on the blotter. I can tell by the way you hand 
 it out. Well, explain "capitalist." 
 
 "I tells this boss plain what I come for and how I 
 come to came. 
 
 " Gold-dust? says he, looking as puzzled as a baby that 
 got a feather stuck on its molasses finger. "That s funny. 
 This ain t a gold-mining country. And you invested all 
 your capital on a stranger s story? Well, well! These 
 Indians of mine they are the last of the tribe of Peches 
 are simple as children. They know nothing of the 
 purchasing power of gold. I m afraid you ve been im 
 posed on, says he. 
 
 " Maybe so, says I, but it sounded pretty straight to 
 me. 
 
 " W. D., says the King, all of a sudden, I ll give you a 
 square deal. It ain t often I get to talk to a white man, 
 and I ll give you a show for your money. It may be these 
 constituents of mine have a few grains of gold-dust hid 
 away in their clothes. To-morrow you may get out these 
 goods you ve brought up and see if you can make any 
 sales. Now, I m going to introduce myself unofficially. 
 My name is Shane Patrick Shane. I own this tribe of 
 Peche Indians by right of conquest single handed and 
 unafraid. I drifted up here four years ago, and won em 
 by my size and complexion and nerve. I learned their 
 language in six weeks it s easy: you simply emit a 
 string of consonants as long as your breath holds out and 
 fchen point at what you re asking for. 
 
 " I conquered em, spectacularly, goes on King Shaac, 
 
Supply and Demand 95 
 
 and then I went at em with economical politics, law, 
 sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New England ethics and 
 parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can guess at 
 it, I preach to em in the council-house (I m the council) 
 on the law of supply and demand. I praise supply and 
 knock demand. I use the same text every time. You 
 wouldn t think, W. D., says Shane, that I had poetry hi 
 me, would you? 
 
 M *Well, says I, I wouldn t know whether to call it 
 poetry or not. 
 
 " Tennyson, says Shane, furnishes the poetic gospel 
 I preach. I always considered him the boss poet. Here s 
 the way the text goes : 
 
 "For, not to admire, if a man could learn it, were more 
 
 Than to walk all day like a Sultan of old in a garden of spice, ** 
 
 You see, I teach em to cut out demand that supply 
 Li the main thing. I teach em not to desire anything 
 beyond their simplest needs. A little mutton, a little 
 ocoa, and a little fruit brought up from the coast 
 that s all they want to make em happy. I ve got em 
 well trained. They make their own clothes and hats 
 out of a vegetable fibre and straw, and they re a contented 
 lot. It s a great thing, winds up Shane, to have made a 
 people happy by the incultivation of such simple insti 
 tutions. 
 
 "Well, the next day, with the King s permission. I has 
 the McClintock open up a couple of sacks of my goods in 
 the little plaza of the village. The Indians swarmed 
 round by the hundred and looked the bargain-counter 
 
96 Options 
 
 over. I shook red blankets at em, Hash d finger- r kit, s 
 and ear-bobs, tried pearl necklaces and side-combs on the 
 women, and a line of red hosiery on the men. Twas no 
 use. They looked on like hungry graven images, but I 
 never made a sale. I asked McClintock what was the 
 trouble. Mac yawned three or four times, rolled a ciga 
 rette, made one or two confidential side remarks to a mule, 
 and then condescended to inform me that the people had 
 no money. 
 
 "Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red and 
 royal as usual, with the gold chain over his chest and his 
 cigar in front of him. 
 } " How s business, W. D.? he asks. 
 
 " Fine, says I. It s a bargain-day rush. I ve got one 
 more line of goods to offer before I shut up shop. I ll 
 try em with safety-razors. I ve got two gross that I 
 bought at a fire sale. 
 
 "Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private 
 secretary he carries with him has to hold him up. 
 
 "*O my sainted Aunt Jerusha! says he, ain t you one 
 of the Babes in the Goods, W. D.? Don t you know that 
 no Indians ever shave? They pull out their whiskers 
 instead. 
 
 " Well, says I, that s just what these razors would da 
 for em they wouldn t have any kick coming if they 
 used em once. 
 
 "Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a 
 block, if there had been any block. 
 ^ " Tel? era. says I to McClintock, it ain t money I 
 
Supply and Demand 97 
 
 want tell cm I ll take gold-dust, lell em 111 allow 
 em sixteen dollars an ounce for it in trade. That s what 
 I m out for the dust. 
 
 "Mac interprets, and you d have thought a squadron 
 of cops had charged the crowd to disperse it. Every 
 uncle s nephew and aunt s niece of em faded away inside 
 of two minutes. 
 
 "At the royal palace that night me and the King talked 
 it over 
 
 They ve got the dust hid out somewhere, says I, or 
 they wouldn t have been so sensitive about it. 
 
 "They haven t, says Shane. What s this gag you ve 
 got about gold? You been reading Edward Allan PoeF 
 They ain t got any gold. 
 
 " They put it in quills, says I, and then they empty 
 it in jars, and then into sacks of twenty-five pounds each. 
 I got it straight. 
 
 "W. D., says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, 
 I don t often see a white man, and I feel like putting you 
 on. I don t think you ll get away from here alive, any 
 how, so I m going to tell you. Come over here. 
 
 "He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the 
 room and shows me a pile of buckskin sacks. 
 
 " Forty o f em, says Shane. One arroba in each one. 
 In round numbers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see 
 there. It s all mine. It belongs to the Grand Yacuma. 
 They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty 
 thousand dollars think of that, you glass-bead peddler, 
 says Shane and all mine. 
 
98 Options 
 
 " Little good it does you, says I, contemptuously and 
 hatefully. And so you are the government depository 
 of this gang of moneyless money-makers? Don t you 
 pay enough interest on it to enable one of your depositors 
 to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond 
 worth $200 for $4.85? 
 
 " Listen/ says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming 
 out on his brow. I m confidant with you, as you have, 
 somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever, he says, 
 feel the avoirdupois power of gold not the troy weight 
 of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it? 
 
 " *Never, says I. I never take in any bad money/ 
 
 "Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms 
 over the sacks of gold-dust. 
 
 " I love it, says he. I want to feel the touch of it day 
 and night. It s my pleasure in life. I come in this roonv 
 and I m a king and a rich man. I ll be a millionaire in 
 another year. The pile s getting bigger every month. 
 I ve got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the 
 creeks. I m the happiest man in the world, W. D. I 
 just want to be near this gold, and know it s mine and it s 
 increasing every day. Now, you know/ says he, Vhy 
 my Indians wouldn t buy your goods. They can t. 
 They bring all the dust to me. I m their king. I vt 
 taught em not to desire or admire. You might as well 
 shut up shop/ 
 
 " I ll tell you what you are/ says I. *You re a plain, 
 coBteaaptible miser. You preach supply and you forget 
 demand. Now, supply/ I goes on, is never anything 
 
Supply and Demand 99 
 
 but supply. On the contrary/ says I, demand is a much 
 broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the 
 rights of our women and children, and charity and friend 
 ship, and even a little begging on the street corners. 
 They ve both got to harmonize equally. And I ve got a 
 few things up my commercial sleeve yet, says I, that may 
 jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and economy.* 
 
 "The next morning I had McClintock bring up another 
 mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up. The 
 people gathered around the same as before. 
 
 "I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair- 
 combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women 
 put em on. And then I played trumps. 
 
 "Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand- 
 mirrors, with solid tinfoil backs, and passed em around 
 among the ladies. That was the first introduction of 
 looking-glasses among the Peche Indians. 
 
 "Shane walks by with his big laugh. 
 
 " Business looking up any? he asks. 
 
 "It s looking at itself right now, says I. 
 
 " By-and-by a kind of a murmur goes through the crowd. 
 The women had looked into the magic crystal and seen 
 that they were beautiful, and was confiding the secret to 
 the men. The men seemed to be urging the lack of money 
 and the hard times just before the election, but their 
 excuses didn t go. 
 
 "Then was my time. 
 
 "I called McClintock away from an animated conver 
 sation with his mules and told him to do some interpreting 
 
100 Options 
 
 "Tell em, says I, that gold-dust will buy for them 
 these befitting ornaments for kings and queens of the 
 earth. Tell em the yellow sand they wash out of the 
 waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop Suey 
 of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that 
 will make them beautiful and preserve and pickle them 
 from evil spirits. Tell em the Pittsburgh banks are pay 
 ing four per cent, interest on deposits by mail, while this 
 get-rich-frequently custodian of the public funds ain t 
 even paying attention. Keep telling em, Mac/ says I, 
 *to let the gold-dust family do their work. Talk to em 
 like a born anti-Bryanite, says I. Kemind em that 
 Tom Watson s gone back to Georgia, says I. 
 
 " McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of 
 his mules, and then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type 
 at the mob of shoppers. 
 
 "A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on 
 his arm, with three strings of my fish-scale jewelry and 
 imitation marble beads around her neck, stands up on a 
 block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like a man 
 shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes. 
 
 " He says, says McClintock, that the people not know 
 that gold-dust will buy their things. The women very 
 mad. The Grand Yacuma tell them it no good but for 
 keep to make bad spirits keep away. 
 
 You can t keep bad spirits away from money, says L 
 
 " They say, goes on McClintock, the Yacuma fool 
 them. They raise plenty row. 
 
 ** Going! Going! says I. Gold-dust or cash takes the 
 
Supply and Demand 101 
 
 entire stock. The dust weighed before you, and taken 
 at sixteen dollars the ounce the highest price on the 
 Gaudy mala coast. 
 
 "Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don*t 
 know what s up. Mac and me packs away the hand- 
 mirrors and jewelry they had handed back to us, and we 
 had the mules back to the corral they had set apart for 
 our garage. 
 
 "While we was there we hear great noises of shouting, 
 and down across the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, 
 with his clothes ripped half off, and scratches on his 
 face like a cat had fought him hard for every one of 
 its lives. 
 
 "They re looting the treasury, W. D., he sings out. 
 They re going to kill me and you, too. Unlimber a 
 couple of mules at once. We ll have to make a get-away 
 in a couple of minutes. 
 
 "They ve found out/ says I, the truth about the law 
 of supply and demand. 
 
 "It s the women, mostly, says the King. And they 
 used to admire me so! 
 
 " They hadn t seen looking-glasses then, says I. 
 
 "They ve got knives and hatchets, says Shane; Tmrry f 
 
 " Take that roan mule, says I. You and your law of 
 supply ! I ll ride the dun, for he s two knots per hour the 
 faster. The roan has a stiff knee, but he may make it, 
 says I. If you d included reciprocity in your political 
 platform I might have given you the dun, says I. 
 
 "Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules 
 
Options 
 
 and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches 
 reached the other side and bgan firing gtoaas and long 
 knives at us. We cut the thongs that held crp our end 
 of the bridge and headed for the coast. " 
 
 A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch s shop at that 
 moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch 
 nodded at him friendly. 
 
 "I heard down at Casey s," said the cop, in rumbling, 
 husky tones, "that there was going to be a picnic of the 
 Hat-Cleaners Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is 
 that right?" 
 
 " Sure, " said Finch. " There ll be a dandy time. " 
 
 "Gimme five tickets," said the cop, throwing a five- 
 dollar bill on the showcase. 
 
 "Why, " said Finch," ain t you going it a little too sa 
 
 "Go to h !" said the cop. "You got em to sell, 
 ain t you? Somebody s got to buy em. Wish I could 
 go along. " 
 
 I was glad to see Finch so well thought of in his neigh 
 borhood. 
 
 And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face 
 and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress. 
 
 " Mamma says," she recited shrilly, "that you must 
 
 give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the 
 
 milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with 
 
 ! but she didn t say that," the elf concluded, with a 
 
 ! . hopeful but honest grin. 
 
 Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I 
 
Supply and Demand 103 
 
 noticed that the total sum that the small girl received was 
 one dollar and four cents. 
 
 "That s the right kind of a law," remarked Finch as 
 he carefully broke some of the stitches of my hatband so 
 that it would assuredly come off within a few days 
 "the law of supply and demand. But they ve both got 
 to work together. I ll bet," he went on, with his dry 
 smile, "she ll get jelly beans with that nickel she likes 
 *em. What s supply if there s no demand for it?" 
 
 "What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously. 
 
 "Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was 
 Shane came in and bought the tickets. He came back 
 with me, and he s on the force now. " 
 
BURIED TREASURE 
 
 IHERE are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody 
 please sit still until they are called upon specifically to 
 rise? 
 
 I had been every kind of fool except one. I had ex 
 pended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played 
 poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops parted soon with 
 my money in many ways. But there remained one r6le 
 of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. 
 That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does 
 the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be fol 
 lowers in the hoof -prints of King Midas none has found a 
 pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise. 
 
 But, going back from my theme a while as lame pens 
 must do I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I saw 
 May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, 
 the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beauti 
 ful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic 
 witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a 
 small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and 
 charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like 
 raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty 
 kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the 
 picture for her. 
 
 10* 
 
Buried Treasure 105 
 
 You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have 
 and to hold. I wanted her to abide with me, and put my 
 slippers and pipe away every day in places where they can 
 not be found of evenings. 
 
 May Martha s father was a man hidden behind whis 
 kers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies 
 and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your 
 back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words 
 to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying 
 fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 
 em and calling em names. 
 
 He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized 
 her highly as a fine specimen of the racibus humanus be 
 cause she saw that he had food at times, and put his 
 clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-bottles 
 filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent-minded. 
 
 There was another besides myself who thought May 
 Martha Mangum one to be desired. That was Goodloe 
 Banks, a young man just home from college. He had 
 all the attainments to be found in books Latin, Greek, 
 philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathe 
 matics and logic. 
 
 If it hadn t been for his habit of pouring out this ii> 
 formation and learning on every one that he addressed, 
 I d have liked him pretty well. But, even as it was, he 
 and I were, you would have thought, great pals. 
 
 We got together every time we could because each el 
 us wanted to pump the other for whatever straws we could 
 find which way the wind blew from the heart of May 
 
106 Options 
 
 Martha Mangum rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe 
 Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is 
 the way of rivals. 
 
 You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, 
 culture, rowing, intellect, and clothes. I would have put 
 you in mind more of baseball and Friday-night debating 
 societies by way of culture and maybe of a good 
 horseback rider. 
 
 But in our talks together, and in our visits and conver 
 sation with May Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I 
 could find out which one of us she preferred. May 
 Martha was a natural-born non-committal, and knew in 
 her cradle how to keep people guessing. 
 
 As I said, old man Mangum was absent-minded. After 
 a long time he found out one day a little butterfly must 
 have told him that two young men were trying to 
 throw a net over the head of the young person, a daughter, 
 or some such technical appendage, who looked after his 
 comforts. 
 
 I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. 
 Old Mangum orally labelled and classified Goodloe and 
 myself easily among the lowest orders of the vertebrates; 
 and in English, too, without going any further into Latin 
 than the simple references to Orgetorix, Rex Helvetii 
 which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us 
 that if he ever caught us around his house again he would 
 add us to his collection. 
 
 Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expect 
 ing the storm to subside. When we dared to eall at the 
 
Buried Treasure 107 
 
 house again May Martha Mangum and her father were 
 gone. Gone! The house they had rented was closed. 
 Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also. 
 
 And not a word of farewell to either of us from May 
 Martha not a white, fluttering note pinned to the haw 
 thorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on the gate-post nor a post 
 card in the post-office to give us a clew. 
 
 For two months Goodloe Banks and I separately 
 tried every scheme we could think of to track the run 
 aways. We used our friendship and influence with the 
 ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad conductors, 
 and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results. 
 
 Then we became better friends and worse enemies 
 than ever. We forgathered in the back room of Snyder s 
 saloon every afternoon after work, and played dominoes, 
 and laid conversational traps to find out from each other 
 if anything had been discovered. That is the way of rivals. 
 
 Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying 
 his own learning and putting me in the class that was 
 reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot 
 play/* Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a con 
 tempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded 
 as good-natured, so I kept my temper. And I was trying 
 to find out if he knew anything about May Martha, so I 
 endured his society. 
 
 In talking things over one afternoon he said to me: 
 
 "Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you 
 profit? Miss Mangum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet un- 
 cultnred, but she is destined for higher things than you 
 
108 Options 
 
 could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed to 
 appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and 
 writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and 
 expended their philosophy of life. Don t you think you 
 are wasting your time looking for her?" 
 
 "My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room 
 house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a 
 Texas prairie. A piano," I went on, "with an automatic 
 player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle 
 under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always 
 hitched at a post for the missus and May Martha 
 Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, 
 and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away 
 every day in places where they cannot be found of even 
 ings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a fig a 
 dried, Smyrna, Dago-stand fig for your curriculums, 
 cults, and philosophy." 
 
 "She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe 
 Banks. 
 
 "Whatever she is meant for," I answered, "just now she 
 is out of pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can 
 without aid of the colleges." 
 
 "The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a 
 domino; and we had the beer. 
 
 Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came 
 into town and brought me a folded blue paper. He said 
 his grandfather had just died. I concealed a tear, and he 
 went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded 
 this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as 
 
Buried Treasure 109 
 
 part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules 
 and a hypotenuse of non-arable land. 
 
 The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during 
 the rebellion of the abolitionists against the secessionists. 
 It was dated June 14, 18G3, and it described the hiding- 
 place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver coin valued at 
 three hundred thousand dollars. Old Rundle grand 
 father of his grandson, Sam was given the information 
 by a Spanish priest who was in on the treasure-burying, 
 and who died many years before no, afterward in 
 old Rundle s house. Old Rundle wrote it down from 
 dictation. 
 
 "Why didn t your father look this up?" I asked young 
 Rundle. 
 
 "He went blind before he could do so," he replied. 
 
 "Why didn t you hunt for it yourself?" I asked. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I ve only known about the paper for 
 ten years. First there was the spring ploughin to do, and 
 then choppin the weeds out of the corn; and then come 
 takin fodder; and mighty soon winter was on us. It 
 seemed to run along that way year after year." 
 
 That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it 
 up with young Lee Rundle at once. 
 
 The directions on the paper were simple. The whole 
 burro cavalcade laden with the treasure started from an 
 old Spanish mission in Dolores County. They travelled 
 due south by the compass until they reached the Alamita 
 River. They forded this, and buried the treasure on the 
 top of a little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle stand 
 
110 Options 
 
 ing in a row between two higher ones. A heap of stones 
 marked the place of the buried treasure. All the party 
 except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few 
 days later. The secret was a monopoly. It looked good 
 to me. 
 
 Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, 
 hire a surveyor to run out the line from the Spanish mis 
 sion, and then spend the three hundred thousand dollars 
 seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But, without being 
 highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense. 
 
 We went to the State land-office and had a practical, 
 what they call a "working," sketch made of all the sur 
 veys of land from the old mission to the Alamito River. 
 On this map I drew a line due southward to the river. 
 The length of lines of each survey and section of land was 
 accurately given on the sketch. By these we found the 
 point on the river and had a "connection" made with it 
 and an important, well-identified corner of the Los 
 Animos five-league survey a grant made by King Philip 
 of Spain. 
 
 By doing this we did not need to have the line run out 
 by a surveyor. It was a great saving of expense and time. 
 
 So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team 
 with all the accessories, and drove a hundred and forty- 
 nine miles to Chico,the nearest town to the point we wished 
 to reach. There we picked up a deputy county surveyor. 
 He found the corner of the Los Animos survey for us, ran 
 out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas 
 west that our sketch called for, laid a stone a the spot, 
 
Buried Treasure 111 
 
 had coffee and bacon, and caught the mail-stage back to 
 fhico. 
 
 I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred 
 thousand dollars. Lee Bundle s was to be only one 
 third, because I was paying all the expenses. With that 
 two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find May 
 Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And with it I 
 could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum s dove 
 cot, too. If I could find that treasure ! 
 
 But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were 
 a dozen little mountains densely covered by cedar-brakes, 
 but not one shaped like a pack-saddle. That did not deter 
 TIS. Appearances are deceptive. A pack-saddle, like 
 beauty, may exist only in the eye of the beholder. 
 
 I and the grandson of the treasure examined those cedar- 
 covered hills with the care of a lady hunting for the wicked 
 flea. We explored every side, top, circumference, mean 
 elevation, angle, slope, and concavity of every one for two 
 miles up and down the river. W T e spent four days doing 
 so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and hauled 
 the remains of the coffee and bacon the one hundred and 
 forty-nine miles back to Concho City. 
 
 Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. 
 I was busy driving, because I was in a hurry. 
 
 As shortly as could be after our empty return, Goodloe 
 Banks and I forgathered in the back room of Snyder s 
 saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told 
 Goodloe about my expedition after the buried treasure. 
 
 "If I could have found that three hundred thousand 
 
Options 
 
 dollars," I said to him, "I could have scoured and sifted 
 the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum." 
 
 "She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I 
 shall find her myself. But, tell me how you went about 
 discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was 
 imprudently buried." 
 
 I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the 
 draughtsman s sketch with the distances marked plainly 
 upon it. 
 
 After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back 
 in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion of sar 
 donic, superior, collegiate laughter. 
 
 "Well, you are a fool, Jim," he said, when he could 
 speak. 
 
 "It s your play," said I, patiently, fingering my double 
 six. 
 
 "Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the 
 table with his chalk. 
 
 "Why am I a fool?" I asked. "Buried treasure has 
 been found before in many places." 
 
 "Because," said he, "in calculating the point on the 
 river where your line would strike you neglected to allow 
 for the variation. The variation there would be nine de 
 grees west. Let me have your pencil." 
 
 Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an en 
 velope. 
 
 "The distance, from north to south, of the line run from 
 the Spanish mission," said he, "is exactly twenty-two 
 miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according to your 
 
Buried Treasure 113 
 
 ttory. Allowing for the variation, the point on the Ala- 
 mito River where you should have searched for your 
 treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty- 
 five varas farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, 
 what a fool you are, Jim!" 
 
 "What is this variation that you speak of?" I asked. 
 "I thought figures never lied." 
 
 "The variation of the magnetic compass," said Goodloe, 
 "from the true meridian." 
 
 He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out 
 in his face the singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the 
 seeker after buried treasure. 
 
 "Sometimes," he said with the air of the oracle, "these 
 old traditions of hidden money are not without founda 
 tion. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing 
 the location. Perhaps together we might " 
 
 The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, 
 became companions in adventure. We went to Chico by 
 stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad town. In 
 Chico we hired a team drawing a covered spring-wagon 
 and camping paraphernalia. We had the same surveyor 
 run out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his varia 
 tions, and then dismissed him and sent him on his home 
 ward road. 
 
 It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and 
 made a fire near the bank of the river and cooked supper. 
 Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not 
 fitted him for practical things. 
 
 But while I worked he cheered me with the expression 
 
114 Options 
 
 of great thoughts handed down from the dead ones of old. 
 He quoted some translations from the Greek at much 
 length. 
 
 "Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite pas 
 sage with Miss Mangum as I recited it." 
 
 "She is meant for higher things," said I, repeating his 
 phrase. 
 
 "Can there be anything higher," asked Goodloe, "than 
 to dwell in the society of the classics, to live in the atmos 
 phere of learning and culture? You have often decried 
 education. What of your wasted efforts through your 
 ignorance of simple mathematics? How soon would you 
 have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown 
 you your error ? >r 
 
 "We ll take a look at those hills across the river first," 
 said I, "and see what we find. I am still doubtful about 
 variations. I have been brought up to believe that the 
 needle is true to the pole." 
 
 The next morning was a bright June one. We were up 
 early and had breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He 
 recited Keats, I think it was, and Kelly or Shelley 
 while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to cross 
 the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, 
 and explore the many sharp-peaked, cedar-covered hills 
 on the other side. 
 
 "My good Ulysses," said Goodloe, slapping me on the 
 shoulder while I was washing the tin breakfast plates, 
 "let me see the enchanted document once more. I be 
 lieve it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like 
 
Buried Treasure 115 
 
 4 pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it 
 like, Jim?" 
 
 "Score one against culture," said I. "I ll know it 
 when I see it." 
 
 Goodloe was looking at old Rundle s document when 
 he ripped out a most uncollegiate swear-word. 
 
 "Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the 
 sunlight. "Look at that," he said, laying his finger 
 against it. 
 
 On the blue paper a thing I had never noticed before 
 I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures : 
 "Malvern, 1898." 
 
 "What about it?" I asked. 
 
 "It s the water-mark," said Goodloe. "The paper was 
 manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 
 1863. This is a palpable fraud." 
 
 "Oh, I don t know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty 
 reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the 
 paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle." 
 
 And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education 
 permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and glared 
 at me. 
 
 "I ve often told you you were a fool," he said. "You 
 have let yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And 
 you have imposed upon me." 
 
 "How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you?" 
 
 "By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have dis 
 covered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school 
 education should have enabkd you to avoid- AncU" ha 
 
116 Options 
 
 continued, "I have been put to expense that I could ill 
 afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done 
 \vith it." 
 
 I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh 
 from the dish-water. 
 
 "Goodloe Banks," I said, **I care not one parboiled 
 navy bean for your education, I always barely tolerated 
 it in any one, and I despised it in you. What has your 
 learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore 
 to your friends. Away," I said " away with your water 
 marks and variations! They are nothing to me. They 
 shall not deflect me from the quest." 
 
 I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small 
 mountain shaped like a pack-saddle. 
 
 "I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for 
 the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or noto 
 If you wish to let a water-mark or a variation shake your 
 soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide." 
 
 A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river 
 road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. 
 Goodloe flagged it. 
 
 "I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No 
 one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper now. 
 Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your 
 fate." 
 
 He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail- 
 wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in a 
 cloud of dust. 
 
 After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses or* 
 
Buried Treasure 117 
 
 aew grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way 
 slowly through the cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill 
 shaped like a pack-saddle. 
 
 It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I 
 seen so many birds, so many butterflies, dragon-flies, 
 grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the 
 air and fields. 
 
 I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from 
 base to summit. I found an absolute absence of signs 
 relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, 
 no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of the 
 three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the docu 
 ment of old man Rundle. 
 
 I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. 
 Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful 
 green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the 
 Alamito River. 
 
 And there I was startled to see what I took to be a wild 
 man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a 
 giant butterfly with brilliant wings. 
 
 "Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and 
 wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of educa 
 tion and learning. 
 
 And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered 
 cottage near the small stream. And in a little grassy glade 
 I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers. 
 
 She straightened up and looked at me. For the first 
 time since I knew her I saw her face which was th 
 
118 Optifoas 
 
 color of the white keys of a new piano turn pink. 1 
 walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered 
 flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass. 
 
 "I knew you would come, Jim," she said clearly. 
 "Father wouldn t let me write, but I knew you would 
 come." 
 
 What followed, you may guess there was my wagoa 
 and team just across the river. 
 
 I ve often wondered what good too much education is 
 to a man if he can t use it for himself. If all the benefits 
 of it are to go to others, where does it come in? 
 
 For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is 
 an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with 
 an automatic player, and a good start toward the three 
 thousand head of cattle is under fence. 
 
 And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are 
 put away in places where they cannot be found. 
 
 But who cares for that? Who cares who eares? 
 
TO HIM WHO WAITS 
 
 Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his care 
 with unusual animation. 
 
 The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Cats- 
 kills that had strayed down to the river s edge, and, not 
 having a ferry ticket, had to stop there. The bijou moun 
 tains were densely wooded and were infested by ferocious 
 squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced the sum 
 mer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, 
 a macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills 
 and the foamy lace of the river s edge. A dim path wound 
 from the comfortable road up a rocky height to the her 
 mit s cave. One mile up-stream was the Viewpoint Inn, 
 to which summer folk from the city came; leaving cool, 
 electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven 
 about in burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, 
 by spindle-legged Modreds bearing the blankest of shields. 
 
 Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye 
 receive the personal touch that shall endear you to ike 
 hero. 
 
 A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling 
 at the ends, dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like 
 those that were imposed upon the West some years ago 
 by self -appointed "divine healers" who succeeded the 
 
120 Options 
 
 grasshopper crop. His outward vesture appeared to be 
 kind of gunny-sacking, cut and made into a garment that 
 would have made the fortune of a London tailor. His 
 long, well-shaped fingers, delicate nose, and poise of man 
 ner raised him high above the class of hermits who fear 
 water and bury money in oyster-cans in their caves in 
 spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall 
 above. 
 
 The hermit s home was not altogether a cave. Th 
 cave was an addition to the hermitage, which was a rud 
 hut made of poles daubed with clay and covered with the 
 best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing. 
 
 In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a 
 rustic bookcase made of unplaned poplar planks, and a 
 table formed of a wooden slab laid across two upright 
 pieces of granite something between the furniture of a 
 Druid temple and that of a Broadway beefsteak dungeon. 
 Hung against the walls were skins of wild animals pur 
 chased in the vicinity of Eighth Street and University 
 Place, New York. 
 
 The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the 
 hermit cooked his meals on a rude stone hearth. Witt 
 infinite patience and an old axe he had chopped naturaS 
 shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood his stores of 
 flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking- 
 powder, soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo 
 Emulsion for chaps and roughness of the hands and face. 
 
 The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was 
 an asset of the Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was second 
 
To Him Who Waits 121 
 
 in interest only to the Mysterious Echo in the Haunted 
 Glen. And the Lover s Leap beat him only a few inches, 
 flat-footed. He was known far (but not very wide, on, 
 account of the topography) as a scholar of brilliant intel 
 lect who had forsworn the world because he had been 
 jilted in a love affair. Every Saturday night the View 
 point Inn sent to him surreptitiously a basket of pro 
 visions. He never left the immediate outskirts of his 
 hermitage. Guests of the inn who visited him said his 
 store of knowledge, wit, and scintillating philosophy were 
 simply wonderful, you know. That summer the View 
 point Inn was crowded with guests. So, on Saturday 
 nights, there were extra cans of tomatoes, and sirloin steak, 
 instead of "rounds," in the hermit s basket. 
 
 Now you have the material allegations in the case. So, 
 make way for Romance. 
 
 Evidently the hermit expected a visitor. He carefully 
 combed his long hair and parted his apostolic beard. 
 When the ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock on a stone shelf 
 announced the hour of five he picked up his gunny-sacking 
 skirts, brushed them carefully, gathered an oaken staff, 
 and strolled slowly into the thick woods that surrounded 
 the hermitage. 
 
 He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, 
 slippery with its carpet of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, 
 youngest and fairest of the famous Trenholme sisters. 
 She was all in blue from hat to canvas pumps, varying 
 in tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at 
 daybreak on a spring Saturday to a deep hue of ft 
 
122 Options 
 
 Monday morning at nine when the washerwoman has 
 failed to show up. 
 
 Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine- 
 needles and sighed. The hermit, on the q. t., removed a 
 grass burr from the ankle of one sandalled foot with the 
 big toe of his other one. She blued and almost starched 
 and ironed him with her cobalt eyes. 
 
 "It must be so nice," she said in little, tremulous gasps. 
 "to be a hermit, and have ladies climb mountains to talk 
 to you." 
 
 The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. 
 Beatrix, with a sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine- 
 needles like a bluebird upon her nest. The hermit fol 
 lowed suit; drawing his feet rather awkwardly under his 
 gunny-sacking. 
 
 "It must be nice to be a mountain," said he, with pon 
 derous lightness, "and have angels in blue climb up you 
 Instead of flying over you." 
 
 "Mamma had neuralgia," said Beatrix, "and went to 
 bed, or I couldn t have come. It s dreadfully hot at that 
 horrid old inn. But we hadn t the money to go anywhere 
 else this summer." 
 
 "Last night," said the hermit, "I climbed to the top of 
 that big rock above us. I could see the lights of the inn 
 and hear a strain or two of the music when the wind was 
 right. I imagined you moving gracefully in the arms of 
 others to the dreamy music of the waltz amid the fra 
 grance of flowers. Think how lonely I must have 
 been!" 
 
To Him Who Waits 123 
 
 The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous 
 Trenholme sisters sighed. 
 
 "You haven t quite hit it," she said, plaintively. "I 
 was moving gracefully at the arms of another. Mamma 
 had one of her periodical attacks of rheumatism in both 
 elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub them for an hour 
 with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn t think 
 that smelled like flowers. You know, there were some 
 West Point boys and a yacht load of young men from the 
 city at last evening s weekly dance. I ve known mamma 
 to sit by an open window for three hours with one half of 
 her registering 85 degrees and the other half frost-bitten, 
 and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of ineligiblcs 
 come around where I am, and she ll begin to swell at the 
 knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her to 
 her room and rub her arms. To see mamma dressed 
 you d be surprised to know the number of square inches of 
 surface there are to her arms. I think it must be delight 
 ful to be a hermii. That cassock or gabardine, 
 isn t it? that you wear is so becoming. Do you make 
 it or them of course you must have changes your 
 self? And what a blessed relief it must be to wear san 
 dals instead of shoes ! Think how we must suffer no 
 matter how small I buy my shoes they always pinch my 
 toes. Oh, why can t there be lady hermits, too!" 
 
 The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister 
 extended two slender blue ankles that ended in two enor 
 mous blue-silk bows that almost concealed two fairy Ox 
 fords, also of one of the forty-seven shades of blue. The 
 
124 Options 
 
 hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex-telepathic action, 
 drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny-sacking. 
 
 " I have heard about the romance of your life," said Miss 
 Trenholme, softly. "They have it printed on the back of 
 the menu card at the inn. Was she very beautiful and 
 charming?" 
 
 "On the bills of fare!" muttered the hermit; "but what 
 do I care for the world s babble? Yes, she was of the 
 highest and grandest type. Then," he continued, "then 
 I thought the world could never contain another equal to 
 her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fast 
 ness to spend the remainder of my life alone to devote 
 and dedicate my remaining years to her memory." 
 
 "It s grand," said Miss Trenholme, "absolutely grand! 
 I think a hermit s life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors 
 calling, no dressing for dinner how I d like to be one! 
 But there s no such luck for me. If I don t marry this 
 season I honestly believe mamma will force me into settle 
 ment work or trimming hats. It isn t because I m getting 
 old or ugly; but we haven t enough money left to butt in 
 at any of the swell places any more. And I don t want 
 to marry unless it s somebody I like. That s why I d 
 like to be a hermit. Hermits don t ever marry, do they?" 
 
 "Hundreds of em," said the hermit, "when they ve 
 found the right one." 
 
 "But they re hermits," said the youngest and beauti- 
 fulest, "because they ve lost the right one, aren t they?" 
 
 "Because they think they have," answered the recluse, 
 fatuously. " Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave as 
 
To Him Who Waits 125 
 
 well as to one in the world of swells/ as I believe they are 
 called in the argot." 
 
 "When one of the swells, brings it to them," said Miss 
 Trenholme. "And my folks are swells That s the 
 trouble. But there are so many swells at the seashore 
 in the summer-time that we hardly amount to more than 
 ripples. So we ve had to put all our money into river and 
 harbor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. 
 There were four of us. I m the only surviving one. The 
 others have been married off. All to money. Mamma 
 is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest 
 pen- wipers and art calendars every Christmas. I m the 
 only one on the market now. I m forbidden to look at any 
 one who hasn t money." 
 
 "But "began the hermit. 
 
 "But, oh," said the beautifulest, "of course hermits 
 have great pots of gold and doubloons buried somewhere 
 near three great oak-trees. They all have." 
 
 "I have not," said the hermit, regretfully. 
 
 "I m so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always 
 thought they had. I think I must go now." 
 
 Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest. 
 
 "Fair lady "began the hermit. 
 
 "I am Beatrix Trenholme some call me Trix," she 
 said. "You must come to the inn to see me." 
 
 "I haven t been a stone s-throw from my cave in ten 
 years," said the hermit. 
 
 "You must come to see me there," she repeated 
 u Any evening except Thursday." 
 
126 Options 
 
 The hermit smiled weakly. 
 
 "Good-bye," she said, gathering the folds of her pale- 
 blue skirt. "I shall expect you. But not on Thursday 
 CTening, remember." 
 
 What an interest it would give to the future menu cards 
 of the Viewpoint Inn to have these printed lines added to 
 them : " Only once during the more than ten years of his 
 lonely existence did the mountain hermit leave his famous 
 cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the 
 inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, young 
 est and most beautiful of the celebrated Trenhohne sis 
 ters, whose brilliant marriage to " 
 
 Aye, to whom? 
 
 The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the 
 door stood Bob Binkley, his old friend and companion of 
 the days before he had renounced the world Bob, him 
 self, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the sum 
 mer man s polychromatic garb Bob, the millionaire, 
 with his fart, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, 
 sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was two 
 years older than the hermit, and looked five years 
 younger. 
 
 "You re Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and 
 that going-away bathrobe," he shouted. "I read about 
 you on the bill of fare at the inn. They ve run your bi 
 ography in between the cheese and Not Responsible for 
 Coats and Umbrellas. What d you do it for, Hamp? 
 And ten years, too gee whilikins!" 
 
 "You re just the same," said the hermit. "Come in 
 
To Him Wlio Waits 127 
 
 nnd sit down. Sit on that limestone rock over there; it s 
 softer than the granite." 
 
 "I can t understand it, old man," said Binkley. "I 
 can see how you could give up a woman for ten years, but 
 not ten years for a woman. Of course I know why you did 
 it. Everybody does. Edith Can*. She jilted four or 
 five besides you. But you were the only one who took to 
 a hole in * be ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, 
 the Klondike, politics, and that similia similibus cure. 
 But, say Hamp, Edith Carr was just about the finest 
 woman in the world high-toned and proud and noble, 
 and playing her ideals to win at all kinds of odds She 
 certainly was a crackerjack." 
 
 "After I renounced the world," said the hermit, "I 
 never heard of her again." 
 
 "She married me," said Binkley. 
 
 The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante- 
 \jave and wriggled his toes. 
 
 "I know how you feel about it," said Binkley. "What 
 else could she do? There were her four sisters and her 
 mother and old man Carr you remember how he put 
 all the money he had into dirigible balloons? Well, 
 everything was coming down and nothing going up with 
 em, as you might say. Well, I know Edith as well as 
 you do although I married her. I was worth a million 
 then, but I ve run it up since to between five and six. It 
 wasn t me she wanted as much as well, it was about 
 like this: She had that bunch on her hands, and they 
 had to be taken cafe of. Edith married me two months 
 
128 Options 
 
 after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought she 
 liked me, too, at the time/ 
 
 "And now?" inquired the recluse. 
 
 " We re better friends than ever now. She got a divorce 
 from me two years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn t 
 put in any defence. Well, well, well, Hamp, this is cer 
 tainly a funny dugout you ve built here. But you always 
 were a hero of fiction. Seems like you d have been the 
 very one to strike Edith s fancy. Maybe you did but 
 it s the bank-roll that catches em, my boy your caves 
 and whiskers won t do it. Honestly, Hamp, don t you 
 think you ve been a darned fool?" 
 
 The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was 
 and always had been so superior to the crude and mer 
 cenary Binkley that even his vulgarities could not anger 
 him. Moreover, his studies and meditations in his re 
 treat had raised him far above the little vanities of the 
 world. His little mountainside had been almost an 
 Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the 
 4>olts hurled in the valleys of man below. Had his ten 
 years of renunciation, of thought, of devotion to an ideal, 
 of living scorn of a sordid world, been in vain? Up from 
 the world had come to him the youngest and beautifulest 
 fairer than Edith one and three seventh tunes 
 lovelier than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the her 
 mit smiled in his beard. 
 
 When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from 
 the blot of his presence and the first faint star showed 
 above the pines, the hermit ot the can of baking- 
 
To Him Who Waits 129 
 
 nowder from his cupboard. lie still smiled behind his 
 beard. 
 
 There was a slight rustle in the doorway There stood 
 Edith Carr, with all the added beauty and stateliness and 
 noble bearing that ten years had brought her. 
 
 She was never one to chatter. She looked at the her 
 mit with her large, thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood 
 still, surprised into a pose as motionless as her own Only 
 his subconscious sense of the fitness of things caused him 
 to turn the baking-powder can slowly in his hands until its 
 red label was hidden against his bosom. 
 
 "I am stopping at the inn,* said Edith, in low but clear 
 tones. "I heard of you there. I toid myself that I 
 must see you. I want to ask your forgiveness. I sold my 
 happiness for money. There were others to be provided 
 for but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see 
 you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten 
 years, they tell me, cherishing my memory! I was blind, 
 Hampton. I could not see then that all the money in the 
 world cannot weigh in the scales against a faithful heart. 
 If but it is too late now, of course." 
 
 Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be 
 in a loving woman s pride. But through the thin dis 
 guise the hermit saw easily that his lady had come back 
 to him if he chose. He had won a golden crown if 
 it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of 
 faithfulness was ready for his hand if he desired to 
 stretch it forth. 
 
 For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone 
 
130 Options 
 
 upon him with a reflected radiance. And then by turns 
 he felt the manly sensations of indignation at having been 
 discarded, and of repugnance at having been as it were 
 sought again. And last of all how strange that it 
 should have come at last ! the pale-blue vision of the 
 beautifulest of the Trenholme sisters illuminated his 
 mind s eye and left him without a waver. 
 
 "It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the bak 
 ing-powder can against his heart. 
 
 Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards 
 down the path. The hermit had begun to twist the lid off 
 his can, but he hid it again under his sacking robe. He 
 could see her great eyes shining sadly through the twilight; 
 but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his shack and 
 made no sign. 
 
 Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit 
 Was seized by the world-madness. 
 
 Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elfland, came 
 now and then a few bars of music played by the casino 
 band. The Hudson was broadened by the night into an 
 illimitable sea those lights, dimly seen on its opposite 
 shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-lines, but low- 
 set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front of 
 the inn were gay with fireflies or were they motor-boats, 
 smelling of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known 
 these things and had sported with Amaryllis in the shade 
 of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But for ten years 
 he had turned a heedless ear to these far-off echoes of a 
 frivolous world. But to-night there was something wrong. 
 
To Him Who Waits 131 
 
 The casino band was playing a waltz a waltz. What 
 a fool he had been to tear deliberately ten years of his life 
 from the calendar of existence for one who had given him 
 up for the false joys that wealth " turn ti turn ti turn ti" 
 how did that waltz go? But those years had not been 
 sacrificed had they not brought him the star and pearl 
 of all the world, the youngest and beautifulest of 
 
 "Butdo no* come on Thursday evening, "she had insisted. 
 Perhaps by now she would be moving slowly and grace 
 fully to the strains of that waltz, held closely by West 
 Pointers or city commuters, while he, who had read in her 
 eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost years 
 of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain den. 
 Why should " 
 
 "Damn it," said the hermit, suddenly, "I ll do it!" 
 
 He threw down his Marcus Aurelius and threw off his 
 gunny-sack toga. He dragged a dust-covered trunk from 
 a corner of the cave, and with difficulty wrenched open 
 its lid. 
 
 Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. 
 Clothes ten years old in cut scissors, razors, hats, 
 shoes, all his discarded attire and belongings, were dragged 
 ruthlessly from their renunciatory rest and strewn about 
 in painful disorder. 
 
 A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently for 
 the dulled razors to perform approximately their office. 
 Cutting his own hair was beyond the hermit s skill. So 
 he only combed laid brushed it backward as smoothly as he 
 could. Charity forbids us to consider the heartburnings 
 
132 Options 
 
 and exertions of one so long removed from haberdashery 
 and society. 
 
 At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his 
 cave and began to dig in the soft earth with a long iron 
 spoon. Out of the cavity he thus made he drew a tin can, 
 and out of the can three thousand dollars in bills, tightly- 
 rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real hermit, as 
 this may assure you. 
 
 You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down the 
 little mountainside. A long, wrinkled, black frock-coat 
 reached to his calves. White duck trousers, unacquainted 
 with the tailor s goose, a pink shirt, white standing collar 
 with brilliant blue butterfly tie, and buttoned congress 
 gaiters. But think, sir and madam ten years! From 
 beneath a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a striped band 
 flowed his hair. Seeing him, with all your shrewdness 
 you could not have guessed him. You would have said 
 that he played Hamlet or the tuba or pinochle 
 you would never have laid your hand on your heart and 
 said: "He is a hermit who lived ten years in a cave for 
 love of one lady - to win another." 
 
 The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the 
 river. Gay lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a 
 soft glamour within it. A hundred ladies and gentlemen 
 from the inn and summer cottages flitted in and about 
 it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the 
 hermit had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Some 
 thing seemed to be on there, too. The windows were 
 brilliantly lighted, and music was playing music 
 
To Him Who Waits 135 
 
 different from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino 
 band 
 
 A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the 
 iron gate, with its immense granite posts and wrought-iroa 
 lamp-holders. 
 
 "What is going on here to-night?" asked the hermft. 
 
 "Well, sah," said the servitor, "dey is having de reg lar 
 Thursday-evenin* dance in de casino. And in dc grill 
 room dere s a beefsteak dinner, sah." 
 
 The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hillside whence 
 burst suddenly a triumphant strain of splendid harmony. 
 
 "And up there," said he, "they are playing Mendels 
 sohn what is going on up there?" 
 
 "Up in de inn," said the dusky one, "dey is a weddin 
 goin* on. Mr. Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin* 
 Miss Trenholme, sah de young lady who am quite de 
 belle of de place, sah." 
 
HE ALSO SERVES 
 
 IF I could have a thousand years just one little 
 thousand years more of life, I might, in that time, 
 draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of 
 her robe. 
 
 Up from ships men come, and from waste places and 
 forest and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in 
 strangely distributed words of the things they have seen 
 and considered. The recording of their tales is no more 
 than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two 
 fates I dread deafness and writer s cramp. The hand 
 is yet steady; let the ear bear the blame if these printed 
 words be not in the order they were delivered to me by 
 Hunky Magee, true camp-follower of fortune. 
 
 Biography shall claim you but an instant I first 
 knew Hunky when he was head-waiter at Chubb s little 
 beefsteak restaurant and cafe on Third Avenue, There 
 was only one waiter besides. 
 
 Then, successively, I caromed against him in the little 
 streets of the Big City after his trip to Alaska, hie voyage 
 as oook with a treasure-seeking expedition to the Carib 
 bean, aad his failure as a pearl-fisher in the Arkansas 
 River. Between these dashes into the land of adventure 
 he usually came back to Chubb s for a while, Chubb s 
 
 134 
 
He Aho Serves 135 
 
 was a port for him when gales blew too high; but when you 
 dined there and Hunky went for your steak you never 
 knew whether he would come to anchor in the kitchen or 
 in the Malayan Archipelago. You wouldn t care for his 
 description he was soft of voice and hard of face, and 
 rarely had to use more than one eye to quell any approach 
 to a disturbance among Chubb s customers. 
 
 One night I found Hunky standing at a corner of Twenty - 
 tiu rd Street and Third Avenue after an absence of several 
 months. In ten minutes we had a little round table be 
 tween us in a quiet corner, and my ears began to get busy. 
 I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw Husky s 
 word-of-mouth blows it ah 1 came to something like this: 
 
 "Speaking of the next election," said Hunky, "did you 
 ever know much about Indians? No? I don t mean the 
 Cooper, Beadle, cigar-store, or Laughing Water kind 
 I mean the modern Indian the kind that takes Greek 
 prizes in colleges and scalps the half-back on the other aide 
 hi football games. The kind that eats macaroons and tea 
 in the afternoons with the daughter of the professor of 
 biology, and fills up on grasshoppers and fried rattlesnake 
 when they get back to the ancestral wickiup. 
 
 "Well, they ain t so bad. I like em better than most 
 foreigners that have come over in the last few hundred 
 years. One thing about the Indian is this : when he mixes 
 with the white race he swaps all his own vices for them of 
 the pale-faces and he retains all his own virtues. Well, 
 his virtuea are enough to call out the reserves whenever 
 he lets em loose. But the imported foreigners adopt 
 
136 Options 
 
 our virtues and keep their own vices and it s going to 
 take our whole standing army some day to police that 
 gang. 
 
 "But let me tell you about the trip I took to Mexico 
 with High Jack Snakefeeder, a Cherokee twice removed, a 
 graduate of a Pennsylvania college and the latest thing 
 in pointed-toed, rubber-heeled, patent kid moccasins and 
 Madras hunting-shirt with turned-back cuffs. He was a 
 friend of mine. I met him in Tahlequah when I was out 
 there during the land boom, and we got thick. He had 
 got all there was out of colleges and had come back to lead 
 his people out of Egypt. He was a man of first-class stylo 
 and wrote essays, and had been invited to visit rich guys 
 houses in Boston and such places. 
 
 "There was a Cherokee girl in Muscogee that High 
 Jack was foolish about. He took me to see her a few times. 
 Her name was Florence Blue Feather but you want to 
 clear your mind of all ideas of squaws with nose-rings and 
 army blankets. This young lady was whiter than you are, 
 and better educated than I ever was. You couldn t have 
 told her from any of the girls shopping in the swell Third 
 Avenue stores. I liked her so well that I got to calling on 
 her now and then when High Jack wasn t along, which 
 is the way of friends in such matters. She was educated 
 at the Muscogee College, and was making a specialty of 
 let s see eth yes, ethnology. That s the art that 
 goes back and traces the descent of different races of 
 people, leading up from jelly-fish through monkeys and to 
 the O Briens. High Jack had took up that line too, and 
 
He Also Serves 137 
 
 had read papers about it before all kinds of riotous as 
 semblies Chautauquas and Choctaws and chowder- 
 parties, and such. Having a mutual taste for musty in 
 formation like that was what made em like each other, I 
 suppose. But I don t know! What they call congen 
 iality of tastes ain t always it. Now, when Miss Blue 
 Feather and me was talking together, I listened to her 
 affidavits about the first families of the Land of Nod being 
 cousins gennan (well, if the Germans don t nod, who 
 does?) to the mound-builders of Ohio with incompre 
 hension and respect. And when Fd tell her about the 
 Bowery and Coney Island, and sing her a few songs that 
 I d heard the Jamaica niggers sing at their church lawn- 
 parties, she didn t look much less interested than she did 
 when High Jack would tell her that he had a pipe that the 
 first inhabitants of America originally arrived here on stilts 
 after a freshet at Tenafly, New Jersey. 
 
 "But I was going to tell you more about High Jack. 
 
 "About six months ago I get a letter from him, saying 
 he d been commissioned by the Minority Report Bureau 
 of Ethnology at Washington to go down to Mexico and 
 translate some excavations or dig up the meaning of some 
 ihorthand notes on some ruins or something of that 
 sort. And if I d go along he could squeeze the price into 
 the expense account. 
 
 "Well, I d been holding a napkin over my arm at 
 Chubb s about long enough then, so I wired High Jack 
 *Yes ; and he sent me a ticket, and I met him in Wash 
 ington, and he had a lot of news to tell me. First of all 
 
188 Options 
 
 was that Florence Blue Feather had suddenly disappeared 
 from her home and environments. 
 
 " Run away? I asked. 
 
 " Vanished/ says High J&ck. Disappeared like your 
 shadow when the sun goes under a cloud. She was seen 
 on the street, and then she turned a corner and nobody 
 ever seen her afterward. The whole community turned 
 out to look for her, but we never found a clew. 
 
 " That s bad that s bad, says I. She was a mighty 
 nice girl, and as smart as you find em/ 
 
 "High Jack seemed to take it hard. I guess he must 
 have esteemed Miss Blue Feather quite highly. I could 
 see that he d referred the matter to the whiskey- jug. 
 That was his weak point and many another man s. 
 I ve noticed that when a man loses a girl he generally takes 
 to drink either just before or just after it happens. 
 
 "From Washington we railroaded it to New Orleans, and 
 there took a tramp steamer bound for Belize. And a gale 
 pounded us all down the Caribbean, and nearly wrecked 
 us on the Yucatan coast opposite a little town without a 
 harbor called Boca de Coacoyula. Suppose the ship had 
 run against that name in the dark ! 
 
 " Better fifty years of Europe than a cyclone in the bay, 
 says High Jack Snakefeeder. So we get the captain to 
 send us ashore in a dory when the squall seemed to cease 
 from squalling 
 
 " We will find ruins here or make em/ says High. 
 The Government doesn t care which we do. An appro 
 priation is an appropriation/ 
 
lie Also Serves 139 
 
 "Boca de Coacoyula was a dead town. Them biblical 
 towns we read about Tired and Siphon after they 
 was destroyed, they must have looked like Forty-second 
 Street and Broadway compared to this Boca place. It 
 still claimed 1300 inhabitants as estimated and engraved 
 on the stone courthouse by the census- taker in 1597. The 
 citizens were a mixture of Indians and other Indians; but 
 some of em was light-colored, which I was surprised to 
 see. The town was huddled up on the shore, with woods 
 so thick around it that a subpcena-server couldn t have 
 reached a monkey ten yards away with the papers. We 
 wondered what kept it from being annexed to Kansas; 
 but we soon found out that it was Major Bing. 
 
 " Major Bing was the ointment around the fly. He had 
 the cochineal, sarsaparilla, logwood, annatto. hemp, and 
 all other dye-woods and pure food adulteration conces 
 sions cornered. He had five sixths of the Boca de Thin- 
 gama-jiggers working for him on shares. It was a beauti 
 ful graft. We used to brag about Morgan and E. H. 
 and others of our wisest when I was in the provinces 
 but now no more. That peninsula has got our little 
 country turned into a submarine without even the obser 
 vation tower showing. 
 
 "Major Bing o idea was this: He had the population 
 go forth into the forest and gather these products. When 
 they brought em in he gave em one fifth for their trouble. 
 Sometimes they d strike and demand a sixth. The Major 
 always gave in to em. 
 
 "The Major had a bungalow so close on the sea that 
 
140 Options 
 
 the nine-inch tide seeped through the cracks in the kitchen 
 floor. Me and him and High Jack Snakef eeder sat on the 
 porch and drank rum from noon till midnight. He said 
 he had piled up $300,000 in New Orleans banks, and High 
 and me could stay with him forever if we would. But 
 High Jack happened to think of the United States, and 
 began to talk ethnology. 
 
 " Ruins!* says Major Bing. The woods are full of 
 em. I don t know how far they date back, but they was 
 here before I came. 
 
 "High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of 
 that locality are addicted to. 
 
 "Why/ says the Major, rubbing his nose, I can t 
 hardly say. I imagine it s infidel or Aztec or Noncon 
 formist or something like that. There s a church here 
 a Methodist or some other kind with a parson named 
 Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to 
 Christianity. He and me don t assimilate except on 
 state occasions. I imagine they worship some kind of 
 gods or idols yet. But Skidder says he has em in the 
 fold/ 
 
 "A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, 
 strikes a plain path into the forest, and follows it a good 
 four miles. Then a branch turns to the left. We go a 
 mile, maybe, down that, and run up against the finest 
 ruin you ever saw solid stone with trees and vines and 
 underbrush all growing up against it and in it and through 
 it. All over it was chiselled carvings of funny beasts and 
 people that would have been arrested if they d ever come 
 
Also Serves 141 
 
 oat in vaudeville that way. We approached it from the 
 re&r. 
 
 "High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since 
 we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is the 
 palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to 
 firewater. He d brought a quart along with him. 
 
 *"Hunky, says he, we ll explore the ancient temple. 
 It may be that the storm that landed us here was pro 
 pitious. The Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology, 
 ays he, may yet profit by the vagaries of wind and tide. 
 
 "We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We 
 truck a kind of alcove without bath. There was a gran 
 ite davenport, and a stone wash-stand without any soap 
 or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs drove into 
 holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that fur 
 nished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make 
 you feel like getting back home from an amateur violon 
 cello solo at an East Side Settlement house. 
 
 "While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the 
 wall that the stone-masons must have made when their 
 tools slipped, I stepped into the front room. That was 
 at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor, six little windows 
 like square port-holes that didn t let much light in. 
 
 " I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack s 
 lace three feet away. 
 
 " High/ says I, of all the 
 
 "And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned 
 round. 
 
 "He d taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn t 
 
142 Options 
 
 seem to hear me. I touched him, and came near beating 
 it. High Jack had turned to stone. I had been drinking 
 some rum myself. 
 
 " Ossified!* I says to him, loudly. I knew what would 
 happen if you kept it up. 
 
 "And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he 
 hears me conversing with nobody, and we have a look at 
 Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2. It s a stone idol, or god, or re 
 vised statute or something, and it looks as much liketHigh 
 Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It s got exactly 
 his face and size and color, but it s steadier on its pins. 
 It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see 
 it s been there ten million years. 
 
 " He s a cousin of mine, sings High, and then he turns 
 solemn. 
 
 " Hunky, he says, putting one hand on my shoulder 
 and one on the statue s, I m in the holy temple of my 
 ancestors. 
 
 "Well, if looks goes for anything, says I, y u>ve struck 
 a twin. Stand side by side with buddy, and let s see if 
 there s any difference. 
 
 "There wasn t. You know an Indian can keep his face 
 as still as an iron dog s when he wants to, so when High 
 Jack froze his features you couldn t have told him from 
 the other one. 
 
 " There s some letters, says I, on his nob s pedestal, 
 but I can t make em out. The alphabet of this country 
 seems to be composed of sometimes a, e+ t, a, and u, gen 
 erally, 3 .?, Ts> and t s. 9 
 
He Also Serves 143 
 
 "High Jack s ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum 
 for a minute, and he investigates the inscription. 
 
 " Hunky/ says he, this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one 
 of the most powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs. 
 
 " Glad to know him, says I, but in his present con 
 dition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on 
 Julius Caesar. We might say about your friend : 
 
 "ImperiooB What s his-name, dead and turned to stone 
 No use to write or call him on the phone. 
 
 " Hunky, says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me 
 funny, do you believe in reincarnation? 
 
 " It sounds to me/ says I, like either a clean-up of the 
 slaughter-houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don t 
 know. 
 
 " I believe/ says he, that I am the reincarnation of 
 Hotopaxl. My researches have convinced me that the 
 Cherokees, of all the North American tribes, can boast of 
 the straightest descent from the proud Aztec race. 
 That/ says he, was a favorite theory of mine and Flor 
 ence Blue Feather s. And she what if she 
 
 "High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. 
 Just then he looked more like his eminent co-Indian mur 
 derer, Cray Horse. 
 
 " Well/ says I, what if she, what if she, what if she? 
 You re drunk/ says I. Impersonating idols and believ 
 ing in what was it? recamalization? Let s have a 
 drink/ says I. It s as spooky here as a Brooklyn arti- 
 ficiat-kmb factory at midnight with the gas turned down. 1 
 
144 Options 
 
 "Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged 
 High Jack into the bedless bedchamber. There was peep 
 holes bored through the wall, so we could see the whole 
 front part of the temple. Major Bing told me afterward 
 that the ancient priests in charge used to rubber through 
 them at the congregation. 
 
 " In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a 
 big oval earthen dish full of grub. She set it on a squar* 
 block of stone in front of the graven image, and laid down 
 and walloped her face on the floor a few times, and tha 
 took a walk for herself. 
 
 "High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and 
 looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice- 
 cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crab* 
 and mangoes nothing like what you get at Chubb s. 
 
 "We ate hearty and had another round of rum. 
 
 " It must be old Tecumseh s or whatever you call 
 him birthday, says I. Or do they feed him every dayf 
 I thought gods only drank vanilla on Mount Cate- 
 wampus. 
 
 "Then some more native parties in short kimonos that 
 showed their aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and 
 me and High had to skip back into Father Axletree i 
 private boudoir. They came by ones, twos, and threer, . s 
 and left all sorts of offerings there was enough grub for j 
 Bingham s nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the 
 Peace Conference at The Hague. They brought jars ol 
 honey, and bunches of bananas, and bottles of wine, and 
 stacks of tortillas, and beautiful shawls worth one 
 
He Also Serves 145 
 
 dred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of a kind 
 of vegetable fibre like silk. All of em got down and wrig 
 gled on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and 
 then sneaked off through the woods again. 
 
 " I wonder who gets this rake-off? remarks High Jack. 
 
 " Oh, says I, there s priests or deputy idols or a com 
 mittee of disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the 
 job. Wherever you find a god you ll find somebody wait 
 ing to take charge of the burnt offerings. 
 
 "And then we took another swig of rum and walked out 
 to the parlor front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside 
 as a summer camp on the Palisades. 
 
 "And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down 
 the path and sees a young lady approaching the blasted 
 ruin. She was barefooted and had on a white robe, and 
 carried a wreath of white flowers in her hand. When she 
 got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck through 
 her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and 
 High Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from 
 tumbling down on the floor; for the girl s face was as 
 much like Florence Blue Feather s as his was like old King 
 Toxicology s. 
 
 "And then was when High Jack s booze drowned his 
 system of ethnology. He dragged me inside back of the 
 statue, and says: 
 
 " Lay hold of it, Hunky. We ll pack it into the other 
 room. I felt it all the time, says he. I m the recon 
 sideration of the god Locomotor-ataxia, and Florence 
 Blue Feather was my bride a thousand years ago. She 
 
146 Options 
 
 has come to seek me in the temple where I used to 
 reign/ 
 
 " All right, says I. There s no use arguing against 
 the rum question. You take his feet/ 
 
 "We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and 
 carried him into the back room of the caf the temple, 
 I mean and leaned him against the wall. It was more 
 work than bouncing three live ones from an all-night 
 Broadway joint on New- Year s Eve. 
 
 "Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple 
 of them Indian silk shawls and began to undress 
 himself. 
 
 " Oh, figs! says I. Is it thus? Strong drink is an 
 adder and subtracter, too. Is it the heat or the call of 
 the wild that s got you? 
 
 "But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice 
 to reply. He stops the disrobing business just short of 
 the Manhattan Beach rules, and then winds them red- 
 and-white shawls around him, and goes out and stands on 
 the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw. 
 And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to. 
 
 "In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower 
 wreath. Danged if I wasn t knocked a little silly when 
 she got close, she looked so exactly much like Florence 
 Blue Feather. I wonder, says I to myself, if she has 
 been reincarcerated, too? If I could see, says I to my 
 self, whether she has a mole on her left But the 
 next minute I thought she looked one eighth of a 
 shade darker than Florence; but she looked good at 
 
He Also Serves 147 
 
 that. And High Jack hadn t drunk all the rum that had 
 been drank. 
 
 " The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and 
 got down and inaaeaged her nose with the floor, like the 
 rest did. Then she went nearer and laid the flower wreath 
 on the block of stone at High Jack s feet. Rummy as I 
 was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think of 
 offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provi 
 sions. Even a stone god ought to appreciate a little senti 
 ment like that on top of the fancy groceries they had piled 
 up in front of him. 
 
 "And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, 
 quiet, and mentions a few words that sounded just like 
 the hieroglyphics carved on the walls of the ruin. The 
 girl gives a little jump backward, and her eyes fly open as 
 big as doughnuts; but she don t beat it. 
 
 "Why didn t she? Ill tell you why I think why. It 
 don t seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, 
 and startling that a stone god should come to life for her. 
 If he was to do it for one ol them snub-nosed brown girls 
 on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different 
 but her! I ll bet she said to herself: Well, goodness 
 me! you ve been a long time getting on your job. I ve 
 half a mind not to speak to you. 
 
 "But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away 
 out of the temple together. By the time I d had time to 
 take another drink and enter upon the s<^ene they was, 
 twenty yards away, going up the path in the woods that 
 the girl had con>e do^n. With the natural scenery al-/ 
 
148 Options 
 
 ready in place, it was just like a play to watch em she 
 looking up at him, and him giving her back the best that 
 an Indian can hand out in the way of a goo-goo eye. But 
 there wasn t anything in that recarnification and revulsion 
 to tintype for me. 
 
 " Hey! Injun! I yells out to High Jack. We ve got 
 a board-bill due in town, and you re leaving me without a 
 cent. Brace up and cut out the Neapolitan fisher-maiden, 
 and let s go back home. 
 
 " But on the two goes without looking once back until, 
 as you might say, the forest swallowed em up. And I 
 never saw or heard of High Jack Snakefeeder from that 
 day to this. I don t know if the Cherokees came from 
 the Aspics; but if they did, one of em went back. 
 
 "All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place 
 and panhandle Major Bing. He detached himself from 
 enough of his winnings to buy me a ticket home. And 
 I m back again on the job at Chubb s, sir, and I m going 
 to hold it steady. Come round, and you ll find the steaks 
 as good as ever." 
 
 I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own 
 story; so I asked him if he had any theories about rein 
 carnation and transmogrification and such mysteries as 
 he had touched upon. 
 
 "Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What 
 ailed High Jack was too much booze and education. 
 They ll do an Indian up every time." 
 
 "But what about Miss Blue Feather?" I persisted. 
 
 "Say," said Hunky, with a grin, "that little lady that 
 
He Also Serves 149 
 
 stole High Jack certainly did give me a jar when I first took 
 a look at her, but it was only for a minute. You rememl JT 
 I told you High Jack said that Miss Florence Blue Feather 
 disappeared from home about a year ago? Well, where 
 she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat 
 on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways 
 through and she s been Mrs. Magee ever since." 
 
THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 
 
 BEN GRANGER is a war veteran aged twenty-nine 
 which should enable you to guess the war. He is also 
 principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town 
 over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpet- 
 uafly blow. 
 
 Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold hi the 
 Greater Antilles; and then, hiking across half the world, 
 he marched as a corporal-usher up and down the blazing 
 tropic aisles of the open-air college in which the Filipino 
 was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a cheese 
 slioer, he rallies his corporal s guard of cronies in the shade 
 of his well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted jungles 
 of Mindanao. Always have his interest and choice been 
 for deeds rather than for words; but the consideration 
 and digestion of motives is not beyond him, as this story, 
 which is his, will attest. 
 
 "What is it," ke asked me one moonlit eve, as we sat 
 among his boxes and barrels, "that generally makes men 
 go through dangers, and fire, and trouble, and starvation, 
 and battle, and auch recourses? What does a man do it 
 for? Why does he try to outdo his fellow-humans, and be 
 braver and stronger and more daring and showy than 
 e*ea his best friends are? What s his game? What does 
 
 lit 
 
The Moment of Victory 151 
 
 he expect to get out of it ? lie don t do it just for the fresh 
 air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an 
 ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts 
 along the line of ambit* m and extraordinary hustling in 
 the market-places, forums, shooting-galleries, lyceums, 
 battlefields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of the civilised 
 and vice versa places of the world?" 
 
 "Well, Ben/ said I, with judicial seriousness, "I think 
 we might safely limit the number of motives of a man who 
 seeks fame to three to ambition, which is a desire for 
 popular applause; to avarice, which looks to the material 
 side of success; and to love of some woman whom he 
 cither possesses or desires to possess," 
 
 Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on 
 the top of a mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars. 
 
 "I reckon," said he, "that your diagnosis about covers 
 the case according to the rules laid down in the copy-books 
 and historical readers. Fat what I had in my mind was 
 the case of Willie Robbins, a person I used to know. I ll 
 tell you about him before I close up the store, if you don t 
 mind listening. 
 
 " Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. 
 I was clerking there then for Brady & Murchison, whole 
 sale dry-goods and ranch supplies. Willie and I belonged 
 to the same german club and athletic association and 
 military company. He played the triangle in our serenad 
 ing and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three 
 nights a week somewhere in town. 
 
 " Willie iibed with his name considerable. He weighed 
 
Option* 
 
 about as much as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer 
 suitings, and he had a Where-is-Mary? expression on 
 his features so plain that you could almost see the wool 
 growing on him. 
 
 "And yet you couldn t fence him away from the girls 
 with barbed wire. You know that kind of young fellows 
 a kind of a mixture of fools and angels they rush in 
 and fear to tread at the same time; but they never fail to 
 tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand 
 when *a joyful occasion was had, as the morning papei 
 would say, looking as happy as a king full, and at the same 
 tim* as uncomfortable as a raw oyster served with sweet 
 pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles on; and he 
 had a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty words 
 that he made stretch over four germans a week, and pla 
 giarized from to get him through two ice-cream suppers 
 and a Sunday-night call. He seemed to me to be a sort 
 of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant, and a mem 
 ber of a stranded "Two Orphans" company. 
 
 "I ll give you an estimate of his physiological and pic 
 torial make-up and then I ll stick spurs into the sides of 
 my narrative. 
 
 "Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and 
 manner of style. His hair was opalescent and his con 
 versation fragmentary. His eyes were the same blue 
 shade as the china dog s on the right-hand corner of your 
 Aunt Ellen s mantelpiece. He took things as they came, 
 and I never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, 
 and so did others. 
 
The Moment of Victory 153 
 
 "But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out 
 of his boots and lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, 
 brightest, keenest, smartest, and prettiest girl in San 
 Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest eyes, the 
 shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing Oh, no you re 
 off I wasn t a victim. I might have been, but I knew 
 better. I kept out. Joe Cranberry was It from the start. 
 He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues and thence 
 east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, Myra was a 
 nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked and loaded 
 on a four-horse team for San Antone. 
 
 "One night there was an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. 
 Colonel Spraggins , in San Augustine. We fellows had a 
 big room upstairs opened up for us to put our hats and 
 things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean collars 
 we brought along inside the sweat-biinds of our hats 
 in short, a room to fix up in just like they have every 
 where at high-toned doings. A little farther down the 
 hall was the girls room, which they used to powder up in, 
 and so forth. Downstairs we that is, the San Augus 
 tine Social Cotillion and Merrymakers Club had a 
 stretcher put down in the parlor where our dance was go 
 ing on. 
 
 "Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our 
 cloak-room, I believe we called it when Myra Allison 
 skipped through the hall on her way downstairs from the 
 girls room. Willie was standing before the mirror, deeply 
 interested in smoothing down the blond grass-plot on his 
 head, which seemed to give hun lots of trouble. Myra 
 
154 Options 
 
 was always full of life and devilment. She stopped and 
 stuck her head in our door. She certainly was good-look 
 ing. But I knew how Joe Granberry stood with her. So 
 did Willie; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her and folio wing 
 her around. He had a system of persistence that didn t 
 coincide with pale hair and light eyes. 
 
 " Hello, Willie! says Myra. What are you doing to 
 yourself in the glass? 
 
 " I m trying to look fly, says Willie. 
 
 " Well, you never could be fly, says Myra with her 
 special laugh, which was the provokingest sound I ever 
 heard except the rattle of an empty canteen against my 
 saddle-horn. 
 
 "I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He 
 had a kind of a lily-white look on him which seemed to 
 show that her remark had, as you might say, disrupted his 
 soul. I never noticed anything in what she said that 
 sounded particularly destructive to a man s ideas of self- 
 consciousness: but he was set back to an extent you could 
 scarcely imagine. 
 
 "After we went downstairs with our clean collars on, 
 Willie never went near Myra again that night. After all, 
 he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a chap, 
 and I never wondered that Joe Granberry beat him out. 
 
 "The next day the battleship Maine was blown up, 
 and then pretty soon somebody I reckon it was Joe 
 Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe the Government 
 declared war against Spain. 
 
 "Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin s line 
 
Tlie Moment of Victory 155 
 
 knew that the North by itself couldn t whip a whole 
 country the size of Spain. So the Yankees commenced 
 to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the 
 call. We re coming, Father William, a hundred thou 
 sand strong and then some, w;us the way they sang it. 
 And the old party lines drawn by Sherman s march and 
 the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow street 
 car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided 
 country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized 
 chunk of West, and a South that loomed up as big as the 
 first foreign label in a new eight-dollar suitcase. 
 
 "Of course the dogs of war weren t a complete pack 
 without a yelp from the San Augustine Rifles, Company 
 D, of the Fourteenth Texas Regiment. Our company was 
 among the first to Land in Cuba and strike terror into the 
 hearts of the foe. I m not going to give you a history of 
 the war; I m just dragging it in to fill out my story about 
 Willie Robbins, just as the Republican party dragged ic 
 in to help out the election in 1898. 
 
 "If anybody ever had heroitis, it was that WiJlie Rob- 
 bins. From the minute he set foot on the soil of the 
 tyrants of Castile he seemed to engulf danger as a eat laps 
 up cream. He certainly astonished every man in our 
 company, from the captain up. You d have expected 
 him to gravitate naturally to the job of an orderly to the 
 colonel, or typewriter in the commissary but not any. 
 He created the part of the flaxen-haired boy hero who lives 
 and gets back home with the goods, instead of dying with 
 an important despatch in his hands at his colonel s feet. 
 
156 Options 
 
 "Our company got into a sec don of Cuban scenery 
 where one of the messiest and most unsung portions of the 
 campaign occurred. We were out every day capering 
 around in the bushes, and having little skirmishes with 
 the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of tired- 
 out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, 
 and of no interest to them. We never could see it any 
 other way than as a howling farce-comedy that the San 
 Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the 
 Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little seriors didn t 
 get enough pay to make them care whether they were 
 patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get 
 killed. It seemed like a waste of life to me. I was at 
 Coney Island when I went to New York once, and one of 
 them down-hill skidding apparatuses they call roller- 
 coasters flew the track and killed a man in a brown sack- 
 suit. Whenever the Spaniards shot one of our men, it 
 struck me as just about as unnecessary and regrettable as 
 that was. 
 
 "But I m dropping Willie Bobbins out of the con 
 versation. 
 
 "He was out for bloodshed, laurels, ambition, medals, 
 recommendations, and all other forms of military glory. 
 And he didn t seem to be afraid of any of the recognized 
 forms of military danger, such as Spaniards, cannon-balls, 
 canned beef, gunpowder, or nepotism. He went forth 
 with his pallid hair and china-blue eyes and ate up Span 
 iards like you would sardines a la canopy. Wars and 
 rumbles of wars never flustered him. He would stand 
 
Tlie Moment of Victory 157 
 
 guard-duty, mosquitoes, hardtack, treat, and fire with 
 equally perfect unanimity. No blondes in history ever 
 come in comparison distance of him except the Jack of 
 Diamonds and Queen Catherine of Russia. 
 
 "I remember, one time, a little caballard of Spanish men 
 sauntered out from behind a patch of sugar-cane and shot 
 Bob Turner, the first sergeant of our company, while we 
 were eating dinner. As required by the army regulations, 
 we fellows went through the usual tactics of falling into 
 line, saluting the enemy, and loading and firing, kneeling. 3 
 
 "That wasn t the Texas way of scrapping; but, being 
 a very important addendum and annex to the regular 
 army, the San Augustine Rifles had to conform to the 
 red-tape system of getting even. 
 
 "By the time we had got out our Upton s Tactics, 
 turned to page fifty-seven, said one two three 
 one two three a couple of times, and got blank car 
 tridges into our Springfields, the Spanish outfit had smiled 
 repeatedly, rolled and lit cigarettes by squads, and 
 walked away contemptuously. 
 
 "I went straight to Captain Floyd, and says to him: 
 Sam, I don t think this war is a straight game. You 
 know as well as I do that Bob Turner was one of the whit 
 est fellows that ever threw a leg over a saddle, and now 
 these wire-pullers in Washington have fixed his clock. 
 He s politically and ostensibly dead. It ain t fair. Why 
 should they keep this thing up? If they want Spain 
 licked, why don t they turn the San Augustine Rifles and 
 Joe Seely s ranger company and a carload of West Texas 
 
158 Options 
 
 deputy-sheriffs on to these Spaniards, and let us exonerate 
 them from the face of the earth? I never did, says I, 
 care much about fighting by the Lord Chesterfield ring 
 rules. I m going to hand in my resignation and go home 
 if anybody else I am personally acquainted with gets hurt 
 in this war. If you can get somebody in my place, Sam/ 
 says I, I ll quit the first of next week. I don t want to 
 work in an army that don t give its help a chance. Never 
 mind my wages, says I; let the Secretary of the Treasury 
 keep em. 
 
 " Well, Ben, says the captain to me, your allegations 
 and estimations of the tactics of war, government, pa 
 triotism, guard-mounting, and democracy are all right. 
 But I ve looked into the system of international arbitra 
 tion and the ethics of justifiable slaughter a little closer, 
 maybe, than you have. Now, you can hand in your 
 resignation the first of next week if you are so minded. 
 But if you do, says Sam, I ll order a corporal s guard to 
 take you over by that limestone bluff on the creek and 
 shoot enough lead into you to ballast a submarine air 
 ship. I m captain of this company, a-nd I ve swore al 
 legiance to the Amalgamated States regardless of sec 
 tional, secessional, and Congressional differences. Have 
 you got any smoking-tobacco? winds up Sam. * Mine got 
 wet when I swum the creek this morning. 
 
 ^*The reason I drag all this non ex parte evidence in is 
 because Willie Bobbins was standing there listening to us. 
 I was a second sergeant and he was a private then, but 
 among us Texans and Westerners there never was as much 
 
The Momeni of Victory 159 
 
 tactics and subordination as there was in the regular 
 army. We never called our captain anything but Sam 
 except when there was a lot of major-generals and ad 
 mirals around, so as to preserve the discipline. 
 
 "And says Willie Bobbins to me, in a sharp construc 
 tion of voice much unbecoming to his light hair and pre 
 vious record: 
 
 " You ought to be shot, Ben, for emitting any such 
 sentiments. A man that won t fight for his country is 
 worse than a horse-thief. If I was the cap, I d put you 
 in the guard-house for thirty days on round steak and 
 tamales. War, says Willie, * is great and glorious. I 
 didn t know you were a coward. 
 
 " I m not, says I. If I was, I d knock some of the 
 pallidness off of your marble brow. I m lenient with you, 
 I says, just as I am with the Spaniards, because you have 
 always reminded me of something with mushrooms on the 
 side. Why, you little Lady of Shalott, says I, you under 
 done leader of cotillions, you glassy fashion and moulded 
 form, you white-pine soldier made in the Cisalpine Alps 
 in Germany for the late New- Year trade, do you know of 
 whom you are talking to? We ve been in the same social 
 circle, says I, and I ve put up with you because you 
 seemed so meek and self -unsatisfying. I don t understand 
 wny you have so sudden taken a personal interest in 
 chivalrousness and murder. Your nature s undergone a 
 complete revelation. Now, how is it? 
 
 " Well, you wouldn t understand, Ben, says Willie, 
 giving one of his refined smiles and twining away. 
 
160 Options 
 
 " Come back here! says I, catching him by the tail ol 
 his khaki coat. * You ve made me kind of mad, in spite 
 of the aloofness in which I have heretofore held you. You 
 are out for making a success in this hero business, and I 
 believe I know what for. You are doing it either because 
 you are crazy or because you expect to catch some girl by 
 it. Now, if it s a girl, I ve got something here to show you.* 
 
 "I wouldn t have done it, but I was plumb mad. I 
 pulled a San Augustine paper out of my hip-pocket, and 
 showed him an item. It was a half a column about the 
 marriage of Myra Allison and Joe Granberry. 
 
 "Willie laughed, and I saw I hadn t touched him. 
 
 " Oh/ says he, everybody knew that was going to 
 happen. I heard about that a week ago. And then he 
 gave me the laugh again. 
 
 " All right, says I. Then why do you so recklessly 
 chase the bright rainbow of fame? Do you expect to be 
 elected President, or do you belong to a suicide club? 
 
 "And then Captain Sam interferes. 
 
 " You gentlemen quit jawing and go back to your 
 quarters, says he, or I ll have you escorted to the guard- 
 v house. Now, scat, both of you! Before you go, which 
 one of you has got any chewing-tobacco? 
 
 "We re off, Sam, says I. It s supper-time, anyhow. 
 But what do you think of what we was talking about? 
 I ve noticed you throwing out a good many grappling- 
 hooks for this here balloon called fame What s am 
 bition, anyhow? What does a man risk his life day after 
 day for? Do you know of anything he gets in the end 
 
The Moment of Victory 161 
 
 that can pay him for the trouble? I want to go back 
 home/ says I. I don t care whether Cuba sinks or swims, 
 and I don t give a pipeful of rabbit tobacco whether 
 Queen Sophia Christina or Charlie Culberson rules these 
 fairy isles; and I don t want my name on any list except 
 the list of survivors. But I ve noticed you, Sam, says 
 I, seeking the bubble notoriety in the cannon s larynx a 
 number of times. Now, what do you do it for? Is it 
 ambition, business, or some freckle-faced Phoebe at home 
 that you are heroing for? 
 
 " Well, Ben, says Sam, kind of hefting his sword out 
 from between his knees, as your superior officer I could 
 court-martial you for attempted cowardice and desertion. 
 But I won t. And 111 tell you why I m trying for pro 
 motion and the usual honors of war and conquest. A 
 major gets more pay than a captain, and I need the 
 money. 
 
 " Correct for you! says I. I can understand that. 
 Your system of fame-seeking is rooted in the deepest soil 
 of patriotism. But I can t comprehend, says I, why 
 Willie Robbins, whose folks at home are well off, and who 
 used to be as meek and undesirous of notice as a cat with 
 cream on his whiskers, should all at once develop into a 
 warrior bold with the most fire-eating kind of proclivities. 
 AndHhe girl in his case seems to have been eliminated by 
 marriage to another fellow. I reckon, says I, it s a plain 
 case of just common ambition. He wants his name, may 
 be, to go thundering down the coroners of time. It must 
 be that/ 
 
162 Options 
 
 "Well, without itemizing his deeds, Willie sure made 
 good as a hero. He simply spent most of his time on his 
 knees begging our captain to send him on forlorn hopes 
 and dangerous scouting expeditions. In every fight he 
 was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the Don 
 Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various 
 parts of his autonomy. Once he went off with a detail of 
 eight men and captured a whole company of Spanish. He 
 kept Captain Floyd busy writing out recommendations of 
 his bravery to send in to headquarters; and he began t 
 accumulate medals for all kinds of things heroism and 
 target-shooting and valor and tactics and uninsubordina- 
 tion, and all the little accomplishments that look good to 
 the third assistant secretaries of the War Department. 
 
 "Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major- 
 general, or a knight commander of the main herd, or 
 something like that. He pounded around on a white 
 horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers 
 and a Good Templar s hat, and wasn t allowed by the 
 regulations to speak to us. And Willie Bobbins was made 
 captain of our company. 
 
 "And maybe he didn t go after the wreath of fame then! 
 As far as I could see it was him that ended the war. He 
 got eighteen of us boys friends of his, too killed in 
 battles that he stirred up himself and that didn t seem to 
 me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of us and 
 waded through a little rill about a hundred and ninety 
 yards wide, and climbed a couple of mountains, and 
 sneaked through a mJe of neglected shrubbery and a v 
 
Tlie Moment of Victory 163 
 
 couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw village, and 
 captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny 
 Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, 
 being a blackish man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious to 
 surrender and throw himself on the commissary of his foe. 
 
 "But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The 
 San Augustine News and the Galveston, St. Louis, New 
 York, and Kansas City papers printed his picture and 
 columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine simply 
 went crazy over its gallant son. The News had an 
 editorial tearfully begging the Government to call off the 
 regular army and the national guard, and let Willie carry 
 on the rest of the war single-handed. It said that a refusal 
 to do so would be regarded as a proof that the Northern 
 jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever. 
 
 "If the war hadn t ended pretty soon, I don t know to 
 what heights of gold braid and encomiums Willie would 
 have climbed; but it did. There was a secession of hos 
 tilities just three days after he was appointed a colonel, 
 and got in three more medals by registered mail, and shot 
 two Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an 
 ambuscade. 
 
 "Our company went back to San Augustine when the 
 war was over. There wasn t anywhere else for it to go. 
 And what do you think? The old town notified us in 
 print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a nigger named 
 Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was 
 going to give us the biggest blowout, complimentary, ali 
 mentary, and elementary, that ever disturbed the kildees 
 
164 Options 
 
 on the sand-flats outside of the immediate contiguity />f 
 the city. 
 
 "I say we/ but it was all meant for ex-Private, Cap* 
 tain de facto, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town 
 was crazy about him. They notified us that the reception 
 they were going to put up would make the Mardi Gras 
 in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St. 
 Edmonds with a curate s aunt. 
 
 "Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on 
 schedule time. Everybody was at the depot giving forth 
 Roosevelt-Democrat they used to be called Rebel 
 yells. There was two brass-bands, and the mayor, and 
 schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by 
 throwing Cherokee roses in the streets, and well, may 
 be you ve seen a celebration by a town that was inland 
 and out of water. 
 
 "They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a 
 carriage and be drawn by prominent citizens and some of 
 the city aldermen to the armory, but he stuck to his com 
 pany and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston 
 Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with 
 flags and audiences, and everybody hollered Robbins! 
 or Hello, Willie! as we marched up in files of fours. I 
 never saw a illustriouser-looking human in my life than 
 Willie was. He had at least seven or eight medals and 
 diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat; 
 he was sunburnt the color of a saddle, and he certainly 
 done himself proud. 
 
 "They told us at the depot that the courthouse was to 
 
The Moment of Victory 165 
 
 be illuminated at half-past seven, and there would be 
 speeches and chili-con-carne at the Palace Hotel. Miss 
 Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem by 
 James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had 
 promised us a salute of nine guns from Chicago that he 
 had arrested that day. 
 
 " After we had disbanded in the armory, Willie says to me : 
 
 " Want to walk out a piece with me?* 
 
 "Why, yes,* says I, if it ain t so far that we can t hear 
 the tumult and the shouting die away. I m hungry my 
 self,* says I, and I m pining for some home grub, but 1*11 
 go with you.* 
 
 " Willie steered me down some side streets till we came to 
 a little white cottage in a new lot with a twenty-by-thirty- 
 foot lawn decorated with brickbats and old barrel-staves. 
 
 "Halt and give the countersign,* says I to Willie. 
 Don t you know this dugout? It*s the bird s-nest that 
 Joe Cranberry built before he married Myra Allison. 
 What you going there for?* 
 
 "But Willie already had the gate open. He walked up 
 the brick walk to the steps, and I went with him. Myra 
 was sitting in a rocking-chair on the porch, sewing. Her 
 hair was smoothed back kind of hasty and tied in a knot. 
 I never noticed till then that she had freckles. Joe was 
 at one side of the porch, in his shirt-sleeves, with no collar 
 on, and no signs of a shave, trying to scrape out a hole 
 among the brickbats and tin cans to plant a little fruit- 
 tree in. He looked up but never said a word, and neither 
 did Myra. 
 
166 Options 
 
 "Willie was sure dandy-looking in his uniform, with 
 medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled 
 sword. You d never have taken him for the little white- 
 headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make 
 fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at 
 Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he 
 says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with 
 his teeth: 
 
 " Oh, I don t know! Maybe I could if I tried! 
 
 "That was all that was said. Willie raised his hat, and 
 we walked away. 
 
 "And, somehow, when he said that, I remembered, al! 
 of a sudden, the night of that dance and Willie brushing 
 his hair before the looking-glass, and Myra sticking her 
 head in the door to guy him. 
 
 "When we got back to Sam Houston Avenue, Willie 
 says: 
 
 " Well, so long, Ben. I m going down home and get 
 off my shoes and take a rest. 
 
 " You? says I. What s the matter with you? Ain t 
 the courthouse jammed with everybody in town waiting 
 to honor the hero? And two brass-bands, and recitations 
 and flags and jags, and grub to follow waiting for you? 
 
 "Willie sighs. 
 
 " All right, Ben, says he. Darned if I didn t forget 
 all about that. 
 
 "And that s why I say," concluded Ben Granger, "that 
 you can t tell where ambition begins any more than yon 
 <aan where it is going to wind up." 
 
THE HEAD-HUNTER 
 
 VYHEN the war between Spain and George Dewey was 
 over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained 
 as bush-whacker correspondent for my paper until its 
 managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred-word 
 cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the 
 death of an infant Moro was not considered by the office 
 to be war news. So I resigned, and came home. 
 
 On board the trading-vessel that brought me back I 
 pondered much upon the strange things I had sensed in 
 the weird archipelago of the yellow-brown people. The 
 manoeuvres and skirmishings of the petty war interested 
 me not: I was spellbound by the outlandish and unread 
 able countenance of that race that had turned its expres 
 sionless gaze upon us out of an unguessable past. 
 
 Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been 
 fascinated and attracted by that delightfully original 
 tribe of heathen known as the head-hunters. Those 
 grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling 
 the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their con 
 cealed presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through 
 unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown 
 bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always 
 near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying 
 
 167 
 
168 Options 
 
 their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a 
 gliding serpent might make a twig crackling in the 
 awful sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from 
 the screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even 
 from the rushes of a water-level a hint of death for 
 every mile and every hour they amused me greatly, 
 those little fellows of one idea. 
 
 When you think of it, their method is beautifully and 
 almost hilariously effective and simple. 
 
 You have your hut in which you live and carry out the 
 destiny that was decreed for you. Spiked to the jamb 
 of your bamboo doorway is a basket made of green withes, 
 plaited. From time to time as vanity or ennui or love or 
 jealousy or ambition may move you, you creep forth 
 with your snickersnee and take up the silent trail. Back 
 from it you come, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory 
 head of your victim, which you deposit with pardonable 
 pride in the basket at the side of your door. It may be 
 the head of your enemy, your friend, or a stranger, accord 
 ing as competition, jealousy, or simple sportiveness has 
 been your incentive to labor. 
 
 In any case, your reward is certain. The village men, 
 in passing, stop to congratulate you, as your neighbor on 
 weaker planes of life stops to admire and praise the bego 
 nias in your front yard. Your particular brown maid 
 lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger s eyes at 
 the evidence of your love for her. You chew betel-nut 
 and listen, content, to the intermittent soft drip from the 
 ends of the severed neck arteries. And you show your 
 
The Head-Hunter 169 
 
 teeth and grunt like a water-buffalo which is as near 
 as you can come to laughing at the thought that the 
 cold, acephalous body of your door ornament is being 
 spotted by wheeling vultures in the Mindanaoan wilds. 
 
 Truly, the life of the merry head-hunter captivated me. 
 He had reduced art and philosophy to a simple code. To 
 take your adversary s head, to basket it at the portal of 
 your castle, to see it lying there, a dead thing, with its 
 cunning and stratagems and power gone Is there a 
 better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to 
 establish your superiority over his skill and wisdom? 
 
 The ship that brought me home was captained by an 
 erratic Swede, who changed his course and deposited me, 
 with genuine compassion, in a small town on the Pacific 
 coast of one of the Central American republics, a few 
 hundred miles south of the port to which he had engaged 
 to convey me. But I was w r earied of movement and exotic 
 fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of 
 the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to 
 find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to 
 linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of 
 the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit 
 upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, 
 and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and 
 scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gap 
 ing neighbors sad stories of the death of colonial governors. 
 
 When I first saw Chloe Greene she was standing, all in 
 white, in the doorway of her father s tile-roofed 
 
170 Options 
 
 house, She was polishing a silver cup with a cloth, and 
 she looked like a pearl laid against black velvet. She 
 turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly 
 disapproving gaze, and then went inside, humming a light 
 song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence. 
 
 Small wonder: for Dr. Stamford (the most disreputable 
 professional man between Juneau and Valparaiso) and I 
 were zigzagging along the turfy street, tunelessly singing 
 the words of "Auld Lang Syne" to the air of "Muzzer s 
 Little Coal-Black Coon." We had come from the ice 
 factory, which was Mojada s palace of wickedness, where 
 we had been playing billiards and opening black bottles, 
 white with frost, that we dragged with strings out of old 
 SandovaFs ice-cold vats. 
 
 I turned in sudden rage to Dr. Stamford, as sober as 
 the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become 
 aware that we were swine cast before a pearl. 
 
 "You beast, " I said, "this is half your doing. And the 
 other half is the fault of this cursed country. I d better 
 have gone back to Sleepytown and died in a wild orgy 
 of currant wine and buns than to have had this happen." 
 
 Stamford filled the empty street with his roaring laugh 
 ter. 
 
 "You, too!" he cried. "And all as quick as the pop 
 ping of a cork. Well, she does seem to strike agreeably 
 upon the retina. But don t burn your fingers. All 
 Mojada will tell you that Louis Devoe is the man. " 
 
 "We will see about that," said I. "And, perhaps, 
 whether he is a man as well as the man. " 
 
TJie Head-Hunter 171 
 
 I lost no time in meeting Louis Devoe. That was easily 
 accomplished, for the foreign colony in Mojada numbered 
 scarce a dozen; and they gathered daily at a half -decent 
 hotel kept by a Turk, where they managed to patch 
 together the fluttering rags of country and civilization 
 that were left them. I sought Devoe before I did my 
 pearl of the doorway, because I had learned a little of the 
 game of war, and knew better than to strike for a prize 
 before testing the strength of the enemy. 
 
 A sort of cold dismay something akin to fear 
 filled me when I had estimated him. I found a man so 
 perfectly poised, so charming, so deeply learned in the 
 world s rituals, so full of tact, courtesy, and hospitality, so 
 endowed with grace and ease and a kind of careless, 
 haughty power that I almost over-stepped the bounds in 
 probing him, in turning him on the spit to find the weak 
 point that I so craved for him to have. But I left him 
 whole I had to make bitter acknowledgment to myself 
 that Louis Devoe was a gentleman worthy of my best 
 blows; and I swore to give him them. He was a great 
 merchant of the country, a wealthy importer and ex 
 porter. All day he sat in a fastidiously appointed 
 office, surrounded by works of art and evidences of his 
 high culture, directing through glass doors and windows 
 the affairs of his house. 
 
 In person he was slender and hardly tall. His small, 
 well-shaped head was covered with thick, brown hair, 
 trimmed short, and he wore a thick, brown beard also cut 
 close and to a fine point. His manners were a pattern. 
 
172 Options 
 
 Before long I had become a regular and a welcome 
 visitor at the Greene home. I shook my wild habits from 
 me like a worn-out cloak. I trained for the conflict with 
 the care of a prize-fighter and the self-denial of a Brahmin, 
 
 As for Chloe Greene, I shall weary you with no sonnets 
 to her eyebrow. She was a splendidly feminine girl, as 
 wholesome as a November pippin, and no more mysterious 
 than a window-pane. She had whimsical little theories 
 that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the maxims 
 of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, after all, 
 if that old duffer wasn t rather wise! 
 
 Chloe had a father, the Reverend Homer Greene, and 
 an intermittent mother, who sometimes palely presided 
 over a twilight teapot. The Reverend Homer was a burr- 
 like man with a life-work. He was writing a concord 
 ance to the Scriptures, and had arrived as far as Kings. 
 Being, presumably, a suitor for his daughter s hamd, I 
 was timber for his literary outpourings. I had tne 
 family tree of Israel drilled into my head until I used to 
 cry aloud in my sleep: "And Aminadab begat Jay Eye 
 See," and so forth, until he had tackled another book. 
 I once made a calculation that the Reverend Homer s 
 concordance would be worked up as far as the Seven Vials 
 mentioned in Revelations about the third day after they 
 were opened 
 
 Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate 
 friend of the Greenes. It was there I met him the 
 oftenest, and a more agreeable man or a more accom 
 plished I have never hated in my life. 
 
The Head-Hunter 173 
 
 Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a 
 Boy. My appearance was youthful, and I suppose I had 
 that pleading and homeless air that always draws the 
 motherliness that is in women and the cursed theories 
 and hobbies of paterfamilias. 
 
 Chloe called me "Tommy," and made sisterly fun of 
 my attempts to woo her. With Devoe she was vastly 
 more reserved. He was the man of romance, one to stir 
 her imagination and deepest feelings had her fancy leaned 
 toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in no gla 
 mour; I had the task before me of winning her in what 
 seems to me the American way of fighting with clean 
 ness and pluck and every-day devotion to break away the 
 barriers of friendship that divided us, and to take her, ft I 
 could, between sunrise and dark, abetted by neither moon 
 light nor music nor foreign wiles. 
 
 Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections 
 upon either of us. But one day she let out to me an ink 
 ling of what she preferred in a man. It was tremendously 
 interesting to me, but not illuminating as to its appli 
 cation. I had been tormenting her for the dozenth time 
 with the statement and catalogue of my sentiments 
 toward her. 
 
 "Tommy," said she, "I don t want a man to show his 
 love for me by leading an army against another country 
 and blowing people off the earth with cannons." 
 
 "If you mean that the opposite way," I answered, "as 
 they say women do, I ll see what I can do. The papers 
 are full of this diplomatic row in Russia. My people 
 
174 Options 
 
 know some big people in Washington who are right next 
 to the army people, and I could get an artillery commis 
 sion and " 
 
 "I m not that way," interrupted Chloe. "I mean 
 what I say. It isn t the big things that are done in the 
 world, Tommy, that count with a woman. When the 
 knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay dragons, 
 many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady s hand by 
 being on the spot to pick up her glove and be quick with 
 her cloak when the wind blew. The man I am to like 
 best, whoever he shall be, must show his love in little 
 ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once, that 
 I do not like to have any one walk at my left side; that I 
 detest bright-colored neckties; that I prefer to sit with my 
 back to a light; that I like candied violets; that I must not 
 be talked to when I am looking at the moonlight shining 
 on water, and that I very, very often long for dates stuffed 
 with English walnuts." 
 
 "Frivolity," I said, with a frown. "Any well-trained 
 servant would be equal to such details." 
 
 "And he must remember," went on Chloe, "to remind 
 me of what I want when I do not know, myself, what I 
 want." 
 
 "You re rising in the scale," I said. "What you seem 
 to need is a first-class clairvoyant." 
 
 "And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven 
 sonata, and stamp my foot when I say it, he must know 
 by that that what my soul craves is salted almonds; and 
 he will have them ready in his pocket." 
 
TJic Head-Hunter 175 
 
 "Now," said I, "I arn at a loss. I do not know whether 
 your soul s affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy 
 grocer." 
 
 Chloe turned her pearly smile upon me. 
 
 "Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went 
 on. "And don t think too lightly of the little things, Boy. 
 Be a paladin if you must, but don t let it show on you. 
 Most women are only very big children, and most men are 
 only very little ones. Please us; don t try to overpower 
 us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even 
 a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief 
 before it falls to the ground." 
 
 That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. 
 That is a kind of coast fever with improvements and high- 
 geared attachments. Your temperature goes up among 
 the threes and fours and remains there, laughing scorn 
 fully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the coal-tar 
 derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple mathe 
 matician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula: 
 Vitality + the desire to live the duration of the fever 
 = the result. 
 
 I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where 
 I had been comfortably established, and sent for a gallon 
 of rum. That was not for myself. Drunk, Stamford 
 was the best doctor between the Andes and the Pacific. 
 He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into 
 condition. 
 
 "My boy," said he, "my lily-white and reformed 
 Romeo, medicine will do you no good. But I will give 
 
176 Options 
 
 you quinine, which, being bitter, will arouse in you hatred 
 and anger two stimulants that will add ten per cent, to 
 your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and 
 you will get well if the fever doesn t get in a knockout 
 blow when you re off your guard." 
 
 For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo 
 widow on a burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained 
 Indian nurse, sat near the door like a petrified statue of 
 What s-the-Use, attending to her duties, which were, 
 mainly, to see that time went by without slipping a cog. 
 Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines* 
 or, at worse times, sliding off the horsehair sofa in Sleepy- 
 town. 
 
 One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up 
 and dressed carefully. I took my temperature, which I 
 was pleased to find 104. I paid almost dainty attention 
 to my dress, choosing solicitously a necktie of a dull and 
 subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was looking 
 little the worse from my illness. The fever gave bright 
 ness to my eyes and color to my face. And while I looked 
 at my reflection my color w^ent and came again as I 
 thought of Chloe Greene and the millions of eons that had 
 passed since I d seen her, and of Louis Devoe and the time 
 he had gained on me. 
 
 I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather 
 than walk; I hardly felt the ground under my feet; I 
 thought pernicious fever must be a great boon to make one 
 feel so strong. 
 
 I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awn- 
 
The Ilcad-IIunter 177 
 
 ing in front of the house. She jumped up and met me 
 with a double handshake. 
 
 "I m glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, 
 every word a pearl strung on the string of her sentence. 
 "You are well, Tommy or better, of course. I wanted 
 to come to see you, but they wouldn t let me." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely 
 a little fever. I am out again, as you see." 
 
 We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. 
 Then Chloe looked out yearningly and almost piteously 
 across the ocean. I could see in her sea-blue eyes 
 some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse him! saw 
 it too. 
 
 "What is it?" we asked, in unison. 
 
 "Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I ve 
 wanted some oh, so badly, for two days. It s got be 
 yond a wish; it s an obsession. 
 
 " The cocoanut season is over," said Devoe, in that voice 
 of his that gave thrilling interest to his most common 
 place words. "I hardly think one could be found in 
 Mojada. The natives never use them except when they 
 are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ripe ones 
 to the fruiterers." 
 
 "Wouldn t a broiled lobster or a Welsh rabbit do as 
 well?" I remarked, with the engaging idiocy of a perni 
 cious-fever convalescent. 
 
 Chloe came as near pouting as a sweet disposition and a 
 perfect profile would allow her to come. 
 
 The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face 
 
178 Options 
 
 through the doorway and added a concordance to the 
 conversation. 
 
 "Sometimes," said he, "old Campos keeps the dried 
 nuts in his little store on the hill. But it would be far 
 better, my daughter, to restrain unusual desires, and 
 partake thankfully of the daily dishes that the Lord has 
 set before us." 
 
 "Stuff!" said I. 
 
 "How was that?" asked the Reverend Homer, sharply. 
 
 I say it s tough," said I, "to drop into the vernacular, 
 that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she 
 desires a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Per 
 haps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled walnuts 
 or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as well." 
 
 Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of 
 curiosity. 
 
 Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus. I watched 
 him until he had sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the 
 corner, around which he turned to reach his great ware 
 house and store. Chloe made her excuses, and went in 
 side for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting 
 the seven-o clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in 
 housekeeping. I had tasted her puddings and bread with 
 beatitude. 
 
 When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket 
 made of plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside the 
 door-jamb. With a rush that made my hot temples 
 throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the 
 head-hunters those grim, Jlinty, relentless little men, neve* 
 
The Head-Hunter 179 
 
 seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of 
 their concealed presence. . . . From time to time, as 
 vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move 
 *iim, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the 
 silent trail. . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the 
 severed, gory head of his victim. . . . His particular 
 brown or white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom t casting 
 soft tiger s eyes at the evidence of his love for her. 
 
 I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. 
 From its supporting nails in the wall I took a machete as 
 heavy as a butcher s cleaver and sharper than a safety- 
 razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and set out 
 to the fastidiously appointed private office of Monsieur 
 Louis Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl of the 
 Pacific. 
 
 He was never slow at thinking; he gave one look at my 
 face and another at the weapon in my hand as I entered 
 his door, and then he seemed to fade from my sight. I 
 ran to the back door, kicked it open, and saw him running 
 like a deer up the road toward the wood that began two 
 hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I 
 remember hearing children and women screaming, and 
 seeing them flying from the road. 
 
 He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had al 
 most come up with him. He doubled cunningly and 
 dashed into a brake that extended into a small canon. I 
 crashed through this after him, and in five minutes had 
 him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliffs. There 
 his instinct of self-preservation steadied him, as it will 
 
180 Options 
 
 steady even animals at bay. He turned to me, quite 
 calm, with a ghastly smile. 
 
 "Oh, Rayburn!" he said, with such an awful effort at 
 ease that I was impolite enough to laugh rudely in his face* 
 "Oh, Rayburn!" said he, "come, let s have done with this 
 nonsense! Of course, I know it s the fever and you re 
 not yourself; but collect yourself, man give me that 
 ridiculous weapon, now, and let s go back and talk it 
 over." 
 
 "I will go back," said I, "carrying your head with me, 
 We will see how charmingly it can discourse when it lies 
 in the basket at her door." 
 
 "Come," said he, persuasively, "I think better of you 
 than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. 
 But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come some 
 time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and bas 
 kets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd 
 cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" 
 he ended, with the silky cajolery that one would use 
 toward a fretful child. 
 
 "Listen," said I. "At last you have struck upon the 
 right note. What would she think of me? Listen," I 
 repeated. 
 
 "There are women," I said, "who look upon horse- 
 hair sofas and currant wine as dross. To them even the 
 calculated modulation of your well-trimmed talk sounds 
 like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree in the night. 
 They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the 
 villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors 
 
Tfie Head-Hunter 18i 
 
 of the young men who would win them. One, such as 
 they,* I said, "is waiting. Only a fool would try to win 
 a woman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway or by 
 waiting upon her whims like a footman. They are all 
 daughters of Herodias, and to gain their hearts one must 
 lay the heads of his enemies before them with his own 
 hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe. Do not be 
 a coward as well as a chatterer at a lady s tea-table." 
 
 "There, there!" said Devoe, falteringly. "You know 
 me, don t you, Ray burn?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," I said, "I know you. I know you. I kno\f 
 you. But the basket is empty. The old men of the vil 
 lage and the young men, and both the dark maidens and 
 the ones who are as fair as pearls, walk back and forth and 
 see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we have a 
 scuffle? It is not like you to make things go roughly and 
 with bad form. But the basket is waiting for your head." 
 
 With that he went to pieces. I had to catch him as he 
 tried to scamper past me like a scared rabbit. I stretched 
 him out and got a foot on his chest, but he squirmed like 
 a worm, although I appealed repeatedly to his sense of 
 propriety and the duty he owed to himself as a gentleman 
 not to make a row. 
 
 But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the 
 machete. 
 
 It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken during 
 the six or seven blows that it took to sever his head; but 
 finally he lay still, and I tied his head in my handkerchief. 
 The eyes opened and shut thrice while I walked a hundred 
 
182 Options 
 
 yards. I was red to my feet with the drip, but what did 
 that matter? With delight I felt under my hands the 
 crisp touch of his short, thick, brown hair and close- 
 trimmed beard 
 
 I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the 
 head of Louis Devoe into the basket that still hung by the 
 nail in the door-jamb. I sat in a chair under the awning 
 and waited. The sun was within two hours of setting. 
 Chloe came out and looked surprised. 
 
 "Where have you been, Tommy?" she asked. "You 
 were gone when I came out." 
 
 "Look in the basket," I said, rising to my feet. She 
 looked, and gave a little scream of delight, I was pleased 
 to note. 
 
 "Oh, Tommy!" she said. "It was just what I wanted 
 you to do. It s leaking a little, but that doesn t matter. 
 Wasn t I telling you? It s the little things that count. 
 And you remembered." 
 
 Little things ! She held the ensanguined head of Louis 
 Devoe in her white apron. Tiny streams of red widened 
 on her apron and dripped upon the floor. Her face was 
 bright and tender. 
 
 "Little things, indeed!" I thought again. "The 
 head-hunters are right. These are the things that women 
 like you to do for them." 
 
 Chloe came close to me. There was no one in sight. 
 She looked up at me with sea-blue eyes that said things 
 they had never said before. 
 
 "You think of me," she said. "You are the man I was 
 
Tfie Head-Hunter 183 
 
 describing. You think of the little things, and they are 
 what make the world worth living in. The man for me 
 must consider my little wishes, and make me happy in 
 small ways. He must bring me little red peaches in 
 December if I wish for them, and then I will love him till 
 June. I will have no knight in armor slaying his rival or 
 killing dragons for me. You please me very well, Tommy." 
 
 I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out 
 on my forehead, and I began to feel weak. I saw the red 
 stains vanish from Chloe s apron, and the head of Louis 
 Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut. 
 
 "There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, 
 boy," said Chloe, gayly, "and you must come. I must 
 go in for a little while." 
 
 She vanished in a delightful flutter. 
 
 Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my 
 pulse as though it were his own property that I had es 
 caped with. 
 
 "You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!" he 
 said, angrily. "Why did you leave your bed? And the 
 idiotic things you ve been doing ! and no wonder, with 
 your pulse going like a sledge-hammer." 
 
 "Name some of them," said I. 
 
 "Devoe sent for me," said Stamford. "He saw you 
 from his window go to old Campos store, chase him up 
 the hill with his own yard-stick, and then come back and 
 make off with his biggest cocoanut." 
 
 "It s the little things that count, after all," said I. 
 
 "It s your little bed that counts with you just now," 
 
184 Options 
 
 said the doctor. "You come with me at once, or II? 
 throw up the case. You re as loony as a loon." 
 
 So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I con 
 ceived a distrust as to the value of the method of the head- 
 hunters. Perhaps for many centuries the maidens of the 
 villages may have been looking wistfully at the heads in 
 the baskets at the doorways, longing for other and lesse* 
 trophies. 
 
NO STORY 
 
 TO AVOID having this book hurled into a corner of the 
 room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that 
 this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no 
 shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy "cub" 
 reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story no any 
 thing. 
 
 But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene 
 in the reporters room of the Morning Beacon, I will repay 
 the favor by keeping strictly my promises set forth above. 
 
 I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put 
 on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a 
 shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled 
 high with exchanges, Congressional Records, and old files. 
 There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whis 
 pered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wander 
 ings about its streets. My income was not regular. 
 
 One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp 
 was something in the mechanical department I think 
 he had something to do with the pictures, for he smeiled of 
 photographers supplies, and his hands were always stained 
 and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five and 
 looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, 
 curly red whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the 
 
 185 
 
186 Options 
 
 "welcome" left off. He was pale and unhealthy and miser 
 able and fawning., and an assiduous borrower of sums rang 
 ing from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was 
 his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the 
 Chemical National Bank knows the amount of Ha O that 
 collateral will show on analysis. When he sat on my 
 table he held one hand with the other to keep both from 
 shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of lightness 
 and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was use 
 ful in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and per 
 ceptibly assumed. 
 
 This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining 
 silver dollars as a grumbling advance on a story that the 
 Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted. So if I was not 
 feeling at peace with the world, at least an armistice had 
 been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to write a 
 description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight. 
 
 "Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather im 
 patiently, "how goes it?" He was looking to-day more 
 miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden 
 than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of misery 
 where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick 
 him. 
 
 "Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most 
 fawning look and his log-like eyes that blinked in the 
 narrow space between his high-growing matted beard and 
 his low-growing matted hair. 
 
 "I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more 
 loudly and inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had 
 
No Story 187 
 
 hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can 
 tell you. And I drew them," I continued, "to meet a 
 want a hiatus a demand a need an exigency 
 
 a requirement of exactly five dollars." 
 
 I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was 
 to lose one of the dollars on the spot. 
 
 "I don t want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I 
 breathed again. "I thought you d like to get put onto a 
 good story," he went on. "I ve got a rattling fine one for 
 you. You ought to make it run a column at least. It 11 
 make a dandy if you work it up right. It 11 probably 
 cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don t want any 
 thing out of it myself." 
 
 I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp 
 appreciated past favors, although he did not return them. 
 If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then 
 he would have got it. 
 
 "What is the story?" I asked, poising my pencil with a 
 finely calculated editorial air. 
 
 "I ll tell you," said Tripp. "It s a girl. A beauty. 
 One of the howlingest Amsden s Junes you ever saw. 
 Rosebuds covered with dew violets in their mossy bed 
 
 and truck like that. She s lived on Long Island twenty 
 years and never saw New York City before. I ran against 
 her on Thirty -fourth Street. She d just got in on the East 
 River ferry. I tell you, she s a beauty that would take 
 the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She 
 stopped me on the street and asked me where she could 
 find George Brown. Asked me where she could find 
 
188 Options 
 
 George Brown in New York City! What do you think oi 
 that? 
 
 "I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry 
 a young farmer named Dodd Hiram Dodd next 
 week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the 
 championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased 
 his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to 
 make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up 
 again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best 
 choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada her 
 name s Ada Lowery saddles a nag and rides eight miles 
 to the railroad station and catches the 6 :45 A.M. train for 
 the city. Looking for George, you know you under 
 stand about women George wasn t there, so she wanted 
 him. 
 
 "Well, you know, I couldn t leave her loose in Wolf- 
 town-on-the-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first 
 person she inquired of would say: George Brown? 
 why, yes lemme see he s a short man with light-blue 
 eyes, ain t he? Oh, yes you ll find George on One 
 Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the 
 grocery. He s bill-clerk in a saddle-and-harness store. 
 That s about how innocent and beautiful she is. You 
 know those little Long Island water-front villages like 
 Greenburg a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams 
 and about nine summer visitors for industries. That s 
 the kind of a place she comes from. But, say you 
 ought to see her! 
 
 "What could I do? I don t know what money look? 
 
No Story 189 
 
 like in the morning. And she d paid her last cent of 
 pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, 
 which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eat 
 ing them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding- 
 house on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and 
 hocked her. She s in soak for a dollar. That s old 
 Mother McGinnis price per day. I ll show you the 
 house. 
 
 "What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought 
 you said you had a story. Every ferryboat that crosses 
 the East River brings or takes away girls from Long Is 
 land." 
 
 The premature lines on Tripp s face grew deeper. He 
 frowned seriously from his tangle of hair. He separated 
 his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking 
 forefinger. 
 
 "Can t you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it 
 would make? You could do it fine. All about the ro 
 mance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of 
 stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few stickfuls of 
 funny business joshing the Long Islanders about being 
 green, and, well you know how to do it. You ought 
 to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it 11 cost 
 you only about four dollars. You ll make a clear profit 
 rf eleven." 
 
 "How will it cost me four dollars? " I asked, suspiciously. 
 
 "One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, 
 promptly, "and two dollars to pay the girl s fare back 
 borne." 
 
190 Options 
 
 "And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a 
 rapid mental calculation 
 
 "One dollar to me," said Tripp, "for whiskey. Are you 
 on?" 
 
 I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to 
 begin writing again. But this grim, abject, specious, 
 subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken 
 off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly moist. 
 
 "Don t you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calm 
 ness, "that this girl has got to be sent home to-day 
 not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day? I can t do any 
 thing for her. You know, I m the janitor and correspond 
 ing secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you 
 could make a newspaper story out of it and w r in out a piece 
 of money on general results. But, anyhow, don t you see 
 that she s got to get back home before night?" 
 
 And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depress 
 ing sensation known as the sense of duty. Why should 
 that sense fall upon one as a weight and a burden? I 
 knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of 
 my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada 
 Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp s whiskey dol 
 lar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight- 
 errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail 
 afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. 
 In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat. 
 
 Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to 
 please, conducted me via the street-cars to the human 
 pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I paid the fares. It 
 
A T o Story 191 
 
 seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and the 
 smallest minted coin were strangers. 
 
 Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red 
 brick boarding-house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and 
 crouched as a rabbit makes ready to spring away at the 
 sound of a hunting-dog. I guessed what a life he had led, 
 terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of landladies. 
 
 "Give me one of the dollars quick!" he said. 
 
 The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood 
 there with white eyes they were white, I say and a 
 yellow face, holding together at her throat with one hand 
 a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp thrust the 
 dollar through the space without a word, and it bought 
 us entry. 
 
 "She s in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the 
 back of her sack upon us. 
 
 In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre- 
 table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She 
 was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her bril 
 liant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop you 
 thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the sense 
 less confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have 
 been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. 
 I was introduced, and a gum-drop suffered neglect while 
 she conveyed to me a naive interest, such as a puppy dog 
 (a prize winner) might bestow upon a crawling beetle or a 
 frog. 
 
 Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of 
 one hand spread upon it, as an attorney or a master of 
 
192 Options 
 
 ceremonies might have stood. But he looked the master 
 of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned high, as if it 
 sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen. I 
 thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in 
 the glade between his tangled hair and beard. For one 
 ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been introduced 
 as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in distress. 
 But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the ceremonies, 
 whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his 
 actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon 
 me as material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope 
 of extracting from me his whiskey dollar. 
 
 "My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said 
 Tripp, "will tell you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. 
 He s a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than 
 I can. That s why I brought him with me." (O Tripp, 
 wasn t it the silver-tongued orator you wanted?) "He s 
 wise to a lot of things, and he ll tell you now what s best 
 to do." 
 
 I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in my rickety 
 chair. 
 
 "Why er Miss Lowery," I began, secretly enraged 
 at Tripp s awkward opening, "I am at your service, of 
 course, but er as I haven t been apprized of the cir 
 cumstances of the case, I er " 
 
 "Oh," said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, "it 
 ain t as bad as that there ain t any circumstances. 
 It s the first time I ve ever been in New York except once 
 when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such a 
 
Wo Story 193 
 
 big town. And I met Mr. Mr. Snip on the street and 
 asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here 
 and asked me to wait." 
 
 "I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell 
 Mr. Chalmers all. He s a friend of mine" (I was get 
 ting used to it by this time), "and he ll give you the 
 right tip." 
 
 "Why, certainly," said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop 
 toward me. " There ain t anything to tell except that 
 well, everything s fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd 
 next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres 
 of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck- 
 farms on the Island. But this morning I had my horse 
 saddled up he s a white horse named Dancer and I 
 rode over to the station. I told em at home I was going 
 to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I 
 guess, but I don t care. And I came to New York on the 
 train, and I met Mr. Mr. Flip on the street and asked 
 him if he knew where I could find G G " 
 
 "Now, Miss Lowery," broke in Tripp, loudly, and with 
 much bad taste, I thought, as she hesitated with her 
 word, "you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don t 
 you? He s all right, and good to you, ain t he? " 
 
 "Of course I like him," said Miss Lowery, emphatically. 
 "Hi s all right. And of course he s good to me. So is 
 everybody." 
 
 I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada 
 Lowery s life all men would be good to her. They would 
 r.trive, contrive, struggle, and compete to hold umbrellas 
 
194 Options 
 
 over her hat, check her trunk, pick up her handkerchief, 
 and buy for her soda at the fountain. 
 
 "But," went on Miss Lowery, "last night I got to 
 thinking about G George and I " 
 
 Down went the bright gold head upon her dimpled, 
 clasped hands on the table. Such a beautiful April storm ! 
 Unrestrainedly she sobbed. I wished I could have com 
 forted her. But I was not George. And I was glad I was 
 not Hiram and yet I was sorry, too. 
 
 By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, 
 brave and halfway smiling. She would have made a 
 splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright 
 and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her story. 
 
 "I guess I m a terrible hayseed," she said, between her 
 little gulps and sighs, "but I can t help it. G George 
 Brown and I were sweethearts since he was eight and I was 
 five. When he was nineteen that was four years ago 
 he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he 
 was going to be a policeman or a railroad president or 
 something. And then he was coming back for me. But 
 I never heard from him any more. And I I liked 
 him." 
 
 Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp 
 hurled himself into the crevasse and dammed it. Con 
 found him, I could see his game. He was trying to make 
 a story of it for his sordid ends and profit. 
 
 "Go on, Mr. Chalmers," said he, "and tell the lady 
 what s the proper caper. That s what I told her you d 
 hand it to her straight. Spiel up." 
 
No Story 195 
 
 1 coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. 
 I saw my duty. Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I 
 was securely trapped. Tripp s first dictum to me had 
 been just and correct. The young lady must be sent back 
 to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with, con 
 vinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned with 
 out delay. I hated Hiram and despised George; but 
 duty must be done. Noblesse oblige and only five silver 
 dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but some 
 times they can be made to jibe. It was mine to be Sir 
 Oracle, and then pay the freight. So I assumed an air 
 that mingled Solomon s with that of the general pas 
 senger agent of the Long Island Railroad. 
 
 "Miss Lowery," said I, as impressively as I could, 
 "life is rather a queer proposition, after all." There was 
 a familiar sound to these words after I had spoken them, 
 and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard Mr. Cohan s 
 song. "Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our 
 earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, 
 often fail to materialize." The last three words sounded 
 somewhat trite when they struck the air. "But those 
 fondly cherished dreams," I went on, "may cast a pleasant 
 afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and 
 vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as 
 well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. 
 May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a 
 happy that is, a contented and harmonious life with 
 Mr. er Dodd if in other ways than romantic recol- 
 Jbctions he seems to er fill the bill, as I mi 
 
196 Options 
 
 "Oh, Hi s all right," answered Miss Lowery. "Yes, I 
 could get along with him fine. He s promised me an 
 automobile and a motor-boat. But somehow, when it 
 got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn t help 
 wishing well, just thinking about George. Something 
 must have happened to him or he d have written. On the 
 day he left, he and me got a hammer and a chisel and cut 
 a dime into two pieces. I took one piece and he took the 
 other, and we promised to be true to each other and al 
 ways keep the pieces till we saw each other again. I ve 
 got mine at home now in a ring-box in the top drawer of 
 my dresser. I guess I was silly to come up here looking 
 for him. I never realized what a big place it is." 
 
 And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that 
 he had, still trying to drag in a little story or drama to 
 earn the miserable dollar that he craved. 
 
 "Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they 
 come to the city and learn something. I guess George, 
 maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, 
 or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the 
 races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, 
 and you ll be all right." 
 
 But now the time was come for action, for the hands of 
 the clock were moving close to noon. Frowning upon 
 Tripp, I argued gently and philosophically with Miss 
 Lowery, delicately convincing her of the importance of 
 returning home at once. And I impressed upon her the 
 truth that it would not be absolutely necessary to her 
 N f uture happiness that she mention to Hi the wonders or 
 
No Story 197 
 
 the fact of her visit to the city that had swallowed up the 
 unlucky George. 
 
 She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosinante) 
 tied to a tree near the railroad station. Tripp and I gave 
 her instructions to mount the patient steed as soon as she 
 arrived and ride home as fast as possible. There she was 
 to recount the exciting adventure of a day spent with 
 Susie Adams. She could "fix" Susie I was sure of 
 that and all would be well. 
 
 And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of 
 beauty, I warmed to the adventure. The three of us 
 hurried to the ferry, and there I found the price of a ticket 
 to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty cents. I 
 bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for 
 Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and 
 stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us until it 
 was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And then Tripp 
 and I faced each other, brought back to earth, left dry and 
 desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of life. 
 
 The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwin 
 dling. I looked at Tripp and almost sneered. He looked 
 more careworn, contemptible, and disreputable than ever. 
 I fingered the two silver dollars remaining in my pocket 
 and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids of con 
 tempt. He mustered up an imitation of resistance. 
 
 "Can t you get a story out of it?" he asked, huskily. 
 "Some sort of a story, even if you have to fake part of 
 tit?" 
 ^"Not a line," said I. " I can fancy the look on Grimes* 
 
198 Options 
 
 i 
 
 face if I should try to put over any slush like this. But 
 we ve helped the little lady out, and that ll have to be 
 our only reward." 
 
 "I m sorry," said Tripp, almost inaudibly. "I m 
 sorry you re out your money. Now, it seemed to me like 
 a find of a big story, you know that is, a sort of thing 
 that would write up pretty well." 
 
 "Let s try to forget it," said I, with a praiseworthy 
 attempt at gayety, "and take the next car cross town." 
 
 I steeled myself against his unexpressed but palpable 
 desire. He should not coax, cajole, or wring from me the 
 dollar he craved. I had had enough of that wild-goose 
 chase. 
 
 Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern 
 and glossy seams to reach for something that had once 
 been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and 
 cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a 
 cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and some 
 thing dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand 
 and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime 
 that had been cut in halves with a chisel. 
 
 "What!" I said, looking at him keenly. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he responded, dully. "George Brown, 
 alias Tripp. What s the use?" 
 
 Barring the W. C. T. U., I d like to know if anybody 
 disapproves of my having produced promptly from my 
 pocket Tripp s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying 
 it in his hand. 
 
THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 
 
 WHERE to go for wisdom has become a question of serk 
 ous import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is 
 boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is 
 reeling; ^Esop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solomon 
 is too solemn; you couldn t get anything out of Epictetus 
 with a pick. 
 
 The ant, which for many years served as a model of 
 intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been 
 proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and 
 effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua con 
 ventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. 
 Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of 
 patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors 
 in the almanacs published by the daily newspapers. 
 College professors have become 
 
 But there shall be no personalities. 
 
 To sit in classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the 
 past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the 
 poet says, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." 
 Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into 
 us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a 
 
 199 
 
200 Options 
 
 strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It ! 
 disturbs our roots. 
 
 Then, let us rather gather wisdom. But how to do so 
 requires knowledge. If we know a thing, we know it; 
 but very often we are not wise to it that we are wise, 
 and 
 
 But let s go on with the story. 
 
 n 
 
 Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying 
 on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the 
 amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to 
 him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered magazine, 
 with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He 
 turned out to be a scrap-book. 
 
 "I am a newspaper reporter, " I said to him, to try him. 
 "I have been detailed to write up some of the experi 
 ences of the unfortunate ones who spend their evenings 
 in this park. May I ask you to what you attribute your 
 downfall in " 
 
 I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase a 
 laugh so rusty and unpractised that I was sure it had been 
 his first for many a day. 
 
 "Oh, no, no," said he. "You ain t a reporter. 
 Reporters don t talk that way. They pretend to be one 
 of us, and say they ve just got in on the blind baggage 
 from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park 
 bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here 
 -ftll day and watch the people go by. I can size up any- 
 
The Higher Pragmatism 201 
 
 body who walks past my bench in a way that would 
 surprise you. " 
 
 "Well," I said, "go on and tell me. How do you size 
 me up? * 
 
 "I should say," said the student of human nature with 
 unpardonable hesitation, "that you was, say, in the 
 contracting business or majbe worked in a store or 
 was a sign-painter. You stopped in the park to finish 
 your cigar, and thought you d get a little free monologue 
 out of me. Still, you might be a plasterer or a lawyer 
 it s getting kind of dark, you see. And your wife won t 
 let you smoke at home. " 
 
 I frowned gloomily. 
 
 "But, judging again," went on the reader of men, 
 "I d say you ain t got a wife." 
 
 "No," said I, rising restlessly. "No, no, no, I ain t. 
 But I will have, by the arrows of Cupid ! That is, if " 
 
 My voice must have trailed away and muffled itself in 
 uncertainty and despair. 
 
 "I see you have a story yourself," said the dusty 
 vagrant impudently, it seemed to me. "Suppose you 
 take your dime back and spin your yarn for me. I m 
 interested myself in the ups and downs of unfortunate 
 ones who spend their evenings in the park. " 
 
 Somehow, that amused me. I looked at the frowsy 
 derelict with more interest. I did have a story. Why 
 not tell it to him? I had told none of my friends. I had 
 always been a reserved and bottled-up man. It was 
 psychical timidity or sensitiveness perhaps both. And 
 
02 Options 
 
 I smiled to myself in wonder when I felt an impulse to 
 confide in this stranger and vagabond. 
 
 "Jack, "said I. 
 
 "Mack, "said he. 
 
 "Mack," said I, "I ll tell you." 
 
 "Do you want the dime back in advance?" said he. 
 
 I handed him a dollar. 
 
 "The dime," said I, "was the price of listening to your 
 story." 
 
 "Right on the point of the jaw," said he. "Go on." 
 
 And then, incredible as it may seem to the lovers ia 
 the world who confide their sorrows only to the night 
 wind and the gibbous moon, I laid bare my secret to that 
 wreck of all things that you would have supposed to be 
 in sympathy with love. 
 
 I told him of the days and weeks and months that I had 
 spent in adoring Mildred Telfair. I spoke of my despair, 
 my grievous days and wakeful nights, my dwindling hopes 
 and distress of mind. I even pictured to this night- 
 prowler her beauty and dignity, the great sway she had 
 in society, and the magnificence of her life as the elder 
 daughter of an ancient race whose pride overbalanced the 
 dollars of the city s millionaires. 
 
 "Why don t you cop the lady out?" asked Mack, 
 bringing me down to earth and dialect again. 
 
 I explained to him that my worth was so small, my 
 income so minute, and my fears so large that I hadn t 
 the courage to speak to her of my worship. I told him 
 that in her presence I could only blush and stammer, and 
 
The Higher Pragmatism 203 
 
 that she looked upon me with a wonderful, maddening 
 smile of amusement. 
 
 "She kind of moves in the professional class, don t 
 she? "asked Mack. 
 
 "The Telfair family "I began, haughtily. 
 
 "I mean professional beauty, * said my hearer. 
 
 "She is greatly and widely admired," I answered, 
 cautiously. 
 
 "Any sisters?" 
 
 "One." 
 
 "You know any more girls?" 
 
 "Why, several," I answered. "And a few others." 
 
 "Say, " said Mack, "tell me one thing can you hand 
 out the dope to other girls? Can you chin em and make 
 matinee eyes at em and squeeze em? You know what 
 I mean. You re just shy when it comes to this particular 
 dame the professional beauty ain t that right?" 
 
 " In a way you have outlined the situation with approxi 
 mate truth, " I admitted. 
 
 "I thought so," said Mack, grimly. "Now, that 
 reminds me of my own case. I ll tell you about it. " 
 
 I was indignant, but concealed it. What was this 
 loafer s case or anybody s case compared with mine? 
 Besides, I had given him a dollar and ten cents. 
 
 "Feel my muscle," said my companion, suddenly 
 flexing his biceps. I did so mechanically. The fellows 
 in gyms are always asking you to do that. His arm was 
 as hard as cast-iron. 
 
 "Four years ago," said Mack, "I could lick anj man 
 
204 Options 
 
 in New York outside of the professional ring. Your 
 case and mine is just the same. I come from the West 
 Side between Thirtieth and Fourteenth and I won t 
 give the number on the door. I was a scrapper when I 
 was ten, and when I was twenty no amateur in the city 
 could stand up four rounds with me. S a fact. You 
 know Bill McCarty? No? He managed the smokers 
 for some of them swell clubs. Well, I knocked out every 
 thing Bill brought up before me. I was a middle-weight, 
 but could train down to a welter when necessary. I boxed 
 all over the West Side at bouts and benefits and private 
 entertainments, and was never put out once. 
 
 "But, say, the first time I put my foot in the ring with 
 a professional I was no more than a canned lobster. I 
 dunno how it was I seemed to lose heart. I guess I 
 got too much imagination. There was a formality and 
 publicness about it that kind of weakened my nerve. I 
 never won a fight in the ring. Light-weights and all 
 kinds of scrubs used to sign up with my manager and then 
 walk up and tap me on the wrist and see me fall. The 
 minute I seen the crowd and a lot of gents in evening 
 clothes down in front, and seen a professional come inside 
 the ropes, I got as weak as ginger-ale. 
 
 "Of course, it wasn t long till I couldn t get no backers, 
 and I didn t have any more chances to fight a professional 
 or many amateurs, either. But lemme tell you I 
 was as good as most men inside the ring or out. It was 
 just that dumb, dead feeling I had when I was up against 
 a regular that always done me up. 
 
The Higher Pragmatism 205 
 
 "Well, sir, after I had got out of the business, I got a 
 mighty grouch on. I used to go round town licking pri 
 vate citizens and all kinds of unprofessional just to 
 please myself. I d lick cops in dark streets and car- 
 conductors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I 
 could start a row with em. It didn t make any difference 
 how big they were, or how much science they had, I got 
 away with em. If I d only just have had the confidence 
 in the ring that I had beating up the best men outside of 
 it, I d be wearing black pearls and heliotrope silk socks 
 to-day. 
 
 "One evening I was walking along near the Bowery, 
 thinking about things, when along comes a slumming- 
 party. About six or seven they was, all in swallowtails, 
 and these silk hats that don t shine. One of the gang kind 
 of shoves me off the sidewalk. I hadn t had a scrap in 
 three days, and I just says, * De-light-ed! and hits him 
 back of the ear. 
 
 "Well, we had it. That Johnnie put up as decent a 
 little fight as you d want to see in the moving pictures. 
 It was on a side street, and no cops around. The other 
 guy had a lot of science, but it only took me about six 
 minutes to lay him out. 
 
 "Some of the swallowtails dragged him up against some 
 steps and began to fan him. Another one of em comes 
 over to me and says: 
 
 " Young man, do you know what you ve done? 
 
 " Oh, beat it, says I. I ve done nothing but a little 
 punching-bag work. Take Freddy back to Yale and tell 
 
206 Options 
 
 him to quit studying sociology on the wrong side of the 
 sidewalk. 
 
 " My good fellow, says he, I don t know who you are, 
 but I d like to. You ve knocked out Reddy Burns, the 
 champion middle-weight of the world! He came to 
 New York yesterday, to try to get a match on with Jim 
 Jeffries. If you 
 
 " But when I come out of my faint I was laying on the 
 floor in a drug-store saturated with aromatic spirits of 
 ammonia. If I d known that was Reddy Burns, I d have 
 got down in the gutter and crawled past him instead of 
 handing him one like I did. Why, if I d ever been in a 
 ring and seen him climbing over the ropes, I d have been 
 all to the sal- volatile. 
 
 "So that s what imagination does," concluded Mack. 
 "And as I said, your case and mine is simultaneous. 
 You ll never win out. You can t go up against the 
 professionals. I tell you, it s a park bench for yours in 
 this romance business. " 
 
 Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly. 
 
 "I m afraid I don t see the parallel, " I said, coldly. "I 
 have only a very slight acquaintance with the prize ring. " 
 
 The derelict touched my sleeve with his forefinger, for 
 emphasis, as he explained his parable. 
 
 "Every man," said he, with some dignity, "has got 
 his lamps on something that looks good to him. With 
 you, it s this dame that you re afraid to say your say to. 
 With me, it was to win out ih the ring. Well, you ll lose 
 just like I did," 
 
The Higher Pragmatism 207 
 
 "Why do you think I shall lose?" I asked warmly. 
 
 "Cause," said he, "you re afraid to go in the ring. 
 You dassen t stand up before a professional. Your case 
 and mine is just the same. You re a amateur; and that 
 means that you d better keep outside of the ropes. " 
 
 "Well, I must be going, " I said, rising and looking with 
 elaborate care at my watch. 
 
 WTien I was twenty feet away the park-bencher called 
 to me. 
 
 "Much obliged for the dollar," he said. "And for 
 the dime. But you ll never get *er. You re in the 
 amateur class." 
 
 "Serves you right," I said to myself, "for hobnobbing 
 with a tramp. His impudence!" 
 
 But, as I walked, his words seemed to repeat themselves 
 over and over again in my brain. I think I even grew 
 angry at the man. 
 
 "I ll show him!" I finally said, aloud. "I ll show him 
 that I can fight Reddy Burns, too even knowing who 
 he is." 
 
 I hurried to a telephone-booth and rang up the Telfair 
 residence. 
 
 A soft, sweet voice answered. Didn t I know that 
 voice? My hand holding the receiver shook. 
 
 "Is that you?" said I, employing the foolish words that 
 form the vocabulary of every talker through the telephone. 
 
 "Yes, this is I," came back the answer in the low, 
 clear-cut tones that are an inheritance of the Telfairs. 
 "Who is it, please?" 
 
208 Options 
 
 "It s me," said I, less ungrammatically than egotisti 
 cally. "It s me, and I ve got a few things that I want to 
 say to you right now and immediately and straight to 
 the point." 
 
 " Dear me, " said the voice. " Oh, it s you, Mr. Arden ! " 
 
 I wondered if any accent on the first word was intended. 
 Mildred was fine at saying things that you had to study 
 out afterward. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I hope so. And now to come down to 
 brass tacks." I thought that rather a vernacularism, if 
 there is such a word, as soon as I had said it; but I didn t 
 stop to apologize. "You know, of course, that I love 
 you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long 
 time. I don t want any more foolishness about it that 
 is, I mean I want an answer from you right now. Will 
 you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please. Keep out, 
 Central. Hello, hello ! Will you, or will you not ? " 
 
 That was just the uppercut for Reddy Burns chin. 
 The answer came back: 
 
 "Why, Phil, dear, of course I will! I didn t know that 
 you that is, you never said oh, come up to the house, 
 please I can t say what I want to over the phone. You 
 are so importunate. But please come up to the house, 
 won t you?" 
 
 Would I? 
 
 I rang the bell of the Telfair house violently. Some 
 sort of a human came to the door and shooed me into the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 "Oh, well," said I to myself, looking at the ceiling, 
 
The Higher Pragmatism 209 
 
 "any one can learn from any one. That was a pretty 
 good philosophy of Mack s, anyhow. lie didn t take 
 advantage of his experience, but I get the benefit of it. 
 If you want to get into the professional class, you ve 
 got to " 
 
 I stopped thinking then. Some one was coming down 
 the stairs. My knees began to shake. I knew then how 
 Mack had felt when a professional began to climb over 
 the ropes. 1 looked around foolishly for a door or a 
 window by which I might escape. If it had been any 
 other girl approaching, I mightn t have 
 
 But just then the door opened, and Bess, Mildred s 
 younger sister, came in. I d never seen her look so much 
 like a glorified angel. She walked straight up to me, 
 and and 
 
 I d never noticed before what perfectly wonderful eyes 
 and hair Elizabeth Telfair had. 
 
 "Phil," she said, in the Telfair, sweet, thrilling tones, 
 "why didn t you tell me about it before? I thought it 
 was sister you wanted all the tune, until you telephoned 
 to me a few minutes ago! * 
 
 I suppose Mack and I always will be hopeless amateurs. 
 But, as the thing has turned out in my case, I m mighty 
 glad of it. 
 
BEST-SELLER 
 
 ONE day last summer I went to Pittsburgh well, I 
 had to go there on business. 
 
 My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of 
 the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them 
 were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, 
 with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have 
 the windows raised. Then there was the usual number 
 of men who looked as if they might be in almost any 
 business and going almost anywhere. Some students 
 of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell 
 you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in 
 life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only 
 way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the 
 train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same 
 i time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the 
 , sleeper. 
 
 The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on 
 the window-sill off to the left knee of my trousers. I 
 removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was 
 eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded 
 the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of 
 Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and 
 
 210 
 
Best-Setter 211 
 
 looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black f 
 bald-spotted head just visible above the back of 
 No. 9. 
 
 Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his 
 chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was 
 "The Rose Lady and Trevelyan" one of the best-selling 
 novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philis 
 tine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the win 
 dow, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of 
 Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass com 
 pany an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two 
 years. 
 
 In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and 
 had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, 
 residence, and destination. Politics might have followed 
 next; but I was not so ill-fated. 
 
 I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the 
 stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. 
 He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that 
 jeems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of 
 your nose. I never saw him wear but one kind of necktie, 
 and he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is 
 as hard and true as anything ever turned out by the 
 Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as 
 Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. 
 Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield 
 Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the 
 branch heaven. He believes that "our" plate-glass is 
 the most important commodity in the world, and that 
 
Options 
 
 when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent 
 and law-abiding. 
 
 During my acquaintance with him in the City of 
 Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, 
 romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during 
 our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after 
 Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage- 
 pudding, and coffee (hey, there! with milk separate). 
 Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he 
 told me that business had picked up since the party 
 conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown. 
 
 II 
 
 "Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with 
 the toe of his right shoe, "did you ever read one of these 
 best-sellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an 
 American swell sometimes even from Chicago who 
 falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is 
 travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father s 
 kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They re all 
 alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Washing 
 ton newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a 
 Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat- 
 broker worth fifty millions. But he s always ready to 
 break into the king row of any foreign country that sends 
 over their queens and princesses to try the new plush seats 
 on the Big Four or the B. and O. There doesn t seem to 
 be any other reason in the book for their being here. 
 
 "Well, this fellow chases the royal chair- warmer home 
 
Best-Seller 213 
 
 as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets her on the 
 corso or the strasse one evening and gives us ten pages of 
 conversation. She reminds him of the difference in their 
 stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in three 
 solid pages about America s uncrowned sovereigns. If 
 you d take his remarks and set em to music, and then 
 take the music away from em, they d sound exactly like 
 one of George Cohan s songs. 
 
 "Well, you know how it runs on, if you ve read any 
 of em he slaps the king s Swiss bodyguards around 
 like everything whenever they get in his way. He s a 
 great fencer, too. Now, I ve known of some Chicago 
 men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard 
 of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first 
 landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenf esten- 
 stein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes a 
 Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to 
 massacre the said king. And then he has to fight duels 
 with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four 
 Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline- 
 station. 
 
 "But the great scene is when his rival for the princess* 
 hand, Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis 
 and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yata 
 ghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This scene 
 is what runs the best-seller into the twenty-ninth edition 
 before the publisher has had time to draw a check for 
 the advance royalties. 
 
 "The American hero shucks his coat and throws if; 
 
Options 
 
 over the heads of the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse 
 a slap with his mitt, says Yah ! to the yataghan, and lands 
 in Kid McCoy s best style on the count s left eye. Of 
 course, we have a neat little prize-fight right then and 
 there. The count in order to make the go possible 
 seems to be an expert at the art of self-defence, himself; 
 and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight done over 
 into literature. The book ends with the broker and the 
 princess doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden- 
 trees on the Gorgonzola Walk. That winds- up the love- 
 story plenty good enough. But I notice that the book 
 dodges the fin al issue. Even a best-seller has sense enough 
 to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain-broker on the 
 throne of Lobsterpotsdam or bringing over a real princess 
 to eat fish and potato salad in an Italian chalet on Michi 
 gan Avenue. What do you think about em?" 
 
 "Why," said I, "I hardly know, John. There s a 
 saying: Love levels all ranks, you know. 
 
 "Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are 
 rank on the level. I know something about literature, 
 even if I am in plate-glass. These kind of books a^e 
 wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they pJe 
 em up on me. No good can come out of an international 
 clinch between the Old World aristocracy and one of v.j 
 fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they 
 generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A 
 fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high- 
 school and belonged to the same singing-society that he 
 did. When young millionaires fall in love, they always 
 
Best-Seller 215 
 
 select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on 
 the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper corre 
 spondents always marry widow ladies ten years older 
 than themselves who keep boarding-houses. No, sir, 
 you can t make a novel sound right to me when it makes 
 one of C. D. Gibson s bright young men go abroad and 
 turn kingdoms upside down just because he s a Taft 
 American and took a course at a gymnasium. And listen 
 how they talk, too!" 
 
 Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page. 
 
 " Listen at this, " said he. " Trevelyan is chinning with 
 the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. 
 This is how it goes: 
 
 " Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth s fairest flowers. Would I 
 aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only 
 myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no 
 title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and a 
 sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors.* 
 
 "Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking 
 about freeing anything that sounded as much like canned 
 pork as that ! He d be much more likely to fight to have 
 an import duty put on it. " 
 
 "I think I understand you, John," said I. "You 
 want fiction-writers to be consistent with their scenes 
 and characters. They shouldn t mix Turkish pashas 
 with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island 
 clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cow 
 boys, or Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajalia of 
 India," 
 
216 Options 
 
 "Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 
 em, " added Pescud. "It don t jibe. People are divided 
 into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it s every 
 body s impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, 
 too. I don t see why people go to work and buy hundreds 
 of thousands of books like that. You don t see or hear 
 of any such didoes and capers in real lif e. " 
 
 III 
 
 "Well, John," said I, "I haven t read a best-seller is 
 a long time. Maybe I ve had notions about them some* 
 what like yours. But tell me more about yourself. 
 Getting along all right with the company?" 
 
 "Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I ve had 
 my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a com 
 mission, too. I ve bought a neat slice of real estate out 
 in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next 
 year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. 
 Oh, I m in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter 
 who s elected!" 
 
 "Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, I didn t tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud 
 with a broader grin. 
 
 "O-ho!" I said. "So you ve taken time enough off 
 from your plate-glass to have a romance?" 
 
 "No, no," said John. "No romance nothing like 
 that! But I ll tell you about it. 
 
 "I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about 
 eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, ths 
 
Best-Seller 217 
 
 finest looking girl I d ever laid eyes on. Nothing spec 
 tacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. 
 Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either 
 handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, 
 and she wasn t the kind to start anything. She read a 
 book and minded her business, which was to make the 
 world prettier and better just by residing in it. I kept 
 on looking out of the side doors of my eyes, and finally 
 the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case 
 of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. 
 I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate- 
 glass business go to smash for a while. 
 
 "She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to 
 Louisville over the L. and N. There she bought another 
 ticket, and went on through Shelbyville, Frankford and 
 Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time 
 keeping up with her. The trains came along when they 
 pleased, and didn t seem to be going anywhere in partic 
 ular, except to keep on the track and the right of way as 
 much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions 
 instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. 
 Ill bet Pinker-ton would outbid the plate-glass people for 
 my services any time if they knew how I managed to 
 shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her 
 sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her. 
 
 "The last station she got off at was away down in 
 Virginia, about six in the afternoon. There were about 
 fifty houses and four hundred niggers in sight. The rest 
 was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds. 
 
218 Options 
 
 "A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, 
 looking as proud as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on 
 the same post-card, was there to meet her. His clothes 
 were frazzled, but I didn t notice that till later. He took 
 her little satchel, and they started over the plank walks 
 and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece 
 behind em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet 
 ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the 
 previous Saturday. 
 
 "They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took 
 my breath away when I looked up. Up there in the 
 biggest grove I ever saw was a tremendous house with 
 round white pillars about a thousand feet high, and the 
 yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs 
 that you couldn t have seen the house if it hadn t been as 
 big as the Capitol at Washington. 
 
 " Here s where I have to trail, says I to myself. "I 
 thought before that she seemed to be in moderate circum 
 stances, at least. This must be the Governor s mansion, 
 or the Agricultural Building of a new World s Fair, any 
 how. I d better go back to the village and get posted by 
 the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some inf ormatioii 
 
 "In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View 
 House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse 
 grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, 
 and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord I was 
 taking orders for plate-glass. 
 
 " I don t want no plates, says he, but I do need 
 another glass molasses-pitcher. 
 
Best-Seller 219 
 
 "By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answer 
 ing questions. 
 
 " Why, says he, I thought everybody knowed who 
 lived in the big white house on the hill. It s Colonel 
 Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, 
 or anywhere else. They re the oldest family in the State. 
 That was his daughter that got off the train. She s been 
 up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick. 
 
 "I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I 
 caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down 
 next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat 
 there wasn t any other way. 
 
 " Excuse me, says I, can you tell me where Mr. 
 Hinkle lives? 
 
 " She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see 
 about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just 
 a slight twinkle of fun in her eyes. 
 
 "*No one of that name lives in Birchton, says she. 
 That is, she goes on, as far as I know. Is the gentleman 
 you are seeking white? 
 
 "Well, that tickled me. No kidding, says I. I m 
 not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pitts 
 burgh." 
 
 " You are quite a distance from home, says she. 
 
 " I d have gone a thousand miles farther, says I. 
 
 " Not if you hadn t waked up when the train 
 started in Shelby ville, says she; and then she turned 
 almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in 
 the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep 
 
Options 
 
 on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see 
 which train she took and only just managed to wake up 
 in time. 
 
 "And then I told her why I had come, as respectful 
 and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about 
 myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked 
 was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her 
 to like me. 
 
 "She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes 
 never get mixed up. They look straight at whatever 
 she s talking to. 
 
 " I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. 
 Pescud, says she. What did you say your name i 
 John? 
 
 " John A., says I. 
 
 " And you came mighty near missmg the train at 
 Powhatan Junction, too, says she, with a laugh that 
 sounded as good as a mileage-book to me. 
 
 How did you know? I asked. 
 
 " Men are very clumsy, said she. I knew you were 
 on every train. I thought you were going to speak to 
 me, and I m glad you didn t. 
 
 "Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, 
 serious look came on her face, and she turned and pointed 
 a finger at the big house. 
 
 " The Allyns, says she, have lived in Elmcroft for a 
 ; hundred years. We are a proud xamily. Look at that 
 mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the pillars and porches 
 and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms and 
 
Best-Seller 
 
 the ballroom are twenty-eight feet high. My father is a 
 lineal descendant of belted earls/ 
 
 " * I belted one of em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in 
 Pittsburgh, says I, and he didn t offer to resent it. He 
 was there dividing his attentions between Monongahela 
 whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh. 
 
 " * Of course, she goes on, my father wouldn t allow a 
 drummer to set his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that 
 I was talking to one over the fence he would lock me in 
 my room. 
 
 " Would you let me come there? says I. Would you 
 talk to me if I was to call? For, I goes on, if you said I 
 might come and see you, the earls might be belted or 
 suspendered, or pinned up with safety-pins, as far as 
 I am concerned. 
 
 " I must not talk to you, she says, because we have 
 not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will 
 say good-bye, Mr. 
 
 " Say the name, says I. You haven t forgotten it. 
 
 " Pescud, says she, a little mad. 
 
 1 The rest of the name ! I demands, cool as could be. 
 
 John, says she. 
 
 " John what? I says. 
 
 "John A., says she, with her head high. Are you 
 through, now? 
 
 "I m coming to see the belted earl to-morrow, I says. 
 
 " He ll feed you to his fox-hounds, says she, laughing. 
 
 " If he does, it ll improve their running, says I. I m 
 something of a hunter myself. 
 
222 Options 
 
 " I must be going in now, says she. I oughtn t to 
 have spoken to you at all. I hope you ll have a pleasant 
 trip back to Minneapolis or Pittsburgh, was it? Good 
 bye! 
 
 " Good-night, says I, and it wasn t Minneapolis, 
 What s your name, first, please? 
 
 "She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, 
 and said: 
 
 " My name is Jessie, says she. 
 
 " Good-night, Miss Allyn, says I. 
 
 "The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the door-bell 
 of that World s Fair main building. After about three 
 quarters of an hour an old nigger man about eighty 
 showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him my 
 business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He 
 showed me in. 
 
 "Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? 
 That s what that house was like. There wasn t enough 
 furniture in it to fill an eight-dollar flat. Some old horse 
 hair lounges and three-legged chairs and some framed 
 ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But 
 when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light 
 up. You could almost hear a band playing, and see a 
 bunch of old-timers in wigs and white stockings dancing 
 a quadrille. It was the style of him, although he had on 
 the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the station. 
 
 "For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came 
 mighty near getting cold feet and trying to sell him some 
 plate-glass. But I got my nerve back pretty quick. He 
 
Best-Seller 223 
 
 asked me to sit down, and I told him everything. I told 
 him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and 
 what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, 
 and explained to him my little code of living to be 
 always decent and right in your home town; and when 
 you re on the road never take more than four glasses of 
 beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five cent limit. 
 At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the 
 window, but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a 
 chance to tell him that story about the Western Congress 
 man who had lost his pocketbook and the grass widow 
 you remember that story. Well, that got him to laughing, 
 and I ll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and 
 horsehair sofas had heard in many a day. 
 
 "We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; 
 and then he began to ask questions, and I told him the 
 rest. All I asked of him was to give me a chance. If I 
 couldn t make a hit with the little lady, I d clear out, 
 and not bother any more. At last he says: 
 
 " * There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of 
 Charles I, if I remember rightly. 
 
 " If there was, says I, * he can t claim kin with our 
 bunch. We ve always lived in and around Pittsburgh. 
 I ve got an uncle in the real-estate business, and one in 
 trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire 
 about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky 
 Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run 
 across that story about the captain of the whaler who ; 
 tried to make a sailor say his prayers? says I. 
 
Options 
 
 " It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,* 
 says the colonel. 
 
 "So I told it to him. Laugh ! I was wishing to myself 
 that he was a customer. What a bill of glass I d sell him ! 
 And then he says : 
 
 The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences 
 has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly 
 agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities 
 between friends. With your permission, I will relate 
 to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally 
 connected, and which may furnish you some amuse 
 ment. 
 
 "So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. 
 Did I laugh? Well, say! When I got my face straight 
 he calls in old Pete, the superannuated darky, and sends 
 him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was 
 Elmcroft for me while I was in the town. 
 
 "Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word 
 with Miss Jessie alone on the porch while the colonel was 
 thinking up another story. 
 
 " It s going to be a fine evening, says I. 
 
 " He s coming, says she. * He s going to tell you, this 
 time, the story about the old negro and the green water 
 melons. It always comes after the one about the Yankees 
 and the game rooster. There was another time, she 
 goes on, that you nearly got left it was at Pulaski 
 City. 
 
 " *Yes, says I, I remember. My foot slipped as I wa* 
 jumping on the step, and I nearly tumbled off. 
 
Best-Seller 225 
 
 " *I know, says she. And and I / was afraid you 
 had, John A. I was afraid you had. 
 
 "And then she skips into the house through one of the 
 big windows. " 
 
 IV 
 
 "Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way 
 through the slowing car. 
 
 Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely 
 promptness of an old traveller. 
 
 "I married her a year ago," said John. "I told you I 
 built a house in the East End. The belted I mean the 
 colonel is there, too. I find him waiting at the gate 
 whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story 
 I might have picked up on the road." 
 
 I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing 
 more than a ragged hillside dotted with a score of black 
 dismal huts propped up against dreary mounds of slag 
 and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents, too, and the 
 rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud te 
 the railroad-tracks. 
 
 "You won t sell much plate-glass here, John," said I 
 "Why do you get off at this end-o -the-world? " 
 
 "Why," said Pescud, "the other day I took Jessie for 
 a little trip to Philadelphia, and coming back she thought 
 she saw some petunias in a pot in one of those windows 
 over there just like some she used to raise down in the old 
 Virginia home. So I thought I d drop off here for the 
 night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or 
 
226 Options 
 
 blossoms for her. Here we are. Good-night, old man. 
 I gave you the address. Come out and see us when you 
 have time. " 
 
 The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown 
 ladies insisted on having windows raised, now that the 
 rain beat against them. The porter came along with 
 his mysterious wand and began to light the car. 
 
 I glanced downward and saw the best-seller. I picked 
 it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the 
 car, where the raindrops would not fall upon it. And 
 then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has 
 no geographical metes and bounds. 
 
 "Good-luck to you, Trevelyan," I said. "And may 
 you get the petunias for your princess!" 
 
RUS IN URBE 
 
 (CONSIDERING men in relation to money, there ur^ 
 three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more moncv 
 than they can spend; men who have more money thai, 
 they do spend: and men who spend more money thac 
 they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the 
 least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer 
 Grenville North pretty well, although he had something 
 like two or ten or thirty millions I ve forgotten exactly 
 how many. 
 
 I did not leave town that summer. I usually went 
 down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The 
 place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and 
 dogs and whip-poor-wills and rusty windmills made so 
 much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in 
 my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New 
 York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. 
 One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied: 
 " Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort 
 in the world." You have heard that phrase before. 
 But that is what I told him. 
 
 I was press-agent that year for Binkley & Bing, the 
 theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know 
 
Options 
 
 what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret 
 of being one. 
 
 Binkley was touring France in his new C. & N. William 
 son car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, 
 which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs 
 rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June 
 and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in 
 accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I re 
 mained in New York, which I had decided was the finest 
 summer resort in 
 
 But I said that before. 
 
 On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp 
 in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen 
 rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, 
 solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of 
 course it was in the woods if Mr. Pinchot wants to pre 
 serve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or 
 thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around 
 the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dun- 
 sinane, and be preserved. 
 
 North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, 
 extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all 
 night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have 
 my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with outdoor 
 obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was 
 insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively 
 well dressed. 
 
 "Just ran down for a few days, " said he, "to sign some 
 \j>apers and stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. 
 
Rus in Urbc 229 
 
 Well, you indolent cockney, what arc you domg in town? 
 I took a chance and telephoned, and they said you were 
 here. What s the matter with that Utopia on Long 
 Island where you used to take your typewriter and your 
 villainous temper every summer? Anything wrong with 
 the er swans, weren t they, that used to sing on the 
 farms at night?" 
 
 "Ducks," said I. "The songs of swans are for luckier 
 ears. They swim and curve their necks in artificial lakes 
 on the estates of the wealthy to delight the eyes of the 
 favorites of Fortune. " 
 
 "Also in Central Park," said North, "to delight the 
 eyes of immigrants and bummers. I ve seen em there 
 lots of times. But why are you in the city so late in the 
 summer?" 
 
 "New York City," I began to recite, "is the finest 
 sum " 
 
 "No, you don t," said North, emphatically. "You 
 don t spring that old one on me. I know you know 
 better. Man, you ought to have gone up with us this 
 summer. The Prestons are there, and Tom Volney and 
 the Monroes and Lulu Stanford and th* Miss Kennedy 
 and her aunt that you liked so well. " 
 
 "I never liked Miss Kennedy s aunt," I said. 
 
 "I didn t say you did," said North. "We are having 
 the greatest time we ve ever had. The pickerel and trout 
 are so ravenous that I believe they would awallow your 
 hook with a Montana copper-mine prospectus fastened 
 on it. And we ve a couple of electric launches; and I ll 
 
230 Options 
 
 i tell you what we do every night or two we tow a row 
 -boat behind each one with a big phonograph and a boy to 
 change the discs in em. On the water, and twenty yards 
 behind you, they are not so bad. And there are passably 
 good roads through the woods where we go motoring. I 
 shipped two cars up there. And the Pinecliff Inn is 
 only three miles away. You know the Pinecliff. Some 
 good people are there this season, and we run over to the 
 dances twice a week. Can t you go back with me for a 
 week, old man?" 
 
 I laughed. " Northy, " said I " if I may be so familiar 
 with a millionaire, because I hate both the names Spencer 
 and Grenville your invitation is meant kindly, but 
 the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the 
 bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived barring, 
 thank Heaven, the fiddling while the city burns at ninety 
 in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me 
 like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat 
 pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured 
 up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for trout, you 
 know, yourself, that Jean, at Maurice s, cooks them better 
 than any one else in the world. " 
 
 "Be advised," said North. "My chef has pinched 
 the blue ribbon from the lot. He lays some slices of 
 bacon inside the trout, wraps it all in corn-husks the 
 husks of green corn, you know buries them in hot 
 ashes and covers them with live coals. We build fires 
 on the bank of the lake and have fish suppers. " 
 
 "I know," said I. "And the servants bring down 
 
Rus in Urbe 
 
 tables and chairs and damask cloths, and you eat with 
 silver forks. I know the kind of camps that you million 
 aires have. And there are champagne pails set about, 
 disgracing the wild flowers, and, no doubt, Madame 
 Tetrazzini to sing in the boat pavilion after the trout. " 
 
 "Oh, no," said North, concernedly, "we were never 
 as bad as that. We did have a variety troupe up from the 
 city three or four nights, but they weren t stars by as 
 far as light can travel in the same length of time. I 
 always like a few home comforts even when I m roughing 
 it. But don t tell me you prefer to stay in the city during 
 summer. I don t believe it. If you do, why did you 
 spend your summers there for the last four years, even 
 sneaking away from town on a night train, and refusing 
 to tell your friends where this Arcadian village was?* 
 
 "Because," said I, "they might have followed me and 
 discovered it. But since then I have learned that 
 Amaryllis has come to town. The coolest things, the 
 freshest, the brightest, the choicest, are to be found in the 
 city. If you ve nothing on hand this evening I will 
 show you. " 
 
 " I m free, " said North, " and I have my light car out 
 side. I suppose, since you ve been converted to the 
 town, that your idea of rural sport is to have a little 
 whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and then 
 a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under 
 a fan that can t stir up as many revolutions in a week as 
 Nicaragua can in a day." 
 
 "We ll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow. 1 
 
Options 
 
 I said. I was choking with the hot, stale air of my littlg 
 apartment, and I wanted that breath of the cool to brace 
 me for the task of proving to my friend that New York 
 was the greatest and so forth. 
 
 " Where can you find air any fresher or purer than this? " 
 I asked, as we sped into Central s boskiest dell. 
 
 "Air!" said North, contemptuously. "Do you call 
 this air? this muggy vapor, smelling of garbage and 
 gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could get one sniff of 
 the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at daylight. " 
 
 "I have heard of it," said I. "But for fragrance and 
 tang and a joy in the nostrils I would not give one puff 
 of sea breeze across the bay, down on my little boat 
 dock on Long Island, for ten of your turpentine-scented 
 tornadoes. " 
 
 "Then why," asked North, a little curiously, "don t 
 you go there instead of staying cooped up in this Greater 
 Bakery?" 
 
 "Because," said I, doggedly, "I have discovered that 
 New York is the greatest summer " 
 
 "Don t say that again," interrupted North, "unless 
 you ve actually got a job as General Passenger Agent of 
 the Subway. You can t really believe it. " 
 
 I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to 
 my friend. The Weather Bureau and the season had 
 conspired to make the argument worthy of an able advo 
 cate. 
 
 The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above 
 the furnaces of Avernus. There was a kind of tepid 
 
Rus in Urbe 233 
 
 gaye<y afoot and awheel in the boulevards, mainly 
 evinced by languid men strolling about in straw hats and 
 evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags 
 up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. 
 The hotels kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitable 
 outlook, but inside one saw vast empty caverns, and the 
 footrails at the bars gleamed brightly from long dis- 
 acquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the 
 cross-town streets the steps of the old brownstone houses 
 were swarming with "stoopers," that motley race hailing 
 from skylight room and basement, bringing out their 
 straw door-step mats to sit and fill the air with strange 
 noises and opinions. 
 
 North and I dined on the top of a hotel; and here, for a 
 few minutes, I thought I had made a score. An east 
 wind, almost cool, blew across the roofless roof. A capa 
 ble orchestra concealed in a bower of wistaria played 
 with sufficient judgment to make the art of music probable 
 and the art of conversation possible. 
 
 Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other 
 tables gave animation and color to the scene. And an 
 excellent dinner, mainly from the refrigerator, seemed to 
 successfully back my judgment as to summer resorts. 
 But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed his 
 lawyers and prated so of his confounded camp in the 
 woods that I began to wish he would go back there anC 
 leave me in my peaceful city retreat. 
 
 After dining we went to a roof-garden vaudeville that 
 was being much praised. There we found a good bill, 
 
34 Options 
 
 an artificially cooled atmosphere, cold drinks, prompt 
 service, and a gay, well-dressed audience. North was 
 bored. 
 
 "If this isn t comfortable enough for you on the hottest 
 August night for five years, " I sard, a little sarcastically, 
 "you might think about the kids down in Delancey and 
 Hester streets lying out on the fire-escapes with their 
 tongues hanging out, trying to get a breath of air that 
 hasn t been fried on both sides. The contrast might 
 increase your enjoyment. " 
 
 "Don t talk Socialism," said North. "I gave five 
 hundred dollars to the free ice fund on the first of May. 
 I m contrasting these stale, artificial, hollow, wearisome 
 amusements with the enjoyment a man can get in the 
 woods. You should see the firs and pines do skirt- 
 dances during a storm; and lie down flat and drink out of 
 a mountain branch at the end of a day s tramp after the 
 deer. That s the only way to spen< a summer. Get out 
 and live with Nature. " 
 
 "I agree with you absolutely," said I, with emphasis. 
 
 For one moment I had relaxed my vigilance, and had 
 spoken my true sentiments. North looked at me long 
 and curiously. 
 
 "Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo, " he asked, 
 "have you been singing this deceitful paean to summer 
 in town?" 
 
 I suppose I looked my guilt. 
 
 " Ha, " said North, " I see. May I ask her name? " 
 
 "Annie Ashton," said I, simply. "She played 
 
Rus in Urbe 
 
 nette in Binkley & Ring s production of The Silver 
 Cord/ She is to have a better part next season." 
 
 "Take me to see her," said North. 
 
 Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. 
 They were out of the West, and had a little money that 
 bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley & Bing 
 I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert 
 James Vandiver, I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever 
 one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and 
 smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island 
 and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, 
 it was the Ashton set forth above. 
 
 But she had a soul above ducks above nightingales; 
 aye, even above the birds of paradise. She was very 
 beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She 
 had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to 
 stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. 
 She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & 
 Bing s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she 
 had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial r6le. I 
 had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville 
 North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaude 
 ville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone. 
 
 Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver 
 and Mr. North. 
 
 We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never 
 aw her look more charming. 
 
 North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He 
 was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he 
 
236 Options 
 
 had two, ten, or thirty millions, I ve forgotten which. I 
 incautiously admired the mother s cap, whereupon she 
 brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a 
 course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie s fingers 
 had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you 
 do to em, they palled upon me. And I could hear 
 North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack 
 camp. 
 
 Two days after that I saw North in his motor-car with 
 Miss Ashton and her mother. On the next afternoon he 
 dropped in on me. 
 
 "Bobby," said he, "this old burg isn t such a bad 
 proposition in the summer-time, after all. Since I ve 
 been knocking around it looks better to me. There are 
 some first-rate musical comedies and light operas on the 
 roofs and in the outdoor gardens. And if you hunt up 
 the right places and stick to soft drinks, yov can keep 
 about as cool here as you can in the country. Hang it! 
 when you come to think of it, there s nothing much to the 
 country, anyhow. You get tired and sunburned and 
 lonesome, and you have to eat any old thing that the cook 
 dishes up to you. " 
 
 "It makes a difference, doesn t it?" said I. 
 
 "It certainly does. Now, I found some whitebait 
 yesterday, at Maurice s, with a new sauce that beats 
 anything in the trout line I ever tasted. " 
 
 "It makes a difference, doesn t it?" I said. 
 
 "Immense. The sauce is the main thing with white 
 bait." 
 
Rus in Urbe 237 
 
 "It makes a difference, doesn t it?" I asked, looking 
 kim straight in the eye. He understood. 
 
 "Look here, Bob, " he said, "I was going to tell you. I 
 couldn t help it. I ll play fair with you, but I m going 
 in to win. She is the one particular for me. " 
 
 "All right," said I. "It s a fair field. There are no 
 rights for you to encroach upon." 
 
 On Thursday afternoon Miss Ashton invited North and 
 myself to have tea in her apartment. He was devoted, 
 and she was more charming than usual. By avoiding the 
 subject of caps I managed to get a word or two into and 
 out of the talk. Miss Ashton asked me in a make-conver 
 sational tone something about the next season s tour. 
 
 "Oh," said I, "I don t know about that. I m not 
 going to be with Binkley & Bing next season. " 
 
 "Why, I thought," said she, "that they were going to 
 put the Number One road company under your charge. 
 I thought you told me so. " 
 
 "They were," said I, "but they won t. I ll tell you 
 what I m going to do. I m going to the south shore of 
 Long Island and buy a small cottage I know there on the 
 edge of the bay. And I ll buy a catboat and a rowboat 
 and a shotgun and a yellow dog. I ve got money enough 
 to do it. And I ll smell the salt wind all day when it 
 blows from the sea and the pine odor when it blows from 
 the land. And, of course, I ll write plays until I have a 
 trunk full of em on hand. 
 
 "And the next thing and the biggest thing I ll do will 
 be to buy that duck-farm next door. Few people under- 
 
238 Options 
 
 stand ducks. I can watch em for hours. They can 
 march better than any company in the National Guard, 
 and they can play follow my leader better than the entire 
 Democratic party. Their voices don t amount to much, 
 but I like to hear em. They wake you up a dozen times 
 a night, but there s a homely sound about their quacking 
 that is more musical to me than the cry of Fresh straw- 
 ber-rees! under your window in the morning when you 
 want to sleep. 
 
 "And," I went on, enthusiastically, "do you know the 
 value of ducks besides their beauty and intelligence and 
 order and sweetness of voice? Picking their feathers 
 gives an unfailing and never-ceasing income. On a farm 
 that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one year. 
 Think of that! And the ones shipped to the market will 
 bring in more money than that. Yes, I am for the ducks 
 and the salt breeze coming over the bay. I think I shall 
 get a Chinaman cook, and with him and the dog and 
 the sunsets for company I shall do well. No more of 
 this dull, baking, senseless, roaring city for me. " 
 
 Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed. 
 
 "I am going to begin one of my plays to-night," I said, 
 "so I must be going." And with that I took my de 
 parture. 
 
 A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, asking 
 me to call at four in the afternoon. I did. 
 
 "You have been very good to me," she said, hesitat 
 ingly, "and I thought I would tell you. I am going to 
 leave the stage, " 
 
Rus in Urbe 39 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I suppose you will. They usually do 
 when there s so much money. " 
 
 "There is no money, * she said, "or very little. Our 
 money is almost gone." 
 
 "But I am told," said I, "that he has something like 
 two or ten or thirty millions I have forgotten which." 
 
 "I know what you mean," she said. "I will not pre 
 tend that I do not. I am not going to marry Mr. North. " 
 
 "Then why are you leaving the stage?" I asked, 
 severely. "What else can you do to earn a living?" 
 
 She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her 
 eyes yet as she spoke. 
 
 "I can pick ducks," she said. 
 
 We sold the first year s feathers for $350. 
 
A POOR RULE 
 
 I HAVE always maintained, and asserted from time 
 to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, 
 construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That 
 she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous 
 mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see, 
 As "Harper s Drawer" used to say in bygone years : 
 
 "The following good story is told of Miss , Mr. , 
 
 Mr. , and Mr. ." 
 
 We shall have to omit " Bishop X " and " the Rev. , " 
 
 for they do not belong. 
 
 In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of 
 the Southern Pacific. A reporter would have called it 3 
 "mushroom" town; but it was not. Paloma was, first 
 and last, of the toadstool variety. 
 
 The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink 
 and for the passengers both to drink and to dine. There 
 was a new yellow-pine hotel, also a wool warehouse, and 
 perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest was 
 composed of tents, cow ponies, "black- waxy" mud, and 
 mesquite-trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma 
 was an about-to-be city. The houses represented faith; 
 the tents hope; the twice-a-day train, by which you might 
 leave, creditably sustained the r6le of charity. 
 
 40 
 
A Poor Rule 241 
 
 The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot 
 in the town while it rained, and the warmest when it shone. 
 It was operated, owned, and perpetrated by a citizen 
 known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come out of Indiana 
 to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and 
 sorghum. 
 
 There was a four-room, unpainted, weather-boarded 
 box house in which the family lived. From the kitchen 
 extended a "shelter" made of poles covered with chaparral 
 brush. Under this was a table and two benches, each 
 twenty feet long, the product of Paloma home carpentry. 
 Here was set forth the roast mutton, the stewed apples, 
 boiled beans, soda-biscuits, puddinorpie, and hot coffee 
 of the Parisian menu. 
 
 Ma Hinkle and a subordinate known to the ears as 
 "Betty, " but denied to the eyesight, presided at the range. 
 Pa Hinkle himself, with salamandrous thumbs, served 
 the scalding viands. During rush hours a Mexican youth, 
 who rolled and smoked cigarettes between courses, 
 aided him in waiting on the guests. As is customary at 
 Parisian banquets I place the sweets at the end of my 
 wordy menu. 
 
 Heen Hinkle! 
 
 The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No 
 doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splendidly 
 bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself (had he 
 seen her) would have endorsed the phonography. 
 
 Heen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady 
 Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west 
 
242 Options 
 
 line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on 
 a high stool in a rough pine grand-stand or was it a 
 temple? under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. 
 There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with 
 a little arch under which you passed your money. Heaven 
 knows why the barbed wire; for every man who dined 
 Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her 
 duties were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under 
 the arch, and she took it. 
 
 I set out with the intent to describe Deen Hinkle to you. 
 Instead, I must refer you to the volume of Edmund Burke 
 entitled: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our 
 Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive 
 treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of 
 beauty roundness and smoothness, I think they are, 
 according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a 
 patent charm; as for smoothness- the more new wrinkles 
 a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes. 
 
 Heen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed 
 under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the 
 year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde 
 strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were 
 wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a 
 storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words 
 (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the 
 beautiful. Like fancy, "It is engendered in the eyes." 
 There are three kinds of beauties I was foreordained to 
 be homiletic; I can never stick to a story. 
 
 The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you 
 
A Poor Rule 243 
 
 tike. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, 
 the ladies in Bouguereau s paintings. Ileen Hinkle was 
 the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless Town. 
 There were a thousand golden apples coining to her as 
 Helen of the Troy laundries. 
 
 The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even 
 !rom beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to 
 win her smiles. They got them. One meal - - one 
 smile one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen 
 seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. 
 According to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself 
 
 last. 
 
 The first was an artificial product known as Bryan 
 Jacks a name that had obviously met with reverses. 
 Jacks was the outcome of paved cities. He was a small 
 3ian made of some material resembling flexible sandstone. 
 His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house; 
 his eyes were twin cranberries; his mouth was like the 
 aperture under a drop-letters-here sign. 
 
 He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, 
 thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point 
 in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, 
 business, profession, and sport in the world, had been 
 present at, or hurrying on his way to, every headline 
 event that had occurred between oceans since he was 
 five years old. You might open the atlas, place your 
 finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks 
 would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens 
 before you could close it again. He spoke patronizingly 
 
244 Options 
 
 and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill, 
 Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St. Louis 
 Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the 
 Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He 
 had learned everything the world could teach him, and 
 he would tell you about it. 
 
 I hate to be reminded of Pollok s "Course of Time," 
 and so do you; but every time I saw Jacks I would think 
 of the poet s description of another poet by the name of 
 G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply drank drank 
 draughts that common millions might have quenched; 
 then died of thirst because there was no more to 
 drink." 
 
 That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he 
 came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He 
 was a telegrapher and station-and-express-agent ac 
 seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who 
 knew everything and could do everything was content 
 to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could under 
 stand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a 
 personal favor to the president and stockholders of the 
 S. P. Ry. Co. 
 
 One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over 
 to you. He wore bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and 
 a bow tie made of the same cloth as his shirt. 
 
 My rival No. 2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services 
 had been engaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in 
 compelling refractory cattle to keep within the bounds of 
 decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off the 
 
A Poor Rule 45 
 
 ; stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore 
 the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at 
 the back of his neck. 
 
 Twice a week Bud rode in front the Val Verde Ranch 
 to sup at the Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many- 
 high-handed Kentucky horse at a tremendously fast lope, 
 which animal he would rein up so suddenly under the big 
 mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs 
 would plough canals yards long in the loam. 
 
 Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of 
 course. 
 
 The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little 
 parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It was 
 all willow rocking-chairs, and home-knit tidies, and 
 albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright 
 piano in one corner. 
 
 Here Jacks and Bud and I or sometimes one or two 
 of us, according to our good-luck used to sit of even 
 ings when the tide of trade was over, and "visit" Miss 
 Hinkle. 
 
 Eeen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher 
 things (if there can be anything higher) than taking in 
 dollars all day through a barbed-wire wicket. She had 
 read and listened and thought. Her looks would have 
 formed a career for a less ambitious girl ; but, rising su 
 perior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the 
 nature of a salon the only one in Paloma. 
 
 "Don t you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" 
 she would ask, with such a pretty little knit of her arched 
 
46 Options 
 
 brows that the late Ignatius Donnelly, himself, had he 
 seen it, could scarcely have saved his Bacon. 
 
 Heen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more 
 cultured than Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of 
 the greatest of women painters; that Westerners are more 
 spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners; that 
 London must be a very foggy city, and that California 
 must be quite lovely in the springtime. And of many 
 other opinions indicating a keeping up with the world s 
 best thought. 
 
 These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and 
 evidence: Ileen had theories of her own. One, in par 
 ticular, she disseminated to us untiringly. Flattery she 
 detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and action, 
 she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and 
 woman. If ever she could like any one, it would be for 
 those qualities. 
 
 "I m awfully weary," she said, one evening, when we 
 three musketeers of the mesquite were in the little parlor, 
 "of having compliments on my looks paid to me. I know 
 I m not beautiful." 
 
 (Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all 
 he could do to keep from calling her a liar when she said 
 that.) 
 
 "I m only a little Middle- Western girl, " went on Heen, 
 "who just wants to be simple and neat, and tries to help; 
 her father make a humble living. " 
 
 (Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dollars 
 r month, clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.) 
 
A Poor Rule 247 
 
 Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his 
 hilt, from which he could never be persuaded to separate. 
 He did not know whether she wanted what she said she 
 wanted or what she knew she deserved. Many a wiser 
 man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided. 
 
 "Why ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, 
 ain t everything. Not say in that you haven t your 
 share of good looks, I always admired more than anything 
 else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma and 
 pa. Any one what s good to their parents and is a kind 
 of home-body don t specially need to be too pretty. " 
 
 Heen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. "Thank 
 you, Mr. Cunningham," she said. "I consider that one 
 of the finest compliments I ve had in a long time. I d 
 so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk 
 about my eyes and hair. I m glad you believe me when 
 I say I don t like flattery." 
 
 Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. 
 You couldn t lose Jacks. He chimed in next. 
 
 "Sure thing, Miss Heen," he said; "the good-lookers 
 don t always win out. Now, you ain t bad looking, of 
 course but that s nix-cum-rous. I knew a girl once in 
 Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could skin the 
 cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. 
 Now, a girl might have the California peach crop mashed 
 to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I ve seen 
 er worse lookers than you. Miss Been; but what I like 
 about you is the business way you ve got of doing things 
 Cool and wise that s the winning way for a girl. Mi 
 
248 Options 
 
 Hinkle told me the other day you d never taken in a 
 lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you ve been 
 on the job. Now, that s the stuff for a girl that s what 
 catches me." 
 
 Jacks got his smile, too. 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. Jacks," said Ileen. "If you only 
 knew how I appreciate any one s being candid and not a 
 flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I m pretty. 
 I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell 
 you the truth." 
 
 Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen s 
 face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden 
 impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful handi 
 work of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite 
 that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene 
 in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies that 
 she was a a corker; and as for mine, I cared not if 
 she were as cruel as a serpent s tooth to her fond parents, 
 or if she couldn t tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, 
 if I might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her 
 peerless and wonderful beauty. 
 
 But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had 
 witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of 
 Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle was not one to be 
 beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So I 
 joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I 
 became mendacious and didactic. 
 
 "In all ages, Miss Hinkle," said I, "in spite of the 
 poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has been 
 
A Poor Rule 249 
 
 admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, 
 men found more a charm in her queenly mind than in her 
 looks." 
 
 "Well, I should think so!" said Hecn. "I ve seen 
 pictures of her that weren t so much. She had an awfully 
 long nose. " 
 
 "If I may say so," I went on, "you remind me of 
 Cleopatra, Miss Ileen. " 
 
 "Why, my nose isn t so long!" said she, opening her 
 eyes wide and touching that comely feature with a 
 dimpled forefinger. 
 
 " Why er I mean, " said I "I mean as to mental 
 endowments. " 
 
 "Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud 
 and Jacks had got theirs. 
 
 "Thank every one of you, " she said, very, very sweetly, 
 **for being so frank and honest with me. That s the way 
 want you to be always. Just tell me plainly and 
 truthfully what you think, and we ll all be the best friends 
 in the world. And now, because you ve been so good to 
 me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do 
 nothing but pay me exaggerated compliments, I ll sing 
 and play a little for you. " 
 
 Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we 
 would have been better pleased if Ileen had remained in 
 her low rocking-chair face to face with us and let us gaze 
 upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti not even on 
 the farewellest of the diva s farewell tours. She had a 
 cooinjr little voice like that of a turtle-dove that could 
 
250 Options 
 
 almost fill the parlor when the windows and doors wens 
 closed, and Betty was not rattling the lids of the stove in 
 the kitchen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about 
 eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills sounded 
 like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother s iron wash- 
 pot. Believe that she must have been beautiful when I 
 tell you that it sounded like music to us. 
 
 Ileen s musical taste was catholic. She would sing 
 through a pile of sheet music on the left-hand top of the 
 piano, laying each slaughtered composition on the right- 
 hand top. The next evening she would sing from right 
 to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody 
 and Sankey. By request she always wound up with 
 "Sweet Violets " and "When the Leaves Begin to Turn. " 
 
 When we left at ten o clock the three of us would go 
 down to Jacks little wooden station and sit on the plat 
 form, swinging our feet and trying to pump one another 
 for clews as to which way Miss Ileen s inclinations seemed 
 to lean. That is the way of rivals they do not avoid 
 and glower at one another; they convene and converse 
 and construe striving by the art politic to estimate 
 the strength of the enemy. 
 
 One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young 
 lawyer who at once flaunted his shingle and himself 
 spectacularly upon the town. His name was C. Vincent 
 Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a recent 
 graduate of a Southwestern law school. His Prince 
 Albert coat, light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft 
 black hat, and narrow white muslin bow tie proclaimed 
 
A Poor Ride 
 
 .hat more loudly* than any diploma could. Vesey was 
 a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau 
 Brummell, and Little Jack Homer. His coming boomed 
 Paloma. The next day after he arrived an addition to the 
 town was surveyed and laid off in lots. 
 
 Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, 
 must mingle with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. 
 And, as well as with the soldier men, he was bound to 
 seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So Jacks 
 and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his 
 acquaintance. 
 
 The doctrine of predestination would have been dis 
 credited had not Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become 
 fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the 
 yellow-pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; 
 but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. 
 His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of 
 profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slaug so weird 
 that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of 
 Bud s imprecations, and made me dumb with gloom. 
 
 For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him 
 like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, 
 appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, 
 and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for pre 
 eminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Been 
 could resist his oratory and Prince Albert. 
 
 But a day came that gave us courage. 
 
 About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little 
 gallery m front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Heen to 
 
25% Options 
 
 come, when I heard voices inside. She had come into the 
 room with her father, and Old Man Hinkle began to talk 
 to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, 
 and not unphilosophic. 
 
 "Ily," said he, "I notice there s three or four young 
 fellers that have been callin to see you regular for quite 
 a while. Is there any one of em you like better than 
 another?" 
 
 "Why, pa," she answered, "I like all of em very well. 
 I think Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris 
 are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest 
 in everything they say to me. I haven t known Mr.< 
 Vesey very long, but I think he s a very nice young 
 man, he s so frank and honest in everything he says 
 to me. " 
 
 "Now, that s what I m gittin at," says old Hinkle. 
 "You ve always been sayin you like people what tell the 
 truth and don t go humbuggin you with compliments and 
 bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these 
 fellers, and see which one of em will talk the straightest 
 to you. " 
 
 "But how ll I do it, pa?" 
 
 "I ll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, 
 Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logans- 
 port. It wasn t long, but it was all we could afford then. 
 And your teacher said you didn t have any voice, and it 
 was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you 
 ask the fellers what they think of your singin , and see 
 what each one of em tells you. The man that ll tell you 
 
A Poor Rule 253 
 
 (lie truth about it ll have a mighty lot of nerve, and 11 
 do to tie to. What do you think of the plan? " 
 
 "All right, pa," said Ileen. "I think it s a good idea. 
 I ll try it." 
 
 Ileen and Mr. Ilinkle went out of the room through the 
 inside door. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. 
 Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o clock 
 to come. It was Bud s night in town, and when he rode 
 !n I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal 
 to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be. 
 
 Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an up 
 lifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey 
 from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would 
 be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen s 
 love of frankness and honesty how she treasured truth 
 and candor above vain compliment and blandishment. 
 
 Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and 
 down the platform, singing "Muldoon Was a Solid Man" 
 at the top of our voices. 
 
 That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were 
 filled besides the lucky one that sustained the trim figure 
 of Miss Hinkle. Three of us waited with suppressed 
 excitement the application of the test. It was tried on 
 Bud first. 
 
 " Mr. Cunningham, " said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, 
 after she had sung "When the Leaves Begin to Turn," 
 "what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and 
 honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be 
 toward me " 
 
54 Options 
 
 Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show the 
 sincerity that he knew was required of him. 
 
 "Tell you the truth, Miss Heen," he said, earnestly, 
 * you ain t got much more voice than a weasel just 
 a little squeak, you know. Of course, we all like to hear 
 you sing, for it s kind of sweet and soothin after all, 
 and you look most as mighty well sittin on the piano- 
 stool as you do faced around. But as for real singin* 
 I reckon you couldn t call it that. " 
 
 I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his 
 frankness, but her pleased smile and sweetly spoken 
 thanks assured me that we were on the right track. 
 
 "And what do you think, Mr. Jacks ?" she asked 
 next. 
 
 "Take it from me, " said Jacks, "y u ain t in the prima 
 donna class. I ve heard em warble in every city in the 
 United States; and I tell you your vocal output don t go. 
 Otherwise, you ve got the grand opera bunch sent to the 
 soap factory in looks, I mean; for the high screechers 
 generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But 
 nix for the gargle work. Your epiglottis ain t a real side- 
 stepper its footwork ain t good. " 
 
 With a merry laugh at Jack s criticism, Heen looked 
 inquiringly at me. 
 
 I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a 
 thing as being too frank? Perhaps I even Ledged a little 
 in my verdict; but I stayed with the critics. 
 
 "I am not skilled in scientific music, Miss Heen," I said, 
 * 6 hut frankly I cannot praise very highly the singing- voice 
 
A Poor Ride 255 
 
 that Nature has given you. It has long been a favorite 
 comparison that a great singer sings like a bird. Well, 
 there are birds and birds. I would say that your voice 
 reminds me of the thrush s throaty and not strong, nor 
 of much compass or variety but still er sweet 
 in er its way, and er 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. Harris," interrupted Miss Hinkle. 
 "I knew I could depend upon your frankness and hon 
 esty." 
 
 And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from 
 his snowy cuff, and the water came down at Lodore. 
 
 My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute 
 to that priceless, God-given treasure Miss II inkle s 
 voice. He raved over it in terms that, if they had been 
 addressed to the morning stars when they sang together, 
 would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric 
 shower of flaming self-satisfaction. 
 
 He marshalled on his white finger-tips the grand opera 
 stars of all the continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma 
 Abbott, only to depreciate their endowments. He gpoke 
 of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios, and 
 other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He 
 admitted, as though driven to a corner, that Jenny Lind 
 had a note or two in the high register that Miss Hinkle 
 had not yet acquired but " !!!" that was a mere 
 matter of practice and training. 
 
 And, as a peroration, he predicted solemnly pre 
 dicted a career in vocal art for the " coming star of the 
 and one of which grand old Texas may well 
 
256 Options 
 
 be proud, " hitherto unsurpassed in the annals of musical 
 history. 
 
 When we left at ten, Ileen gave each of us her usual 
 warm, cordial handshake, entrancing smile, and invitation i 
 to call again. I could not see that one was favored above 
 or below another but three of us knew we knew. 
 
 We knew that frankness and honesty had won, and that 
 the rivals now numbered three instead of four. 
 
 Down at the station Jacks brought out a pint bottle of 
 the proper stuff, and we celebrated the downfall of a 
 blatant interloper. 
 
 Four days went by without anything happening worthy 
 of recount. 
 
 On the fifth, Jacks and I, entering the brush arbor for 
 our supper, saw the Mexican youth, instead of a divinity 
 in a spotless waist and a navy-blue skirt, taking in the 
 dollars through the barbed-wire wicket. 
 
 We rushed into the kitchen, meeting Pa Hinkle coming 
 out with two cups of hot coffee in his hands. 
 
 "Where s Ileen?" we asked, in recitative. 
 
 Pa Hinkle was a kindly man. "Well, gents," said he, 
 "it was a sudden notion she took; but I ve got the money, 
 and I let her have her way. She s gone to a corn a 
 conservatory in Boston for four years for to have her voice 
 cultivated. Now, excuse me to pass, gents, for this 
 coffee s hot, and my thumbs is tender. " 
 
 That night there were four instead of three of us sitting 
 on the station platform and swinging our feet. C. Vin 
 cent Vesey was one of us. We discussed things while dogs 
 
A Poor Rule 257 
 
 barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-cent piece 
 or a flour barrel, over the chaparral. 
 
 And what we discussed was whether it is better to lie 
 to a woman or to tell her the truth. 
 
 And as all of us were young then, we did not come to & 
 decision. 
 
 THE END 
 
2HE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 APfi 1 4 n 
 QMARY 
 
 JAN 2 1 1982 
 
 W O JAN 2 1 1982 
 
 LD 21-100m.9, 47(A5702sl6)476