UPDS EDWARD B. LENT 477C // CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN CUPID S MIDDLEMAN. CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN BY EDWARD B. LENT AUTHOR OF "BEING DONE GOOD" ILLUSTRATED BY H. B. MATTHEWS NEW YORK CUPPLES & LEON Copyright, 1906, by CUPPLES & LEON To MY FRIEND, HERBERT F. GUNNISON, OF THE BROOKLYN EAGLE. 21368G8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN Frontispiece "WHY, WHO IN THE WORLD COULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS NONSENSE?" LAUGHED HYGEIA 214 "YOU ADVERTISE ROOMS FOR LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING". . . 238 "I WROTE IT, GABRIELLE AND FORGIVE ME" 286 "I CAME TO APOLOGIZE TO YOU, MR. TESCHERON" 322 PREFACE JOHN ALDEN was a celebrated Cupid's mid- dleman. In presenting the cause of Miles Standish to Priscilla, however, he did not attend strictly to business as a jobber. He was not able to resist the lady when she asked: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" That famous question has practically made it impossible for the middleman to make much headway in the assumed part. Benjamin Hopkins, of Oswe- gatchie County, was not a traitor perhaps be- cause he never met the fair Priscillas face to face. This story can teach no new lesson ; it can only recall the ancient wisdom which filled Miles Standish when it was too late. In the poem by Longfellow, the Plymouth Captain says : ft # # # I should have remembered the adage If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover, No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christ- mas!" E. B. L. Cupid's Middleman CHAPTER I TT IM, it's years since you asked me to help - I you out in a love affair," I said. "Has your old heart grown cold, shriveled up, or what's the matter?" "You're right, Ben ; it must be a long time back. But why don't you put out a few letters for your- self?" "I wish I could get a dollar a ton for all I have written for you," said I ; "then I'd have a fortune and all the girls would be chasing me for my money." "Say, was it as bad as that, do you think?" "Well, cut the price in two and I'd be satisfied." "What a fool I was, Ben, to let you trifle with my fair friends in that way ! You came near put- ting me in a terrible hole several times." "Is that so? You never said anything about it. Tell me now." 2 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN "Not for a mansion and forty servants would I tell you. Well, I should say not. Nay ! Nay !" "I'll bet you profited by my efforts and you're not willing to let on. Do you think that is a friendly attitude to take toward an agent who has increased the range of your powers of fascina- tion?" "You came near increasing the length of my neck by several inches. Why, the fathers and big brothers of some of those girls you wrote to came near lynching me." "Well, I wasn't to blame* for that, was I?" "You certainly were. You laid it on too thick." "Not too thick to please the girls, did I ?" "Suited some of the girls first rate, but it's bad to write so much. It's apt to come back at you when you least expect it." "What do you care so long as the girls were pleased ? You were not courting the father. If you had intended to have the old gentleman read them I could easily have changed the style from a Grade A love to a nice assortment of short busi- ness phrases. But, say, Jim, you ought to tell me what happened. Come, now! Any bull's- eyes?" "Do you know that you wrote enough letters to my girls to have married me off a dozen times or CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 3 more? There are some streets I dare not pass through now there's that foolish creature in West Thirty-eighth Street, for example." I knew that Jim would leak a little if persist- ently tapped with interrogations. "What about her? Did we send her many or was she easily won?" I asked. "Hard or soft?" As the middleman it was purely business with me. "That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment. "Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She didn't think anything of putting up five dol- lars to learn how it was going to turn out. As soon as I heard that I quit calling and shut you off, for it was either that or get shot, I believed." "That's quite a case, Jim. Let me into all of that, won't you?" "I'm not going to tell you. It's past now, so let it go. You got me into enough trouble to fill a book. The book won't be written, though, for the inside story dies with me." "Come, come, Jim ; it's not fair to shut me out from all the excitement and fun after I did all the drudgery. Think how I used to struggle here to keep up my end." "You struggle ! Where do you suppose I came in? Still, I'll say no more about it, for I see you 4 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN are trying to pump me. Let it pass. How do you find the state of the country to-night?" Jim swung from the interesting subject to my hobby, political economy and measures for saving the nation from its impending doom. A man who can't make much headway toward home- building before or after marriage usually becomes a reformer. Men with families take things as they are, if they live at home instead of a club, and find plenty to do. I could not be moved with- out a protest. "Never mind, Jim," said I. "You may want me to help you out some day and I shall not un- dertake to handle the case unless it is clearly stated in the contract that I am to be in at the finish." "Agreed ; Ben, you are to be there." "Even though you're going to be lynched, don't hesitate to send for me." "That'll probably be the finish, if I give my se- crets away to you again. Still, I am past that now." He seemed to doubt his words, however. "Hanging or wedding, I'm to be there is that agreed ?" "You'll be the best man in any event and you may stand just as close as the minister or the mob will allow." I could see that he was in a good humor and CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 5 had noticed its increasing hold upon him for sev- eral weeks. Such a fine specimen of farm-bred manhood as Jim Hosley could not escape, although he had kept from the net and in the free waters of bachelorhood until he was thirty. Six feet two inches, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, and as rosy as a schoolboy, he seemed born to remain young and handsome always. Well do I remember this conversation now, and how little we then realized the nature of the fruitage of our folly which we discussed so airily that evening in our bachelor apartments where we kept house together. I regret that I am not a literary man. I never corresponded with magazine editors without pay- ing the return postage and therefore I am not in shape to put in the soft touches where they be- long, and I am also aware that the field is too big for me, for it includes the heart of a woman, a domain in which I am easily lost, although I did set up to be a pilot for my friend. As for my own matrimonial prospects, they were dim. I really cared nothing about them, for I understood I was such a small potato I wouldn't be noticed for seed, and there seemed poor pros- pects for me to ever sprout into anything that would attract attention enough to draw a handful of paris green and plaster. I had a better opinion 6 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN of my ideas on saving 1 the country, however. I found a lot of people who agreed with me that the country was going- to the bad; that there wasn't much use trying 1 to get money enough ahead to go into business, because if you did you would only net fresh air and exercise and an appetite that would cut whale oil and consume the margin. Jim found it an easy matter to turn me from prying into his private affairs. I had just been reading my paper. "Shall Autocrats Rule Us?" was the subject of the editor's heavy work for the evening and it stirred me up. That fellow used "strong and powerful" language, as our dominie used to say when he was preaching and got two feet away from his notes on the pulpit and doubled on his tracks. "You can put it down in your notebook, Jim, that I say the country is in a bad fix." "That's right, Ben, and unless you get the job of mending it, no George Washington will ap- pear." "Listen to this," said I, paying no attention to his guying. " 'Everywhere the voice is that of Democracy, but the hand and the checkbook are those of a respectable Autocracy.' Isn't that so? Why, when I had ploughed through a stack of CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 7 those magazines" (and I pointed to our parlor table and its load of ten-cent literature) "I burned two fillings of the lamp, and I tell you I had to swallow hard on a lot of big words that would have kept old Webster chasing to the fellows he stole from; I wound in and out a lot of trotting sentences that broke twice to the line on a track that was laid out by a park gardener to go as far as possible without reaching anywhere, and I fetched up this morning with a swelled head, stuffed full of cold-microbes that had formed a combine from the nozzle of my Adam's apple clean up to a mass of chronic gooseflesh that had crusted on the top of my crown as solid as if it had been put there by a file-maker, expert in per- manent pimpling " "Yes, I noticed them when you were at break- fast this morning," sniffed Jim. 'Why, it's no joke, Jim; this discussion about the country will wind up in some sort of a revo- lution. I have been talking around lately among the plain people, and a lot of them declare straight up and down that the country is going to peter out like the water in the tap here in our fifth flat when I am completely soaped up and have to stand there and feel it crackle and dry in my ears and burn me blind. Pretty soon those people who 8 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN read my paper, say the prosperity of the United States will slow down into a quiet trickle, then a dribble shading off into a blast of air and a maddening gurgle, while folks stick their heads out the window and swear at the government for not giving them notice." "It's an awful big country to save," said Jim. "Look at the Prohibitionists." "Well, Jim, I must say I get discouraged when I read of one man being worth a thousand mil- lion dollars. It makes me feel mighty poor. I don't see any use in being ambitious and taking any stock at all in anything so far as I am con- cerned, but I do hate to see the government come to harm. I get to thinking that if the Declara- tion of Independence isn't going to hold out that I'll change my politics and then see what will happen. When a fellow who is as set in his ways as I am changes his politics, reform must be com- ing, for I would probably be the last man to flop." 'If you could stick to one girl the way you do to the Republican party," said Jim, "you would soon be letting the country go to blazes." I could see that he was inclined toward shallow conversation. It was evident that he had more to tell me than he dared in view of the calamity which had followed his former confidences. I CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 9 said nothing, merely making note of his mental condition. I was not through with the country by any means. It was best to pump Jim by in- direct conversation. "It's an awful thing to think of changing your politics," I continued. "Why, up in Oswegatchie County, as far back as anybody can remember or read in the town papers on file, my folks have been Republicans and have been honored with office, earned good salaries and some of the longest obituary poems ever penned by that necro- logical songbird, Amelia Benson." "She sang like a catbird for fifty cents a col- umn," remarked Jim. "Her style was good for the price and it w'as preferred because it never struck below the belt," I added. "Her occasional verse was a trifle worse. Don't you know 'The Pain Killer' used to be full of it when advertisements ran low?" "I always liked that paper in your town," said Jim "for shaving." Our paper was called "The Pain Killer" down in Jerusalem Corners and other distant places when it was so full of stomach-bitters advertise- ments that the news of the week had to be left out for a couple of issues and seemed such ridicu- lous reading when it appeared, especially to the 10 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN sick who were then out ploughing and the parents of the babies that had been hinted about some time before and were then swaddled, exercising with the colic and ready to have their names in print as among those present. Jim had an important engagement and dressed with some care to meet what was evidently a social demand of consequence. I had observed of late that clothes were playing a greater part in his society drama. It seemed to me he must be getting close to a leading lady. The conversation ended with a "Good-night" from Jim and he passed out leaving me to ponder alone. The hermits of the country have time to consider its welfare, so I went to reading my magazines to gather more inspiration for de- nouncing the United States Senate and the rest of the rascals. The railroads are to blame. I hold them re- sponsible, for one of them brought me down to New York ten years ago on a ten-dollar excur- sion ticket, and an old Sunday-school teacher of mine who had seen all he could pay for here wanted to get back, so he made me an offer of five dollars for the return half, and after prac- ticing my handwriting for a spell he got so accu- rate he could write my name about as well as CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 11 I could, in case the conductor cornered him and wanted to throw him off into the Black River. He landed home all right and nobody was the wiser. Would that all my trickery had died as gentle a death ! But I see now that fooling with another fellow's courtship and cheating a railroad are different, because the railroad is everybody's business and the other is supposed to be a private affair. Cheating a railroad used to be no crime till they got to cheating us so hard. I remember up in Oswegatchie County that all of my folks in the County Clerk's office held passes and sel- dom complained about the railroad robbing us of our land, so that five dollars taken contrary to the contract on the ticket did not worry me overmuch, because I knew my dad would have closed on it like Jim Jackson's foot always acci- dentally trod on and spiked anything that rolled his way in the old man's store. Jim Hosley and I, two bachelors who have been down here in this great metropolis for ten years, looking for the fortunes we always hear about at the annual Waldorf dinners of the Oswegatchie County Society as being a part of the perquisites of our northern tribe, then lived together in a top apartment pretty well down-town, conven- iently situated five flights up without an elevator 12 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN and the same number back on the turn when any- thing was needed from the corner store. Jim came from Gorley and I from Dazer Falls. The solitude of the upper air, therefore, suited us. A man can stand for five hours at any corner in Dazer Falls and shout "Fire" through a forty- inch megaphone without starting up a native. Dazer Falls is a study in village still life. In Gorley silence and race suicide are equally com- mon and not noticed except by strangers. Up in the fifth flat we got away from the world almost as well, except that the clatter of our dish- washing and the thumping of our disagreeing opinions would at times sound like the whirr of industry, for Jim and I did our own housework, our own thinking and lived as cheaply as monop- oly will permit '(monopoly, that is the thing I am against as a political economist, I can tell you). The pile that was to come our way we had not yet receipted for. Once or twice, years before, we had thought we were getting close to it, but we found we'd have to change our politics to get farther. After that I lost all personal ambition, as I could get so few people to listen to my plans for making everything right. These kickers spent all their time kicking against monop- oly, but wouldn't let me show them how to slay CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 13 it. When I began my studies along this line I hesitated whether to begin war near the top with the United States Senate or at the bottom with the poor masses in the slums. Down at the bot- tom I would be more at home, for I know full well what it is to be bleached by the blues of adversity. In saving the masses though, by a direct appeal, I did not think I could do much to brag about down here, for they don't under- stand more than half you say to them in English and their suspicion sours the half they take in before they make any use of it. This would have made it extra hard for me, because advice was all I had to use in saving the country. Up in the United States Senate I used to think I might do something, but it was such a long way up from where I stood. They have been taking tremen- dous fees up there for their own advice, generally given to other members of their distinguished body or to members of their own State legisla- tures, as to how to vote wisely on this or that piece of law ordered by their clients. Therefore, it seemed to me it would be only reasonable for them to take my advice, as they might be able to turn it over at a good figure a little later on when the custom-made law business picked up again. Just now I don't suppose they could do much with 14 it, for most of those old codgers are as glum as a funeral march; but, of course, I admit I am no judge of chin music and could not understand what they said, probably, if they spoke. I want to state right here, though, that it is a mistake for a man to undertake to save the coun- try ancl to have ideas on that subject when he tries to help another fellow win the heart of a girl and gets mixed up in the tangle that such interference is bound to bring on anybody who attempts it. I didn't know, and therefore I should have thrown up the job as soon as I began to get wound in it. You have heard that gentle hum of the buzz-saw? You have seen how still it runs and how its feathery edge seems calm dur- ing the lull in the sawmill? You also noticed that no one who understands the sawmill business ever goes near it to give it a friendly tap just when it is looking that way? It is the same with the other fellow's love affairs. Leave them alone when all is quiet, and when there are ructions leave them alone. They are buzz-saws for theorists. A man with ideas on saving the coun- try is the poorest man in the world to undertake to help save a friend with a sick heart. The little matter of the country is a cinch compared to that job. Why, the little matter of stringing CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 15 a few extra stars to make traveling at night safer on the Milky Way would be an easy contract compared to that. But I touched the saw and it certainly did cut off a lot of opinions I used to be proud of. Jim and I had a habit of going over the sad state of the country pretty thoroughly during our leisure moments in the evening. There were chairs in our parlor that fitted us to a dot. They were seldom if ever dusted, unless they were acci- dentally turned over and then some would fall off, but no one ever 'disturbed them and ruffled them into hard knots just to improve their appearance. We sat on the chairs, not on their appearance. During our talks Jim did the listening. This constituted a de facto conversation. His knowl- edge of Gorley and up-State affairs, after an ab- sence of ten years, was well maintained by regu- larly reading the county papers, but his knowledge of monopoly and our foreign affairs came wholly from me while we would sit and cure the air of our front room with our smoking corncobs. And dad, who used them in his smokehouse, used to say they beat sawdust for flavor. We mixed a little short-cut tobacco to sweeten the cob. This was not our ideal way of spending the evening, for we had a Perfecto ambition. For ten years, 16 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN though, we had been gradually squeezing our- selves to fit circumstances and had come to realize that the pipe and kerosene oil are the cheapest fuel and light the trusts offer in New York. A gal- lon of oil a week, a pound of tobacco and seven scuttles of coal stood us in for our quota of com- fort, and as we paid our humble tributes to the concerns that had cornered these articles we were happy in the thought that it wasn't as bad as it might be. They had not yet cornered the air necessary to oxidize these commodities, although they fia9 tfie connecting link, the match, and would no clouHt soon get the air. We percfiecf tfiere in tfie top Hat after a long trial o'f tfie abnormalities of boarding-house life. I heard them called that once and it seemed to me that it fitted. We were fairly cosy, although, as I have hinted, there was nothing over-ornate about the furnishings. No woman had ever seen the place and therefore our ideas as to keeping it always tfie same were never disturbed, and it had never been spoken ill of. In the winter we kept house with more system than we did in the summer, when dish-washing became too much of a burden and appetite dwindled to chipped beef and angel cake, two simple things to serve. We got fagged out in this climate in the summer, and CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 17 if you had been born in Oswegatchie County, where forty degrees below zero is as common as at the North Pole, and had then lived up there beneath the roof of that flat, you would under- stand. In all our wanderings through the art galleries and the comic papers we had never found an artist who could draw the sun like that tin roof. Jim was almost as much interested as I was in having no harm come to the government, but not quite. We both worked for the city, holding civil service jobs. His was only a small city job, that of Sealer of Weights and Measures, while I was connected with the Department of Health as an Inspector of Offensive Trades, with more pay to offset the larger responsibilities. Jim once asked me what I did and I explained it this way : "An Inspector of Offensive Trades must have a nose as delicately trained as a Sousa's ear, so that when a blast from the full olfactory orches- tra rolls up from Newtown Creek and its stupe- fying vibrations are wafted on the fog billows driven by a gusty east wind toward the Depart- ment of Health, he can detect strains of the glue hoofs quite independently of the abattoir's offal bass, and tell at a sniff if discord breathes from the settling tanks of the fish factory or if the aroma of the fertilizer grinder is two notes below standard pitch as established by the officials to meet the approval of the sensitive ladies of the civic smelling committees." You can see that my work called for a peculiar kind of brains. Jim, in those days, went around to the grocery stores and made sure that the scales were in work- ing order and that the weights balanced with the official weights he carried in a small bag. If he found a groceryman using weights that had been bored out to make them lighter he made an arrest and usually laid off for two days because he had to be a witness against the prisoner at court. He took these vacations at regular intervals, about twice a month, so I figured he did not pounce down on a man as soon as he found him giving short weight, but saved those desirable cases for use at regular periods when he required rest with a day or two at home. Jim was not lazy, but he was not so spry as he was ten years ago when he was fresh from playing full-back on our scrub team. For a num- ber of years he had been tramping around out- doors all day and had been inclined to play full front on the gastronomic flying wedge at the res- taurants, where we commuted for our meals as CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 19 long as we could stand it before taking up the primitive notions of the culinary art practiced in our own kitchen. Our cooking became very sim- ple. After we tackled making fried cakes and both went to bed with headaches from the cotton- seed oil, I asked Jim to take what we had turned out to a neighboring machine shop and see if they didn't want some three-inch washers for locomo- tive work. The farmer and the manicure artist have dis- covered the same law of compensation. If a man has a big ear he may have only a little corn. With Jim it was about the same. He chased short- weight fellows all day and when it came night he piled on all the weight he could just to lift himself out of the under-weight rut of the day's work. Fat kept Jim sociable I don't mean that he was portly, but he was filled out well over the angles of youth. This was desirable, because a lean bach- elor can't live with another lean one. I don't know why, except it's Nature's law. He hyenas in the same cage act the same way. Before Jim started in to take on weight he had been passing through quite a long corre- spondence with a young woman, and it was so long that I began to give out on poetry and was thinking of laying in more stock in that line to 20 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN drive the arrow home to a finish. Jim had never done any courting without consulting me. I at- tended to the correspondence and rather liked my job, because it gave me experience that might be useful. Now that it is all over, of course, I know better I look the other way. At the time we were very busy in one of these affairs, I remember, Jim was blue-eared, ragged- nerved and petulant to such a degree that I began to think of shipping him back to the old farm, where pork gravy and fried cakes would certainly restore his nervous system ; otherwise I felt he would land in a padded cell. Nothing he ate agreed with him and I felt sure it must be a bad case of unrequited love. He looked sour upon all the world, mistaking me most of the time for the man who ran it. We were both on the point of getting a divorce when he began to take a bottle of ale regularly at dinner. The first week Jim mounted a pound a day and we were both overjoyed to note the improvement in our rela- tions which the ugly co-respondent (did you ever see a co-respondent that wasn't ugly?) had threat- ened to disturb with the Dakota chills. The remedy proved it was not a girl who both- ered him. For a long time after when Jim felt nervous I would recommend ale. I did not be- lieve it was possible for a woman to disturb him, but I was wrong again. When Jim had returned two cases of empties we were on thoroughly good terms again. Of course we are glad he tried the ale, but if we had parted then and there we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. The small amount the junk man would have paid for our outfit might have been better than what we netted. CHAPTER II t ANY man who knows the first thing about housekeeping, who has gone deep enough into it to bring in wood or light a lamp, ought to know that the upper story of a double boiler is not the thing to fry eggs in. How any man with the faintest glimmering of a suspicion that he can cook an egg should hit upon a tool as unhandy as that, is beyond me. A double boiler is a telescopic arrangement used by first-class cooks for boiled puddings. I understand that they prefer them because the raisins do not get frightened and all huddled up at the bottom try- ing to escape, like they do if boiled in the New England fashion in a towel. Jim Hosley knew nothing of this, never having read the Gentle- man's Home Journal to any extent. One night when I came in one of the big nights in our his- tory, all right I found him frying two eggs with this back-handed device. Of course it made no difference to me if he fried them right on the coals 22 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 23 and lost everything except the fun of doing it; at the same time I felt called upon to point out the skillet as the appropriate kitchen furniture for the occasion. It was certainly a peculiar notion and hinted to me that another woman had arrived and would soon be everywhere in that flat. "Jim, you don't know enough about frying eggs," said I, "to deserve them at six for a quar- ter. You ought to eat canned goods or something you can't damage by fire." "This thing suits me better than your flat pan," said he. "You see how I can take off the lid and jam it right down on the coals and have it all over while you are waiting to warm up on top. Never used to cook eggs up home always sucked them ; down here, been pulling at this pipe so long, or eating brass goods in the restaurants, I seem to have lost the liking for them. Tried them when up there last summer, but it warn't no use; they didn't taste the same." "Same with me," I sadly admitted, with my mind on the girl. "There didn't seem to be enough nicotine in them to suit." "Ben, chase yourself and find the pepper and salt, and be good enough to tell me whose funeral it is down-stairs to-night," interrupted Jim, changing the subject, m CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN! "I didn't know there was one," said I. "How far down is it?" "One flight." "Think of that," said I. "When the world gets crowded it seems to grow careless and un- neighborly. We don't either of us know who lives there, and here we have been coming and going for about three years in this place. Still, we are only here nights. Yet it's a strange world. Think of living within ten feet of anybody in Osweg'atchie County and not knowing them es- pecially if they have a vote." "It is a queer place here in New York," said Jim, quietly. "It keeps getting busier all the time. Even the women hustle." I think now he sighed there, but I am not certain. "We don't get time to get acquainted with ourselves, let alone our neighbors ten feet away. A man might have his own funeral here and never know it. Never thought I'd have to live in such a place," he con- tinued. "This will be a lonesome world when there are no country folks." "Jim, you're getting to be a philosopher," said I. "In you that is a sure sign a woman's picture is focusing on your brain. I've never known you to drop into sentiment while using the double boiler. Is it that girl down-town?" (I had CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 25 heard her name from others, Gabrielle Tescheron, for I kept close watch of him, but he did not know that I knew it.) "You know the one I mean the girl who sticks her tongue out to straighten her veil." "No, no," said Jim, laughing. "I made it plain to her that she'd have to marry both of us." "A kind of matrimonial sandwich, eh? But say, Jim, come to think of it, I have heard you tell several times lately just what bad weather we have been having on Sundays for the past three months. It's a clincher. No ?" Jim began to pound the bottom of the inverted boiler with the lid lifter to secure a release of the eggs, which he earnestly hoped would let go and land on the plate. "Did you grease that thing?" I asked, as he tum-tummed in vain, for the eggs had glued into a fresco showing a rising and setting sun on oppo- site sides of the bottom. "No; didn't know where you kept the grease. What would you recommend in a case of this kind?" But before I could advise, Jim had made fair headway in transferring the eggs directly without the intervention of a plate, an economy we prac- ticed frequently. The meal was served in the 26 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN kitchen to save steps and progressed with custom- ary smoothness, each getting up a dozen times or so to bring things from the shelves or the stove. While we were slicking up the dishes I got to chuckling and Jim began to blush and look fool- ish. I could see that he knew I had found him out. We made short work of the chores. I wound the alarm clock and sent down the milk bottle via the dumb waiter, which you can't tip with a dime, but have to push or pull clean to or from the cellar, unless it happens to be en route just as you get there and can chuck your load aboard. We then stretched out in the cosy front room, and lighting our pipes warmed to the task of be- ing comfortable. I was pained to feel that the day must come when woman would part us, but I said nothing more, determined to let time and Jim's confiding nature reveal the tender secrets of his heart now melting for that girl with the dancing brown eyes, the mass of filmy dark hair straying in wisps from a harness of braid, ribbon and pins, to Jim's utter distraction and the poor girl's despair. All my efforts in Jim's behalf had been lost ap- parently, or Jim, having won the prizes in each case, became disenchanted for one reason or an- CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 27 other. Perhaps like my love letters, the girls were works of art and would not bear too close an inspection. The coming case would make one more failure, I imagined; still, I was sorry I had remarked how she had coaxed her veil into shape; but with that wanton hair, a hat which was a department to manage in itself, a tailor-made primness of figure to superintend and the curva- tures of Jim's conversation to follow, I could un- derstand that she needed the help of all her senses to keep her pretty, light-hearted poise. I sighed to think of the trouble in store for Mrs. Jim, not in the least knowing what a remarkable woman she was ; in my estimation of her at that time I think I was about as far off the track as I got at any subsequent turn, Jim had been uninterested so long '(nearly three years), I felt love was now a proposition which wouldn't find a crevice in his heart to trickle into and widen until it split him asunder. But with the clever young woman of business, in the rush and turmoil of the down-town hustle, it is such a gentle humidity it seems to work its corrosion unseen in the broad daylight. Thermometer read- ings don't show it. You have to keep close to the barometer of eyes and sighs to know anything definite of its ups and downs unless it passes into 28 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN fog or pours, then everybody can see it dropping through the air. I began to feel that it would pour soon around Jim, and I shuddered, for I thought I already heard the patter of light feet in the hall. Some of the gray poetry of loneli- ness began to spread around my disturbed and anxious soul for fear no drippings like that would ever fall on me. Race suicide conscientiously practiced is a hard game. Nature abhors a vacuum, and especially human nature. Perhaps this girl had a sister. A comfortable introspec- tion began to take the contract of illuminating my mind. Agreeable family scenery was thrown around by the magic of the thought. It scattered about six kids for Jim and the same-sized bunch for me enough to prove that human nature ab- hors the inter-marrying of men as Jim and I had tried it. We naturally drifted away from the subject we were both thinking about and got around to talk- ing on old home matters the day's doings and the state of the country; graft, buying and selling law, and what it all had to do with harming the government and the likelihood of losing our jobs. It was about 8 130 o'clock as near as I can re- member, when a timid knock on the front door startled both of us. I answered the call, expect- CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 29 ing to find that fairy Miss Tescheron ready to pop in and oust me like a Republican hold-over on a Tammany Happy New Year's. I peeped out as charily as a jailer. The dim light revealed a tiny messenger boy something awful had prob- ably happened up homeJ A messenger boy was enough to startle both of us, for no one in the world would spend half a dollar to tell us any- thing unless they were scared into it. I swung the door open and the boy took off his cap and removed from its sweat-band stronghold a neat- looking note. "Say, boss, Hoes Mr. Benjamin Hopkins live up here?" he asked between breaths, for the five flights had tuckered him. "That's me," said I, reaching for the note and carefully scanning the typewritten address, for upon second thought I believed love and not fright might have sent a note to Jim. But it was for me. so I opened it and leaning toward the lamp read in diplomatically suppressed wonder: "Mr. Benjamin Hopkins, "97 East Eighteenth Street, New York". "Dear Sir: Do not mention this matter to Hosley, but I wish to see you at once at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I have instructed the clerk to 30 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN send you to my room immediately. Please come right away, as the matter cannot wait." "Yours truly, "ALBERT TESCHERON." "Her pa," thought I; but I didn't let on. A stale actor in a play couldn't have pulled himself together in a more unconcerned-I-do-this-every- night fashion than I signed for the note, tipped the poor little shaver and closed the door. Jim eyed me in surprise, but it was nothing to my own astonishment. What did old Tescheron want of me ? No matter. "Jim, I've got to run up-town for a few min- utes about some work," was the wording of my deception, eased by the thought that it was in his behalf. I slipped on my hat and coat and started for the door, taking in at a glance that Jim was smoking hard and squirming uneasily. CHAPTER III ONE thing I liked about Tescheron he talked business from the start. He jumped into it at once, so that I had no time to take notice of anything except that he talked without an accent, was probably French only in name and that he wore clothes which were superfine. I never saw such a dresser for a man with iron-gray hair and fifty-five years to con- tend against in the youth-preserving business, which I calculated was one of his pleasures in life, if not his vocation. Nothing I figured on coming up-town happened except that I found my man. A sixty-year old boy brought me to the room on the third floor. I could see that Mr. Tescheron was a whole encyclopedia on manners, but he gave me the paper-covered digest which retails for ten cents, and began: "Hope I reached you just at the close of the funeral." 31 32 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN "What funeral?" I asked. "Say, see here, Hopkins, I want you to talk fair and square with me no nonsense, you under- stand. You know of the funeral Mrs. Brown- ing's and if you weren't there you know when it was over and when Hosley returned. I am pretty hot in the collar over this business; all happened right under my nose ; never thought of such a thing happening; but I'm not too late to stop this infernal impostor, not too late! Of course you don't know anything about my end of it, Hopkins, and I know that you, too, have been fooled at your end, for I've looked you up. I have reports from a dozen, business men who say you are perfectly square and that is why I send for you now that we may work together and make the greatest headway. Do you know that the scoundrel Hosley has become infatuated with my daughter? a pretense for criminal purposes, of course. To-day he seeks me out to tell me they are engaged! A few hours later I hear he is crying at the funeral of his wife!" There was some French in Tescheron after all, for he waved his arms and danced about like a man whose tongue won't wag fast enough to please him. If Jim had dealt with large business concerns CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 33 as an inspector, instead of corner grocerymen and small storekeepers, they might have saved him. The business men whom Tescheron had consulted regarding me, I afterward learned, were the man- ufacturers whose plants I had investigated for the city. Some of the best families in New York are connected with Newtown Creek glue and they, it seems, had stuck to me in this emergency. A fish man will believe anything a glue man tells him; I don't know why, but it's so, and the fact was certainly to my advantage. When Tescheron had calmed I broke out with a hiss and a stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could do was to stammer and splutter like a bass viol tuning up, while I sozzled around in my chair trying' to break in with something that would count. Why should a man of my tempera- ment take a hand in love, war or diplomacy? As a theoretical manipulator of fathers-in-law, as a text-book writer on the subject, I was in the extra fancy class, but the part of Daniel in the lion's den could not be played by me unless I agreed to step in the marble-lined vestibule of open jaws and 34 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN get kicked down the back stairs after a thorough overhauling. On the firing line my plans did not fit and I became a failure. A smell of fish in the room restored me. I knew not whence it came, but its soft presence yielding to my keen detector restored my pro- fessional pride and self-respect. I then felt I was something of a detective after all. I eyed a re- volving ventilator in the window-pane as a pos- sible avenue of its entrance from the culinary de- partment. I did not suspect Tescheron. "I see you are not inclined to side with me in this matter," he rattled on. "To-night I notify the coroner. I " "Are you a fool ?" I blurted with that rare pres- ence of mind which will some day save me by put- ting me in jail. "Are you an idiot? You seem to be gone in the head. Call a dozen coroners, by all means, and be the laughing-stock of the town. Drag your whole family into the illustrated news- papers. Go ahead and have a good time at your own expense. Get out the fire department and have them squirt on you!" I was surprised at the string of sarcasm which rolled forth when I did start. Tescheron danced a first-class vaudeville turn and shouted : "Say what you please, I notify the CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 35 coroner! Hosley killed his wife so that he might marry my daughter; I have had detectives out, so I know and you don't. I " "How long have you had them out ?" "Since two o'clock to-day soon as he left me." "Since two o'clock to-day, eh? And what did you have against Mr. Hosley before that hour, pray?" "Oh, nothing except a strong personal dislike to him but I have enough against him now; I have enough now! I had told him he was too old ; that he had done nothing to merit her just to gain time, you see. I wanted time to find out ; to look him over with care ; with the same precau- tion I would use in a cold matter of business. It was well I did; it's a mighty good thing I used my business sense in this matter. You see, you are no man of business. You " 'Well," said I with a calmness affected to ag- gravate the man who was sure, "you couldn't have hired a better lot of men. They pass you out Jim Hosley, married, and a widower by murdering his wife, and have him engaged to your daughter in six hours. It is as pretty a story as I ever read. A man who wouldn't ring up the coroner on that needs one for his own autopsy. Why, any man would be proud to have a coroner in the family 36 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN on the strength of all that. Tescheron, let's talk about the pleasant memories of the past. What asylums that you have been in do you pre- fereh?" Tescheron proceeded to give me the repertoire of the dancing school. When he began to polka and upset the furniture he dropped his cologned handkerchief. I tossed it up on the ventilator, for somebody had ordered a lot more fish. "So he has fooled you, too? Yes? You have been living with him there and did not know he was married to a woman in aflat right below yours her name is Browning. I saw that you remem- bered it. Strange, ain't it? Do you know how she died? No? I see you do not. You are very smart, very clever. You have talked just as I hoped you would. Let me introduce Mr. Smith." And from behind a screen stepped a slight, middle-aged man with keen blue eyes and fair complexion. I shook hands with Mr. Smith. He was a wide-awake little man, not in the least em- barrassed by the eavesdropping, as it was part of his business. I have lived long enough to know that there are all kinds of Smiths. He was one of them. Of course I began to feel that they were crowd- CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 37 ing me to turn State's evidence against my faith- ful Jim. The thought of the funeral in the early evening in the flat below ours, and Jim's innocent inquiry concerning it, had flashed upon me. I still felt that Mr. Smith was only making out a good case to match a big bill. If Jim Hosley had been leading a double life at such short range without my knowing it I must be a chuckle-head. I knew Jim Hosley was honest ; that easy as his conscience was in trifling matters, he knew no guile. If a Mrs. Browning had been living below us she was as much a stranger to him as her relative's poetry in fact it might have been hers for all Jim knew or cared. Smith answered a knock on the door and stepped into the hall for half a minute. "You don't begin to know this scoundrel," con- tinued Mr. Tescheron, eyeing me like a man with the facts. "Perhaps you will deny that this fel- low Hosley served two years in prison at Joliet, Illinois ; that he was indicted for forgery in Michi- gan and got into a mix-up in Arizona, whence he skipped at the point of a pistol and made his way down into Mexico. This fellow Hosley has passed under a dozen different names. He is notorious in criminal annals. He is so clever that he can completely fool you and deceive my daughr 38 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN ter, who, I would have you understand, is a smart woman one not easily fooled. It is lucky I took this thing in hand when I did, or, as you say, we would have all been shown up in the papers." Well, I let the old codger run along at this clip. It beat anything I had ever heard, but it didn't disturb me, as I have stated, except to create a pain that a good laugh would have cured. What could I say up against a know-it-all combination ? Hadn't the detectives been at work a whole six hours ? What kind of records did they keep in their office if they couldn't bunch a choice bouquet of crime for a fellow willing to pay for it ? You can buy anything in New York. The detective bureau had found good enough clews in Mr. Tescheron's desire for a discovery and in his com- mercial rating which showed that he could pay top prices for the disgrace of a would-be son-in- law in the estimation of his devoted daughter. The detective bureaus, lawyers' offices and "soci- ety" papers that deal in this blasting powder and take contracts to shatter good names were com- mon enough ; everybody knew them. People like Tescheron, though, only knew their names, not their reputations, and like many honest folks went to one of these concerns because he had seen its name frequently in print. Publicity draws trade CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 39 sometimes without reputation, especially first cus- tomers. Tescheron was a new hand at this busi- ness of ruining character with the aid of a crim- inal detective bureau and its lawyer allies and as- sociates on the slanderous "society" papers that fatten on the frailties of human beings with money to buy exemption, but too weak to fight the slimy devils whose pens drip this filth from the social sewage pots ; he knew not the parasites who cling to the maggoty exudations of every form of social disorder. That is the way I fig- ured it. I want it straight on the record here that my devotion to Jim Hosley at that interview began to tighten like the Damon-and-Pythias grip of a two-ton grab bucket. I was figuring to die beside Jim with a Nathan Hale poise of the head and some pat remark. .. Smith, the sharp-eyed, handed a paper to Mr. Tescheron. They whispered about it for a min- ute or so in one corner, and then Mr. Tescheron read it aloud : "Hosley and the undertaker drove away in coach together following hearse. Two men fol- lowing." As he finished they both looked at me, probably 40 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN expecting me to be convinced that all virtue was on their side and to unite with them or at least listen while they revealed all they knew about Jim Hosley's career of crime and deception. But I had enough. I knew where the crime was there, I believed. I opened up on a new line. "I guess I'll notify the coroner," said I quietly, starting to go. "No, no!" shouted Tescheron. "I did not mean to do that. I only said that to draw you out. All I ask of you, Mr. Hopkins, is that you give your evidence against this man when I next summon you. I am glad to find you convinced at last but never mind the coroner. I can ac- complish my purpose under cover." I edged away. "No, I think you have convinced me that it is my duty to notify the coroner," said I, "so that this murderer, Hosley, may be put to death. It's a nasty business for all of us," I said, "except Smith, here, who won't mind it." "Hopkins, if you do that you will spoil all my plans," pleaded the now completely flustrated Tescheron. "Stand in with me. Help me to pre- sent the truth about this rascal in the presence of my daughter and all will go well. As for the au- thorities, let them take care of their end them- CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 41 selves. The Tescheron family is not to be sac- rificed! Think of yourself, man! Surely you don't want to be mixed up in such a horrible crime you who have been fooled for years. Come, now! Agreed, eh?" "I'll think it over," said I, giving one down- stroke of the handle for a parting shake to each of these brainy men and then I passed out. As I traveled toward home, I regretted I had been so confident, and had not asked to be shown all the evidence they had against Hosley. That proved to be more of a mistake than I supposed, as I hur- ried along. Just before entering our house, I called a boy and sent this message to Mr. Tescheron, at his home in Ninety-sixth Street. I found the address in the telephone book : "Have notified Coroner Flanagan, He has tele- phoned all the cemeteries to hold body. Autopsy to-morrow. Rest easy. I am with you. "HOPKINS/' CHAPTER IV FLANAGAN would enjoy the joke, I thought, on my way home. Coroner Tim Flanagan, the Tammany leader of the dis- trict in which we lived, was the friend of every- body in his territory, and took a kindly interest in Jim and me, although we held office on other tenure than "pull." We bought tickets every year for the annual clam-bake of the Timothy J. Flan- agan Association, held at Rockaway, and there mingled with the politicians big and little, and the fellows from our departments. We office-holders knew which side our bread was buttered on, and we also liked clams. We did not attend the an- nual mid-winter ball of the same association, but we never failed to buy tickets admitting "ladies and gent." If the news that I had taken undue liberty with his name came back to Flanagan I knew he would quickly forgive me. Flanagan was a good fellow, straight and loyal. As I passed through the vestibule of our apart- 42 43 ment house T looked at the letter-boxes and noticed the narrow string of crape tied on the little knob, under the badly written name, "Browning 1 /' If the sad event had closed, as reported by the subor- dinates of Smith, the careless undertaker had for- gotten to remove this shred of formality. I found the murderer, forger and bad man of the border, in bed, snoring as if he was glad he had always stuck to the treadmill of virtue, and had never murdered a wife to get another with money, or had raised a check for a cool million or so without the formalities of a pious pur- loiner from the people's purse. No criminal in history had ever slept with a smoother rhythm to his heart-beat than this one, with the elite of New York's private detective bureaus hot upon his trail for a long chase. His sonorous snore might have sent a waver through the mind of the crafty Tescheron, and made the wily Smith feel that the case would dwindle to less than a week's job. when he was probably figuring on a good two thousand dollars in it, having sized up the buyer pretty well. I felt satisfied that my telegram would put some insomnia in Ninety-sixth Street when the great work closed for the night at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the protector of the household returned 44 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN to rest those tired wheels that had been whirring fast in his head since 2 P. M., short -belted to the Smith dynamo of fraud. I didn't expect to do much sleeping myself, so I proceeded to divest and relax under the sedative pull of my pipe. For about half an hour I creaked the comfortable rocker, and pondered on that old subject of fools and their money, and how it was that wise men like myself had so little of it. The solitudes and soliloquies of life appealed to me especially with a nice bunch of fake crime hov- ering in the air between me and, say, a few feet beneath my rocker. I was lolling in our front parlor, probably not ten feet above the spot just vacated by the latest victim, and the man who would swing or singe for the deed was playing a soft nostrilian air two doors down the hall but, no! The tune stopped! The villain had turned 216 pounds over on a set of springs which shiv- eringly reported the man-quake in their midst. A brief moment of calm just enough for a mur- derer to lick his chops and gather a lulling sense of monotony from the contemplation of a fresh wife-slaying, and he was off again with the sheriff after him for exceeding the speed limit. His horn was clearing the track and the vibrations blended in a romping continuity. CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 45 The deeper Jim got into his Bluebeard dreams, or his fairyland of love, the deeper I got into my hobby, political economy, and to thinking of the wide difference between us. Somebody had to do a little thinking, for Fate was tying our affairs in hard, wet knots, and the chances were we'd have to stay under the stream of life's perplexities. Jim was so smooth in ap- pearance (alas ! but not in tongue) he might slip out of a corner as easily as his fine manners en- abled him to progress in society. But I was no man for style. I could cut no swath with women. The few times I had tried it, the scythe had turned upon me, took me for an extra tough bunch of wet grass and stung me badly. I could see that my chances there were poor. If Jim got out of this murder business, as I believed he would soon, I intended to run the flat alone, fill it full of books written by people who have advised the country out of a spirit of pure patriotism (and into a worse hole), and after reading all they had to say, I thought I could produce something origi- nal that would put them all out of print, with my small volume standing alone on the shelves, as the last word on the pursuit of happiness, contain- ing full directions on how to keep to the trail, from birth to the grave, with a stop-over ticket 46 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN at the last-named junction. I felt that all this was in me, just as Jim felt there was some- thing in him, he didn't know what, but so long as it kept him fidgeting he knew it was there. It was not surprising to my friends that I had given up all hope for myself. As I have said, I was no man for style. It always seemed to me that my clothes fitted me when I was buying them, but it never struck anybody else that way afterward. I paid the same prices as Jim, but I would have done just as badly at three times as much, and might just as well have saved money buying sec- ond-hand through a want "ad." Nature de- signed me to spoil tailoring. If I had lived in Eden the fig leaves on my belt would have browned and cracked before noon the first day, and if a few figs were then worn on the side as fringe ornaments, I would have carelessly picked them inside out, making the suit look seedier still. On a foggy morning the dewdrops of Paradise would have spotted me, and on a windy day the flying burrs and feather-tailed seeds would have taken me for good ground ; the pussy willows and all such forest fuzz and excelsior for a good thing. If I had been a Roman no one would have seen me down street, for I would be in the baths CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 47 waiting for my wrapper to be scoured, washed and mended. This is a way Fate has of keeping a few schol- ars and investigators in the world. Herbert Spencer would have been swamped in a family, and the same with George Eliot. If they had married each other, as Herbert says they might (had Georgie been better-looking), philosophical and imaginative genius would have been lost in getting the meals and bending posterity over the parental knee to make sin seem undesirable. I had always felt that Jim was cut out to get mar- ried, and I stood ready to help him through the entire catalogue of crime and conspiracy, for I knew he could not undertake so much alone as well as I knew glue from tallow coming two miles by air line. If Jim wanted to do it, though, I would give him the benefit of my knowledge of the theory of courtship, a subject I was well up in, having read considerably more fiction than he had. This with my keen intuitive perceptions, I felt fitted me to act again in an advisory capacity, for my critical faculties were massive, although, as I have hinted, my executive qualities as a lover were undersized. I had time for Jim's affairs, because society had peculiar horrors for me. Let a woman say some- 48 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN thing at a dinner or a reception, and my neck would begin to swell like a pouter pigeon's and my collar would close down like a pair of hedge clippers centered at the back collar button. This would cause no alarm in the young woman, for she would imagine the choking symptoms were only signs of an embarrassment produced by her interest in me. This would not have been a bad thing, for bashful men always get the most en- couragement, and if persistently bashful, are coaxed into all the intricate arts of the gentle game by the woman who is interested in them. Thus T always seemed to have the good luck of the bashful man up to the last gasp, and until I began to turn blue. She would then see that it was apoplexy, and not her charms, which was undoing me. But the apoplexy, the bulging veins and the reddening eyes were forgotten when I sought relief by insert- ing the first two fingers of each hand on either side of my collar, and with a short, outward jerk, would open the starchy shears that were fastening like a constrictor around my air valves. This would startle the young creature into diffi- dence, and I always hated to do it, but it was the only way I could assume my self-control. Fol- lowing the application of the two-finger move* CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 49 ment, relief would come quickly, with a splutter and a stammering apology for not catching her last remark. My volubility from that point to the next attack, when interrupted by a suggestion which would derail me, or by a third party not following our train of thought, would impress the hearer that it was the collar which was tight. This remarkable misfortune, of course, deprived me of the influence of the bashful man, and as I was no dissembler I could not take advantage of the appearance of my distress. My blushes were wholly due to choking and could not pass for flashes reflexed by heart-throbs. There was another thing I had to battle with from my entrance into society. Jim could look like a lord in a dress suit. I always looked like a lord knows what! The 'Sun once published a picture of the dress trousers of Grover Cleveland and David B. Hill lined up with those of Gov- ernor Montague of Virginia, for impartial presen- tation by a flashlight photograph. It was an as- tonishing revelation of Democracy below the waist line. Jim cut it out and put it in a pretty straw frame. He said he never wanted me to lose sight of the styles set by great statesmen. Montague, as became his aristocratic name and lineage, was a model of perfection about the legs, and Jim said SO CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN it proved he would never get to Washington and take rank with our great men. Cleveland and Hill, however, who had been there, evidently pinned their trousers in curl-papers, so that they were always ready to look fancy in society and be snap-shotted. Mine followed the Washington route without urging. Then, as to vest, coat and shirts: no tailor could make a coat for me that could trail after my neck when it was engaged in the throes of a society conversation, The coat had to go off at the back of the collar and stand to one side until the neck was through talking. The vest generally showed only two square inches and gave little trouble to the public, so long as I kept my coat on and hid the safety-pins which reefed it in the back. The shirt, up to a certain course of the dinner, would keep under the nap- kin, but until I learned of a patent mixture to cover the bosom with a transparent waterproof- ing, used to protect wall-paper and other delicate fabrics from ink stains and finger-marks, I found it a burden to carry so much exposed linen. But with this wax paint, I care not what drops on it; it won't stick unless it's hot metal, and there is not so much of that in the air at dinners this side of Arizona. Studs are a source of mortification to me. I CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 51 have paid as high as fifty cents for a set of three and had them all break off the first night, exposing the brass settings. I sought to reduce this tor- ment by wearing only one stud-hole, but that makes it necessary to go away into a far country, three times during the dinner, to bore out the stump of the old stud and drive in the new. Any man who has done the job with his collar and tie on, knows that he is as pop-eyed as a lobster when he gets through, trying to keep the field of opera- tions in view. I had special bolts made which I had soldered on. This is practicable where the wax paint is used and the mangle of the laundry avoided. A good paint will last three years. Shaving for society appearances cut windfalls all over my face, that I had to cover with the overhang of whiskers. I tried the old-style razor, but my shaving ran into big money for court plaster, so I got some safety razors, several brands of them, determined to keep a decent-look- ing lawn. These devices are like mowing ma- chines in that they have teeth to grip the crop and make it stand straight for the attack of the knife, but the knife doesn't move in a shuttle like that of the mowing machine it is stationary, so that you have an arrangement that is a combination of mowing machine and road scraper. I think 52 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN the safety razors were responsible for most of the blanks in my whisker area. They dug chunks out of some of the most fertile spots, and as noth- ing would grow there, I covered them by the ivy process adopted by bald men, who train eighteen hairs from back of the left ear diagonally up and across the cranial arbor and down the front to a point over the right eye, where the ends are brought up short as if they were rooted near there. I could say I was not bald. This gave me some satisfaction, but I never boasted of it in public. There was a streak of porcupine in our family. This accounted for the trod-grass ap- pearance of my head, even when prepared care- fully for public appearance. It was at its best when it looked like a meadow of tall timothy that had been walked over by the cows on a wet day. Curry-combing would not disturb it. Herr Most, Ibsen, Old Hoss Hoey and I had a common quill- haired ancestor. There were some other points that fitted me to blush unseen. When I was fifteen years old and my voice was changing, it struck a peculiar gait. It ran up and down about six octaves, to the tune of a five-finger exercise. I talked around town for a few weeks in a surprisingly new style, that reminded me of a boarder who came up to CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 53 our place one summer from New York and un- dertook to show us how to ride a horse. When the horse got as fast as a spry walk the boarder would teeter up and down in the saddle as if he had been practicing on a spring bed and had kept a chunk of it in each hip pocket for elasticity. George Honkey, our druggist and censor of public man- ners, said it was the most insipid piece of equine pitty-patter he had ever seen on Main Street, and from the get-up-and-down of it, he guessed it must be the Episcopal ritual for horseback exer- cise. My vocal cords, while tuning for my lowly part in life's orchestra, for a day at a time would seem to stick to a decent tenor or drop to an im- pressive bass which would have fitted me to be a preacher, but a sudden attack of mumps, with measles complicating, pulled them to one side and burned the bridge. They afterward drew tight down on the sounding board, so that now when I talk the rickety buzz is like that of a horse-fiddle played with the tremolo and the soft pedal. An seolian harp made of rubber bands on a bicycle, aroused by the wind as the machine moves swiftly, gives the same soft rasp a prolonged "sizz." What chance had a man with women, handi- capped as I was? And I have mentioned only a few minor matters, which have come quickly to 54 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN mind, as I hastily pen this narrative of my ad- ventures as the middleman in Jim's love affairs. And yet I had a true and noble heart, with a capacity for manly devotion as great as any ever advertised on Sunday in the "personal" column. I make this statement because a man in my posi- tion must take the stand in his own behalf, if any testimony is to be given for his side of the case. I am the only competent witness to my own vir- tues. In order to appreciate me, a woman would need to have a fine discrimination. My beauty might have been revealed to such a woman if she had concentrated by absent treatment on my lofty, self-sacrificing character, evidenced by my pur- suit of the chaste in art and the sane in philosophy. But all hope had then well-nigh departed. I realized that there were inconsistencies in the theories of the survival of the fittest and natural selection. I was an example of the exception to the rule. Excluded, I became the last of my race. I was the last candy in the box just as full of sugar as those that had been devoured, but con- demned to rattle in solitude because, forsooth, chocolate creams are preferred to gum-drops. Chilled by a want of sympathetic appreciation while mingling with my fellows, I had gradually withdrawn to the scholarly cloisters of our fifth- CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 55 story apartment, adjacent to the tin roof, which so fascinated the summer sun, and far above the turmoil of a world of men and women wholly dis- interested in me. Perhaps this may seem a little too pessimistic for a philosopher whose experience had taught him to be above disappointment, yet I must confess it is true I could not witness the social achievements of my companion without pangs of remorse; the indifference of the world to merit, to much pure gold in the ore, convinced me that a varnished label in six colors maintains the market for mediocrity. Driven to despera- tion, I might yet seek a beauty doctor and obtain the glazed surface so essential to social success. Bachelorhood with Jim seemed to have been due to his lack of appreciation of others, for accord- ing to the favorable comment his comely appear- ance created, he seemed to be filled with indiffer- ence; while with me, as I warmed into high en- thusiasm over certain well-defined representatives of the angelic sex, coolness, growing to statuesque frigidity, would develop in the object of my devo- tions, and the beauty whose charms had bedeviled me into insomnia and wild-eyed desperation be- came related to me thereafter as the angel sur- mounting the tombstone that marked the resting place of my folly. 56 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN Moderation, therefore, I concluded, was the keynote of success in courtship. When the cur- rent became balanced in negative and positive qualities, the desirable equilibrium recognized by each pole as the real thrill of mutual romance, jeal- ousy and despair would spark, blow out the fuse and short-circuit into a proposal and an accept- ance. Jim was negative in desire and positive in appearance, thus securing neutrality, and my passive state was the resultant of a positive in- clination and a negative exterior. Thus Jim was admired and I was tolerated, but he had pro- gressed no further than I. One Sunday he and I were strolling through an art gallery. "What do you call this, Ben?" he whispered behind his hand, pointing to the portrait of a red- haired Diana sitting cm a low, mossy stump in a lonely spot. Her back was turned toward us, and she seemed to be taking a sun bath. He looked stealthily around to make sure his curiosity was not noted by the spectators near us. "It says on the label that Titty Ann painted it. It is the bluest-looking woman I ever saw; how did they come to let it in ?" "Yes," said I, not attempting to disturb his view of the painting or the name of the artist, CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 57 "Titty Ann was a great painter of the blue- blooded women of the aristocracy, so blue-blooded they seemed to be bruised all over, and Titty Ann wanted you to see there was no place they had not been hurt." The incident shows how keen was Jim's appre- ciation of this great subject of universal interest to bachelors. It seemed to me in those days that the fairest creature that ever fluttered could not charm him with the siren whistle of her swishing silk, nor throw a damaging spark from her bright eyes. But here he was, plunged into the most dreadful complications, which seemed in the mind of Tescheron, at least, to be fastening him in the electric chair. It must have been about 1 1 :3O o'clock when Jim got out of bed and began to mope around the flat, tramp nervously up and down the private hall and scuffle through the closets, the cupboard and among the pots and pans, which fretfully clashed in a heap upon the floor when he sought to unhook his favorite, the upper story of the double boiler. I wondered what ailed him now. From the way the alleged murderer was rattling the crockery and the tinware, back in the kitchen, I knew he had it bad. What prompted him to in- vade the kitchen and unhook our outfit I don't 68 CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN know, but I think he was trying to heat some water, poor chap! to accompany a certain pill, on a theory that it was dyspepsia which disturbed his dreams. Presently he wandered into the front room, looking badly rumpled. He had on his yellow and brown dressing gown and a pair of pink- bowed knitted slippers of a piebald variety, that I had seen displayed by a neighboring gents' fur- nishing goods store. "Ben, what are you doing up this time of night ? Pretty late, ain't it?" He asked. "Oh, I'm just cogitating," I answered. "You look sick ; anything the matter with you ? and, say, when you go into that kitchen, I wish you wouldn't chuck everything in the place on the floor for me to pick up." "I picked 'em all up, Ben," was his meek reply. I never could scold him, so I forgave him and invited him to sit down and have a smoke. He fairly jumped at the idea, and it pleased me to see him bite. I thought then how little Tescheron could know of this innocent blockhead, Jim Hos- ley, whose heart and brain traps were built on the open, sanitary order, with nothing concealed. Jim continued fidgety and wide-awake as he took his seat near the table and the county papers. CUPID'S MIDDLEMAN 59 He squirmed on the cushions, smoked hard and complained of the tobacco, the weather, the police magistrates, his tight shoes, the careless washer- woman and a string of matters incidental to the world's work and its burdens that he had never mentioned before so long as I had lived with him, and that was pretty close to ten years. It was easy to see that this was