THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD FOR THE ENGLISH READING ROOM STRICTLY BUSINESS BY THE SAME AUTHOR Roads of Destiny, Cabbages and Kings, The Foul Million, The Trimmed Lamp, Heart of the West, The Voice of the City, The Gentle Grafter, Options Major (by misplaced courtesy) w enticorth C'asicell. STRICTLY BUSINESS MORE STORIES OF THE FOUR MILLION BY O. HENRY Author of " The Four Million," " The Voice of the City," " The Trimmed Lamp" " Sixes and Sevens," " Whirligigs," Etc. PUBLISHED BT DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY FOB REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO. 1916 ALL EIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY DOUBLED*?, PAG ft COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. STRICTLY BUSINESS 3 II. THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED 21 III. BABES IN THE JUNGLE . . . . . . 34 IV. THE DAY RESURGENT ....... 43 V. THE FIFTH WHEEL ........ 51 VI. THE POET AND THE PEASANT ..... 73 VII. THE ROBE OF PEACE ...... 83 VIII. THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT ...... 00 IX. THE CALL OF THE TAME 100 X. THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY 100 XI. THE THING'S THE PLAY 118 XII. A RAMBLE IN APHASIA ....... 130 XIII. A MUNICIPAL REPORT ...... 148 XIV. PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER . : . . .173 XV. A BIRD OF BAGDAD 183 XVI. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON .... 104 XVII. A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 209 XVIII. THE GIRL AND THE HABIT . . . k .231 XIX. PROOF OF THE PUDDING 240 XX. PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S 255 XXI. THE VENTURERS 276 XXII. THE DUEL 294 XXIII. "WHAT You WANT" . 302 STRICTLY BUSINESS STRICTLY BUSINESS I SUPPOSE you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a con- densed list of your ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something like this : Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irre- proachable actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on Broadway and their step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley. The ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first sale of the Ellen Terry mem- oirs. Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he was. All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne and eat lobsters until noon the next 4 Strictly Business day. After all, the moving pictures have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp. Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority and we go home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking glasses. Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It seems to have been divulged that in- stead of being motoring bacchanalians and diamond- hungry loreleis they are businesslike folk, students and ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen. Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and* buskiners be the true one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little story of two stroll- ers ; and for proof of its truth I can show you only the dark patch above the cast-iron handle of the stage-en- trance door of Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act. The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspira- Strictly Business 5 tion. Bob Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house than which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of good work. The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinee of- fering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the life- time of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thes- pian muscles- the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the palm of the other. One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got his d. h. coupon for an orches- tra seat. A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announce- ment spaces and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled and applauded; but Bob Hart, " All the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as 6 Strictly Business a boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball. But when H came on, " The Mustard " suddenly sat up straight. H was the happy alphabetical prognosti- cator of Winona Cherry, in Character Songs and Im- personations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry ; but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and ginghamy coun- try girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log school-house besides cipherin* and nouns, especially " When the Teach-er Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, she reappeared in, considerably less than a " trice " as a fluffy " Parisienne " so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin Rouge. And then But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else. He thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of " Helen Grimes " in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, in- side pockets, safe-deposit vaults, bandboxes, and coal Strictly "Business 7 cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call. They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds. But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called it " Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of " Helen Grimes." And here was " Helen " herself, with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his critical taste de- manded. After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and got Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty old house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card. By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain voile skirt, with her hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the great (un- written) New England drama not yet entitled any- thing. " I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his card carefully. " What did you wish to see me about ? " " I saw you work last night," said Hart. " I've writ- ten a sketch that I've been saving up. It's for two ; and I think you can do the other part. I thought I'd see you about it." " Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry. " I've been 8 Strictly Business wishing for something of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns." Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and read it to her. " Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry. And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had lacked. At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that " Mice Will Play " would blos- som into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puck- erings of her smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead pencil she gave out her dictum. " Mr. Hart," said she, " I believe your sketch is going to win out. That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And Pve seen you work. I know what you can do with the other part. Strictly Business 9 But business is business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now? " " Two hundred," answered Hart. " I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry. " That's about the natural discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all right. I love it; but there's something else I love better that's a little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard. " Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSI- NESS. If you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it. And I believe we can make it go. And there's something else I want to say : There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm on the level^ and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I'm going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts. No Old Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me. " If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the 10 Strictly Business It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to craven- ette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I Want you to know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've got money in five savings banks." " Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, " you're in on your own terms. I've got { strictly business ' pasted in my hat and stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stan- leys * Explorations into Africa.' And nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry ? " " Not any," said Cherry. " What I'm going to do with my money is to bank it. You can get four per cent, on deposits. Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more." " Well," said Hart, " you've got the proper idea all right, all right, anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn't fix them- Strictly Business 11 selves for the wet days to come if they'd save their money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way ; and I believe this sketch will more than dou- ble what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up." The subsequent history of " Mice Will Play " is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, sub- stituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol put the sketch through all the known processes of con- densation and improvement. They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boarding- house clock in the rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrill- ing climax of the sketch. Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and daring, is tem- pestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private sec- retary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, " Arapahoe " Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cat- tle king, owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, 12 Strictly Business is in either the Bad Lands or Amagansett, L. I. Des- mond (in private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his ad- dress as New York, leaving you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattle- man should want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em. Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not something along in between " Bluebeard, Jr.," and " Cymbeline " played in the Russian. There were only two parts and a half in " Mice Will Play." Hart and Cherry were the two, of course ; and the half was a minor part always played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and a panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders. There was another girl in the sketch a Fifth Avenue society swelless who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue before he lost his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the photographic state Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the Amagan of the Bad Lands dror- ing room. Helen was jealous, of course. Strictly Business 13 And now for the thriller. Old " Arapahoe " Grimes dies of angina pectoris one night so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper over the footlights while only his secretary was present. And that same day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts for the prices we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time. Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made his (alleged) croak. " Gawd knows I love him ; but if he has done this deed " you sabe, don't you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue Girl who doesn't come on the stage and can we blame her, with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actu- ally must be buttoned in the back by a call boy, maid'' cost so much? But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be, is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides like the variations on the chart of a typhoid- fever patient is enough to make any perfect lady mad. So, then ! They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry 14 Strictly Business in Amagansett once?), and the denouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends. Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it? The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn't left their seats; and no man could get past " Old Jimmy," the stage door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility. Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack Valentine : " Robber and thief and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this should be your fate!" With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-cal- iber. " But I will be merciful," goes on Helen. " You shall live that will be your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the death that you deserve. There is her picture on the mantel. I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced your craven heart." And she does it. And there's no fake blank car- tridges or assistants pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet the actual bullet goes through the face of the photograph and then strikes the hidden spring of the sliding panel in the wall and lo ! the panel slides, and there is the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold. It's great. You knv Strictly Business 15 how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shoot- ing. In the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter, covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot, and she had to shoot steady and true every time. Of course old " Arapahoe " had tucked the funds away there in the secret place ; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary (which really might have come under the head of " obtaining money under " ; but that is neither here nor there) ; and, of course, the New York girl was really engaged to a con- crete house contractor in the Bronx; and, necessarily, Jack and. Helen ended in a half -Nelson and there you are. After Hart and Cherry had gotten " Mice Will Play " flawless, they had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears. After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what it panned out. That night at 11.30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night at her boarding-house door. 16 Strictly Business " Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, " come inside just a few minutes. We've got our chance now to make good and to make money. What we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can." " Right," said Bob. " It's business with me. You've got your scheme for banking yours ; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention." " Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. " I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine ' and all on business principles." " Mice Will Play " had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten weeks rather neat for a vaude- ville sketch and then it started on the circuits. With- out following it, it may be said that it was a solid draw- ing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity. ^.^ Sam Packard, manager of one of Sector's New York houses, said of Hart & Cherry ? " As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit. It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute, straight home after their act, and each of 'em as gentlemanlike as a Strictly Business 17 lady. I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession." And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the story : At the end of its second season " Mice Will Play " came back to New York for another run at the roof gar- dens and summer theatres. There was never any trou- ble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank books that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment plan to hold them. I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding ambitions j ust the same as the man who wants to be president, or the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire. And I hope I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they often move in a mys- terious way their wonders to perform. But, listen. At the first performance of " Mice Will Play " in New- York at the new Westphalia (no hams alluded to) The- atre, Winona Cherry was nervous. When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantel, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and thea striking the disk, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck. Not expecting to get it there, Hart col- 18 Strictly Business lapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic manner. The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters re- spectively and more or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell. The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who was waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses. The doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily. " No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagno- sis. " If it had been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practi- tioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse me; I've got a serious case outside to look after." After that Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattle- boro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every Strictly Business 19 town he played. Vincente had moved on the same cir- cuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend. " Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, " I'm glad it's no worse. The little lady is wild about you." "Who? "asked Hart. " Cherry," said the juggler. " We didn't know how bad you were hurt ; and we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her." " It was an accident, of course," said Hart. " Cher- ry's all right. She wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it. There's no hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the job again in three days. Don't let her worry." " Man," "said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, h'ned face, " are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion? Cherry's crying her heart out for you calling * Bob, Bob,' every second, with them hold- ing her hands and keeping her from coming to you." " What's the matter with her? " asked Hart, with wide-open eyes. " The sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says. She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an acci- dent. What's the matter with her? " " You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vin- cente. " The girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with you? Is she noth- ing to you? I wish you could hear her call you." 20 Strictly Business " Loves me ? " asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he lay. " Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible." " I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs. " But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, " it's impossi- ble. It's impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing." " No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, " could mistake it. She's wild for love of you. How have you been so blind? " " But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, " it's too late. It's too late, I tell you, Sam ; it's too late. It can't be. You must be wrong. It's impossible. There's some mistake." " She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler. " For love of you she's fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise the curtain. Wake up, man." "For love of me? " said Bob Hart with staring eyes. " Don't I tell you it's too late ? It's too late, man. Why, Cherry and I have been married two years! " A STORY with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his bottle of testing acid. Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square pre- sided over by George the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that quarter, and this is their shibboleth: " * Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks." Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets where a Spanish- American colony has huddled for a little tropical warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is " El Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the vola- tile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries. 21 22 Strictly Business Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at long taw. In El Refugio they find the atmosphere in which they thrive. In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hie thee to El Refugio ! There only will you find a fish bluefish, shad or pompano from the Gulf ' baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes give it color, individuality and soul ; chili Colorado bestows upon it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and mystery, and but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity but never in it hovers an ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, " by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio ah, Dios ! The Gold That Glittered 23 One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General was between a claybank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate. Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to en- able him to inquire his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-brick house that read, " Hotel Espanol." In the window was a card in Span- ish, " Aqui se habla Espanol." The General entered, sure of a congenial port. In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had blond oh, unimpeachably blond hair. For the rest she was amiability, and ran largely to inches around. Gen. Falcon brushed the floor with his broad- brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllables sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of a bunch. " Spanish or Dago? " asked Mrs. O'Brien, pleasantly. " I am a Colombian, madam," said the General, proudly. " I speak the Spanish. The advisement in your window say the Spanish he is spoken here. How is that? " 24 Strictly Business " Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you ? " said the madam. " I'm sure I can't" At the Hotel Espanol General Falcon engaged rooms and established himself. At dusk he sauntered out upon the streets to view the wonders of this roaring city of the North. As he walked he thought of the wonderful golden hair of Mme. O'Brien. " It is here," said the General to himself, no doubt in his own language, " that one shall find the most beautiful senoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among our beauties one so fair. But no ! It is not for the General Falcon to think of beauty. It is my country that claims my devotion." At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto the General became involved. The street cars bewildered him, and the fender of one upset him against a pushcart laden with oranges. A cab driver missed him an inch with a hub, and poured barbarous execrations upon his head. He scrambled to the sidewalk and skipped again in terror when the whistle of a peanut-roaster puffed a hot scream into his ear. " Valgame Dios ! What dev- il's city is this ? " As the General fluttered out of the streamers of pass- ers like a wounded snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was " Bully " McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The The Gold TJwt GUttered 25 other Nimrod of the asphalt was " Spider " Kelley, a sportsman with more refined methods. In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade the quicker. His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. McGuire. " G'wan ! " he commanded harshly. u I saw it first." McGuire slunk away, awed by superior intelligence. " Pardon me," said Mr. Kelley, to the General, " but you got balled up in the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you." He picked up the General's hat and brushed the dust from it. The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed. The General, bewildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a caballero with a most disinterested heart. " I have a desire," said the General, " to return to the hotel of O'Brien, in which I am stop. Caramba ! senor, there is a loudness and rapidnesa of going and coming in the city of this Nueva York." Mr. Kelley's politeness would not suffer the distin- guished Colombian to brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied. At the door of the Hotel Kspariol they paused. A little lower down on the opposite side of the street shone the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio. Mr. Kelley, to whom few streets were un- familiar, knew the place exteriorly as a " Dago joint." All foreigners Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of 26 Strictly Business " Dagoes " and Frenchmen. He proposed to the Gen- eral that they repair thither and substantiate their ac- quaintance with a liquid foundation. An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a table in the conspirator's corner of El Refu- gio. Bottles and glasses were between them. For the tenth time the General confided the secret of his mission to the Estados Unidos. He was here, he declared, to purchase arms 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles for the Colombian revolutionists. He had drafts in his pocket drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York correspondent for $25,000. At other tables other rev- olutionists were shouting their political secrets to their fellow-plotters ; but none was as loud as the General. He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine; he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be hinted at to a living soul. Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to sympathetic enthusiasm. He grasped the General's hand across the table. " Monseer," he said, earnestly, " I don't know where this country of yours is, but I'm for it. I guess it must be a branch of the United States, though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia, too, some- times. It's a lucky thing for you that you butted into me to-night. I'm the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you. The Secretary of War of the United States is me best friend. He's in the city now, and I'll see him for you to-morrow. In The Gold That Glittered 27 the meantime, monseer, you keep them drafts tight in jour inside pocket. I'll call for you to-morrow, and take you to see him. Say! that ain't the District of Columbia you're talking about, is it? " concluded Mr. Kelley, with a sudden qualm. " You can't capture that with no 2,000 guns it's been tried with more." " No, no, no ! " exclaimed the General. " It is the Republic of Colombia it is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of the South. Yes. Yes." " All right," said Mr. Kelley, reassured. " Now suppose we trek along home and go by-by. I'll write to the Secretary to-night and make a date with him. It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New York. Mc- Clusky himself can't do it." They parted at the door of the Hotel Espanol. The General rolled his eyes at the moon and sighed. " It is a great country, your Nueva York," he said. " Truly the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley the senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness they are mag- nificas ! Muy magnificas ! " Kelley went to the nearest telephone booth and called up McCrary's cafe, far up on Broadway He asked for Jimmy Dunn. " Is that Jimmy Dunn ? " asked Kelley. " Yes," came the answer. " You're a liar," sang back Kelley, joyfully. 28 Strictly Business " You're the Secretary of War. Wait there till I comt up. I've got the finest thing down here in the way of a fish you ever baited for. It's a Colorado-maduro, with a gold band around it and free coupons enough to buy a red hall lamp and a statuette of Psyche rubbering in the brook. Fll be up on the next car." Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence line. He never saw a blud- geon in his life; and he scorned knockout drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended vic- tim but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in New York. It was the ambi- tion of " Spider " Kelley to elevate himself into Jimmy's class. These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's. Kelley explained. " He's as easy as a gum shoe. He's from the Island of Colombia, where there's a strike, or a feud, or some- thing going on, and they've sent him up here to buy S,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the thing with. He showed me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one for $5,000 on a bank here. 'S truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with him because he didn't have it in thousand-dollar bills, and hand it to me on a silver waiter. Now, we've got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us." They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn The Gold That Glittered 29 said : " Bring him to No. Broadway, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon." In due time Kelley called at the Hotel Espailol for the General. He found that wily warrior engaged in de- lectable conversation with Mrs. O'Brien. " The Secretary of War is waitin' for us," said Kel- ley. The General tore himself away with an effort. " Ay, senor," he said, with a sigh, " duty makes a call. But, senor, the senoras of your Estados Unidos how beauties! For exemplification, take you la Madame O'Brien que magnifica ! She is one goddess one Juno what you call one ox-eyed Juno." Now Mr. Kelley was a wit ; and better men have been shriveled by the fire of their own imagination. " Sure ! " he said with a grin ; " but you mean a perox- ide Juno, don't you ? " Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head* Her businesslike eye rested for an instant upon the dis- appearing form of Mr. Kelley. Except in street cars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady. When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, and then admitted into a well-equipped office where a distinguished looking man, with a smooth face, wrote at a desk. General Falcon was presented to the Secretary of War of the United States, and his mis- sior made known by his old friend, Mr. Kelley. 30 Strictly Business " Ah Colombia ! " said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to understand ; " I'm afraid there will be a little difficulty in that case. The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the estab- lished government, while I " the secretary gave the General a mysterious but encouraging smile. " You, of course, know, General Falcon, that since the Tammany war, an act of Congress has been passed requiring all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you I will be glad to do so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelley. But it must be in absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia. I will have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the warehouse." The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters A. D. T. on his cap stepped promptly into the room. " Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory," said the Secretary. The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied it closely. " I find," he said, " that in Warehouse 9, of Govern- ment stores, there is a shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule is that legal-tender money must be paid down at The Gold That Glittered 31 the time of purchase. My dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall have this lot of arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer's price. And you will forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview. I am expect- ing the Japanese Minister and Charles Murphy every moment ! " As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to his esteemed friend, Mr. Kelley. As another, the nimble Secretary of War was extremely busy during the next two days buying empty rifle cases and filling them with bricks, which were then stored in a warehouse rented for that purpose. As still another, when the Gen- eral returned to the Hotel Espanol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread from his lapel, and said: " Say, senor, I don't want to ' butt in,' but what does that monkey-faced, cat-eyed, rubber-necked tin horn tough want with you ? " " Sangre de mi vida ! " exclaimed the General. " Im- possible it is that you speak of my good friend, Senor Kelley." " Come into the summer garden," said Mrs. O'Brien. " I want to have a talk with you." Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed. " And you say," said the General, " that for the sum of $18,000 can be purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one year with this garden so lovely so resembling unto the patios of my care Colombia? " 32 Strictly Business " And dirt cheap at that," sighed the lady. " Ah, Dios ! w breathed General Falcon. " What to me is war and politics? This spot is one paradise. My country it har other brave heroes to continue the fighting. What to me should be glory and the shooting of mans ? Ah ! no. It is here I have found one angel. Let us buy the Hotel Espafiol and you shall be mine, and the money shall not be waste on guns." Mrs. O'Brien rested her blond pompadour against the shoulder of the Colombian patriot. " Oh, senor," she sighed, happily, " ain't you ter- rible!" Two days later was the time appointed for the de- livery of the arms to the General The boxes of sup- posed rifles were stacked in the rented warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them, waiting for his friend Kelley to fetch the victim. Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Es- pafiol. He found the General behind the desk adding up accounts. " I have decide," said the General, * to buy not guns. I have to-day buy the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General Perrico Ximenes Villa- blanca Falcon with la Madame O'Brien." Mr. Kelly almost strangled. " Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're a swindler that's what you are! The Gold That Glittered 33 You've bought a boarding house with money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is." " Ah," said the General, footing up a column, " that is what you call politics. War and revolution they are not nice. Yes. It is not best that one shall always fol- low Minerva. No. It is of quite desirable to keep hotels and be with that Juno that ox-eyed Juno. Ah ! what hair of the gold it is that she have ! " Mr. Kelley choked again. " Ah, Senor Kelley ! " said the General, feelingly and finally, " is it that you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she make? " Ill BABES IN THE JUNGLE MONTAGUE SILVER, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: " If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute ; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe you can't count 'em!" Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remem- ber the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice. I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half -moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief. " Paresis or superannuated ? " I asks him. " Hello, Billy," says Silver ; " I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I've been saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things 34 Babes in the Jungle 35 from these people. They only know this and that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd hate for my mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She raised me better." " Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that does skin grafting? " I asks. " Well, no," says Silver ; " you needn't back Epi- dermis to win to-day. I've only been here a month. But I'm ready to begin ; and the members of Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle toward this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the Evening Dally. " I've been studying the town," says Silver, " and reading the papers every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows an O'Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from them. Come up in my room and I'll tell you. We'll work the town together, Billy, for the sake of old times." Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant objects lying about. " There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds," says Silver, " than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, S. C. They'll bite at any- thing. The brains of most of 'em commute. The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didn't a man the other 36 Strictly Business day sell J. P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto's celebrated painting of the young Saint John! " You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That's gold mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in two hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People fought to buy it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to the station-house, and then I took it off the market. I don't want people to give me their money. I want some little consideration connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt. I want 'em to guess the missing letter in Chic go, or draw to a pair of nines before they pay me a cent of money. " Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to quit it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told 'em I was Admiral Dewey's nephew. They offered to cash my draft on him for a thousand, but I didn't know my uncle's first name. It shows, though, what an easy town it is. As for burglars, they won't go in a house now unless there's a hot supper ready and a few college students to wait on 'em. They're slugging citizens all over the upper part of the city and I guess, taking the town from end to end, it's a plain case of assault and Battery." " Monty," says I, when Silver had slacked up, " you Babes in the Jungle 37 may have Manhattan correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt it. I've only been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me that it's ours with a cherry in it. There ain't enough rus in urbe about it to suit me. I'd be a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in their hair, an(l run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don't look easy to me." "You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emi- grants have it. New York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicide sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties." " I hope you are right, Monty," says I ; " but I wish all the same I had been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of fanners is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 'em to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount for $200 at the county bank. The people here appear to 38 Strictly Business possess instincts of self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are not cultured enough to tackle this game." " Don't worry," says Silver. " I've got this Jay- ville-near-Tarrytown correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East River ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broad- way who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives ! A good, live hustling West- ern man ought to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Law- son's displeasure." " Hyperbole aside," says I, " do you know of any im- mediate system of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen Gould's doorsteps ? " " Dozens of 'em," says Silver. " How much capital have you got, Billy? " " A thousand," I told him. " I've got $1,200," says he. " We'll pool and do a big piece of business. There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't know how to begin." The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy. " We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he. " A man I know in the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He says he likes to meet people from the West" Babes in the Jungle 39 " That sounds nice and plausible,'* says I. " I'd like to know Mr. Morgan." " It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, " to get ac- quainted with a few finance kings. I kind of like the social way New York has with strangers." The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. " Mr. Morgan " looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane. "Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein. "It sounds superfluous," says he, " to mention the name of the greatest financial " " Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan. " I'm glad to know you gents ; I take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from Little Rock. I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere. If either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I" " Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, " you forget ! " " Excuse me, gents ! " says Morgan ; " since I've had the gout so bad I sometimes play a social game pf cards at my house. Neither of you never knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around Little Rock? He lived in Seattle, New Mexico." Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with his cane and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone of voice. 40 Strictly Business " They have been pounding your stocks to-day on the Street, Pierpont? " asks Klein smiling. "Stocks! No!" roars Mr. Morgan. "It's that picture I sent an agent to Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me to-day that it ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for that picture yes, $75,000. I give the agent a la carte in purchasing it. I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De Vinchy to " " Why, Mr. Morgan," says Klein ; " I thought you owned all of the de Vinchy paintings." "What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?" asks Silver. " It must be as big as the side of the Flatiron, Building." " I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says Morgan. " The picture is 27 inches by 42 ; and it is called ' Love's Idle Hour.' It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a purple river. The cablegram said it might have been brought to this country. My collection will never be complete without that picture. Well, so long, gents ; us financiers must keep early hours." Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a caH. Me and Silver talked about how simple and unsuspect- ing great people was; and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like Mr. Morgan ; and I said I thought it would be rather imprudent, myself. Klein proposes a stroll after dinner; and me and him Babes in the Jungle 41 and Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights. Klein sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his admiration in a pawnshop window, and we all go in while he buys 'em. After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at me and waves his hands. "Did you see it?" says he. "Did you see it, Billy?" " What? " I asks. " Why, that picture that Morgan wants. It's hang- ing in that pawnshop, behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein was there. It's the article sure as you live. The girls are as natural as paint can make them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck-and-wing on the bank of a river with the blues. What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give for it? Oh, don't make me tell you. They can't know what it is in that pawnshop." When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit to buy a drink. We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-chains. " That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there," remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. " But I kind of enthuse over the girl with the shoulder- blades and red bunting. Would an offer of $2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in hurrying it off the nail? " 42 Strictly Business The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-chains. " That picture," says he, " was pledged a year ago by an Italian gentleman. I loaned him $500 on it. It is called ' Love's Idle Hour,' and it is by Leonardo de Vinchy. Two days ago the legal time expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge. Here is a style of chain that is worn a great deal now." At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker $2,000 and walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with it and started for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for him. In two hours Silver comes back. " Did you see Mr. Morgan? " I asks. " How much did he pay you for it? " Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover. " I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, " be- cause Mr. Morgan's been in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is this: The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for $3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone that's what I can't understand." IV THE DAY RESURGENT 1 CAN see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture ; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number. First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number of toes will fill the bill. -Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known model, will pose for it in the " Lethergogallagher," or whatever it was that Trilby called it. Second the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. This is magazine-covery, but reliable. Third Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade. Fourth Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout. Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the higher criticism has hard-boiled them. The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves 43 44 Strictly Business that Easter, of all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception. It belongs to all re- ligions, although the pagans invented it. Going back still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree ficus carica. Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a holiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you follow in the footsteps of Danny McCree. Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place on the calendar between Saturday and Mon- day. At 5.24 the sun rose, and at 10.30 Danny fol- lowed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed his face at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard, smooth, knowing coun- tenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap, and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder between second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in Harlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front room of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe, with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still clung to his pipe, al- though his sight had been taken from him two years before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off without permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason that they cannot see the smoke. The Day Resurgent 45 Now, could you enjoy having the news read to you from an evening newspaper unless you could see the colors of the headlines? " 'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree. " Scramble mine," said Danny. After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume of the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur frock coat, striped trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest, and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow from Schonstein's (between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit stand) Saturday night sale. " You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man McCree, a little wistfully. " 'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well, it's fine spring weather. I can feel it in the air." " Why should I not be going out? " demanded Danny in his grumpiest chest tones. " Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest my team has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfast you've just eat, I'd like to know? Answer me that!" " All right, lad," said the old man. " I'm not com- plainin'. While me two eyes was good there was noth- in' better to my mind than a Sunday out. There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the windy. I have me tobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad. Times I wish your mother had lamed to read, so I 46 Strictly Business might hear the rest about the hippopotamus but let that be." " Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopota- muses ? " asked Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. " Have you been taking him to the Zoo? And for what?" " I have not," said Mrs. McCree. " He sets by the windy all day. 'Tis little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm thinkin' they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease without stoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there's lard burnin' in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. 'Tis weary days, Sun- days, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fine day, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst the morning. There will be cold supper at six." " Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus ? " asked Danny of Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs. " I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. " But 'tis the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages that I've not been complained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No, then?" " It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. " Likely there's nothing in it." The Day Resurgent 47 Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward into the heart of the district where Easter modern Easter, in new, bright raiment > leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving parterres of living flowers so it seemed when your eye looked upon the Easter girl. Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The windows of the brown- stone mansions were packed with the most opulent crea- tions of Flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies. Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him. " Why, Corrigan," he asked, " is Easter? I know it comes the first time you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March but why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of politics ? " " 'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of the Third Deputy Police Commis- sioner, " peculiar to New York. It extends up to Har- lem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hun- dred and Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political." " Thanks," said Danny. " And say did you ever 48 Strictly "Business hear a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean." " Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, " and there was wood alcohol in that." Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his. The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly. The family entrance of Dugan's cafe was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysteri- ous meaning of the springtime jubilee. " Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, " why do they have Easter? " " Skiddoo ! " said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new one? All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it up. What's the an- swer two apples or a yard and a half? " From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The The Day Resurgent 49 April sun seemed to stir in him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrong diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon. A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church. They pumped hands on the corner. " Gee ! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. " What's wrong? Come away with me to church and be cheerful." " What's doing at church ? " asked Danny. "Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin' you might come around to go." " What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily. " Nobody seems to know." " Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. " You haven't even looked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on new spring clothes. Silly ! Are you coming to church with me ? " " I will," said Danny. " If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought to be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. The green roses are great." At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spoke rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner; but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled his theme resurrection. Not a new creation ; but a new life arising out of the old. The congregation had heard it often before. But there was a wonderful hat, 50 Strictly Business a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth pew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention. After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with pique in her sky-blue eyes. " Are you coming along to the house ? " she asked. " But don't mind me. I'll get there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about something. All right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree? " " I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning and crossing the street. Katy walked away with the green roses dangling in- dignantly. Danny stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets, at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recog- nize it. It was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of woman for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth. Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight. '* Hippopotamus ! " he shouted to an elevated road The Day Resurgent 51 pillar. " Well, how is that for a bum guess ? Why, blast mj skylights ! I know what he was driving at now. " Hippopotamus ! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx ! It's been a year since he heard it ; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469 B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed what he was trying to get out of him." Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor supported. Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on the sill. " Will that be you, lad? " he asked. Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the outset of committing a good deed. " Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house ? " he snapped, viciously. " Have I no right to come in ? " " Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. " Is it evening yet? " Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt letters, " The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick. He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper. And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said: " Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?" 52 Strictly Business " Did I hear ye open the book? " said old man Mc- Cree. " Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno ; but I took a great likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe." " Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus," said Danny. " The war be- gan there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronam. I'll read it." With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening. Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man McCree's eyes. " Do ye hear our lad readin' to me ? " he said. " There is none finer in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again." After supper he said to Danny : " 'Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough." " Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" said Danny, angrily. "Have I no The Day Resurgent 53 right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house? " THE FIFTH WHEEL THE ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold, cold. They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freez- ing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and mut- tered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged walking delegate of the Lord. Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a man. You deeded him to Morpheus ; and the recording angel gave you credit. The Preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for himself the task 54 The Fifth Wheel 55 of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce. The hour of eight was but a little while past; sight- seers in a small, dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with con- scientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the Preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieu- tenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad of the re- deemed. All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid of eloquence splen- did with the deadly, accusive monotony of truth. Be- fore the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must hear one phrase of the Preacher's the one that formed his theme that night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the world. " No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky." Think of it, tippler. It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the Potter's Field. A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless emulated the terrapin, drawing his head 56 Strictly Business far down into the shell of his coat collar. It was a well-cut tweed coat ; and the trousers still showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But, conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further. The young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-night bed seekers. If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500- pound, 100 to 1-shot bays. The carriage is shaped like a bath-tub. In each end of it reclines an old lady Van Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather tickler. Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid. But it is one of the saddest things about ro- mance that a tight shoe or an empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dan- cing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed The Fifth Wheel 57 m \ Lane army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often quarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desper- ate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse. The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, shabby but neat. " What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy ? " asked Thomas, with the freemasonic familiarity of the damned "Booze? That's mine. You don't look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rum- mage sale ? " The other young man seemed to welcome the ad- vances of the airy ex-coachman, " No," said he, " nrine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving; relatives. Fve been out of work for a year because I don't know how to work ; and I've been sick in BeHevue and other hospitals four months. My wife and kid had to go back to hep mother. I was turned out of the hospital yesterday. And I haven't a cent. That* a my tale of woe." " Tough luck," said Thomas. ** A roan alone eao 58 Strictly Business pull through all right. But I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it." Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that it drew the at- tention even of the listless Bed Liners. Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire. When opposite the unfortunate company the fasten- ings of this tire became loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake of the flying car. Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place among the Preacher's goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire, swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On both sides of the avenue people were shouting, whistling, and waving canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas coming up with the lost tire. One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that so grand an automobilist could offer for the service he had rendered, and save his pride. Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little, brown, muffled chauffeur driving, and an im- posing gentleman wearing a magnificent sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat. Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex- coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his red- dened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the ex- The Fifth Wheel 59 tent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to higher denominations. But the look was not so construed. The sealskinned gentleman received the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-coachman, and muttered to himself inscrutable words. " Strange strange ! " said he. " Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied that the Chaldean Chiro- scope has availed. Could it be possible? " Then he addressed less mysterious words to the wait- ing and hopeful Thomas. " Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire. And I would ask you, if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smuythes living in Washington Square North? " " Oughtn't I to? " replied Thomas. " I lived there. Wish I did yet." The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car. " Step in, please," he said. " You have been ex- pected." Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed Line. But after the lap- robe had been tucked about him and the auto had sped on its course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind. " Maybe the guy hasn't got any change," was his 60 Strictly Business diagnosis. " Lots of these swell rounders don't lug about any ready money. Guess he'll dump me out when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow, it's a cinch that I've got that open- air bed convention beat to a finish." Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious atitomo- bilist seemed, himself, to marvel at the surprises of life. " Wonderful ! amazing ! strange ! " he repeated to him- self constantly. When the car had well entered the crosstown Seven- ties it swung eastward a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brownstone-front houses. " Be kind enough to enter my house with me," said the sealskinned gentleman when they had alighted. " He's going to dig up, sure," reflected Thomas, fol- lowing him inside. There was a dim light in the hall. His host con- ducted him through a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy stories. The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings em- broidered with fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped portieres of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars. The furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman r s feet The Fifth Wheel 61 sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or four oddly shaped stands or tables covered Tfith black velvet drapery. Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor to find that he had disappeared. " B'gee ! " muttered Thomas, " this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn't wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian Nights' adventures that you read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy." Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant electric glow. With a- fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and im- possible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portieres parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throne- 62 Strictly Business room advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his d t's to be mindful of his p's and 5'*. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists. " Say, doc," said he resentfully, " that's a hot bird you keep on tap. I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the williwalloos, and when he threw them 32-candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the sideboard." " That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentle- man with a wave of his hand. " May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North." " Any silver missing? " asked Thomas tartly. " Any joolry displaced? Of course I know 'em. Any of the old ladies' sunshades disappeared? Well, I know 'em. And then what?" The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly. " Wonderful ! " he murmured. " Wonderful ! Shall I come to believe in the Chaldean Chiroscope myself? The Fifth Wheel 63 Let me assure you," he continued, " that there is noth- ing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you that very good fortune awaits you. We will see." "Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his old professional pride in his voice. "I'll promise to cut out the booze and do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise, doc ? B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its flashlight owls and so forth." With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two minutes. He went out to the side- walk and gave an order to the chauffeur, who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment, he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and genial converse that the poor Bed Liner almost forgot the cold streets from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued. A servant brought some tender cold fowl and tea bis- cuits and a glass of miraculous wine; and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at the door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another soft petition for a brief absence. Two women, well muffled against the cold, were ad- mitted at the front door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was screened 64 Strictly Business nd segregated from the larger front room by heavy, double portieres. Here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely tasteful than in the other. On a gold-inlaid rosewood table were scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, triangular instrument or toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels. The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump, took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an attendant might have done. " You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco," said the elder woman, wearily. " I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I've about lost the lit- tle faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it." " Madam," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, " the true Art cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the crystal, the stars, the magic formulae of Zarazin, nor the Oracle of Po. But we have at last discovered the true psychic route. The Chaldean Chiroscope has been successful in our search." The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to pro- claim his belief in his own words. The elderly ladjr looked at him with a little more interest. The Fifth Wheel 65 " Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with ray hands on it," she said. " What do you mean ? " " The words were these," said Professor Cherubusco, rising to his full magnificent height : ' * By the -fifth lvheel of the chariot he shall come.' ' " I haven't seen many chariots," said the lady, " but I never saw one with five wheels." " Progress," said the professor " progress in science and mechanics has accomplished it though, to be exact, we may speak of it only as an extra tire. Prog- ress in occult art has advanced in proportion. Madam, I repeat that the Chaldean Chiroscope has succeeded. I can not only answer the question that you have pro- pounded, but I can produce before your eyes the proof thereof." And now the lady was disturbed both in her disbelief and in her poise. " O professor ! " she cried anxiously " When ? where? Has he been found? Do not keep me in sus- pense." " I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes," said Professor Cherubusco, *' and I think I can demon- strate to you the efficacy of the true Art." Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread and fowl when the enchanter appeared sud- denly at his side. "Are you willing to return to your old home if you 66 Strictly Business are assured of a welcome and restoration to favor? " he asked, with his courteous, royal smile. " Do I look bughouse ? " answered Thomas. " Enough of the footback life for me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as a nut on a new axle." " My dear young man," said the other, " she has been searching for you everywhere." "Great!" said Thomas. "I'm on the job. That team of dropsical dromedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman like myself ; but I'll take the job back, sure, doc. They're good people to be with." And now a change came o'er the suave countenance of the Caliph of Bagdad. He looked keenly and suspi- ciously at the ex-coachman. " May I ask what your name is ? " he said shortly. " You've been looking for me," said Thomas, " and don't know my name? You're a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the Central Office gumshoers. I'm Thomas McQuade, of course; and I've been chauffeur of the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago for well, doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on booze, and when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon I was standing in that squad of hoboes ab the Worth monument wait- ing for a free bed. Now, what's the prize for the best answer to all this ? " The Fifth Wheel 67 To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy, disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian's shoe. As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway. " Crazy guy," was his estimate of the mysterious auto- mobilist. " Just wanted to have some fun kiddin', I guess. He might have dug up a dollar, anyhow. Now I've got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bum bed hunters before they all get preached to sleep." When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the ranks of the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In the file in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and something of a wife and child. " Sorry to see you back again," said the young man, turning to speak to him. *' I hoped you had struck something better than this." "Me?" said Thomas. "Oh, I just took a run around the block to keep warm! I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast to-night." " In this kind of weather," said the young man, " charity avails itself of the proverb, and both begins and ends at home." 68 Strictly Business And now the Preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last hymn of petition to Providence and man. Those of the Bed Liners whose windpipes still registered above 32 degrees hopelessly and tunelessly joined in. In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming straight toward him from the opposite side- walk. " Annie ! " he yelled, and ran toward her. " You fool, you fool ! " she cried, weeping and laugh- ing, and hanging upon his neck, " why did you do it ? " "The Stuff," explained Thomas briefly. "You know. But subsequently nit. Not a drop." He led her to the curb. " How did you happen to see me ? " " I came to find you," said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve. " Oh, you big fool ! Professor Cherubusco told us that we might find you here." " Professor Ch Don't know the guy. What sa- loon does he work in ? " " He's a clearvoyant, Thomas ; the greatest in the world. He found you with the Chaldean telescope, he said." ** He's a liar," said Thomas. " I never had it. He never saw me have anybody's telescope." " And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or something." " Annie," said Thomas solicitously, " you're giving me the wheels now. If I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed The Fifth Wheel 69 in it long ago. And without any singing and preaching for a nightcap, either." " Listen, you big fool. The Missis says she'll take you back. I begged her to. But you must behave. And you can go up to the house to-night ; and your old room over the stable is ready.'* " Great ! " said Thomas earnestly. " You are It, An- nie. But when did these stunts happen ? " " To-night at Professor Cherubusco's. He sent his automobile for the Missis, and she took me along. I've been there with her before." " What's the professor's line ? " " He's a clearvoyant and a witch. The Missis con- sults him. He knows everything. But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, though she's paid him hun- dreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we could find you here." " What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do ? " " That's a family secret," said Annie. " And now you've asked enough questions. Come on home, you big fool." They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped. " Got any dough with you, Annie ? " he asked. Annie looked at him sharply. " Oh, I know what that look means," said Thomas. " You're wrong. Not another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me in the bed line over there 70 Strictly Business that's in a bad shape. He's the right kind, and he's got wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list. No booze. If you could dig up half a dollar for him so he could get a decent bed I'd like it." Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse. " Sure, I've got money," said she. " Lots of it. Twelve dollars." And then she added, with woman's ineradicable suspicion of vicarious benevolence: " Bring him here and let me see him first." Thomas went on his mission. The wan Bed Liner came readily enough. As the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse and screamed : " Mr. Walter Oh Mr. Walter ! " " Is that you, Annie? " said the young man weakly. " Oh, Mr. Walter ! and the Missis hunting high and low for you ! " " Does mother want to see me? " he asked, with a flush coming out on his pale cheek. " She's been hunting for you high and low. Sure, she wants to see you. She wants you to come home. She's tried police and morgues and lawyers and advertising and detectives and rewards and everything. And then she took up clearvoyants. You'll go right home, won't you, Mr. Walter? " " Gladly, if she wants me," said the young man. " Three years is a long time. I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the street cars are giving free rides. I used to walk and beat that old plug team of The Fifth Wheel 71 bays we used to drive to the carriage. Have they got them yet? " " They have," said Thomas, feelingly. " And they'll have 'em ten years from now. The life of the royal elephantibus truckhorseibus is one hundred and forty- nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my reappoint- ment five minutes ago. Let's all ride up in a surface car that is er if Annie will pay the fares." On the Broadway car Annie handed each one of the prodigals a nickel to pay the conductor. " Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large sums of money around," said Thomas sar- castically. " In that purse," said Annie decidedly, " is exactly $11.85. I -shall take every cent of it to-morrow and give it to Professor Cherubusco, the greatest man in the world." " Well," said Thomas, " I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe off things the way he does. I'm glad his spooks told him where you could find me. If you'll give me his address, some day I'll go up there, myself, and shake his hand." Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an abrasion or two on his knees and elbows. " Say, Annie," said he confidentially, " maybe it's one of the last dreams of the booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with a swell guy 72 Strictly Business that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the d t's, why am I so sore ? " " Shut up, you fool," said Annie. " If I could find that funny guy's house," said Thomas, in conclusion, " Fd go up there some day and punch his nose for him," VI THE POET AND THE PEASANT 1 HE other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams. When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment : " Too artificial." Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess Countj chianti, and swallowed indignation with the slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of dis- gust from the windows of express trains. Conant wrote a poem and called it " The Doe and the Brook." It was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with Amaryl* 74 Strictly Business lis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor. But this has very little to do with the story. Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped slowly up Forty-sec- ond Street. The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip and hair the exact color of the little or- phan's (afterward discovered to be the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were cor- duroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear holes, its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged from a former equine possessor. In his hand was a valise description of it is an im- possible task; a Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to shame the gold-brick men. Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger stand in the gutter and stretch The Poet and the Peasant 75 his neck at the tall buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney " attraction " or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street cars. At Eighth Avenue stood " Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the coun- tryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his head. " Too thick, pal," he said, critically " too thick by a couple of inches. I don't know what your lay is ; but you've got the properties on too thick. That hay, now why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any more." " I don't understand you, mister," said the green one. " I'm not lookin' for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to look at the town, bein* that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins ; but this here town is five times as big." " Oh, well," said " Bunco Harry," raising his eye- brows, " I didn't mean to butt in. You don't have to 76 Strictly Business tell. I thought you ought to tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow." " I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," ac- knowledged the other. They went to a cafe frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks. " I'm glad I come across you, mister," said Haylocks. " How'd you like to play a game or two of seven-up ? I've got the keerds." He fished them out of Noah's valise a rare, inimita- ble deck, greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields. " Bunco Harry " laughed loud and briefly. " Not for me, sport," he said, firmly. " I don't go against that make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs haven't dressed like that since T9. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that layout." " Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks. He drew forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup, and laid it on the table. " Got that for my share of grandmother's farm," he announced. " There's $950 in that roll. Thought I'd come to the city and look around for a likely business to go into." " Bunco Harry " took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost respect in his smiling eyes. 77 " I've seen worse," he said, critically. " But you'll never do it in them clothes. You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about Pittsburg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work off phony stuff like that." " What's his line ? " asked two or three shifty-eyed men of " Bunco Harry " after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed. " The queer, I guess," said Harry. " Or else he's one of Jerome's men. Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his I wonder now oh, no, it couldn't have been real money." Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer. Several sinister fellows hung upon one end of the bar. At first sight of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated rus- ticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary suspicion. Haylocks swung his valise across the bar. " Keep that a while for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a virulent claybank cigar. " I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you wouldn't think so to look at me.' J Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band 78 Strictly Business piece, and Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back. " Diwy, Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar 4 winking openly at one another. " Honest, now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. " You don't think I'd fall to that, do you ? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight cent Waterbury that's stopped fit ten minutes to ten." When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of the " gags " that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra rustic, so exag- gerated beyond the most freakish products of the barn- yard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he ex- cited only weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural that even a shell- game man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the sight of it. Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps The Poet and the Peasant 79 and once more exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy. " Son," said he, " run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm mighty nigh out of chicken feed. I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll hurry up." A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's .face. " Aw, watchert'ink ! G'wan and get yer funny biU changed yerself. Dey ain't no farm clothes yer got on* G'wan wit yer stage money." On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gam- bling-house. He saw Haylocks, and his expression sud- denly grew cold and virtuous. " Mister," said the rural one. " I've heard of places in this here town where a fellow could have a good game or old sledge or peg a card at keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on about $9 or $10? I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a business of some kind." The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left forefinger nail. " Cheese it, old man," he murmured, reproachfully. " The Central Office must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has 80 Strictly Business got you beat a crosstown block in the way of Eliza- bethan scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no gilded halls where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace." Rebuffed again by the great city that is so swift to detect artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his thoughts to hold a conference. " It's my clothes," said he ; " durned if it ain't. They think I'm a hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in New York you must dress up like they do." So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their noses and rubbed their hands and *aan. the tape line ecstatically over the bulge in his inside pocket where reposed a red nubbin of corn with an even number of rows. And messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway within the lights of Long Acre. At 9 o'clock in the evening one descended to the side- walk whom Ulster County would have foresworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the latest block. His light gray trousers were deeply creased ; a gay blue silk hand- kerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant English walking coat. His collar might have graced a laundry window ; his blond hair was trimmed close ; the wisp of hay was gone. For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely The Poet and the Peasant 81 air of a boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening pleasures. And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the easy and graceful tread of a millionaire. But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with gray eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row of loungers in front of the hotel. " The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray eyes. " Come along." It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs. " Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, " all my share of grandmother's farm." The desk sergeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust Valley farm, Ulster County, and then began to take descriptions of the strong-arm gentle- men. When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown. "When I read the first line of * The Doe and the Brook," said the editor, " I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to heart with Nature. The finished art of the line did not blind me to that fact. To 82 Strictly Business use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free child of the woods and fields were to don the garb of fashion and walk down Broadway. Beneath the ap- parel the man would show." " Thanks," said Conant. " I suppose the check will be round on Thursday, as usual." The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your choice of " Stay on the Farm " or " Don't Write Poetry." THE ROBE OF PEACE JVlYSTERIES follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select few who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it full credence. Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the intrinsically inner circle of the elite. Without any of the ostentation of the fashionable ones who endeavor to attract notice by eccentric display of wealth and show he still was au fait in everything that gave deserved lustre to his high position in the ranks of society. Especially did he shine in the matter of dress. In this he was the despair of imitators. Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and possessed of an unlimited ward- robe, he was conceded to be the best-dressed man in New York, and, therefore, in America. There was not a tailor in Gotham who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the privilege of mak- 83 84 Strictly Business ing Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he wore them, they would have been a priceless advertise- ment. Trousers were his especial passion. Here noth- ing but perfection would he notice. He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he would wear these garments without exchanging. Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly. For three days his absence brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to operate the usual methods of inquiry. All of them failed. He had left absolutely no trace be- hind. Then the search for a motive was instituted, but none was found. He had no enemies, he had no debts, there was no woman. There were several thousand dol- lars in his bank to his credit. He had never showed any tendency toward mental eccentricity ; in fact, he was of a particularly calm and well-balanced temperament. Every means of tracing the vanished man was made use of, but without avail. It was one of those cases more numerous in late years where men sem to have gone out like the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail of smoke as a witness. In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers' old friends, went for a little run on the other side. While pottering around in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day, to hear of a most- The Robe of Peace 85 astery in the Swiss Alps that promised something out- side of the ordinary tourist-beguiling attractions. The monastery was almost inaccessible to the average sight- seer, being on an extremely rugged and precipitous spur of the mountains. The attractions it possessed but did not advertise were, first, an exclusive and divine cordial made by the monks that was said to far surpass benedictine and chartreuse. Next a huge brass bell so purely and accurately cast that it had not ceased sound- ing since it was first rung three hundred years ago. Finally, it was asserted that no Englishman had ever set foot within its walls. Eyres and Gilliam decided that these three reports called for investigation. It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the monastery of St. Gondrau. It stood upon a frozen, wind-swept crag with the snow piled about it in treacherous, drifting masses. They were hospitably received by the brothers whose duty it was to entertain the infrequent guest. They drank of the precious cor- dial, finding it rarely potent and reviving. They lis- tened to the great, ever-echoing bell, and learned that they were pioneer travelers, in those gray stone walls, over the Englishman whose restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of the earth. At three o'clock on the afternoon they arrived, the two young Gothamites stood with good Brother Cristofer in the great, cold hallway of the monastery to watch the monks march past on their way to the refectory. They 86 Strictly Business came slowly, pacing by twos, with their heads bowed, treading noiselessly with sandaled feet upon the rough stone flags. As the procession slowly filed past, Eyres suddenly gripped Gilliam by the arm. " Look," he whispered, eagerly, "at the one just opposite you now the one on this side, with his hand at his waist if that isn't Johnny Bellchambers then I never saw him ! " Gilliam saw and recognized the lost glass of fashion. " What the deuce," said he, wonderingly, " is old Bell doing here? Tommy, it surely can't be he! Never heard of Bell having a turn for the religious. Fact is, I've heard him say things when a four-in-hand didn't seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for court-martial before any church." " It's Bell, without a doubt," said Eyres, firmly, " or I'm pretty badly in need of an oculist. But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the Royal High Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink teas, up here in cold storage doing penance in a snuff-colored bathrobe ! I can't get it straight in my mind. Let's ask the jolly old boy that's doing the honors." Brother Cristofer was appealed to for information. By that time the monks had passed into the refectory. He could not tell to which one they referred. Bellcham- bers ? Ah, the brothers of St. Gondrau abandoned their worldly names when they took the vows. Did the gen- tlemen wish to speak with one of the brothers ? If they would come to the refectory and indicate the one they The Robe of Peace 87 wished to see, the reverend abbot in authority would, doubtless, permit it. Eyres and Gilliam went into the dining hall and pointed out to Brother Cristof er the man they had seen. Yes, it was Johnny Bellchambers. They saw his face plainly now, as he sat among the dingy brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse, brown bowl. Permission to speak to one of the brothers was granted to the two travelers by the abbot, and they waited in a reception room for him to come. When he did come, treading softly in his sandals, both Eyres and Gilliam looked at him in perplexity and astonishment. It was Johnny Bellchambers, but he had a different look. Upon his smooth-shaven face was an expression of in- effable peace, of rapturous attainment, of perfect and complete happiness. His form was proudly erect, his eyes shone with a serene and gracious light. He was as neat and well-groomed as in the old New York days, but how differently was he clad ! Now he seemed clothed in but a single garment a long robe of rough brown cloth, gathered by a cord at the waist, and falling in straight, loose folds nearly to his feet. He shook, hands with his visitors with his old ease and grace of manner. If there was any embarrassment in that meeting it was not manifested by Johnny Bellchambers. The room had no seats ; they stood to converse. " Glad to see you, old man," said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly. " Wasn't expecting to find you up here. 88 Strictly Business Not a bad idea, though, after alL Society's an awful sham. Must be a relief to shake the giddy whirl and retire to er contemplation and er prayer and hymns, and those things." " Oh, cut that, Tommy," said Bellchambers, cheer- fully. " Don't be afraid that I'll pass around the plate. I go through these thing-um-bobs with the rest of these old boys because they are the rules. I'm Brother Am- brose here, you know. I'm given just ten minutes to talk to you fellows. That's rather a new design in waistcoats you have on, isn't it, Gilliam? Are they wearing those things on Broadway now? " "It's the same old Johnny," said Gilliam, joyfully. "What the devil I mean why Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man ? " " Peel the bathrobe," pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, " and go back with us. The old crowd'll go wild to sec you. This isn't in your line, Bell. I know half a dozen girls that wore the willow on the quiet when you shook us in that unaccountable way. Hand in your res- ignation, or get a dispensation, or whatever you have to do to get a release from this ice factory. You'll get catarrh here, Johnny and My God ! you haven't any socks on ! M Bellchambers looked down at his sandaled feet and smiled. " You fellows don't understand," he said, soothingly. " It's nice of you to want me to go back, but the old life The Robe of Peace 89 will never know me again. I have reached here the goal of all my ambitions. I am entirely happy and con- tented. Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days. You see this robe that I wear? " Bellchambers caressingly touched the straight-hanging garment : " At last I have found something that will not bag at the knees. I have attained " At that moment the deep boom of the great brass bell reverberated through the monastery. It must have been a summons to immediate devotions, for Brother Am- brose bowed his head, turned and left the chamber with- out another word. A slight wave of hia hand as he passed through the stone doorway seemed to say a fare- well to his old friends. They left the monastery with- out seeing -him again. And this is the story that Tommy Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam brought back with them from their latest Euro- pean tour. 1HE other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue is a conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters is the Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from speculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling wooden toys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from nutmegs ground to a pulp. Now and then when Pogue has made a good haul he comes to New York for a rest. He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and Thou in the wilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure to him as sliding down the bumps at Coney would be to President Taft. "Give me," says Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Espe- cially New York. I'm not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don't find any." While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two places. One is a little second-hand book- shop on Fourth Avenue, where he reads books about his hobbies, Mahometanism and taxidermy. I found him at the other his hall bedroom in Eighteenth Street 90 The Girl and the Graft 91 where he sat in his stocking feet trying to pluck " The Banks of the Wabash " out of a small zither. Four years he has practised this tune without arriving near enough to cast the longest trout line to the water's edge. On the dresser lay a blued-steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens and twenties large enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-story class. A cham- bermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in the hall, unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stock- ing feet, aghast at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her met- ropolitan instincts, to remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll. I sat on his trunk while Ferguson Pogue talked. No one could be franker or more candid in his conversation. Beside his. expression the cry of Henry James for lacteal nourishment at the age of one month would have seemed like a Chaldean cryptogram. He told me stories of his profession with pride, for he considered it an art. And I was curious enough to ask him whether he had known any women who followed it. " Ladies ? " said Pogue, with Western chivalry. " Well, not to any great extent. They don't amount to much in special lines of graft, because they're all so busy in general lines. What? Why, they have to. Who's got the money in the world? The men. Did you ever know a man to give a woman a dollar without any consideration? A man will shell out his dust to another man free and easy and gratis. But if he drops 92 Strictly Business a penny in one of the machines run by the Madam Eve's Daughters' Amalgamated Association and the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he pulls the lever you can hear him kick to the superintendent four blocks away. Man is the hardest proposition a woman has to go up against. He's a low-grade one, and she has to work overtime to make him pay. Two times out of five she's salted. She can't put in crushers and costly ma- chinery. He'd notice 'em and be onto the game. They have to pan out what they get, and it hurts their tender hands. Some of 'em are natural sluice troughs and can carry out $1,000 to the ton. The dry-eyed ones have to depend on signed letters, false hair, sympathy, the kangaroo walk, cowhide whips, ability to cook, senti- mental juries, conversational powers, silk underskirts, ancestry, rouge, anonymous letters, violet sachet pow- ders, witnesses, revolvers, pneumatic forms, carbolic acid, moonlight, cold cream and the evening newspa- pers." You are outrageous, Ferg," I said. " Surely there is none of this * graft,' as you call it, in a perfect and harmonious matrimonial union ! " "Well," said Pogue, "nothing that would justify you every time in calling up Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and a vaudeville manager on a dead run. But it's this way: Suppose you're a Fifth Avenue millionaire, soaring high, on the right side of copper and cappers. The Girl and the Graft 93 " You come home at night and bring a $9,000,000 dia- mond brooch to the lady who's staked you for a claim. You hand it over. She says, * Oh, George ! * and looks to see if it's backed. She comes up and kisses you. You've waited for it. You get it. All right. It's graft. " But I'm telling you about Artemisia Blye. She was from Kansas and she suggested corn in all of its phases. Her hair was as yellow as the silk; her form was as tall and graceful as a stalk in the low grounds during a wet summer ; her eyes were as big and startling as bunions, and green was her favorite color. " On my last trip into the cool recesses of your se- questered city I met a human named Vaucross. He was worth that is, he had a million. He told me he was in business on the street. * A sidewalk merchant ? ' sa}-s I, sarcastic. * Exactly,' says he. * Senior partner of a paving concern.' " I kind of took to him. For this reason, I met him on Broadway one night when I was out of heart, luck, tobacco and place. He was all silk hat, diamonds and front. He was all front. If you had gone behind him you would have only looked yourself in the face. I looked like a cross between Count Tolstoy and a June lobster. I was out of luck. I had but let me lay my eyes on that dealer again. " Vaucross stopped and talked to me a few minutes and then he took me to a high-toned restaurant to eat 94 Strictly Business dinner. There was music, and then some Beethoven, and Bordelaise sauce, and cussing in French, and frangi- pangi, and some hauteur and cigarettes. When I am flush I know them places. " I declare, I must have looked as bad as a magazine artist sitting there without any money and my hair all rumpled like I was booked to read a chapter from ' El- sie's School Days ' at a Brooklyn Bohemian smoker. But Vaucross treated me like a bear hunter's guide. He wasn't afraid of hurting the waiter's feelings. " ' Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, ' I am using you.' " * Go on,' says I ; ' I hope you don't wake up.' " And then he tells me, you know, the kind of man he was. He was a New Yorker. His whole ambition was to be noticed. He wanted to be conspicuous. He wanted people to point him out and bow to him, and tell others who he was. He said it had been the desire of his life always. He didn't have but a million, so he couldn't attract attention by spending money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of automobiles ; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in the pa- pers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amal- gam-filled teeth, supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary gang had been run over. The Girl and the Graft 95 " * Ever try the reporters ? ' I asked him. " * Last month,' says Mr. Vaucross, ' my expenditure for lunches to reporters was $124.80.' " * Get anything out of that? ' I asks. " * That reminds me,' says he ; ' add $8.50 for pepsin. Yes, I got indigestion.' " * How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence? ' I inquires. ' Contrast? ' " ' Something of that sort to-night,' says Vaucross. ' It grieves me ; but I am forced to resort to eccentricity.' And here he drops his napkin in his soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is devastating a potato under a palm across the room. " ' The Police Commissioner,' says my climber, grat- ified. " ' Friend,' says I, in a hurry, * have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your ladder. When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated. Be thoughtful.' " At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia Blye comes to me. " ' Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,' says I ' a column or two every day in all of 'em and your picture in most of 'em for a week. How much would it be worth to you ? ' " ' Ten thousand dollars,' says Vaucross, warm in a minute. ' But no murder,' says he ; * and I won't wear pink pants at a cotillon.' 96 Strictly Business " * I wouldn't ask you to,' says I. * This is honor- able, stylish and uneffeminate. Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some other beans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.' " We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise room. I telegraphed that night to Miss Arte- misia in Salina. She took a couple of photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in the Fourth Presby- terian Church in the morning, and got some transporta- tion and $80. She stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and a valentine to the vice- president of a trust company for a mileage book and a package of five-dollar notes with $250 scrawled on the band. " The fifth evening after she got my wire she was waiting, all decolletee and dressed up, for me and Vau- cross to take her to dinner in one of these New York feminine apartment houses where a man can't get in un- less he plays bezique and smokes depilatory powder ci- garettes. " * She's a stunner,' says Vaucross when he saw her. * They'll give her a two-column cut sure.' " This was the scheme the three of us concocted. It was business straight through. Vaucross was to rush Miss Blye with all the style and display and emotion he could for a month. Of course, that amounted to noth- ing as far as his ambitions were concerned. The sight of a man in a white tie and patent leather pumps pour- The Girl and the Graft 97 ing greenbacks through the large end of a cornucopia to purchase nutriment and heartsease for tall, willowy blondes in New York is as common a sight as blue tur- tles in delirium tremens. But he was to write her love letters the worst kind of love letters, such as your wife publishes after you are dead every day. At the end of the month he was to drop her, and she would bring suit for $100,000 for breach of promise. " Miss Artemisia was to get $10,000. If she won the suit that was all ; and if she lost she was to get it any- how. There was a signed contract to that effect. " Sometimes they had me out with 'em, but not of- ten. I couldn't keep up to their style. She used to pull out his notes and criticize them like bills of lading. " ' Say, you!' she'd say. ' What do you call this Letter to a Hardware Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? You East- ern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansas grasshopper does about tugboats. " My dear Miss Blye ! " wouldn't that put pink icing and a little red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long do you expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff? You want to get down to business, and call me " Tweedlums Babe " and " Honeysuckle," and sign yourself " Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy " if you want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse gray hairs. Get sappy.' " After that Vaucross dipped his pen in the indelible 98 Strictly Business tabasco. His notes read like something or other in the original. I could see a jury sitting up, and women tearing one another's hats to hear 'em read. And I could see piling up for Mr. Vaucross as much notorious- ness as Archbishop Cranmer or the Brooklyn Bridge or cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed. He seemed mighty pleased at the prospects. " They agreed on a night ; and I stood on Fifth Av- enue outside a solemn restaurant and watched 'em. A process-server walked in and handed Vaucross the papers at his table. Everybody looked at 'em ; and he looked as proud as Cicero. I went back to my room and lit a five-cent cigar, for I knew the $10,000 was as good as ours. " About two hours later somebody knocked at my <3oor. There stood Vaucross and Miss Artemisia, and she was clinging yes, sir, clinging to his arm. And they tells me they'd been out and got married. And they articulated some trivial cadences about love and such. And they laid down a bundle on the table and said * Good night ' and left. " And that's why I say," concluded Ferguson Pogue, " that a woman is too busy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft such as is given her for self-preservation and amusement to make any great suc- cess in special lines." " What was in the bundle that they left? " I asked, with my usual curiosity. The Girl and the Graft 99 " Why," said Ferguson, " there was a scalper's rail- road ticket as far as Kansas City and two pairs of Mr. Vaucross's old pants." IX THE CALL OF THE TAME VY HEN the inauguration was accomplished the pro* ceedings were made smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders it is well known that a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warriors paid a visit to the big city. The newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats and leather belts that they wear to North Beach fish fries, and mixed with the visitors. No damage was done beyond the employment of the wonderful plural " tenderfeet " in each of the scribe's stories. The Westerners mildly contemplated tJhe skyscrapers as high as the third story, yawned at Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel corri- dors, and altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of Ye Ancient and Honorable Artillery sepa- rated during a sham battle from his valet. Out of this sightseeing delegation of good King Teddy's Gentlemen of the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, of Pin Feather, Ariz. The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away from the company of his pardners true. The dust from a thousand rustling skirts filled his eyes. The 100 The Call of the Tame 101 mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky deafened him. The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming eyes confused his vision. The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Green- brier's first impulse was to lie down and grab a root. And then he remembered that the disturbance was hu- man, and not elemental ; and he backed out of it with a grin into a doorway. The reporters had written that but for the wide- brimmed hats the West was not visible upon these gauchos of the North. Heaven sharpen their eyes ! The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in impossible places ; the bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the low, turned-down collar, pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, white glazed as the letters on the window of the open-day-and-night-except-Sunday restaurants ; the out- curve at the knees from the straddle grip ; the peculiar spread of the half -closed right thumb and fingers from the stiff hold upon the circling lasso ; the deeply absorbed weather tan that the hottest sun of Cape May can never equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that unconsciously divided the rushing crowds into fours, as though they were being counted out of a corral ; the segregated lone- liness and solemnity of expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have not intruded upon him nearer than a day's ride these brands of the West were set upon Greenbrier Nye. Oh, yes ; he wore a broad- brimmed hat, gentle reader just like those the Madi- 102 Strictly Business son Square Post Office mail carriers wear when they go up to Bronx Park on Sunday afternoons. Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of metropolitan cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the stream and gave him a buffet upon his collarbone that sent him reeling against a wall. The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker who has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib. about it. But he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in consideration of love and affection after the manner of the West, which greets its friends with contumely and uproar and pounding fists, and receives its enemies in decorum and order, such as the judicious placing of the welcoming bullet demands. " God in the mountains ! " cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the foreleg of his cull. " Can this be Longhorn Merritt? " The other man was oh, look on Broadway any day for the pattern business man latest rolled-brim derby good barber, business, digestion and tailor. " Greenbrier Nye ! " he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had smitten him. " My dear fellow ! So glad to see you ! How did you come to oh, to be sure the inaugural ceremonies I remember you joined the Rough Riders. You must come and have luncheon with me, of course." Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall The Call of the Tame 103 with a hand the size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle. " Longy," he said, in a melancholy voice that dis- turbed traffic, " what have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen. They done made you into an inmate of the city directory. You never made no such Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila. * Come and have lunching with me ! ' You never defined grub by any such terms of reproach in them days." " I've been living in New York seven years," said Merritt. " It's been eight since we punched cows to- gether in Old Man Garcia's outfit. Well, let's go to a cafe, anyhow. It sounds good to hear it called ' grub ' again." They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by a natural law, to the bar. " Speak up," invited Greenbrier. " A dry Martini," said Merritt. " Oh, Lord ! " cried Greenbrier ; " and yet me and you once saw the same pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Canon Diablo! A dry but let that pass. Whiskey straight and they're on you." Merritt smiled, and paid. They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected with the cafe. Merritt dexterously di- verted his friend's choice, that hovered over ham and 104 Strictly Business eggs, to a puree of celery, a salmon cutlet, a partridge pie and a desirable salad. " On the day," said Greenbrier, grieved and thunder- ous, " when I can't hold but one drink before eating when I meet a friend I ain't seen in eight years at a 2 by 4 table in a thirty-cent town at 1 o'clock on the third day of the week, I want nine broncos to kick me forty times over a 640-acre section of land. Get them sta- tistics?" " Right, old man," laughed Merritt. " Waiter, bring an absinthe frappe and what's yours, Greenbrier? " " Whiskey straight," mourned Nye. " Out of the neck of a bottle you used to take it, Longy straight out of the neck of a bottle on a galloping pony Ari- zona redeye, not this ab oh, what's the use ? They're on you." Merritt slipped the wine card under his glass. " All right. I suppose you think I'm spoiled by the city. I'm as good a Westerner as you are, Greenbrier; but, somehow, I can't make up my mind to go back out there. New York is comfortable comfortable. I make a good living, and I live it. No more wet blankets and riding herd in snowstorms, and bacon and cold cof- fee, and blowouts once in six months for me. I reckon I'll hang out here in the future. We'll take in the the- atre to-night, Greenbrier, and after that we'll dine at" The Call of the Tame 105 " I'll tell you what you are, Merritt," said Green- brier, laying one elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. " You are a concentrated^ effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I've seen you rope and tie a steer in 4$l/2. If you was to see one now you'd write to the Police Commissioner about it. And these flapdoodle drinks that you inoculate your system with these little essences of cowsh'p with acorns in 'em, and paregoric flip they ain't anyways in assent with the cordiality of manhood. I hate to see you this way." " Well, Greenbrier," said Merritt, with apology in his tone, " in a way you are right. Sometimes I do feel like I was being raised on the bottle. But, I tell you, New York is comfortable comfortable. There's something about it the sights and the crowds, and the way it changes every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-mile-long stake rope around a man's neck, with the other end fastened somewhere about Thirty-fourth Street. I don't know what it is." " God knows," said Greenbrier sadly, " and I know. The East has gobbled you up. You was venison, and 106 Strictly Business now you're real. You put me in mind of a japonica in a window. You've been signed, sealed and diskivered. Requiescat in hoc signo. You make me thirsty." " A green chartreuse here," said Merritt to the waiter. " Whiskey straight," sighed Greenbrier, " and they're on you, you renegade of the round-ups." " Guilty, with an application for mercy," said Mer- ritt. " You don't know how it is, Greenbrier. It's so comfortable here that " " Please loan me your smelling salts," pleaded Green- brier. " If I hadn't seen you once bluff three bluffers from Mazatzal City with an empty gun in Phoenix " Greenbrier's voice died away in pure grief. " Cigars ! " he called harshly to the waiter, to hide his emotion. " A pack of Turkish cigarettes for mine," said Mer- ritt " They're on you," chanted Greenbrier, struggling to conceal his contempt. At seven they dined in the Where-to-Dine-Well col- umn. That evening a galaxy had assembled there. Bright shone the lights o'er fair women and br let it go, any- how brave men. The orchestra played charm- ingly. Hardly had a tip from a diner been placed in its hands by a waiter when it would burst forth into soniferousness. The more beer you contributed to it the more Meyerbeer it gave you. Which is reciprocity. The Call of the Tame 107 Merritt put forth exertions on the dinner. Green- brier was his old friend, and he liked him. He per- suaded him to drink a cocktail. " I take the horehound tea," said Greenbrier, " for old times' sake. But I'd prefer whiskey straight. They're on you." " Right ! " said Merritt. " Now, run your eye down that bill of fare and see if it seems to hitch on any of the items." " Lay me on my lava bed ! " said Greenbrier, with bulging eyes. " All these specimens of nutriment in the grub wagon ! What's this ? Horse with the heaves ? I pass. But look along ! Here's truck for twenty round- ups all spelled out in different sections. Wait till I see." The viands ordered, Merritt turned to the wine list. " This Medoc isn't bad," he suggested. " You're the doc," said Greenbrier. " I'd rather have whiskey straight. It's on you." Greenbrier looked around the room. The waiter brought things and took dishes away. He was observ- ing. He saw a New York restaurant crowd enjoying itself. " How was the range when you left the Gila ? " asked Merritt. " Fine," said Greenbrier. " You see that lady in the red speckled silk at that table? Well, she could warm over her beans at my campfire. Yes, the range was 108 Strictly Business good. She looks as nice as a white mustang I see once on Black River." When the coffee came, Greenbrier put one foot on the seat of the chair next to him. " You said it was a comfortable town, Longy," he said, meditatively. " Yes, it's a comfortable town. It's different from the plains in a blue norther. What did you call that mess in the crock with the handle, Longy? Oh, yes, squabs in a cash roll. They're worth the roll. That white mustang had just such a way of turning his head and shaking his mane look at her, Longy. If I thought I could sell out my ranch at a fair price, I be- lieve I'd " Gyar song ! " he suddenly cried, in a voice that paralyzed every knife and fork in the restaurant. The waiter dived toward the table. " Two more of them cocktail drinks," ordered Green- brier. Merritt looked at him and smiled significantly. " They're on me," said Greenbrier, blowing a puff of smoke to the ceiling. X THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY iHE poet Longfellow or was it Confucius, the in- rentor of wisdom ? remarked : " Life is real, life is earnest; And things are not what they seem." As mathematics are or is : thanks, old subscriber ! ; the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the great god- dess Two-and-Two-Makes-Four. Figures unassail- able sums in addition shall be set over against what- ever opposing element there may be. A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, would say : " Ahem ! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus that is, that life is real then things (all of which life includes) are real. Anything that is real is what it seems. Then if we consider the proposition that * things are not what they seem,' why" But this is heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra ; we would conduct you into the presence 109 110 Strictly Business of the elusive, seductive, pursued, satisfying, mysterious X. Not long before the beginning of this century, Septi- mus Kinsolving, an old New Yorker, invented an idea. He originated the discovery that bread is made from flour and not from wheat futures. Perceiving that the flour crop was short, and that the Stock Exchange was having no perceptible effect on the growing wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market. The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she never had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accommodated) bought a five-cent loaf of bread you laid down an additional two cents, which went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his perspicacity. A second result was that Mr. Kinsolving quit the game with $2,000,000 prof er rake-off. Mr. Kinsolving's son Dan was at college when tha mathematical experiment in breadstuffs was made. Dan came home during vacation, and found the old gentle- man in a red dressing-gown reading " Little Dorrit " on the porch of his estimable red brick mansion in Washing- ton Square. He had retired from business with enough extra two-cent pieces from bread buyers to reach, if laid side by side, fifteen times around the earth and lap as far as the public debt of Paraguay. Dan shook hands with his father, and hurried over to Greenwich Village to see his old high-school friend, Ken- witz. Dan had always admired Kenwitz. Kenwitz was The Unknown Quantity 111 pale, curly-haired, intense, serious, mathematical, studi- ous, altruistic, socialistic and the natural foe of oli- garchies. Kenwitz had foregone college, and was learn- ing watch-making in his father's jewelry store. Dan was smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and tolerant alike of kings and ragpickers. The two foregathered joyously, being opposites. And then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his mainsprings and to his private li- brary in the rear of the jewelry shop. Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the accumulations of B. A. and two years of Europe thick upon him. He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving's elaborate tombstone in Green- wood, and a tedious excursion through typewritten docu- ments with the family lawyer; and then, feeling himself a lonely and hopeless millionaire, hurried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue. Kenwitz unscrewed a magnifying glass from his eye, routed out his parent from a dingy rear room, and aban- doned the interior of watches for outdoors. He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench in Washington Square. Dan had not changed much ; he was stalwart, and had a dignity that was inclined to relax into a grin. Kenwitz was more serious, more intense, more learned, philosophical and socialistic. " I know about it now," said Dan, finally. " I pumped it out of the eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad's collection of bonds and boodle. 112 Strictly Business It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken. And I am told that he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their pennies for loaves of bread at the little bakeries around the corner. You've studied economics, Dan, and you know all about monopolies, and the masses, and octopuses, and the rights of laboring people. I never thought about those things before. Football and trying to be white to my fellow- man were about the extent of my college curriculum. " But since I came back and found out how dad made his money I've been thinking. I'd like awfully well to pay back those chaps who had to give up too much money for bread. I know it would buck the line of my income for a good many yards ; but I'd like to make it square with 'em. Is there any way it can be done, old Ways and Means ? " Kenwitz's big black eyes glowed fierily. His thin, intellectual face took on almost a sardonic cast. He caught Dan's arm with the grip of a friend and a judge. " You can't do it ! " he said, emphatically. " One of the chief punishments of you men of ill-gotten wealth is that when you do repent you find that you have lost the power to make reparation or restitution. I admire your good intentions, Dan, but you can't do anything. Those people were robbed of their precious pennies. It's too late to remedy the evil. You can't pay them back." " Of course," said Dan, lighting his pipe, " we couldn't hunt up every one of the duffers and hand 'em back the right change. There's an awful lot of 'en The Unknown Quantity 113 buying bread all the time. Funny taste they have I never cared for bread especially, except for a toasted cracker with the Roquefort. But we might find a few of 'em and chuck some of dad's cash back where it came from. I'd feel better if I could. It seems tough for people to be held up for a soggy thing like bread. One wouldn't mind standing a rise in broiled lobsters or dev- iled crabs. Get to work and think, Ken. I want to pay back all of that money I can." " There are plenty of charities," said Kenwitz, me- chanically. " Easy enough," said Dan, in a cloud of smoke. " I suppose I could give the city a park, or endow an aspara- gus bed in a hospital. But I don't want Paul to get away with .the proceeds of the gold brick we sold Peter. It's the bread shorts I want to cover, Ken." The thin fingers of Kenwitz moved rapidly. " Do you know how much money it would take to pay back the losses of consumers during that corner in flour? " he asked. " I do not," said Dan, stoutly. '* My lawyer tells me that I have two millions." " If you had a hundred millions," said Kenwitz, vehe- mently, " you couldn't repair a thousandth part of the damage that has been done. You cannot conceive of the accumulated evils produced by misapplied wealth. Each penny that was wrung from the lean purses of the poor reacted a thousandfold to their harm. You do not 114 Strictly Business understand. You do not see how hopeless is your de- sire to make restitution. Not in a single instance can it be done. " Back up, philosopher ! " said Dan. " The penny has no sorrow that the dollar cannot heal." " Not in one instance," repeated Kenwitz. " I will give you one, and let us see. Thomas Boyne had a little bakery over there in Varick Street. He sold bread to the poorest people. When the price of flour went up he had to raise the price of bread. His customer's were too poor to pay it, Boyne's business failed and he lost his $1,000 capital all he had in the world." Dan Kinsolving struck the park bench a mighty blow with his fist. " I accept the instance," he cried. " Take me to Boyne. I will repay his thousand dollars and buy him a new bakery." " Write your check," said Kenwitz, without moving, " and then begin to write checks in payment of the train of consequences. Draw the next one for $50,000. Boyne went insane after his failure and set fire to the building from which he was about to be evicted. The loss amounted to that much. Boyne died in an asylum." " Stick to the instance," said Dan. " I haven't no- ticed any insurance companies on my charity list." " Draw your next check for $100,000," went on Ken- witz. " Boyne's son fell into bad ways after the bakery The Unknown Quantity 115 closed, and was accused of murder. He was acquitted last week after a three years' legal battle, and the state draws upon taxpayers for that much expense." " Back to the bakery ! " exclaimed Dan, impatiently. " The Government doesn't need to stand in the bread line." " The last item of the instance is come and I will show you," said Kenwitz, rising. The Socialistic watchmaker was happy. He was a millionaire-baiter by nature and a pessimist by trade. Kenwitz would assure you in one breath that money was but evil and corruption, and that your brand-new watch needed cleaning and a new ratchet-wheel. He conducted Kinsolving southward out of the square and into ragged, poverty-haunted Varick Street. Up the narrow stairway of a squalid brick tenement he led the penitent offspring of the Octopus. He knocked on a door, and a clear voice called to them to enter. In that almost bare room a young woman sat sewing at a machine. She nodded to Kenwitz as to a familiar acquaintance. One little stream of sunlight through the dingy window burnished her heavy hair to the dolor of an ancient Tuscan's shield. She flashed a rippling smile at Kenwitz and a look of somewhat flustered inquiry. Kinsolving stood regarding her clear and pathetic beauty in heart-throbbing silence. Thus they came into the presence of the last item of the Instance. 116 Strictly Business " How many this week, Miss Mary? " asked the watch- maker. A mountain of coarse gray shirts lay upon the floor. " Nearly thirty dozen," said the young woman cheer- fully. " I've made almost $4. I'm improving, Mr. Kenwitz. I hardly know what to do with so much money." Her eyes turned, brightly soft, in the direc- tion of Dan. A little pink spot came out on her round, pale cheek. Kenwitz chuckled like a diabolic raven. " Miss Boyne," he said, " let me present Mr. Kinsolv- ing, the son of the man who put bread up five years ago. He thinks he would like to do something to aid those who were inconvenienced by that act." The smile left the young woman's face. She rose and pointed her forefinger toward the door. This time she looked Kinsolving straight in the eye, but it was not a look that gave delight. The two men went down into Varick Street. Ken- witz, letting all his pessimism and rancor and hatred of the Octopus come to the surface, gibed at the moneyed side of his friend in an acrid torrent of words. Dan ap- peared to be listening, and then turned to Kenwitz and shook hands with him warmly. " I'm obliged to you, Ken, old man," he said, vaguely r " a thousand times obliged." " Mein. Gott ! you are crazy ! " cried the watchmaker, (dropping his spectacles for the first time in years. The Unknown Quantity 11T Two months afterward Kenwitz went into a large bakery on lower Broadway with a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses that he had mended for the proprietor. A lady was giving an order to a clerk as Kenwitz passed her. " These loaves are ten cents," said the clerk. " I always get them at eight cents uptown," said the lady. " You need not fill the order. I will drive by there on my way home." The voice was familiar. The watchmaker paused. " Mr. Kenwitz ! w cried the lady, heartily. " How do you do? " Kenwitz was trying to train his socialistic and eco- nomic comprehension on her wonderful fur boa and the carriage waiting outside. " Why, Miss Boyne ! " he began. " Mrs. Kinsolving," she corrected. " Da and I were married a month ago." XI THE THING'S THE PLAY JjEING acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses. One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking- looking man not much past forty, but with very gray thick hair. Not being afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past my ears while I re- garded the man. " There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the reporter. " They gave me the assign- ment. It was to run a column and was to be on the extremely light and joking order. The old man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh, yes, I'm working on a farce comedy now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the details ; but I certainly fell down on that job. I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead. Why? Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you could make a one-act tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details." 118 The Thing's the Play 119 After the performance my friend, the reporter, re- cited to me the facts over the Wiirzburger. " I see no reason," said I, when he had concluded, " why that shouldn't make a rattling good funny story. Those three people couldn't have acted in a more absurd and preposterous manner if they had been real actors in a real theatre. I'm really afraid that all the stage is a world, anyhow, and all the players merely men and women. ( The thing's the play,' is the way I quote Mi*. Shakespeare." " Try it," said the reporter. " I will," said I ; and I did, to show him how he could have made a humorous column of it for his paper. There stands a house near Abingdon Square. On the ground floor- there has been for twenty-five years a little store where toys and notions and stationery are sold. One night twenty years ago there was a wedding in the rooms above the store. The Widow Mayo owned the house and store. Her daughter Helen was married to Frank Barry. John Delaney was best man. Helen was eighteen, and her picture had been printed in a morning paper next to the headlines of a " Wholesale Female Murderess " story from Butte, Mont. But after your eye and intelligence had rejected the connection, you seized your magnifying glass and read beneath the portrait her description as one of a series of Prominent Beauties and Belles of the lower west side. Frank Barry and John Delaney were " prominent " 120 Strictly Business young beaux of the same side, and bosom friends, whom you expected to turn upon each other every time the curtain went up. One who pays his money for orches- tra seats and fiction expects this. That is the first funny idea that has turned up in the story yet. Both had made a great race for Helen's hand. When Frank won, John shook his hand and congratulated him honestly, he did. After the ceremony Helen ran upstairs to put on her hat. She was getting married in a traveling dress. She and Frank were going to Old Point Comfort for a week. Downstairs the usual horde of gibbering cave-dwellers were waiting with their hands full of old Congress gaiters and paper bags of hominy. Then there was a rattle of the fire-escape, and into her room jumps the mad and infatuated John Delaney, with a damp curl drooping upon his forehead, and made violent and reprehensible love to his lost one, entreating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the Bronx, or any old place where there are Italian skies and dolce far niente. It would have carried Blaney off his feet to see Helen repulse him. With blazing and scornful eyes she fairly withered him by demanding whatever he meant by speak- ing to respectable people that' way. In a few moments she had him going. The manliness that had possessed him departed. He bowed low, and said something about " irresistible impulse " and " for- The Thing's the "Play 121 ever carry in his heart the memory of *% . and she sug- gested that he catch the first fire-escape going down. " I will away," said John Delaney, " to the further- most parts of the earth. I cannot remain near you and know that you are another's. I will to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for n " For goodness sake, get out," said Helen. " Some- body might come in." He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that he might give it a farewell kiss. Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever vouchsafed you to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and have the one you don't want come with a damp curl on his forehead and kneel to you and babble of Africa. and love which, in spite of everything, shall forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of your own happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you congratulate yourself as he presses his last kiss upon your knuckles, that your nails are well manicured say, girls, it's galluptious don't ever let it get by you. And then, of course- how did you guess it? the door opened and in stalked the bridegroom, jealous of slow-tying bonnet strings. The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the window and down the fire-ec*pc sprang John Delaney, Africa bound. 122 Strictly Business A little slow music, if you please faint violin, just a breath in the clarinet and a touch of the 'cello. Im- agine the scene. Frank, white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears them from his shoulders once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and that the stage manager will show you how and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring groups of as- tonished guests. And, now, because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, grow gray, rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of twenty years which must precede the rising of the curtain again. Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could have bested many an eighteen- year-old at a beauty show on points and general results. Only a few people remembered her wedding comedy, but she made of it no secret. She did not pack it in lav- ender or moth balls, nor did she sell it to a magazine. One day a middle-aged, money-making lawyer, who bought his legal cap and ink of her, asked her across the counter to marry him. "I'm really much obliged to you," said Helen, cheer- fully, "but I married another man twenty years ago. 'The Thing's the Play 123 He was more a goose than a man, but I think I love him yet. I have never seen him since about half an hour after the ceremony. Was it copying ink that you wanted or j ust writing fluid ? " The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a respectful kiss on the back of her hand. Helen sighed. Parting salutes, however romantic, may be overdone. Here she was at thirty-eight, beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her lovers were reproaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had lost a customer, too. Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card. Two large rooms on the third floor were pre- pared for desirable tenants. Roomers came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs. Barry was the abode of neatness, comfort and taste. One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room above. The discord and clatter uptown of- fended his nice ear; so a friend had sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise. Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eye- brows, his short, pointed, foreign, brown beard, his dis- tinguished head of gray hair, and his artist's tempera- ment revealed in his light, gay and sympathetic manner was a welcome tenant in the old house near Abingdon Square. Helen lived on the floor above the store. The archi- tecture of it was singular and quaint. The hall was 124 Strictly Business large and almost square. Up one side of it, and then across the end of it ascended an open stairway to the floor above. This hall space she had furnished as a sitting room and office combined. There she kept her desk and wrote her business letters ; and there she sat of evenings by a warm fire and a bright red light and sewed or read. Ramonti found the atmosphere so agree- able that he spent much time there, describing to Mrs. Barry the wonders of Paris, where he had studied with a particularly notorious and noisy fiddler. Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40's, with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes. He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable thing. With the eyes of Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed her with tales of distant climes and wooed her by respectful innuendo. From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the presence of this man. His voice somehow took her swiftly back to the days of her youth's ro- mance. This feeling grew, and she gave way to it, and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor in that romance. And then with a woman's rea- soning (oh, yes, they do, sometimes) she leaped over common syllogisms and theory, and logic, and was sure that her husband had come back to her. For she saw in his eyes love, which no woman can mistake, and a thousand tons of regret and remorse, which aroused pity, The Thing's the Play 125 which is perilously near to love requited, which is the sine qua non in the house that Jack built. But she made no sign. A husband who steps around the corner for twenty years and then drops in again should not expect to find his slippers laid out too con- veniently near nor a match ready lighted for his cigar. There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly exe- cration. A little purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were properly humble, he might be trusted with a harp and crown. And so she made no sign that she knew or suspected. And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this ! Sent out on an assignment to write up a roar- ing, hilarious, brilliant joshing story of but I will not knock a brother let us go on with the story. One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen's hall-office- reception-room and told his love with the tenderness and ardor of the enraptured artist. His words were a bright flame of the divine fire that glows in the heart of a man who is a dreamer and a doer combined. " But before you give me an answer," he went on, be- fore she could accuse him of suddenness, " I must tell you that * Ramonti ' is the only name I have to offer you. My manager gave me that. I do not know wh I am or where I came from. My first recollection is of opening my eyes in a hospital. I was a young man, and I had been there for weeks. My life before that is a blank to me. They told me that I was found lying in 126 Strictly Business the street with a wound on my head and was brought there in an ambulance. They thought I must have fal- len and struck my head upon the stones. There was nothing to show who I was. I have never been able to remember. After I was discharged from the hospital, I took up the violin. I have had success. Mrs. Barry I do not know your name except that I love you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the one woman in the world for me and" oh, a lot of stuff like that. Helen felt young again. First a wave of pride and a sweet little thrill of vanity went all over her ; and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes, and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She hadn't expected that throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in her life, and she hadn't been aware of it. "Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm a mar- ried woman." And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do, sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter. Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his room. Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand The Thing's the Play 127 Well she might. Three suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away. In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes. Helen was in the willow rocker, knit- ting a useless thing in cotton-wool. He ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat. Sitting across the table from her, he also poured out his narrative of love. And then he said : " Helen, do you not remem- ber me? I think I have seen it in your eyes. Can you forgive the past and remember the love that has lasted for twenty years ? I wronged you deeply I was afraid to come back to you but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you, forgive me? " Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held on< of her hands in a strong and trembling clasp. There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene like that and her emotions to portray. For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, un- forgettable, virginal love for her bridegroom was hers ; the treasured, sacred, honored memory of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bpund her to it. But the other half of her heart and soul was filled with something else a later, fuller, nearer in- fluence. And so the old fought against the new. And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The 128 Strictly Business hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but who- ever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck. This music and the musician called her, and at her side honor and the old love held her back. " Forgive me," he pleaded. " Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you love," she declared, with a purga- torial touch. "How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you married him, Helen " " Who Are You? " cried the woman, with wide-opea eyes, snatching her hand away. " Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always loved you the best? I am John Delaney. If you can forgive " But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, fly- ing up the stairs toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she climbed up she sobbed, cried and sang : " Frank ! Frank ! Frank ! " The Thing's the Play 129 Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it ! XII A RAMBLE IN APHASIA MY wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting the level kiss of domesticity flavored with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea. When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came suddenly. For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad law case that I won tri- umphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me. " If you don't slacken up, Bellford," he said, " you'll 130 A Ramble in Aphasia 131 go suddenly to pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me, does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity blotted out and all from that little brain clot made by overwork or worry ? " " I always thought," said I, " that the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters." Doctor Volney shook his head. " The disease exists," he said. " You need a change or a rest. Court-room, office and home there is the only route you travel. For recreation you read law T>ooks. Better take warning in time." " On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, " my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be established." That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was feeling as well as I usually did > possibly in better spirits than usual. I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself : " I must have a name of some sort." I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I 132 Strictly Business find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large denomination. " I must be some one, of course," I repeated to myself, and began again to consider. The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits. One of them a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my com- panion said: " You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the con- vention in New York ; I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri." Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my companion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicu- ous advertisement, assisted me furthet. A Ramble in Aphasia 133 " My name," said I, glibly, " is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas." " I knew you were a druggist," said my fellow traveler, affably. " I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention." " Are all these men druggists ? " I asked, won- deringly. " They are. This car came through from the West. And they're your old-time druggists, too none of your patent tablet-and-granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I've got an idea to spring on this convention new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart, and Sod. et Pot. Tart. one's poison, you know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as pos- sible, on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea ? " " It seems to me a very good one," I said. "All right! When I spring it on the convention 134 Strictly 'Business you back it up. We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic tablets." " If I can be of any aid," I said, warming, " the two bottles of er " " Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash." " Shall henceforth sit side by side," I concluded, firmly. " Now, there's another thing," said Mr. Bolder. u For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer the magnesia carbonate or the pulverized glycerrhiza radix? " " The er magnesia," I said. It was easier to say than the other word. Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through hi$ spectacles. " Give me the glycerrhiza," said he. " Magnesia cakes." " Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases," he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. " I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory don't A Ramble in 'Aphasia 135 know his own name, and won't even recognize the straw- berry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! fTut! Why can't they stay at home and forget? " I took the paper and read, after the pungent head- lines, the following: " DENVER, June 12. Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the highest stand- ing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappear- ance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disap- pearance, it may be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. E very- effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man." " It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder," I said, after I had read the despatch. " This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married and re- spected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I 136 Strictly Business know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without & name, a history or a home." "Oh, gammon and jalap!" said Mr. Bolder. "It's larks they're after. There's too much education nowa- days. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say : * He hypnotized me.' ' Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments and philosophy. We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name " Edward Pinkhammer " in the register. As I did so I felt per- vade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibili- ties. I was just born into the world. The old fetters f whatever they had been were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's learning and experience. I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no baggage. " The Druggists' Convention," I said. " My trunk has somehow failed to arrive." I drew out a roll of money. " Ah ! " said he, showing an auriferous tooth, " we A Ramble in Aphasia 137 have quite a number of the Western delegates stopping here." He struck a bell for the boy. I endeavored to give color to my role. " There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I said, " in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles containing the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the tartrate of sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf." " Gentleman to three-fourteen," said the clerk, hastily. I was whisked away to my room. The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and be- gan to live the life of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve problems of the past. It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belong to him who is able to bear them. You must be either the city's guest or its victim. The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens, that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls 138 Strictly Business and grotesque, drolly extravagant parodies upon human kind. I went here and there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder tables d'hote to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again, where the night life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for good cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of License, but Convention holds it. Comity has a toll-gate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land of Free- dom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles. Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly murmuring palm rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked love-mak- ing clerks and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway A Ramble in Aphasia 139 glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway growing upon one like an opium habit. One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greeted me with offensive familiarity. "Hallo, Bellford!" he cried, loudly. "What the deuce are you doing in New York? Didn't know any- thing could drag you away from that old book den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little business run alone, eh? " " You have made a mistake, sir," I said, coldly, re- leasing my hand from his grasp. " My name is Pink- hammer. You will excuse me." The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something about telegraph blanks. " You will give me my bill," I said to the clerk, " and have my baggage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed by confidence men." I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on lower Fifth Avenue. There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be served almost al fresco in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet and luxury and a per- fect service made it an ideal place in which to take Juncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there 140 Strictly Business picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught. " Mr. Bellford ! " exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice. I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone a lady of about thirty, with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been her very dear friend. " You were about to pass me," she said, accusingly. " Don't tell me you did not know me. Why should we not shake hands at least once in fifteen years ? " I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair op- posite her at the table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a creme de mentlie. Her hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could not look away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look into the profundities of a wood at twilight. " Are you sure you know me ? " I asked. " No," she said, smiling, " I was never sure of that." " What would you think," I said, a little anxiously, " if I were to tell you that my name is Edward Pink- hammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas?" " What would I think ? " she repeated, with a merry glance. ** Why, that you had not brought Mrs. Bell- ford to New York with you, of course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian." Her voice A Ramble in Aphasia 141 lowered slightly " You haven't changed much, Elwyn." I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely. " Yes, you have," she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note in her latest tones ; " I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could." I poked my straw anxiously in the creme de menthe. " I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. " But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything." She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed to see in my face. " I've heard of you at times," she went on. " You're quite a big lawyer out West Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles? Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars." She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time. " Would it be too late," I asked, somewhat timor- ously, " to offer you congratulations ? " " Not if you dare do it," she answered, with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease pat- terns on the cloth with my thumb nail. " Tell me one thing," she said, leaning toward me 142 Strictly Business rather eagerly " a thing I have wanted to know for many years just from a woman's curiosity, of course have you ever dared since that night to touch, smell or look at white roses at white roses wet with rain and dew?" I took a sip of creme de menthe. " It would.be useless, I suppose," I said, with a sigh, " for me to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it." The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound it was a laugh of hap- piness yes, and of content and of misery. I tried to look away from her. "You lie, Elwyn Bellford," she breathed, blissfully. " Oh, I know you lie ! " I gazed dully into the ferns. " My name is Edward Pinkhammer," I said. " I came with the delegates to the Druggists' National Con- vention. There is a movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, you would take little interest." A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her hand, and bowed. " I am deeply sorry," I said to her, " that I cannot A Ramble in \ApJiasia 143 remember. I could explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not concede Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the the roses and other things." " Good-by, Mr. Bellford," she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as she stepped into her carriage. I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel, a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his finger nails with a silk handker- chief, appeared, magically, at my side. " Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, casually, giving the bulk of his attention to his forefinger, " may I request you to step aside with me for a little conversation r There is a room here." " Certainly," I answered. He conducted me into a small, private parlor. A lady and a gentleman were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking had her fea- tures not been clouded by an expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed coloring and features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a traveling dress ; she fixed upon me an ear- nest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her bosom. I think she would have started for- ward, but the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand. He then came, him- self, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little gray about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face. 144 Strictly Business " Bellford, old man," he said, cordially, " I'm glad to see you again. Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you were overdo- ing it. Now, you'll go back with us, and be yourself again in no time." I smiled ironically. " I have been ' Bellforded so often," I said, " that it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life? " Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman. She sprang past his detaining arm. " Elwyn ! " she sobbed, and cast herself upon me, and clung tight. " Elwyn," she cried again, " don't break my heart. I am your wife call my name once just once, I ould see you dead rather than this way." I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly. " Madam," I said, severely, " pardon me if I suggest that you accept a resemblance too precipitately. It is a pity," I went on, with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, ** that this Bellford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identification. In order to understand the allusion," I concluded airily, " it may be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of the Druggists' National Convention." A 'Ramble in Aphasia 145 The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm. " What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it? " she moaned. He led her to the door. " Go to your room for a while," I heard him say. " I will remain and talk with him. His mind? No, I think not only a portion of the brain. Yes, I am sure he will recover. Go to your room and leave me with him." The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall. " I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pink- hammer, if I may," said the gentleman who remained. " Very well, if you care to," I replied, " and will excuse me if I take it comfortably ; I am rather tired." I stretched myself upon a couch by a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair nearby. " Let us speak to the point," he said, soothingly. " Your name is not Pinkhammer." " I know that as well as you do," I said, coolly. " But a man must have a name of some sort. I can as- sure you that I do not extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one christens one's self sud- denly, the fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But, suppose it had been Scheringhausen or Scroggins ! I think I did very well with Pinkhammer." " Your name," said the other man, seriously, " is 146 Strictly Business Elwyn C. Bellford. You are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity. The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, perhaps, a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the room is your wife." " She is what I would call a fine-looking woman," I said, after a judicial pause. " I particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair." " She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disap- pearance, nearly two weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, a travel- ing man from Denver. He said that he had met you in a hotel here, and that you did not recognize him." " I think I remember the occasion," I said. " The fellow called me * Bellford,' if I am not mistaken. But don't you think it about time, now, for you to introduce yourself? " " I am Robert Volney Doctor Volney. I have been your close friend for twenty years, and your phy- sician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try, Elwyn, old man try to remember ! " " What's the use to try? " I asked, with a little frown. *' You say you are a physician. Is aphasia curable ? A Ramble in Aphasia 147 When a man loses his memory does it return slowly, or suddenly ? " " Sometimes gradually and imperfectly ; sometimes as suddenly as it went." " Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doc- tor Volney ? " I asked. " Old friend," said he, " I'll do everything in my power, and will have done everything that science can do to cure you." " Very well," said I. " Then you will consider that I am your patient. Everything is in confidence now professional confidence." " Of course," said Doctor Volney. I got up from the couch. Some one had set a vase of white roses on the centre table a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid myself upon the couch again. " It will be best, Bobby," I said, " to have this cure happen suddenly. I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin " good old Doc it was glorious ! " XIII A MUNICIPAL REPORT The cities are full of pride, Challenging each to each This from her mountainside, That from her burthened beach. R. KIPLING. Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, o* Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are " story cities " New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. FRANK NORMS. is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Calif ornians. Calif ornians are a race of people ; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city ; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fel- lows Building. But Californians go into detail. Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness 148 A Municipal Report 149 comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say : " In this town there can be no romance what could happen here? " Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally. NASHVILLE. A city, port of delivery, and the capital of Ihe State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational centre in the South. I stepped off the train at 8 P. M. Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substi- tution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe. Take of London fog 30 parts ; malaria 10 parts ; gas leaks 20 parts ; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup ; but 'tis enough 'twill serve. I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self -suppression for me to keep from climbing to the 150 Strictly Business top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated. I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with ap- proximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old " marster " or anything that happened " befo' de wah." The hotel was one of the kind described as " reno- rated." That means $20,000 worth of new marble pil- lars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en brochette. At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was any- thing doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied : " Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin' after sundown." Sundown had been accomplished ; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there. A Municipal Report 151 It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum. As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, " Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned that I was merely a " fare " instead of a victim. I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Per- haps they didn't until they were " graded." On a few of the " main streets " I saw lights in stores here and there ; saw" street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than " main " seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind dis- creetly drawn window shades ; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little " doing." I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel. In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood ad- vanced against Nashville, where he shut up a National force 152 Strictly Business under General Thomas. The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict. All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful con- flicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick ! the tile floor the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship. Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything: Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip, And curse me the British vermin, the rat. Let us regard the word " British " as interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat. This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a A Municipal "Report 153 starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Bud- dha. He possessed one single virtue he was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder. I happened to be standing within five feet of a cus- pidor when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squirrel rifles ; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the op- portunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the bar. I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Wiirzburger and wish that Longstreet had but what's the use? Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the 154 Strictly Business last one at Appomattox I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my dis- taste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod. By this time I began to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him brusquely ; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver money. When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously : " If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally." " Why, no," said I, after some reflection ; " I don't see my way clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do A Municipal Report 155 not care for his company. Your town," I continued, " seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertain- ment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates? " " Well, sir," said the clerk, " there will be a show here next Thursday. It is I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night." After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, : pangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange. "A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. " Nothing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town." Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manu- facturing centres of the country. It is the fifth boet and shoe market in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods, grocery, and drug business. I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a Northern liter- 156 Strictly Business ary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal connection between the publication and one of its con- tributors, Azalea Adair. Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten or twenty. At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers en brochette (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner I came upon U/icle Cassar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyra- mids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King Cetti- wayo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and age had so variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story the story that is so long in coming, because you can hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville. Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But A Municipal Report 157 the frogs and tassels were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving " black mammy ") new frogs made of cunningly twisted com- mon hempen twine. This twine was frayed and dis- heveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled hues. The lone button was the size of a half- dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine. This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham him- self might have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I ap- proached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones: " Step right in, suh ; ain't a speck of dust in it jus' got back from a funeral, suh." I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among 158 Strictly Business the vehicles for hire that lined the curb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair. " I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and Was about to step into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden sus- picion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly : " What are you gwine there for, boss ? " " What is that to you? " I asked, a little sharply. " Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The seats is clean jes' got back from a funeral, suh." A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving ; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming win- dows were two rows of dim houses. The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of which 137 miles are paved; a system of water- works that cost $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains. Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed man- sion. Thirty yards back from the street it stood, out- A Municipal Report 159 merged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrub- bery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside. When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of con- scious generosity, as I did so. He refused it. " It's two dollars, suh," he said. " How's that ? " I asked. " I plainly heard you call out at the hotel : * Fifty cents to any part of the town.' ' " It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. " It's a long ways from the hotel." " It is within the city limits and well within them," I argued. " Don't think that you have picked up a green- horn Yankee. Do you see those hills over there ? " I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle) ; "well, I was born ancl raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from other people when you see 'em? " The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. " Is you from the South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They is somethin' sharp in the toea for a Southern gen'l'man to wear." 160 Strictly Business " Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose ? " said I inexorably. His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished. " Boss," he said, " fifty cents is right ; but I needs two dollars, suh; I'm obleeged to have two dollars. I ain't demandin' it now, suh ; after I knows whar you's from ; I'm jus' say in' that I has to have two dollars to-night, and business is mighty po'." Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance. " You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket, " you ought to be turned over to the po- lice." For the first time I saw him smile. He knew ; he Tcnew; HE KNEW. I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through in the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability. Enough of the African bandit for the present : I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened the creaky gate. The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it in twenty years. I could not see why a A Municipal Report 161 strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold. Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descend- ant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received me. The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pine- cone hanging basket but they were not there. Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learn- ing was not broad, but was deep and of splendid original- ity in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made. While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, uncon- sciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aure- 162 Strictly Business lius, Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much oh, so much too much of real life. I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and a dress she had, not much else, I fan- cied. So, divided between my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and found that I could not speak of contracts. In the presence of the nine Muses and the three Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There would have to be another col- loquy after I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of the next after- noon was set for the discussion of the business proposi- tion. " Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is the time for smooth generalities), " seems to be a quiet, sedate place. A home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever happen." It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity of more than 2,000 barrels. Azalea Adair seemed to reflect. " I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. A Municipal Report 163 " Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world I mean the building of the tower of Babel result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in the North American Review." " Of course," said I platitudinously, " human nature is the same everywhere ; but there is more color er more drama and movement and er romance in some cities than in others." " On the surface," said Azalea Adair. " I have trav- eled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was 164 Strictly Business sizzling as high as her heart ; but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and stores and lumber yards." Some one knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and went to inves- tigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders. " You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, " and a sugar cake." She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging eyes. Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand cor- ner missing, torn in two pieces and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro there was no doubt of it. " Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, " and get a quarter of a pound of tea the kind he always sends me and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she explained to me. Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her A Municipal Report 165 hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek I was sure it was hers filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words. Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and dis* appeared. For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then something like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair. " This is a roomy house," she said, " and I have a ten- ant for part of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps to-morrow Mr. Baker will be able to supply me." I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But to- morrow would do. That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I, managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accom- plice after the fact, if that is the correct legal term to a murder. As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door of his peripatetic 166 Strictly Business sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual: " Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean jus' got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any " And then he knew me and grinned broadly. " 'Scuse me, boss; you is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you kindly, suh." " I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three," said I, " and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss Adair? " I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill. " I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he re- plied. ** I judge that she is pretty poor," I said. " She hasn't much money to speak of, has she ? " For an instant I looked again at the fierce- countenance of King Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an ex- tortionate old Negro hack driver. " She ain't gwine to starve, suh," h said slowly* " She has reso'ces, suh ; she has reso'ces." " I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I. " Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly. " I jus' had to have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss.'* I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine : " A. Adair holds out for eight cents word." The answer that came back was : " Give it to her quick, you duffer." Just before dinner " Major " Wentworth Caswell bore A Municipal Report 167 down upon me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping, thereby, to es- cape another; but he was one of those despicable, roar- ing, advertising bibbers who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies. With an air of producing millions he drew two one- dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the mid- dle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other. I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clew to a tremendously fine detec- tive story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleep- ily : " Seems as if a lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, toov Wonder if " Then I fell asleep. King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rat- tled my bones over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready. 168 Strictly Business Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract at eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair. Without much trou- ble I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horse- hair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor. With a wis- dom that I had not suspected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired and capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) I ex- plained to him my presence in the hollow house of mys- tery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old Negro. " Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, " run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive run. I want you to get back sometime this week." It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a dis- trust as to the speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Cassar was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided that I might do. " It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said. " In other words, the result of poverty, pride, and star- A Municipal Report 169 vation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept nothing ex- cept from that old Negro, Uncle Casar, who was once owned by her family." " Mrs. Caswell ! " said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract and saw that she had signed it '* Azalea Adair Caswell." " I thought she was Miss Adair," I said. " Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor. " It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support." When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in sea- son, and their height of color. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to ths door. I told him that it was within my power and in- tentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Aza- lea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased. " By the way," he said, " perhaps you would like t er," remarked Dabster, " in comparison with the size of this building. I understand the area of its side to be about 340 by 100 feet. That would make you occupy a proportionate space as if half of Beloochistan were placed upon a territory as large as the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, with the Province of Ontario and Belgium added." "Is that so, sport?" said Joe, genially. "You are Weisenheimer on figures, all right. How many square pounds of baled hay do you think a jackass could eat if he stopped brayin' long enough to keep still a minute and five eighths? " A few minutes later Daisy and Mr. Dabster stepped from an. elevator to the top floor of the skyscraper. Then up a short, steep stairway and out upon the roof. Dabster led her to the parapet so she could look down at the black dots moving in the street below. " What are they? " she asked, trembling. She had never before been on a height like this before. And then Dabster must needs play the philosopher on the tower, and conduct her soul forth to meet the immen- sity of space. " Bipeds," he said, solemnly. " See what they become even at the small elevation of 340 feet mere crawling insects going to and fro at random." " Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed 180 Strictly Business Daisy, suddenly " they're folks ! I saw an automobile. Oh, gee ! are we that high up ? " " Walk over this way," said Dabster. He showed her the great city lying like an orderly ar- ray of toys far below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of the winter afternoon. And then the bay and sea to the south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky. " I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes. " Say we go down." But the philosopher was not to be denied his oppor- tunity. He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half -nelson he had on the infinite, and the mem- ory he had for statistics. And then she would never- more be content to buy chewing gum at the smallest store in New York. And so he began to prate of the small- ness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a re- moval from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed. And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted. " You don't carry me with you," said Daisy. " Say, I think it's awful to be up so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have been Joe. Why, Jimmy ! we might as well be in New Jersey ! Say, I'm afraid up here ! " The philosopher smiled fatuously. Psyche and the P sky scraper 181 " The earth," said he, " is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look up there." Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent and the stars were coming out above. " Yonder star," said Dabster, " is Venus, the evening star. She is 66,000,000 miles from the sun." " Fudge ! " said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, " where do you think I come from Brooklyn ? Susie Price, in our store her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco that's only three thousand miles." The philosopher smiled indulgently. " Our world," he said, " is 91,000,000 miles from the sun. There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,- 000,000 stars, including those of the thirteenth magni- tude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us. Each of these stars " " You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily. " You're tryin* to scare me. And you have ; I want to go down ! " She stamped her foot. " Arcturus " began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrupted by a demonstration out of the vast* 182 Strictly "Business ness of the nature that he was endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart. For to the heart- expounder of nature the stars were set in the firmament expressly to give soft light to lovers wandering happily beneath them; and if you stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm you can almost touch them with your hand. Three years for their light to reach us, indeed ! Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper almost to midday. Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky toward the east. It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed. " Take me down," she cried vehemently, " you you mental arithmetic ! " Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it. She was wild-eyed, and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop. Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the phi- losopher lost her. She vanished; and he stood, be- wildered, without figures or statistics to aid him. Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated stove. The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, cry- ing, scattering fruit and candies, tumbled into his arms. " Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper. Ain't it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me." XV A BIRD OF BAGDAD WITHOUT doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. Quigg's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue born and bred in the Bowery stag- gers northward full of good resolutions. Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit mate for its high*- born sister boulevard to the west, or its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square; and here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder in unison, recalling the tread of marching hosts Hooray ! But now come the silent and terrible moun- tains buildings square as forts, high as the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day. On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of " Littell's Living Age " and G. W. M. Reyn- old's novels in the windows. And next- poor Fourth 183 184 Strictly Business Avenue ! the street glides into a mediaeval solitude. On each side are the shops devoted to " Antiques." Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows and menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets. Hauberks and helms, blunder- busses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound cit- izens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the blood- stained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live inclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts scarce one good whoop or tra-la-la remained? Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but enliven- ing glories of the Little Rialto not after the echoing drum-beats of Union Square. There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen ; 'tis but the suicide of a street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth and is never seen again. Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the modest restaurant of Quigg. It stands there yet if you care to view its crumbling red-brick front, its show window heaped with oranges, tomatoes, layer cakes, pies, canned asparagus its papier-mache lobster and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce if you A Bird of Bagdad 185 care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been traced in the yellowest of coffee stains the trail of the Japanese advance to sit there with one eye on your umbrella and the other upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who assumes to be our dear old lord and friend, the " Nobleman in India." Quigg's title came through his mother. One of her ancestors was a Margravine of Saxony. His father was a Tammany brave. On account of the dilution of his heredity he found that he could neither become a reign- ing potentate nor get a job in the City Hall. So he opened a restaurant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave him a living, though he gave it little attention. One side of his house bequeathed to him a' poetic and romantic nature. The other gave him the restless spirit that made him seek adventure. By day he was Quigg, the restaurateur. By night he T/as the Margrave the Caliph the Prince of Bo- hemia going about the city in search of the odd, the mysterious, the inexplicable, the recondite. One night at 9, at which hour the restaurant closed, Quigg set forth upon his quest. There was a mingling of the foreign, the military and the artistic in his appear- ance as he buttoned his coat high up under his short- trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward toward the more central life conduits of the city. In his pocket he had stored an assortment of cards, written 186 Strictly Business upon, without which he never stirred out of doors. Each of those cards was good at his own restaurant for its face value. Some called simply for a bowl of soup or sand- wiches and coffee; others entitled their bearer to one, two, three or more days of full meals; a few were for single regular meals; a very few were, in effect, meal tickets good for a week. Of riches and power Margrave Quigg had none ; but he had a Caliph's heart it may be forgiven him if his head fell short of the measure of Harun Al Rashid's. Perhaps some of the gold pieces in Bagdad had put less warmth and hope into the complainants among the ba- zaars than had Quigg's beef stew among the fishermen and one-eyed calenders of Manhattan. Continuing his progress in search of romance to di- vest him, or of distress that he might aid, Quigg became aware of a fast-gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner of Broadway and the crosstown street that he was traversing. Hurrying to the spot he beheld a young man of an exceedingly melan- choly and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic was suspended. A policeman in the centre of the mob stooped often to the ground as he urged the blockaders to move on. The Margrave saw at a glance that here was food for A Bird of Bagdad 187 his hunger after knowledge concerning abnormal work- ings of the human heart. He made his way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm. " Come with me at once," he said, in the low but commanding voice that his waiters had learned to fear. " Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with expressionless eyes. " Pinched by a painless dentist. Take me away, flatty, and give me gas. Some lay eggs and some lay none. When is a hen ? " Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park. There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Caliph's mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of his substance and stores. " I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by iPompton, N. J., wasn't I? " asked the young man. *' You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to scramble after," said the Margrave. " That's it. You buy all the beer you can hold, and then you throw chicken feed to Oh, curse that word chicken, and hens, feathers, roosters, eggs, and every- thing connected with it ! " " Young sir," said the Margrave kindly, but with dig- nity, " though I do not ask your confidence, I invite it. 188 Strictly Business I know the world and I know humanity. Man is my study, though I do not eye him as the scientist eyes a beetle or as the philanthropist gazes at the objects of his bounty through a veil of theory and ignorance. It is my pleasure and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and complicated misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my fellow-men. You may be familiar with the history of that glorious and immortal ruler, the Caliph Harun Al Rashid, whose wise and be- neficent excursions among his people in the city of Bag- dad secured him the privilege of relieving so much of their distress. In my humble way I walk in his foot- steps. I seek for romance and adventure in city streets not in ruined castles or in crumbling palaces. To me the greatest marvels of magic are those that take place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and di- verse forces of a crowded population. In your strange behavior this evening I fancy a story lurks. I read ia your act something deeper than the wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift. I observe in your countenance the cer- tain traces of consuming grief or despair. I repeat I invite your confidence. I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. Will you not trust me? " " Gee, how you talk ! " exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes. " You've got the Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters. I mind that old Turk you speak of. I read ' The Arabian A Bird of Bagdad 189 Nights ' when I was a kid. He was a kind of Bill Dev- ery and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. But, say, you might wave enchanted dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night without ever touching me. My case won't yield to that kind of treatment." " If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious smile. " I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a deep sigh, " but I don't think you can help me any. Unless you're a peach at guessing it's back to the Bosphorus for you on your magic linoleum." THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE " I work in Hildebrant's saddle and harness shop down in Grant Street. I've worked there five years. I get $18 a week. That's enough to marry on, ain*t it? Well, I'm not going to get married. Old Hildebrant is one of these funny Dutchmen you know the kind always getting off bum jokes. He's got about a million riddles and things that he faked from Rogers Brothers' great-grandfather. Bill Watson works there, too. Me and Bill have to stand for them chestnuts day after day. Why do we do it? Well, jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush * ? And then there's Laura. "What? The old man's daughter. Comes in the shop every day. About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of the Rhine and charms 190 Strictly Business the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best harness blacking think of that! "Me? Well, it's either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill is all to the psychopathic about her ; and me ? well, you saw me plating the road- bed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-night. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your High- ness, and I wot not of what I wouldst. "How? Why, old Hildebrant says to me and Bill this afternoon : * Boys, one riddle have I for you ge- habt haben. A young man who cannot riddles ant- worten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide is not that hein ? ' And he hands us a riddle a conundrum, some calls it and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces. " The riddle? Why, it was this : * What kind of a hen lays the longest? ' Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest? Ain't it like a Dutchman to risk a man's happiness on a fool proposition like that? A Bird of "Bagdad 191 Now, what's the use? What I don't know about hens would fill several incubators. You say you're giving im- itations of the old Arab guy that gave away libraries in Bagdad. Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy that'll solve this hen query, or not? " When the young man ceased the Margrave arose and paced to and fro by the park bench for several minutes. Finally he sat again, and said, in grave and impressive tones : " I must confess, sir, that during the eight years that I have spent in search of adventure and in relieving dis- tress I have never encountered a more interesting or a more perplexing case. I fear that I have overlooked hens in my researches and observations. As to their habits, their times and manner of laying, their many varieties and cross-breedings, their span of life, their " " Oh, don't make an Ibsen drama of it ! " interrupted the young man, flippantly. " Riddles r- especially old Hildebrant's riddles don't have to be worked out se- riously. They are light themes such as Sim Ford and Harry Thurston Peck like to handle. But, somehow, I can't strike just the answer. Bill Watson may, and he may not. To-morrow will tell. Well, Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow that you butted in and whiled the time away. I guess Mr. Al Rashid himself would have bounced back if one of his constituents had conducted him up against this riddle. I'll say good night. Peace fo' yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah.'* 192 Strictly Business "The Margrave, with a gloomy air, held out his hand* *'I cannot express my regret," he said, sadly. ** Never before have I found myself unable to assist ia someway. ' What kind of a hen lays the longest? ' It is a baffling problem. There is a hen, I believe, called Ihe Plymouth Rock that " ** Cut it out," said the young man. " The Caliph trade is a mighty serious one. I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny in a preacher's defense of John D Rockefeller. Well, good night, Your Nibs." From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pock- ets. He drew forth a card and handed it to the young man. " Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said* " The time may come when it might be of use to you. w " Thanks ! " said the young man, pocketing it care- lessly. " My name is Simmons." ##*### Shame to him who would hint that the reader's inter- est shall altogether pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. I am indeed astray if my hand fail in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would fol- low. Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in at the door of Hildebrant, harness maker. Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench^ silver- buckling a raw leather martingale. Bill Watson came in first. " Veil," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile A Bird of Bagdad 193 conceit of the joke-maker, " haf you guessed him? ' Vat kind of a hen lays der longest? ' " Er why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. " I think so, Mr. Hildebrant the one that lives the longest Is that right? " " Nein ! " said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. " You haf not guessed der answer." Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bach- elorhood. In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco pale, melancholy, hopeless. "Veil," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? * Vat kind of a hen lays der longest ? ' Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye. Should he curse this mountain of pernicious humor curse him and die? Why should But there was Laura. Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and stood. His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margrave's card. He drew it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged look at a crawl- ing fly. There was written on it in Quigg's bold, round hand : " Good for one roast chicken to bearer." Simmons looked up with a flashing eye. " A dead one ! " said he. " Goot ! " roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. " Dot is right ! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party." XVI COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON 1 HERE are no more Christmas stories to write. Fio tion is exhausted; and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are re- duced to two very questionable sources facts and philosophy. We will begin with whichever you choose to call it. Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs. Now come the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, and the Twenty-fifth of December. On the tenth of that month the Child of the Million- aire lost her rag-doll. There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on the Hudson, and these ransacked 194 Compliments of the Season 195 the house and grounds, but without finding the lost treas- ure. The child was a girl of five, and one of those per- verse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, inexpensive toy instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and pony phaetons. The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inex- plicable to the Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting as Bay State Gas ; and to the Lady, the Child's mother, who was all form that is, nearly all, as you shall see. The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects. The Millionaire smiled and tapped his coffers confidently. The pick of the output of the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery to the mansion ; but Rachel refused to be comforted. She was weeping for her rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign foolishness. Then doctors with the finest bedside manners and stop-watches were called in. One by one they chattered futilely about pepto- manganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites until their stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the wire for show or place. Then, as men, they advised that the rag-doll be found as soon as possible and restored to its mourning parent. The Child sniffed at therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy. And all this time cablegrams were coming from 196 Strictly Business Santa Claus saying that he would soon be here and en- ^ joining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on the pool-rooms and tontine policies and platoor systems long enough to give him a welcome. Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing itself. The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows of the stores, they who had 'em were getting out their furs. You hardly knew which was the best bet in balls three, high, moth, or snow. It was no time at which to lose the rag-doll of your heart. If Doctor Watson's investigating friend had been called in to solve this mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the Millionaire's wall a copy of " The Vampire." That would have quickly suggested, by in- duction, "A rag and a bone and a hank of hair." " Flip," a Scotch terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child's heart, frisked through the halls. The hank of hair ! Aha ! X, the unf ound quantity, represented the rag-dolL But, the bone? Well, when dogs find bones they Done! It were an easy and a fruitful task to examine Flip's forefeet. Look, Watson! Earth dried earth between the toes. Of course, the dog but Sherlock was not there. Therefore it devolves. But topography and architecture must intervene. Compliments of the Season 197 The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man's face two days after a shave. At one side of it, and fronting on another street was a pleasaunce trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables. The Scotch pup had ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless undertakers. There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write for the hypo- dermical wizard or fi'-pun notes to toss to the sergeant. Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers the Christmas heart of the thing. Fuzzy was drunk not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as you or I might get, but decently, appro- priately, and inoffensively, as becomes a gentleman down on his luck. Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune. The road, the haystack, the park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary beds-with-shower-bath-attach- ment, the petty pickings and ignobly garnered largesse of great cities these formed the chapters of his his- tory. Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one side of the Millionaire's house and grounds. He saw a leg of Betsy, the lost rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery, from its un- timely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth the maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and 198 Strictly Business went on his way crooning a road song of his brethren that no doll that has been brought up to the sheltered life should hear. Well for Betsy that she had no ears. And well that she had no eyes save unseeing circles of black; for the faces of Fuzzy and the Scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of no rag-doll could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome monsters. Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river and near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled. In Grogan's, Christmas cheer was al- ready rampant. Fuzzy entered with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the feast of Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup. He set Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously, seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, as one entertaining his lady friend. The loafers and bibbers around caught the farce of it, and roared. The bartender gave Fuzzy a drink. Oh, many of us carry rag-dolls. " One for the lady ? " suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another contribution to Art beneath his waistcoat. He began to see possibilities in Betsy. His first-night had been a success. Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon him. In a group near the stove sat " Pigeon " McCarthy, Compliments of the Season 199 Black Riley, and " One-ear " Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a newspaper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed " One Hundred Dollars Reward." To earn it one must return the rag-doll lost, strayed, or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the too faithful Child. Flip, the terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, mama- ing, and eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes. The advertisement was a last resort. Black Riley came from behind the stove and ap- proached Fuzzy in his one-sided parabolic way. The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had tucked Betsy under his arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates elsewhere. " Say, 'Bo," said Black Riley to him, " where did you cop out dat doll ? " " This doll ? " asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger to be sure that she was the one referred to. " Why, this doll was presented to me by the Emperor of Beloochistan. I have seven hundred others in my country home in Newport. This doll " " Cheese the funny business," said Riley. " You swiped it or picked it up at de house on de hill where #00 Strictly Business but never mind dat. You want to take fifty cents f of de rags, and take it quick. Me brother's kid at home might be wantin' to play wid it. Hey what? " He produced the coin. Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuz- zy's laugh. Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine from the extempo^ raneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angei unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches of well-nourished corporeity, de- fended from the winter winds by dingy linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small, circular wrinkles running around his coat-sleeves and knees guar- anteed the quality of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the moisture of altruism and woozi- ness, looked upon you kindly, yet without abashment. He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily formidable. So, Black Riley temporized. " Wot'll you take for it, den ? " he asked. " Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, " cannot buy her." He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of Compliments of the Season 201 attainment. To set a faded-blue, earth-stained rag-doll on a bar, to hold mimic converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of plaudits earned and his throat scorching with free libations poured in his honor could base coin buy him from such achievements? You will perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament. Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea-lion in search of other cafes to conquer. Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were beginning to spangle the city like pop-corn bursting in a deep skillet. Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over the brink of the hour. Mil- lions had prepared for its celebration. Towns would be painted red. You, yourself, have heard the horns and dodged the capers of the Saturnalians. " Pigeon " McCarthy, Black Riley, and " One-ear " Mike held a hasty converse outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten the three of them. In a go-as-you- please encounter he was already doomed. They overtook him just as he and Betsy were enter- ing Costigan's Casino. They deflected him, and shoved the newspaper under his nose. Fuzzy could read and more. " Boys," said he, " you are certainly damn true friends. Give me a week to think it over." 202 Strictly Business The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty. The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertise- ments were soulless, and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied by the morrow. " A cool hundred," said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mush- ily. " Boys," said he, " you are true friends. I'll go up and claim the reward. The show business is not what it used to be." Night was falling more surely. The three tagged at his sides to the foot of the rise on which stood the Millionaire's house. There Fuzzy turned upon them acrimoniously. " You are a pack of putty-faced beagle-hounds," he roared. " Go away." They went away a little way. In " Pigeon " McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas-pipe eight inches long. In one end of it and in the middle of it was a lead plug. One-half of it was packed tight with solder. Black Riley carried a slung-shot, being a conventional thug. " One-ear " Mike relied upon a pair of brass knucks an heirloom in the family. " Why fetch and carry," said Black Riley, " when some one will do it for ye? Let him bring it out to us. Hey what?" " We can chuck him in the river," said " Pigeon * McCarthy, " with a stone tied to his feet.'* Compliments of the Season 203 " Youse guys make me tired," said " One-ear " Mike sadly. "Ain't progress ever appealed to none of yez? Sprinkle a little gasoline on 'im, and drop 'im on the Drive well?" Fuzzy entered the Millionaire's gate and zigzagged toward the softly glowing entrance of the mansion. The three goblins came up to the gate and lingered one on each side of it, one beyond the roadway. They fingered their cold metal and leather, confident. Fuzzy rang the door-bell, smiling foolishly and dreamily. An atavistic instinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right glove. But he wore no gloves ; so his left hand dropped, embarrassed. The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to. silks and laces shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport, his card of admission, his surety of welcome the lost rag-doll of the daughter of the house dangling under his arm. Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from unseen lights. The hireling went away and returned with a maid and the Child. The doll was re^ stored to the mourning one. She clasped her lost dar- ling to her breast ; and then, with the inordinate selfish- ness and candor of childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair. Fuzzy wriggled himself into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic smile and blattering small talk 204 Strictly Business that is supposed to charm the budding intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging her Betsy close. There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy's hand ten ten-dollar bills ; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions. James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far as the front door. When the money touched Fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his ; it had been given him. It and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye ! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand ; and now wherever he might go the en- chanted palaces with shining foot-rests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to him. He followed James to the door. He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for him to pass into the vestibule. Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Compliments of the Season 205 Black Riley and his two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs. Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire's door and be- thought himself. Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall gay where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and and some one was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before. Some one singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas Fuzzy thought he must have been pretty drunk to have over- looked that. And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of some impossible, vanished, and ir- revocable past a little, pure-white, transient, forgotten ghost the spirit of noblesse oblige. Upon a gentle- man certain things devolve. James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and " One-ear " Mike saw, and care- lessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate. With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used or could ever use, Fuzzy compelled the 206 Strictly Business menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve. Especially at the Christmas season. " It is cust customary," he said to James, the flus- tered, " when a gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season with the lady of the house. You und'stand? I shall not move shtep till I pass compl'ments season with lady the house. Und'- stand?" There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was simply a tramp being visited by a ghost. A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to an- swer it, leaving Fuzzy in the hall. James explained somewhere to some one. Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library. The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled, and said something about a doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll. A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to Fuzzy. As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his dis- abilities dropped from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy. Compliments of the Season 207 Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whisky. What had the Million- aire's mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab horses' hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda ? And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it? The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her con- descending smile fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something beneath the rags and- Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not under- stand. But it did not matter. Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly. " P-pardon, lady," he said, " but couldn't leave with- out exchangin' comp'ments sheason with lady th' house. 'Gainst princ'ples gen'leman do sho." And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the House when men wore lace ruffles and powder. " The blessings of another year " Fuzzy 's memory failed him. The Lady prompted; " Be upon this hearth." " The guest " stammered Fuzzy. 208 Strictly Business " And upon her who " continued the Lady, with a leading smile. " Oh, cut it out," said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. " I can't remember. Drink hearty." Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of her caste. James enveloped Fuzzy and re-conducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly drifted through the house. Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate. " I wonder," said the Lady to herself, musing, " who i but there were so many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them after they have fallen so low." Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called : " James ! " James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy wait- ing unsteadily, with his brief spark of the divine fire gone. Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his section of gas-pipe. " You will conduct this gentleman," said the Lady, " downstairs. Then tell Louis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes to go." xvn A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA THE great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph- ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are will- ing to let enjoy his spoils unsuc cored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not reshower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find any- where a hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the eleemosynary press. So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth Brother, hoping to escape the minis- trations of the roving horde of caliphoid sultans. Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the histories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of Commanders of the Faithful. Until dawn you might sit on the enchanted rug and listen to 209 210 Strictly Business such stories as are told of the powerful genie Roc-Ef~ El-Er who sent the Forty Thieves to soak up the oil plant of AH Baba; of the good Caliph Kar-Neg-Ghe, who gave away palaces ; of the Seven Voyages of Sail- bad, the Sinner, who frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands ; of the Fisherman and the Bottle ; of the Barmecides' Boarding house ; of Alad- din's rise to wealth by means of his Wonderful Gas- meter. But now, there being ten sultans to one Sheherazade, she is held too valuable to be in fear of the bowstring. In consequence the art of narrative languishes. And, as the lesser caliphs are hunting the happy poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover in order to heap upon them strange mercies and mysterious bene- fits, too often comes the report from Arabian head- quarters that the captive refused " to talk." This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be called THE STORY OF THE CALIPH WHO ALLEVIATED HIS CONSCIENCE Old Jacob Spraggins mixed for himself some Scotch and lithia water at his $1,200 oak sideboard. Inspira- tion must have resulted from its imbibition, for im* A Night in New Arabia 211 mediately afterward he struck the quartered oak soundly with his fist and shouted to the empty dining room : " By the coke ovens of hell, it must be that ten thou- sand dollars ! If I can get that squared, it'll do the trick." Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, having gained your interest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen years before. When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine. I don't know what a breaker boy is ; but his occupation seems to be standing by a coal dump with a wan look and a dinner-pail to have his picture taken for magazine articles. Anyhow, Jacob was one. But, instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his helpless parents and brothers at the mercy of the union strikers' reserve fund, he hitched up his galluses, put a dollar or two in a side proposi- tion now and then, and at forty-five was worth $20,000,000. There now ! it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you ? I've seen biographies that but let us dissemble. I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., after he had arrived at the seventh stage of his career. The stages meant are, first, humble origin ; second, deserved promotion ; third, stockholder ; fourth, capitalist ; fifth, trust magnate ; sixth, rich malefactor ; seventh, caliph ; 212 Strictly Business eighth, x. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher mathematics. At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business. The income of a czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, railroads, manufactories, and cor- porations, but none of it touched Jacob's hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private secretary. Jacob built a three-million- dollar palace on a corner lot fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and began to feel the mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon him. Event- ually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat four-in-hand, and became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat. When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul's salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be for- gotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate " estimates " it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. D. & Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a " Where-to-Dine-Well " tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that A Night in New Arabia 213 the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorce. Oh, well, I, my- self, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human Count Tolstoi, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us. Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degen- erating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers. There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon. When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the Zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of " Oddities of the Day's News " in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one " Jasper Spargyous " had " donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G." A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week ; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one 214 Strictly Business of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper. Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a $200,000 labora- tory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lava- tory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered. The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his ABC degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, added the proper punctua- tion marks, and all was well. While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, unde- signedly reached his ear. " There goes the latest chevalier d' Industrie," said one of them, " to buy a sleeping powder from us. He gets his degree to-morrow." " In foro conscientice" said the other. " Let's 'eave 'arf a brick at 'im." Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act. A Night in New Arabia 215 Jacob wearied of philanthropy on a large scale. " If I could see folks made happier," he said to him- self " If I could see 'em myself and hear 'em ex- press their gratitude for what I done for 'em it would make me feel better. This donatin' funds to institu- tions and societies is about as satisfactory as dropping money into a broken slot machine." So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets to the homes of the poorest. " The very thing ! " said Jacob. " I will charter two river steamboats, pack them full of these unfortunate children and say ten thousand dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a de- lightful outing up the Sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work it off my mind." Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent in- tentions, for an immense person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it ought to have a " Drop Let- ters Here " sign over it hooked a finger around him and set him in a space between a barber's pole and a stack of ash cans. Words came out of the post-office slit smooth, husky words with gloves on 3 em, but sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment. " Say, Sport, do you know where you are at? Well, dis is Mike O'Grady 's district you're buttin' into see ? Mike's got de stomach-ache privilege for every kid in 216 Strictly Business \ dis neighborhood see? And if dere's any picnics or red balloons to be dealt out here, Mike's money pays for 'em see? Don't you butt in, or something'll be handed to you. Youse d settlers and reformers with your social ologies and your millionaire detectives have got dis district in a hell of a fix, anyhow. With your college students and professors rough-housing de soda-water stands and dem rubber-neck coaches fillin' de streets, de folks down here are 'fraid to go out of de houses. Now, you leave 'em to Mike. Dey belongs to him, and he knows how to handle 'em. Keep on your own side of de town. Are you some wiser now, uncle, or do you want to scrap wit' Mike O'Grady for de Santa Claus belt in dis district ? " Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was pre- empted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to or- ganized charity, presented the Y. M. C. A. of his native town with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph's heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bell- boys and waiters $10 and $20 bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who A Night in New Arabia 217 with respect gratuities commensurate to the sery- ice performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of $50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this phi- lanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his optikos needleorum camelibiis or rich man's disease was unrelieved. In Caliph Spraggins's $3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five-cent eating house in Coketown, Pa., and who now would have offered John Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake. And his daughter Celia, nineteen, back from boarding-school and from being polished off by private instructors in the restaurant languages and those etudes and things. Celia is the heroine. Lest the artist's delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice- looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a per- petual smile. She had a wholesome, Spfaggins-in- herited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes. She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth. She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin tablets 218 Strictly Business rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, and she could whistle hornpipes. Keep this pic- ture in mind ; and let the artist do his worst. Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the grocer's young man. The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the transfer. A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon. Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer's young man yourself. But you wouldn't have given him your heart, because you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe-manufacturer with a torpid liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm Beach. Oh, I know about it. So I am glad the grocer's young man was for Celia, and not for you. The grocer's young man was slim and straight and as confident and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders. He wore a gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doc- trine of everlasting punishment to delivery-wagon horses. He slung imported Al fancy groceries about as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boarding-houses ; and when he picked up his whip, your A Night in New Arabia 219 .ind instantly recalled Mr. Tackett and his air with the buttonless foils. Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house. The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning. For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and the canning factories. Then she consulted Annette. To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second house- maid who deserves a paragraph herself. Annette Fletcherized large numbers of romantic novels which she obtained at a free public library branch (donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business). She was Celia's sidekicker and chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn't know it, you may hazard a bean or two. " Oh, canary-bird seed ! " exclaimed Annette. " Ain't it a corkin' situation? You a heiress, and fallin* in love with him on sight! He's a sweet boy, too, and above his business. But he ain't suspectible like the common run of grocer's assistants. He never pays no attention to me." " He will to me," said Celia. " Riches " began Annette, unsheathing the not un- justifiable feminine sting. " Oh, you're not so beautiful," said Celia, with her wide, disarming smile. " Neither am I ; but he sha'n't 220 Strictly Business know that there's any money mixed up with my looks, such as they are. That's fair. Now, I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette." " Oh, marshmallows ! " cried Annette. " I see. Ain't it lovely? It's just like Lurline, the Left- Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker's Wrongs.' I'll bet he'll turn out to be a count." There was a long hallway (or " passageway," as they call it in the land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the house. The grocer's young man went through this to deliver his goods. One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid's cap and apron. But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early Drumhead lettuce and Trophy toma- toes and three bunches of asparagus and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids. But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling " Fisher's Hornpipe " so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame. The grocer's young man stopped and pushed baci his cap until it hung on his collar button behind. " That's out o' sight, Kid," said he. " My name is Celia, if you please," said the whistler, dazzling him with a three-inch smile. A Night in New Arabia 221 "That's all right. I'm Thomas McLeod. What part of the house do you work in? " " I'm the the second parlor maid." " Do you know the Falling Waters'? " " No," said Celia, " we don't know anybody. We got rich too quick that is, Mr. Spraggins did." " I'll make you acquainted," said Thomas McLeod. " It's a strathspey a first cousin to a hornpipe." If Celia's whistling put the piccolos out of commis- sion, Thomas McLeod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes. He could actually whistle bass. When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferry-boat of the Charon line. " I'll be around to-morrow at 10 :15," said Thomas, " with some spinach and a case of carbonic." " I'll practice that what-you-may-call-it," said Celia. " I can whistle a fine second." The processes of courtship are personal, and do not belong to general literature. They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret by-laws of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap. But genteel writing may con- tain a description of certain stages of its progress with- out intruding upon the province of the X-ray or of park policemen. A day came when Thomas McLeod and Celia lingered at the end of the latticed " passage." 222 Strictly Business " Sixteen a week isn't much," said Thomas, letting his cap rest on his shoulder blades. Celia looked through the lattice-work and whistled a dead march. Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much for a dozen handker- chiefs. " Maybe I'll get a raise next month," said Thomas. " I'll be around to-morrow at the same time with a bag of flour and the laundry soap." " All right," said Celia. " Annette's married cousin pays only $20 a month for a flat in the Bronx." Never for a moment did she count on the Spraggins money. She knew Aunt Henrietta's invincible pride of caste and pa's mightiness as a Colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas she and her grocer's young man might go whistle for their living. Another day came, Thomas violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue with " The Devil's Dream," whistled keenly between his teeth. " Raised to eighteen a week yesterday," he said. " Been pricing flats around Morningside. You want to start untying those apron strings and unpinning that cap, old girl." " Oh, Tommy ! " said Celia, with her broadest smile. " Won't that be enough ? I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding. I guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to." " And tell no lie," said Thomas. A Night in New Arabia 223 " And I can sweep and polish and dust of course, a parlor maid learns that. And we could whistle duets of evenings." " The old man said he'd raise me to twenty at Christ- mas if Bryan couldn't think of any harder name to call a Republican than a ' postponer,' " said the grocer's young man. " I can sew," said Celia ; " and I know that you must make the gas company's man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter ; and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains." " Bully ! you're all right, Cele. Yes, I believe we can pull it off on eighteen." As he was jumping into the wagon the second parlor maid braved discovery by running swiftly to the gate. " And, oh, Tommy, I forgot," she called, softly. " I believe I could make your neckties." " Forget it," said Thomas decisively. " And another thing," she continued. " Sliced cu- cumbers at night will drive away cockroaches." " And sleep, too, you bet," said Mr. McLeod. " Yes, I believe if I have a delivery to make on the West Side this afternoon I'll look in at a furniture store I know over there." It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spraggins struck the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember. Which justifies the reflection 224 Strictly Business that some stories, as well as life, and puppies thrown into wells, move around in circles. Painfully but briefly we must shed light on Jacobs' words. The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried to raise corn. Not a nubbin. Jacob, whose nose was a divining-rod, told him there was a vein of coal beneath. He bought the land from the miner for $125 and sold it a month after- ward for $10,000. Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself into a black coat opening in the back, as soon as he heard the news. And so, forty years afterward, we find Jacob il- luminated with the sudden thought that if he could make restitution of this sum of money to the heirs or assigns of the unlucky miner, respite and Nepenthe might be his. And now must come swift action, for we have here some four thousand words and not a tear shed and never a pistol, joke, safe, nor bottle cracked. Old Jacob hired a dozen private detectives to find the heirs, if any existed, of the old miner, Hugh McLeod. Get the point? Of course I know as well as you do that Thomas is going to be the heir. I might have concealed the name ; but why always hold back your mystery till the end? I say, let it come near the mid- A Night in New Arabia 225 31e so people can stop reading there if they want to. After the detectives had trailed false clues about three thousand dollars I mean miles they cornered Thomas at the grocery and got his confession that Hugh McLeod had been his grandfather, and that there were no other heirs. They arranged a meeting for him and old Jacob one morning in one of their offices. Jacob liked the young man very much. He liked the way he looked straight at him when he talked, and the way he threw his bicycle cap over the top of a rose- colored vase on the centre-table. There was a slight flaw in Jacob's system of restitu- tion. He did not consider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession. So he represented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the land who had sent him to refund the sale price for the ease of his conscience. " Well, sir," said Thomas, " this sounds to me like an illustrated post-card from South Boston with ' We're having a good time here ' written on it. I don't know the game. Is this ten thousand dollars money, or do I have to save so many coupons to get it? " Old Jacob counted out to him twenty five-hundred- dollar bills. That was better, he thought, than a check. Thomas put them thoughtfully into his pocket. " Grandfather's best thanks," he said, " to the party who sends it." 226 Strictly 'Business Jacob talked on, asking him about his work, how he spent his leisure time, and what his ambitions were. The more he saw and heard of Thomas, the better he liked him. He had not met many young men in Bagdad so frank and wholesome, " I would like to have you visit my house," he said. " I might help you in investing or laying out your money. I am a very wealthy man. I have a daughter about grown, and I would like for you to know her. There are not many young men I would care to have call on her." " I'm obliged," said Thomas. " I'm not much at making calls. It's generally the side entrance for mine. And, besides, I'm engaged to a girl that has the Dela- ware peach crop killed in the blossom. She's a parlor maid in a house where I deliver goods. She won't be working there much longer, though. Say, don't for- get to give your friend my grandfather's best regards. You'll excuse me now ; my wagon's outside with a lot of green stuff that's got to be delivered. See you again, sir." At eleven Thomas delivered some bunches of parsley and lettuce at the Spraggins mansion. Thomas was only twenty-two; so, as he came back, he took out the handful of five-hundred-dollar bills and waved them carelessly. Annette took a pair of eyes as big as creamed onions to the cook. A Night in New Arabia 227 " I told you he was a count," she said, after relating. " He never would carry on with me." " But you say he showed money," said the cook. " Hundreds of thousands," said Annette. " Carried around loose in his pockets. And he never would look at me." " It was paid to me to-day," Thomas was explaining to Celia outside. " It came from my grandfather's estate. Say, Cele, what's the use of waiting now ? I'm going to quit the job to-night. Why can't we get mar- ried next week ? " " Tommy," said Celia, " I'm no parlor maid. I've been fooling you. I'm Miss Spraggins Celia Sprag- gins. The newspapers say I'll be worth forty million dollars some day." Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time since we have known him. " I suppose then," said he, " I suppose then you'll not be marrying me next week. But you can whistle." " No," said Celia, " I'll not be marrying you next week. My father would never let me marry a grocer's clerk. But I'll marry you to-night, Tommy, if you say so." Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9 :30 P. M., in his motor car. The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully ; I am giving you unsubsidized fiction ; had it been a street car I could have told you its voltage and 228 Strictly Business the number of flat wheels it had. Jacob called for his daughter; he had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was. There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty well mixed with envy and histrionics. " Oh, sir," said she, wondering if she should kneel, " Miss Celia's just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young man to be married. I couldn't stop her, sir. They went in a cab." " What young man ? " roared old Jacob. " A millionaire, if you please, sir a rich nobleman in disguise. He carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was only to blind us 1 , sir. He never did seem to take to me." Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car. The chauffeur had been delayed by trying to light a ciga- rette in the wind. " Here, Gaston, or Mike, or whatever you call your- self, scoot around the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab. If you do, run it down." There was a cab in sight a block away. Gaston, or Mike, with his eyes half shut and his mind on his cigarette, picked up the trail, neatly crowded the cab to the curb and pocketed it. " What fell you doin'? " yelled the cabman. "Pa!" shrieked Celia. A Night in New Arabia 229 *' Grandfather's remorseful friend's agent ! " said Thomas. " Wonder what's on his conscience now." " A thousand thunders ! " said Gaston, or Mike. " I have no other match." " Young man," said old Jacob, severely, " how about that parlor maid you were engaged to? " A couple of years afterward old Jacob went into the office of his private secretary. " The Amalgamated Missionary Society solicits a contribution of $30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans," said the secretary. " Pass 'em up," said Jacob. " The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment fund of $50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due." " Tell em it's been cut out." " The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for $10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens." " Waste basket." " The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course." " Tell 'em to see an undertaker. " Cut 'em all out," went on Jacob. " I've quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I'm interested in and recommend a 10 per cent. 230 Strictly Business cut in salaries. And say I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrubwoman about waste. I've got no money to throw away. And say we've got vine-, gar pretty well in hand, haven't we? " "The Globe Spice & Seasons Company," said the secretary, "controls the market at present." " Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches." Suddenly Jacob Spraggin's plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary's desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger. " Bit it," he said, " darned if he didn't, and he ain't had the tooth three weeks Jaky McLeod, my Celia's kid. He'll be worth a hundred millions by the time he's twenty-one if I can pile it up for him." As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door, and said: " Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I'll be back in an hour and sign the letters." The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid re- lates that toward the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his " Arabian Nights " rambles. Happy are we in these days of enlighten- ment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman's bill. XVIII THE GIRL AND THE HABIT HABIT a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or fre- quent repetition. 1 HE critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life they reproached us for trying to imitate Henry George, George Washington, Washington Irving and Irving Bacheller. We wrote of the West and the East, and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry James. We wrote from our heart > and they said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew or er yes, Deuter- onomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade mecum the un- abridged dictionary. Miss Merriam was cashier at Hinkle's. Hinkle's is one of the big downtown restaurants. It is in what the papers call the " financial district." Each day from 231 232 Strictly Business 12 o'clock to 2 Hinkle's was full of hungry customers messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining stock, promoters, inventors with patents pend- ing and also people with money. The cashiership at Hinkle's was no sinecure. Hinkle egged and toasted and griddle-caked and coffeed a good many customers; and he lunched (as good a word as " dined ") many more. It might be said that Hinkle's breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his luncheon patronage amounted to a horde. Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk inclosed on three sides by a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at the bottom you thrust your waiter's check and the money, while your heart went pit-a-pat. For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take 45 cents out of a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could Next! lost your chance please don't shove. She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle's casters. There is an old and dignified allusion to the " fierce light that beats upon a throne." The light that beats upon the young lady cashier's cage is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang. The Girl and the Habit 233 Every male patron of Hinkle's, from the A. D. T. boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Mer- riam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid's art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compli- ments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, lan- guishing looks and merry banter that was wafted point- edly back by the gifted Miss Merriam. There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of young lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce; she is duchess of dol- lars and devoirs, countess of compliments and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures ; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert Psyche, Circe and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your sirloin medium. The young men who broke bread at Hinkle's never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badi- nage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative 234 Strictly Business petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate. During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam's convex sation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this: " Good morning, Mr. Haskins sir? it's natural, thank you don't be quite so fresh . . . Hello, Johnny ten, fifteen, twenty chase along now or they'll take the letters off your cap . . . Beg pardon count it again, please Oh, don't mention it ... Vaudeville? thanks; not on your moving picture I was to see Carter in Hedda Gabler on Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons . . . 'Scuse me, I thought that was a quarter . . . Twenty-five and seventy-five's a dollar got that ham-and-cabbage habit yet. I see, Billy . . . Who are you addressing? say you'll get all that's coming to you in a minute . . . Oh, fudge ! Mr. Bassett you're always fooling no ? Well, maybe I'll marry you some day three, four and sixty-five is five . . . Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you please . . . Ten cents? 'scuse me; the check calls for seventy well, maybe it is a one instead of a seven . . . Oh, do you like it that way, Mr. Saunders ? some prefer a pomp ; but they say this Cleo de Merody does suit refined features . . . and ten is fifty . . . Hike along there, buddy; don't take this for a Coney Island ticket booth . . . Huh? ' The Girl and the Habit 235 why, Macy's don't it fit nice? Oh, no, it isn't too cool these light-weight fabrics is all the go this sea- son . . . Come again, please that's the third time you've tried to what? forget it that lead quarter is an old friend of mine . . . Sixty-five? must have bad your salary raised, Mr. Wilson ... I seen you on Sixth Avenue Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest swell? oh, my! > who is she? . . . What's the matter with it? why, it ain't money what? Columbian half? well, this ain't South America . . . Yes, I like the mixed best Friday? awfully sorry, but I take my jiu-jitsu lesson on Friday Thursday, then . . . Thanks that's sixteen times I've been told that this morning I guess I must be beautiful . . . Cut that out, please who do you think I am ? . . . Why, Mr. Westbrook do you really think so? the idea!^ one eighty and twenty's a dollar thank you ever so much ; but I don't ever go automobile riding with gentle- men your aunt? well, that's different perhaps . . . Please don't get fresh your check was fifteen cents, I believe' kindly step aside and let ... Hello, Ben -coming around Thursday evening? r there's a gentleman going to send around a box of chocolates, and . . . forty and sixty is a dollar, and one is two . . ." About the middle of one afternoon the dizzy goddess Vertigo whose other name is Fortune suddenly smote an old, wealthy and eccentric banker while he was walking past Hinkle's, on his way to a street car. A 236 Strictly Business wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in street cars is * move up, please ; there are others. A Samaritan, a Pharisee, a man and a policeman who were first on the spot lifted Banker McRamsey and car- ried him into Hinkle's restaurant. When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes he saw a beautiful vision bending over him with a pitiful, tender smile, bath- ing his forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frappe out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRam- sey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his fair preserveress, and then recovered conscious- ness. To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance! Banker McRamsey had an aged and re- spected wife, and his sentiments toward Miss Merriara were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with interest not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. The next day he brought Mrs. Mc- Ramsey down to see her. The old couple were child- less they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn. To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle's again and again ; they invited her to their old- fashioned but splendid home in one of the East Seven- ties. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded The Girl and the Habit 237 them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, nee Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer. Miss Mer- riam was a combination of curves, smiles, rose leaves, pearls, satin and hair-tonic posters. Enough of the fatuity of parents. A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss Merriam, she stood before Hinkle one after- noon and resigned her cashiership. " They're going to adopt me," she told the bereft res- taurateur. " They're funny old people, but regular dears. And the swell home they have got! Say, Hinkle, there isn't any use of talking I'm on the a la carte to wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or marry- a duke at least. Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old cage. I've been cashiering so long I feel funny doing anything else. I'll miss joshing the fel- lows awfully when they line up to pay for the buck- wheats and. But I can't let this chance slide. And they're awfully good, Hinkle; I know I'll have a swell time. You owe me nine-sixty-two and a half for the week. Cut out the half if it hurts you, Hinkle." And they did. Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa Mc- Ramsey. And she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins? The McRamseys poured out money like domestic cham- 238 Strictly Business pagne to polish their adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. Miss er Mc- Ramsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle's. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle's did fade from her memory and speech most of the time. Not every one will remember when the Earl of Hites- bury came to East Seventy Street, America. He was only a fair-to-medium earl, without debts, and he created little excitement. But you will surely remem- ber the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence held their bazaar in the W f-A a Hotel. For you were there, and you wrote a note to Fannie on the hotel paper, and mailed it, just to show her that you did not? Very well ; that was the evening the baby was sick, of course. At the Bazaar the McRamseys were prominent. Miss Mer er McRamsey was exquisitely beautiful. The Earl of Hitesbury had been very attentive to her since he dropped in to have a look at America. At the charity bazaar the affair was supposed to be going to be pulled off to a finish. An earl is as good as a duke. Better. His standing may be lower, but his outstanding accounts are also lower. Our ex-young-lady-cashier was assigned to a booth. She was expected to sell worthless articles to nobs and snobs at exorbitant prices. The proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving to the poor children of the The Girl and the Habit 239 slums a Christmas din Say ! did you ever wonder where they get the other 364 ? Miss McRamsey beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, radiant fluttered about in her booth. An imitation brass network, with a little arched opening, fenced her in. Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, ad- miring admiring greatly, and faced the open wicket. " You look chawming, you know 'pon my word you do my deah," he said, beguilingly. Miss McRamsey whirled around. "Cut that joshing out," she said, coolly and briskly. " Who do you think you are talking to? Your check, please. Oh, Lordy ! " Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a certain booth. The Earl of Hites- bury stood near by pulling a pale blond and puzzled whisker. " Miss McRamsey has fainted," some one explained. XIX PROOF OF THE PUDDING SPRING winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Mvnerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square. The lenient air and the settings of the little park al- most formed a pastoral ; the color motif was green the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation. The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that hallroom poets rhyme with " true " and " Sue " and " coo." The one natural and frank color visible was the 240 Proof of the Pudding 241 ostensible green of the newly painted benches a shade between the color of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year's fast-black cravenette raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape ap- peared a masterpiece. And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor's mind. Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edi- tion before the tenth day of the month a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor's) salary ; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen ; and the morning papers had pub- lished in full a speech he had made at a publishers' ban- quet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his up-town apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the convalescent city. While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the 242 Strictly Business rows of park benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was Dawe Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby. While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Dawe is offered. He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became " dearest " friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capi- tal, and he moved to the Gramercy Park neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them ; the rest were returned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected manu- script, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear Proof of the Pudding 243 conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was mainly concerned about the con- stituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting to her about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they sat down to a dish that a hungry school- boy could have encompassed at a gulp. Dawe com- mented. " It's Maupassant hash," said Mrs. Dawe. " It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry." As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months. " Why, Shack, is this you ? " said Westbrook, some- what awkwardly, for the form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance. " Sit down for a minute," said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. *' This is my office. I can't come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down you won't be dis- graced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor." " Smoke, Shack? " said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield. 244 Strictly Business Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream. " I have just " began the editor. " Oh, I know ; don't finish," said Dawe. " Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn't read the ' Keep off the Grass ' signs." " How goes the writing? " asked the editor. " Look at me," said Dawe, " for your answer. Now don't put on that embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a job as a wine agent or a cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know I can. write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll make you change the spelling of ' regrets ' to * c-h-e-q-u-e ' before I'm done with you." Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression the copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailable contributor. " Have you read the last story I sent you ' The Alarum of the Soul ' ? " asked Dawe. " Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret " " Never mind the regrets," said Dawe, grimly. " There's neither salve nor sting in 'em any more. What Proof of the Pudding 245 T want to know is why. Come, now ; out with the good points first." " The story," said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, " is written around an almost original plot. Characterization the best you have done. Construction almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good story, except ' " I can write English, can't I? " interrupted Dawe. " I have always told you," said the editor, " that you had a style." " Then the trouble is the " " Same old thing," said Editor Westbrook. " You work up to your climax like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, Shack, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible per- spective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, ob- literating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pin- nacle of your dramatic scenes, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door." " Oh, fiddles and footlights ! " cried Dawe, derisively. *' You've got that old sawmill drama kink in your brain p 246 Strictly Business yet. When the man with the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: ' May high heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another's vengeance! ' ' Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency. " I think," said he, " that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or in very similar ones." " Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said Dawe hotly. " I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say : ' What ! Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble after another ! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station. Why wasn't somebody looking after her f Fd like to know? For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy ; she's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy ! How I'm upset ! ' " That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe. " People in real life don't fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a little more, that's all." Proof of the Pudding 247 " Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, " did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips ? " " I never did," said Dawe. " Did you? " " Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. " But I can well imagine what she would say." " So can I," said Dawe. And now the fitting time had come for Editor West- brook to play the oracle and silence his opinionated con- tributor. It was not for an unarrived fictionist to dic- tate words to be uttered by the heroes and heroines of the Minerva Magazine, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof. " My dear Shack," said he, " if I know anything of lif e I know that every sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, con- formable and proportionate expression of feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been de* prived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her cus- tomary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile va* 248 Strictly Business porings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion a sense unconsciously acquired from litera- ture and the stage that prompts them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and his- trionic value." " And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and literature get the stunt? " asked Dawe. " From life," answered the editor, triumphantly. The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent. On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral support was due a downtrodden brother. " Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe. '* Wat's he come makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes in the Square to set and think?" Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure. " Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, " what especial faults in * The Alarum of the Soul ' caused you to throw it down ? " ** When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, " goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancee has been shot Proof of the Pudding 249 by a burglar, he says I do not recall the exact words, but" " I do," said Dawe. " He says : * Damn Central ; she always cuts me off.' (And then to his friend) ' Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you get me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No ; straight ; nothing on the side.' " "And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, " when Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are let me see " "She says," interposed the author: "'Well, what do you think of that ! ' " " Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, " presenting an anti-climax plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet ; they mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy." " Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws dog- gedly. " I say no man or woman ever spouts ' high- falutin ' talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally and a little worse." The editor rose from the bench with his air of indul- gence and inside information. " Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, " would you have accepted ' The Alarum of the Soul ' if you had believed that the actions and words 250 Strictly Business of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story that we discussed? " " It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said the editor. " But I have explained to you that I do not." " If I could prove to you that I am right ? " " I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further just now." " I don't want to argue," said Dawe. " I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my view is the correct one." " How could you do that ? " asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone. " Listen," said the writer, seriously. " I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the maga- zines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'm down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due." " I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, " in selecting the fiction for the Minerva Maga- zine. The circulation has gone up from ninety thou- sand to " " Four hundred thousand," said Dawe. " Whereas it should have been boosted to a million." " You said something to me just now about demon- strating your pet theory." "I will. If you'll give me about half an hour o/ Proof of the Pudding 251 jour time I'll prove to you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise." " Your wife ! " exclaimed Westbrook. " How? " " Well, not exactly by her, but with her," said Dawe. " Now, you know how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only genuine prepara- tion on the market that bears the old doctor's signature. She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast for the neglected genius part." " Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life com- panion," agreed the editor. " I remember what insep- arable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one .of those informal chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much." " Later," said Dawe. ** When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast Louise told me she was going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return home at three o'clock. She is always on time to a minute. It is now " Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket. " Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning his time-piece. " We have just enough time," said Dawe. " We will 252 Strictly Bu-siness go to my flat at once. I will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-room concealed by the portieres. In that note I'll say that I have fled from her forever with an affinity who under- stands the needs of my artistic soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the cor- rect one yours or mine." '* Oh, never ! " exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. ** That would be inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings played upon in such a manner." " Brace up," said the writer. '* I guess I think as much of her as you do. It's for her benefit as well as mine. Fve got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only a minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook." Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity His that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go around. Proof of the Pudding 253 The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hur- ried eastward and then to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat of ver- nal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. Sic transit gloria urbis. A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short dis- tance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated fa9ade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front flats. When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished. " Get a chair, if you can find one," said Dawe, " while I hunt up pen and ink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning.** He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard: 254 Strictly Business " DEAR SHACKLEFOKD : " By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock. I didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. ' She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg and dictionary, and she's not com- ing back, either. We've been practising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along all right ! Good-bye. " LOUISE." Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a deep, vibrating voice : '* My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting by-words of traitors and fiends! " . Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fin- gers of one hand fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips : " Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off your perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack ain't it? " XX PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S ONLY on the lower East Side of New York do tfe houses of Capulet and Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch ; but in the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must ob- serve the niceties of deportment to the wink of an eye- lash and to an inch of elbow room at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and kin. So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the cogni- zance of the enemy's movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain ; experience whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering 255 256 Strictly Business steins at Dutch Mike's that night. Close by his side drew Brick deary, his Mercutio, companion of his perambu- lations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P's and Q's so solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek safety when- ever the ominous politeness of the rival associations con- gealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel. But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom. Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy. had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone. Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy. Past One at Ttooney's 257 The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Mon- tagu supported by three distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be seen. " Raus mit der interrogatories," said Buck Malone to the officer. " Sure I know who done it. I always man- ages to get a bird's eye view of any guy that comes up an' makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No. I'm not telling you his name. I'll settle with um meself . Wow ouch ! Easy, boys ! Yes, I'll attend to his case meself. I'm not making any complaint." At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lum- ber near an East Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. " He'll maybe not croak," said Brick ; " and he won't tell, of course. But Dutch Mike did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It's unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan's in Europe for a week's end with Kings. He'll be back on the Kaiser Williams next Friday. You'll have to duck out of sight till then. Tim'll fix it up all right for us when he comes back." This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney's one night and there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first time in his pre- carious career. Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt 258 Strictly ^Business among Kings and Princes and hold up his big white fin- ger in private offices, it was unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the Kaiser. Wilhelm. It was on Thursday evening that Cork's seclusion be- came intolerable to him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the police to suppress the gangs. If they got him be- fore Corrigan came back, the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then. But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures that represented life to him. At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking up at the name " Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough " hang-out " ; with its frequenters and its lo- cality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring Past One at Rooney's 259 indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the cafe. Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled with Rooney's guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious unpre- cision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a song songs full of " Mr. Johnsons " and " babes " and " coons " historical word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street. For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives, seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois, the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's foot work, and the poise of an eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more than respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i' the mouth drink and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the 260 Strictly Business waiter swabs the suds from under your sticky glass. There is an answer. Transmigration! The soul of Sir Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet to a kindred home under Rooney's visible plaid waistcoat. Rooney's is twenty years ahead of the times. Rooney has removed the embargo. Rooney has spread his cloak upon the soggy crossing of public opinion, and any Elizabeth who treads upon it is as much a queen as another. Attend to the revelation of the secret. In Rooney's ladies may smoke ! McManus sat down at a vacant table. He paid for the glass of beer that he ordered, tilted his narrow- brimmed derby to the back of his brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweet- ness to his taste. The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, joyless laugh- ter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding si- lence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed bene- ficiaries of Rooney's removal of the restrictions laid upon the weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked lemon peel, flat beer, and peau d'Espagne all these were manna to Cork McManus, hungry for his week in the desert of the Capulet's high rear room. A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his Past One at Ttooney's 261 table. Her eyes rested upon him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres all men whom she for the first time confronts. In that space of time she will decide upon one of two things either to scream for the police, or that she may marry him later on. Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn red morocco shopping bag with the inev- itable top-gallant sail of frayed lace handkerchief flying from a corner of it. After she had ordered a small beer from the immediate waiter she took from her bag a box of cigarettes and lighted one with slightly exaggerated ease of manner. Then she looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus and smiled. Instantly the doom of each was sealed. The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for a woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon among that humble portion of humanity that does not care for Bradstreet or coats-of- arms or Shaw's plays. Love at first sight has occurred a time or two in high life ; but, as a rule, the extempore mania is to be found among unsophisticated creatures such as the dove, the blue-tailed dingbat, and the ten- dollar-a-week clerk. Poets, subscribers to all fiction magazines, and schatchens, take notice. With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each of them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle, and deceive, which is the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as love. 262 Strictly 'Business " Have another beer? " suggested Cork. In his cii- cle the phrase was considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction and references. " No, thanks," said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her conventional words carefully. "I merely dropped in for a slight refreshment." The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require explana- tion. " My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, " and we often have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home," " Cheese it ! " said Cork, whom society airs oppressed. ** Your fingers are as yellow as mine." " Say," said the girl, blazing upon him with low- voiced indignation, "what do you think I am? Say, who do you think you are talking to? What? " She was pretty to look at. Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and bright. Under her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, her crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back, low and massy, in a thick, pendant knot behind. The roundness of girlhood still lingered in her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were thinning slightly. She looked upon the world with defiance, sus- picion, and sullen wonder. Her smart, short tan coat was soiled and expensive. Two inches below her black dress dropped the lowest flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt. " Beg your pardon," said Cork, looking at her admir- Past One at Rooney's 263 ingly. " I didn't mean anything. Sure, it's no harm to smoke, Maudy." " Rooney's," said the girl, softened at once by his amends, " is the only place I know where a lady can smoke. Maybe it ain't a nice habit, but aunty lets us at home. And my name ain't Maudy, if you please ; it's Ruby Delamere." " That's a swell handle," said Cork approvingly. " Mine's McManus > Cor er Eddie McManus." " Oh, you can't help that," laughed Ruby. " Don't apologize." Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney's wall. The girl's ubiquitous eyes took in the movement. " I know it's late," she said, reaching for her bag ; " but you know how you want a smoke when you want one. Ain't Rooney's all right? I never saw anything wrong here. This is twice I've been in. I work in a bookbindery on Third Avenue. A lot of us girls have been working overtime three nights a week. They won't let you smoke there, of course. I just dropped in here on my way home for a puff. Ain't it all right in here? If it ain't, I won't come any more." " It's a little bit late for you to be out alone any- where," said Cork. "I'm not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don't want to have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School teacher. Have one more beer, and then say I take you home." 264 Strictly "Business " But I don't know you," said the girl, with fine scru* pulosity. " I don't accept the company of gentlemen I ain't acquainted with. My aunt never would allow that." " Why," said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, " I'm the latest thing in suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin' a lady. You bet you'll find me all right, Ruby. And I'll give you a tip as to who I am. My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns o the Wall Street push. Morgan's cab horse casts a shoe every time the old man sticks his head out the window. Me! Well, I'm in trainin' down the Street. The old man's goin' to put a seat on the Stock Exchange in my stockin' my next birthday. But it all sounds like a lemon to me. What I like is golf and yachtin' and er well, say a corkin' fast ten-round bout between, welter-weights with walkin' gloves." " I guess you can walk to the door with me," said the girl hesitatingly, but with a certain pleased flutter. " Still I never heard anything extra good about Wall Street brokers, or sports who go to prize fights, either. Ain't you got any other recommendations ? " " I think you're the swellest looker I've had my lamps on in little old New York," said Cork impressively. " That'll be about enough of that, now. Ain't you the kidder ! " She modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-embellished look at her cavalier, drink our beer before we go, ha? " Past One at Rooney's 265 A waiter sang. The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising in spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumu- lus clouds, cataracts and suspended fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of the ancient four. Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by Rooney's liquids and Rooney's gallant hospitality to Lady Nico- tine. One o'clock struck. Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and locking doors. Frank pulled down the green shades of the front windows carefully. Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood at the front door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand. Thence- forth whoever might seek admittance must present a countenance familiar to Rooney's hawk's eye the countenance of a true sport. Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced ; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality ; the mildest claret punch struck a knockout blow at law and order; the harmless and genial company became outlaws, defying authority and rule. For after the stroke of one in such places as Rooney's, where neither bed nor board is to be had, 266 Strictly Business drink may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million. It is the law. " Say," said Cork McManus, almost covering the ta- ble with his eloquent chest and elbows, " was that dead straight about you workin' in the bookbindery and livin* At home and just happenin' in here and and all that spiel you gave me ? " " Sure it was," answered the girl with spirit. " Why, jrhat do you think? Do you suppose I'd lie to you? Go down to the shop and ask 'em. I handed it to you n the level." " On the dead level? " said Cork. " That's the way jf want it ; because " " Because what ? " " I throw up my hands," said Cork. " You've got me goin'. You're the girl I've been lookin' for. Will you keep company with me, Ruby ? " " Would you like me to Eddie? " " Surest thing. But I wanted a straight story about about yourself, you know. When a fellow has a girl i a steady girl she's got to be all right, you know. She's got to be straight goods." " You'll find I'll be straight goods, Eddie." " Of course you will. I believe what you told me. But you can't blame me for wantin' to find out. You don't see many girls smokin* cigarettes in places like Rooney's after midnight that are like you." The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes. " I Past One at Itooney's 267 see that now," she said meekly. " I didn't know how bad it looked. But I won't do it any more. And I'll go straight home every night and stay there. And I'll give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie I'll cut 'em out from this minute on." Cork's air became judicial, proprietary, condemna- tory, yet sympathetic. " A lady can smoke," he de- cided, slowly, " at times and places. Why ? Because it's bein' a lady that helps her to pull it off." " I'm going to quit. There's nothing to it," said the girl. She flicked the stub of her cigarette to the floor. " At times and places," repeated Cork. " When I call round for you of evenin's we'll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and have a puff or two. But no more Rooney's at one o'clock see ? " "Eddie, do you really like me?" The girl searched his hard but frank features eagerly with anxious eyes. " On the dead level." " When are you coming to see me where I live ? " " Thursday day after to-morrow evenin'. That suit you? " " Fine. I'll be ready for you. Come about seven. Walk to the door with me to-night and I'll show you where I live. Don't forget, now. And don't you go to see any other girls before then, mister ! I bet you will, though." " On the dead level," said Cork, " you make 'em all 268 Strictly Business look like rag-dolls to me. Honest, you do. I know when I'm suited. On the dead level, I do." Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were delivered. The loud crashes resounded in the room above. Only a trip-hammer or a policeman's foot could have been the author of those sounds. Rooney jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the room, turned off the electric lights and hurried swiftly below. The room was left utterly dark except for the winking red glow of cigars and cigarettes. A second volley of crashes came up from the assaulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring panic moved among the besieged guests. Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring, could be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table to table. " All keep still ! " was his caution. " Don't talk or make any noise! Everything will be all right. Now, don't feel the slightest alarm. We'll take care of you all." Ruby felt across the table until Cork's firm hand closed upon hers. " Are you afraid, Eddie ? " she whispered. " Are you afraid you'll get a free ride ? " " Nothin* doin' in the teeth-chatterin' line," said Cork. " I guess Rooney's been slow with his envelope. Don't you worry, girly ; I'll look out for you all right." Yet Mr. McManus's ease was only skin- and muscle- deep. With the police looking everywhere for Buck Malone's assailant, and with Corrigan still on the ocean Past One at Rooney's 269 wave, he felt that to be caught in a police raid would mean an ended career for him. And just when he had met Ruby, too ! He wished he had remained in the high rear room of the true Capulet reading the pink extras. Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the police in conference in the dark hall. The wordless low growl of their voices came up the stair- way. Frank made a wireless news station of himself at the upper door. Suddenly he closed the door, hurried to the extreme rear of the room and lighted a dim gas jet. " This way, everybody ! " he called sharply. " In a hurry ; but no noise, please ! " The guests crowded in confusion to the rear. Roon- ey's lieutenant swung open a panel in the wall, over- looking the back yard, revealing a ladder already placed for the escape. " Down and out, everybody ! " he commanded. " La- dies first ! Less talking, please ! Don't crowd ! There's no danger." Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel. Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely. " Before we go out," she whispered in his ear " be- fore anything happens, tell me again, Eddie, do you 1 do you really like me ? " " On the dead level," said Cork, holding her close with one arm, " when it comes to you, I'm all in." 270 Strictly Business When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness. The last of the fleeing customers had de- scended. Half way across the yard they bore the lad- der, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against an adjoining low building over the roof of which lay their only route to safety. " We may as well sit down," said Cork grimly. " Maybe Rooney will stand the cops off, anyhow." They sat at a table; and their hands came together again. A number of men then entered the dark room, feel- ing their way about. One of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the electric light. The other man was a cop of the old regime a big cop, a thick cop, a fuming, abrupt cop not a pretty cop. He went up to the pair at the table and sneered fa- miliarly at the girl. " What are youse doin' in here ? " he asked. " Dropped in for a smoke," said Cork mildly. " Had any drinks ? " " Not later than one o'clock." " Get out quick ! " ordered the cop. Then, " Sit down ! " he countermanded. He took off Cork's hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly. " Your name's McManus." " Bad guess," said Cork. " It's Peterson." " Cork McManus, or something like that," said the Past One at Rooney's 271 cop. " You put a knife into a man in Dutch Mike's saloon a week ago." " Aw, forget it ! " said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the officer's tones. " You've got my mug mixed with somebody else's." " Have I ? Well, you'll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be looked over. The description fits you all right." The cop twisted his fingers under Cork's collar. " Come on ! " he ordered roughly. Cork glanced at Ruby. She was pale, and her thin nostrils quivered. Her quick eye danced from one man's face to the other as they spoke or moved. What hard luck ! Cork was thinking Corrigan on the briny ; and Ruby met and lost almost within an hour! Somebody at the police station would recognize him, without a doubt. Hard luck! But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms extended against the cop. His hold on Cork's collar was loosened and he stumbled back two or three paces. " Don't go so fast, Maguire ! " she cried in shrill fury. " Keep your hands off my man ! You know me, and you know I'm givin' you good advice. Don't you touch him again ! He's not the guy you are lookin' for I'll stand for that." " See here, Fanny," said the Cop, red and angry, " I'll take you, too, if you don't look out ! How do you know 272 Strictly Business this ain't the man I want? What are you doing in here with him? " "How do I know?" said the girl, flaming red and white by turns. " Because I've known him a year. He's mine. Oughtn't I to know ? And what am I doin* here with him? That's easy." She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted draperies, heliotrope and black. An elas- tic snapped, she threw on the table toward Cork- a folded wad of bills. The money slowly straightened itself with little leisurely jerks. " Take that, Jimmy, and let's go," said the girl. " I'm declarin' the usual dividends, Maguire," she said to the officer. " You had your usual five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten." "A lie ! " said the cop, turning purple. " You go on my beat again and I'll arrest you every time I see you." " No, you won't," said the girl. " And I'll tell you why. Witnesses saw me give you the money to-night, and last week, too. I've been getting fixed for you." Cork put the wad of money carefully into his pocket, and said : " Come on, Fanny ; let's have some chop suey before we go home." " Clear out, quick, both of you, or I'll " The cop's bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality. At the corner of the street the two halted. Cork handed back the money without a word. The girl took Past One at Rooney's 273 it and slipped it slowly into her hand-bag. Her expres- sion was the same she had worn when she entered Roon- ej's that night she looked upon the world with defi- ance, suspicion and sullen wonder. " I guess I might as well say good-by here," she said dull}*. " You won't want to see me again, of course. Will you shake hands Mr. McManus." " I mightn't have got wise if you hadn't give the snap away," said Cork. " Why did you do it? " " You'd have been pinched if I hadn't. That's why. Ain't that reason enough ? " Then she began to cry. " Honest, Eddie, I was goin' to be the best girl in the world. I hated to be what I am ; I hated men ; I was ready almost to die when I saw you. And you seemed different from everybody else. And when I found you liked me, too, why, I thought I'd make you believe I was good, and I was goin' to be good. When you asked to come to my house and see me, why, I'd have died rather than do anything wrong after that. But what's the use of talking about it? I'll say good-by, if you will, Mr. McManus." Cork was pulling at his ear. " I knifed Malone," said he. " I was the one the cop wanted." " Oh, that's all right," said the girl listlessly. " It didn't make any difference about that." " That was all hot air about Wall Street. I don't do nothin' but hang out with a tough gang on the East Side." 274 Strictly Business " That was all right, too," repeated the girl. " It didn't make any difference." Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low. " I could get a job at O'Brien's," he said aloud, but to himself. " Good-by," said the girl. " Come on," said Cork, taking her arm. ** I know a place." Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house facing a little park. " What house is this ? " she asked, drawing back. " Why are you going in there ? " A street lamp shone brightly in front. There was a brass nameplate at one side of the closed front doors. Cork drew her firmly up the steps. " Read that," said he. She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan and a scream. " No, no, no, Eddie ! Oh, my God, no ! I won't let you do that not now ! Let me go ! You shan't do that ! You can't you mus'n't ! Not after you know ! No, no ! Come away quick ! Oh, my God ! Please, Eddie, come ! " Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm. Cork's right hand felt for the electric but- ton and pressed it long. Another cop how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the wing ! came along, saw them, and Past One at Rooney's 275 ran up the steps. " Here ! What are you doing with that girl ? " he called gruffly. " She'll be all right in a minute," said Cork. " It's a traigh- deal." " Reverend Jeremiah Jones," read the cop from the door-plate with true detective cunning. " Correct," said Cork. " On the dead level, goin' to get married." XXI THE VENTURERS JLjET the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur Limited, if it will ; first you must take your seat in the observation car " Raison d'etre " for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a brief essay on the subject let us call it: "What's Around the Corner." Omne mu/ndiis in duas paries divisum est men who wear rubbers and pay poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more continents to dis- cover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be paralleling the canals of Mars with radium rail- ways. Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synony- mous in the dictionaries. To the knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a prize to be won. Ad- venture is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure flushed and he- roic. The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance perfect because vague and dream-born that we see 876 The Venturers 277 in our tea-cups at breakfast while we growl over our chops and toast. The VENTURER is one who keeps his eye on the hedge- rows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. That is the difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating the forbidden fruit was the best record ever made by a Venturer. Trying to prove that it happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome. To be either is disturbing to the cos- mogony of creation. So, as bracket-sawed and city- directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide the chil- dren and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker under the flickering gas jet at the coolest window and scan this little tale of two modern followers of Chance. " Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West ? " asked Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate the interior of the Pow- hatan Club. " Doubtless," said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room. Forster got his straw hat ( straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the check- room boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions 278 Strictly Business corroborated and his moods matched by some one else. (I had written that " somebody "; but an A. D. T. boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case.) Forster*s favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of Chance. He was a Venturer by na- ture, but convention, birth, tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are sup- posed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had suf- ficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experi- ence and logic almost precisely to what end each digres- sion from routine must lead. He found a depressing monotony in all the variations that the music of his sphere had grafted upon the tune of life. He had not learned that, although the world was made round, the circle has been squared, and that its true interest is to be found in " What's Around the Corner." Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible ; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City ; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traf- The Venturers 279 fie squad of dragomans. Crosstown, uptown, and down- town you may move without seeing her. At the end of an hour's stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that he must dine ; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be appeased by the " dead perfection " of the place's cuisine. Even the music there seemed to be always playing da capo. Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious, restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from all countries of the world spread their national cookery for the omnivorous American. Something might happen there out of the routine he might come upon a subject without a predicate, a road without an end, a question without an answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life's salt ocean. He had not dressed for evening; he wore a dark business suit that would not be questioned even where the waiters served the spaghetti in their shirt sleeves. So John Reginald Forster began to search his clothes for money ; because the more cheaply you dine, the more surely must you pay. All of the thirteen pockets, large and small, of his business suit he explored carefully and found not a penny. His bank book showed a balance of 280 Strictly Business five figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust Com panj, but Forster became aware of a man nearby at his left hand who was really regarding him with some amuse- ment. He looked like any business man of thirty or so, neatly dressed and standing in the attitude of one waiting for a street car. But there was no car line on that avenue. So his proximity and unconcealed curi- osity seemed to Forster to partake of the nature of a personal intrusion. But, as he was a consistent seeker after " What's Around the Corner," instead of mani- festing resentment he only turned a half-embarrassed smile upon the other's grin of amusement. " All in ? " asked the intruder, drawing nearer. " Seems so," said Forster. " Now, I thought there was a dollar in " " Oh, T" know," said the other man, with a laugh. " But there wasn't. I've just been through the same process myself, as I was coming around the corner. I found in an upper vest pocket I don't know how they got there exactly two pennies. You know what kind of a dinner exactly two pennies will buy ! " " You haven't dined, then ? " asked Forster. " I have not. But I would like to. Now, I'll make you a proposition. You look like a man who would take up one. Your clothes look neat and respectable. Ex- cuse personalities. I think mine will pass the scrutiny of a head waiter, also. Suppose we go over to that The Venturers 281 hotel and dine together. We will choose from the menu like millionaires or, if you prefer, like gentlemen in moderate circumstances dining extravagantly for once. When we have finished we will match with my two pen- nies to see which of us will stand the brunt of the house's displeasure and vengeance. My name is Ives. I think we have lived in the same station of life before our money took wings." " You're on," said Forster, joyfully. Here was a venture at least within the borders of the mysterious country of Chance anyhow, it promised something better than the stale infestivity of a table d'hote. The two were soon seated at a corner table in the hotel dining room. Ives chucked one of his pennies across the table to Forster. " Match for which of us gives the order," he said. Forster lost. Ives laughed and began to name liquids and viands to the waiter with the absorbed but calm deliberation of one who was to the menu born. Forster, listening, gave his admiring approval of the order. " I am a man," said Ives, during the oysters, " who has made a lifetime search after the to-be-continued-in- our-next. I am not like the ordinary adventurer who strikes for a coveted prize. Nor yet am I like a gam- bler who knows he is either to win or lose a certain set 'take. What I want is to encounter an adventure to 282 Strictly Business which I can predict no conclusion. It is the breath of existence to me to dare Fate in its blindest manifesta- tions. The world has come to run so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any foot- path of chance in which you do not find signboards in- forming you of what you may expect at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one came in to ask infor- mation. ' He wanted to know, you know ! ' was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, I don't want to know, I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess I want to bet my hand without seeing it." " I understand," said Forster delightedly. " I've often wanted the way I feel put into words. You've done it. I want to take chances on what's coming. Suppose we have a bottle of Moselle with the next course." " Agreed," said Ives. " I'm glad you catch my idea. It will increase the animosity of the house toward the loser. If it does not weary you, we will pursue the theme. Only a few times have I met a true venturer one who does not ask a schedule and map from Fate when he begins a journey. But, as the world becomes more civilized and wiser, the more difficult it is to come upon an adventure the end of which you cannot foresee. In the Elizabethan days you could assault the watch, wring knockers from doors and have a jolly set-to with the blades in any convenient angle of a wall and ' get The Venturers 283 away with it.' Nowadays, if you speak disrespectfully to a policeman, all that is left to the most romantic fancy is to conjecture in what particular police station he will land you." " I know I know," said Forster, nodding approval. " I returned to New York to-day," continued Ives, " from a three years' ramble around the globe. Things are not much better abroad than they are at home. The whole world seems to be overrun by conclusions. The only thing that interests me greatly is a premise. I've tried shooting big game in Africa. I know what an express rifle will do at so many yards ; and when an elephant or a rhinoceros falls to the bullet, I enjoy it about as much as I did when I was kept in after school to do a sum in long division on the blackboard." " I know I know," said Forster. " There might be something in aeroplanes," went on Ives, reflectively. " I've tried ballooning ; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried affair of wind and ballast." " Women," suggested Forster, with a smile. " Three months ago," said Ives. " I was pottering around in one of the bazaars in Constantinople. I no- ticed a lady, veiled, of course, but with a pair of espe- cially fine eyes visible, who was examining some amber and pearl ornaments at one of the booths. With her was an attendant a big Nubian, as black as coal. After a while the attendant drew nearer to me by degrees and slipped, a scrap of paper into my hand. I looked 284 Strictly Business at it when I got a chance. On it was scrawled hastily in pencil : * The arched gate of the Nightingale Garden at nine to-night.' Does that appear to you to be an in- teresting premise, Mr. Forster? " " Go on," said Forster eagerly. " I made inquiries and learned that the Nightingale Garden was the property of an old Turk a grand vizier, or something of the sort. Of course I prospected for the arched gate and was there at nine. The same Nubian attendant opened the gate promptly on time, and I went inside and sat on a bench by a perfumed fountain with the veiled lady. We had quite an ex- tended chat. She was Myrtle Thompson, a lady jour- nalist, who was writing up the Turkish harems for a Chicago newspaper. She said she noticed the New York cut of my clothes in the bazaar and wondered if I couldn't work something into the metropolitan papers about it." " I see," said Forster. " I see." " I've canoed through Canada," said Ives, " down many rapids and over many falls. But I didn't seem to get what I wanted out of it because I knew there were only two possible outcomes I would either go to the bottom or arrive at the sea level. I've played all games at cards ; but the mathematicians have spoiled that sport by computing the percentages. I've made ac- quaintances on trains, I've answered advertisements, I've rung strange door-bells, I've taken every chance that The Venturers 285 presented itself; but there has always been the conven- tional ending the logical conclusion to the premise." " I know," repeated Forster. " I've felt it all. But I've had few chances to take my chance at chances. Is there any life so devoid of impossibilities as life in this city? There seems to be a myriad of opportunities for testing the undeterminable; but not one in a thousand fails to land you where you expected it to stop. I wish the subways and street cars disappointed one as seldom." " The sun has risen," said Ives, " on the Arabian nights. There are no more caliphs. The fisherman's vase is turned to a vacuum bottle, warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours. Life moves by rote. Science has killed adventure. There are no more opportunities such as Columbus and the man who ate the first oyster had. The only certain thing is that there is nothing uncertain." " Well," said Forster, " my experience has been the limited one of a city man. I haven't seen the world as you have; but it seems that we view it with the same opinion. But, I tell you I am grateful for even this little venture of ours into the borders of the haphazard. There may be at least one breathless moment when the bill for the dinner is presented. Perhaps, after all, the pilgrims who traveled without scrip or purse found a keener taste to life than did the knights of the Round Table who rode abroad with a retinue and King Arthur's certified checks in the lining of their helmets. And now, 286 Strictly Business if you've finished your coffee, suppose we match one of your insufficient coins for the impending blow of Fate. What have I up? " " Heads," called Ives. " Heads it is," said Forster, lifting his hand. " I lose. We forgot to agree upon a plan for the winner to escape. I suggest that when the waiter comes you make a remark about telephoning to a friend. I will hold the fort and the dinner check long enough for you to get your hat and be off. I thank you for an even- ing out of the ordinary, Mr. Ives, and wish we might have others." " If my memory is not at fault," said Ives, laughing, " the nearest police station is in Macdougal Street. I have enjoyed the dinner, too, let me assure you." Forster crooked his finger for the waiter. Victor, with a locomotive effort that seemed to owe more to pneumatics than to pedestrianism, glided to the table and laid the card, face downward, by the loser's cup. Forster took it up and added the figures with deliberate care. Ives leaned back comfortably in his chair. " Excuse me," said Forster ; " but I thought you were going to ring up Grimes about that theatre party for Thursday night. Had you forgotten about it? " " Oh," said Ives, settling himself more comfortably. " I can do that later on. Get me a glass of water, waiter." " Want to be in at the death, do you? " asked Forster. The Venturers 287 " I hope you don't object," said Ives, pleadingly. " Never in my life have I seen a gentleman arrested in a public restaurant for swindling it out of a dinner." " All right," said Forster, calmly. " You are en- titled to see a Christian die in the arena as your pousse- cafe." Victor came with the glass of water and remained, with the disengaged air of an inexorable collector. Forster hesitated for fifteen seconds, and then took a pencil from his pocket and scribbled his name on the din- ner check. The waiter bowed and took it away. " The fact is," said Forster, with a little embarrassed laugh, " I doubt whether I'm what they call a ' game sport,* which means the same as a ' soldier of Fortune.' I'll have to make a confession. I've been dining at this hotel two or three times a week for more than a year. I always sign my checks." And then, with a note of appreciation in his voice : " It was first-rate of you to stay to see me through with it when you knew I had no money, and that you might be scooped in, too." " I guess I'll confess, too," said Ives, with a grin. " I own the hotel. I don't run it, of course, but I al- ways keep a suite on the third floor for my use when I happen to stray into town." He called a waiter and said : " Is Mr. Gilmore still behind the desk? All right. Tell him that Mr. Ives is here, and ask him to have my rooms made ready and aired." 288 Strictly Business " Another venture cut short by the inevitable," said Forster. " Is there a conundrum without an answer in the next number? But let's hold to our subject just for a minute or two, if you will. It isn't often that I meet a man who understands the flaws I pick in exist- ence. I am engaged to be married a month from to- day." " I reserve comment," said Ives. " Right ; I am going to add to the assertion. I am devotedly fond of the lady; but I can't decide whether to show up at the church or make a sneak for Alaska. It's the same idea, you know, that we were discussing it does for a fellow as far as possibilities are concerned. Everybody knows the routine you get a kiss flavored with Ceylon tea after breakfast; you go to the office; you come back home and dress for dinner theatre twice a week bills - moping around most evenings trying to make conversation a little quarrel occa- sionally maybe sometimes a big one, and a separation ' or else a settling down into a middle-aged content- ment, which is worst of all." " I know," said Ives, nodding wisely. " It's the dead certainty of the thing," went on Forster, " that keeps me in doubt. There'll nevermore be anything around the corner." " Nothing after the * Little Church,' " said Ives. " I know." The Venturers 289 " Understand," said Forster, " that I am in no doubt as to my feelings toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know wha/c I want ; but I know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure of what I mean." " I understand you," said Ives, with a slow smile. " Well, I think I will be going up to my rooms now. If you would dine with me here one evening soon, Mr. Forster, I'd be glad." " Thursday ? " suggested Forster. " At seven, if it's convenient," answered Ives. " Seven goes," assented Forster. At half -past eight Ives got into a cab and was driven to a number in ooe of the correct West Seventies. His card admitted him to the reception room of an old- fashioned house into which the spirits of Fortune, Chance and Adventure had never dared to enter. On the walls were the Whistler etchings, the steel engrav- ings by Oh-what's-his-name?, the still-life paintings of the grapes and garden truck with the watermelon seeds spilled on the table as natural as life, and the Greuze head. It was a household. There were even brass andirons. Oh a table was an album, half-morocco, with oxidized-silver protections on the corners of the lids. A clock on the mantel ticked leudly, with a warning 290 Strictly Business click at five minutes to nine. Ives looked at it curi- ously, remembering a time-piece in his grandmother's home that gave such a warning. And then down the stairs and into the room came Mary Marsden. She was twenty-four, and I leave her to your imagination. But I must say this much youth and health and simplicity and courage and green- ish-violet eyes are beautiful, and she had all these. She gave Ives her hand with the sweet cordiality of an old friendship. " You can't think what a pleasure it is," she said, " to have you drop in once every three years or so." For half an hour they talked. I confess that I can- not repeat the conversation. You will find it in books in the circulating library. When that part of it was over, Mary said: " And did you find what you wanted while you were abroad? " " What I wanted? " said Ives. " Yes. You know you were always queer. Even as a boy you wouldn't play marbles or baseball or any game with rules. You wanted to dive in water where you didn't know whether it was ten inches or ten feet deep. And when you grew up you were just the same. We've often talked about your peculiar ways." " I suppose I am an incorrigible," said Ives. " I am opposed to the doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, taxes and everything of the kind. The Venturers 291 Life has always seemed to me something like a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis of succeeding chapters." Mary laughed merrily. " Bob Ames told us once," she said, " of a funny thing you did. It was when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off at a town where you hadn't intended to stop just because the brakeman hung up a sign in the end of the car with the name of the next station on it." " I remember," said Ives. " That ' next station ' has been the thing I've always tried to get away from." " I know it," said Mary. " And you've been very foolish. I hope you didn't find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station where there wasn't any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn't happen to you during the three years you've been away." " There was something I wanted before I went away," said Ives. Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet smile. " There was," she said. " You wanted me. And you could have had me, as you very well know." Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room. There had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three years before. He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his mind then. The contents of that room were as fixed, in their way, 292 Strictly Business as the everlasting hills. No change would ever come there except the inevitable ones wrought by time and de- cay. That silver-mounted album would occupy that corner of that table, those pictures would hang on the walls, those chairs be found in their same places every morn and noon and night while the household hung to- gether. The brass andirons were monuments to order and stability. Here and there were relics of a hun- dred years ago which were still living mementos and would be for many years to come. One going from and coming back to that house would never need to forecast or doubt. He would find what he left, and leave what he found. The veiled lady, Chance, would never lift her hand to the knocker on the outer door. And before him sat the lady who belonged in the room. Cool and sweet and unchangeable she was. She offered no surprises. If one should pass his life with her, though she might grow white-haired and wrinkled, he would never perceive the change. Three years he had been away from her, and she was still waiting for him as established and constant as the house itself. He was sure that she had once cared for him. It was the knowledge that she would always do so that had driven him away. Thus his thoughts ran. " I am going to be married soon," said Mary. On the next Thursday afternoon Forster came hur- riedly to Ives's hotel. The Venturers 293 " Old man," said he, " we'll have to put that dinner off for a year or so ; I'm going abroad. The steamer sails at four. That was a great talk we had the other night, and it decided me. I'm going to knock around the world and get rid of that incubus that has been weighing on both you and me the terrible dread of knowing what's going to happen. I've done one thing that hurts my conscience a little; but I know it's best for both of us. I've written to the lady to whom I was engaged and explained everything told her plainly why I was leaving that the monotony of matrimony would never do for me. Don't you think I was right ? " " It is not for me to say," answered Ives. " Go ahead and shoot elephants if you think it will bring the element of .chance into your life. We've got to decide these things for ourselves. But I tell you one thing, Forster, I've found the way. I've found out the big- gest hazard in the world a game of chance that never is concluded, a venture that may end in the highest heaven or the blackest pit. It will keep a man on edge until the clods fall on his coffin, because he will never know not until his last day, and not then will he know. It is a voyage without a rudder or compass, and you must be captain and crew and keep watch, every day and night, yourself, with no one to relieve you. I have found the VENTURE. Don't bother yourself about leaving Mary Marsden, Forster. I married her yester- day at noon," XXII THE DUEL 1HE gods, lying beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion when coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their only solace. But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison of villages and towns ; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, to many mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique among the cities of the world. This shall be the theme of a little story addressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a nar- cotized baby leaves her free. With these I love to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings. New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine's. They came here in various 294 The Duel 295 ways and for many reasons Hendrik Hudson, the art schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dress- makers' convention, the Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freight trains all these have had a hand in making up the population. But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan has got to fight. He has got to fight at once until either he or his adversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there are no rounds. It is slugging from the first. It is a fight to a finish. Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it from the time the ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it has conquered you. It is the same whether you have a million in your pocket or only the price of a week's lodging. The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turn the rankest outlander and Phil- istine. You must be one or the other. You cannot remain neutral. You must be for or against lover or enemy bosom friend or outcast. And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you. It woos you to its heart with the subtlety of a siren. It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days. 296 Strictly ^Business In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long as you please. You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and with- out rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair's residence in Jack- son, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But in New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism. And this dreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of William and Jack. They came out of the West together, where they had been friends. They came to dig their fortunes out of the big city. Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-hander on the nose and the other an upper- cut with his left, just to let them know that the fight was on. William was for business; Jack was for Art. Both were young and ambitious ; so they countered and clinched. I think they were from Nebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota. Anyhow, they were out for success and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like two Lochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at th* City Hall. The Duel 297 Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon. The business man blew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, dropped into the chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill of fare, and had ordered as far as cheese before the artist had time to do more than nod. After the nod a humorous smile came into his eyes. " Billy," he said, " you're done for. The city has gobbled you up. It has taken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with its brand. You are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn't be picked out from them if it weren't for your laundry marks." "Camembert," finished William. "What's that? Oh, you've still got your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little old Noisy ville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It's giving me mine. And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world only slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon, and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers from the East. But I'd never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from the rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard this fellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made me go. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time." " Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a 298 Strictly Business cigarette. " You remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about this great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let it get the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we had always been, and never let it master us. It has downed you, old man. You have changed from a maverick into a butterick." " Don't see exactly what you are driving at," said William. " I don't wear an alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on dress occasions, like I used to do at home. You talk about being cut to a pattern well, ain't the pattern all right ? When you're in Rome you've got to do as the Dagoes do. This town seems to me to have other alleged metropo- lises skinned to flag stations. According to the rail- road schedule I've got in my mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and Paris, France, are asterisk stops which means you wave a red flag and get on every other Tuesday. I like this little suburb of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. There's something or somebody doing all the time. I'm clearing $8,000 a year selling automatic pumps, and I'm living like kings-up. Why, yesterday, I was introduced to John W. Gates. I took an auto ride with a wine agent's sister. I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna May play in the even- ing. Talk about the West, why, the other night I woke everybody up in the hotel hollering. I dreamed I was walking on a board sidewalk in Oshkosh. What have The Duel 299 you got against this town, Jack? There's only one thing in it that I don't care for, and that's a ferry- boat." The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "This town," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to hand every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You've lost, Billy. It shall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or the color work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poor- est millionaires, the littlest great men, the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. It has caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels. It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me the domestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by an aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest in- gredients. Claiming culture, it is the crudest ; assever- ating its pre-eminence, it is the basest ; denying all out- side values and virtue, it is the narrowest. Give me the pure air and the open heart of the West country. I would go back there to-morrow if I could." " Don't you like this filet mlgnon? " said William. 300 Strictly Business " Shucks, now, what's the use to knock the town ! It's the greatest ever. I couldn't sell one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, in Sacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernardt in ' Andrew Mack ' yet ? " " The town's got you, Billy," said Jack. " All right," said William. " I'm going to buy a cottage on Lake Ronkonkoma next summer." At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught his breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times. Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep gulches and wind- ing streams. Some were mountainous ; some lay in long, monotonous rows like the basalt precipices hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the won- derful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and odors and thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich, despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or The Duel 301 Thus the flavor of it came up to him and went into his blood. There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came from the West, and these were its words: " Come back home and the answer will be yes. " DOLLY." He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply : " Impossible to leave here at present." Then he sat at the window again and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again. After all it isn't a story ; but I wanted to know which one of the heroes won the battle against the city. So I went to .a very learned friend and laid the case before him. What he said was : " Please don't bother me ; I have Christmas presents to buy." So there it rests ; and you will have to decide for your- self. xxin WHAT YOU WANT " .NlGHT had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much in- terested our interesting old friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid. They wore clothes eleven hundred years nearer to the latest styles than H. A. saw in the old Bagdad; but they were about the same people underneath. With the eye of faith, you could have seen the Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, the Beautiful Persian, the one-eyed Calenders, Ali Baba and Forty Robbers on every block, and the Barber and his Six Brothers, and all the old Arabian gang easily. But let us revenue to our lamb chops. Old Tom Crowley was a caliph. He had $42,000,- 000 in preferred stocks and bonds with solid gold edges. In these times, to be called a caliph you must have money. The old-style caliph business as conducted by Mr. Rashid is not safe. If you hold up a person now- 302 "What You Want* 303 adays in a bazaar or a Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his private and personal affairs, the police court'll get you. Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money and everything. That's whar makes a caliph you must get to despise everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to w*nt something that you can't pay for. " I'll take a little trot around town all by myself," thought old Tom, " and try if I c&n stir up anything new. Let's see it seems I've read about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who used to go about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with folks he hadn't been introduced to. That don't listen like a bad idea. I certainly have got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on for the ones I do know. That old Cardiff used to pick up cases of trouble as he ran upon 'em and give 'em gold sequins, I think it was and make 'em marry or got 'em good Govern- ment jobs. Now, I'd like something of that sort. My money is as good as his was even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got it. Yes, I guess I'll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how it goes." Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace, and walked westward and then south. As he stepped to the sidewalk, Fate, who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of all the enchanted 304 Strictly Business cities pulled a thread, and a young man twenty blocks away looked at a wall clock, and then put on his coat. James Turner worked in one of those little hat- cleaning establishments on Sixth Avenue in which a fire alarm rings when you push the door open, and where they clean your hat while you wait two days. James stood all day at an electric machine that turned hats around faster than the best brands of champagne ever could have done. Overlooking your mild impertinence in feeling a curiosity about the personal appearance of a stranger, I will give you a modified description of him. Weight, 118; complexion, hair and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about twenty-three; dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge ; pockets containing two keys and sixty-three cents in change. But do not miscon j ecture because this description sounds like a General Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one. Allans ! James stood all day at his work. His feet were, tender and extremely susceptible to impositions being put upon or below them. All day long they burned and smarted, causing him much suffering and inconvenience. But he was earning twelve dollars per week, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet would sup- port him or not. James Turner had his own conception of what happi^ ness was, just as you and I have ours. Your delight is "What You Want" 305 to gad about the world in yachts and motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their common prairie home one by one. James Turner's idea of bliss was different ; but it was his. He would go directly to his boarding-house when his day's work was done. After his supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed (not stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would ascend to his fifth- floor-back hall room. Then he would take off his shoes and socks, place the soles of his burning feet against the cold bars of his iron bed, and read Clark Russell's sea yarns. The delicious relief of the cool metal applied to his smarting soles was his nightly joy. His favorite novels ne.ver palled upon him; the sea and the ad- ventures of its navigators were his sole intellectual pas- sion. No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner taking his ease. When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out of his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand bookstall. On the sidewalk stands he had more than once picked up a paper-covered volume of Clark Russell at half price. While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by. His discerning eye, made keen by twenty years* experience in the manufacture of laundry soap ( save the wrappers I) recognized instantly 806 Strictly Business the poor and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his caliphanous mood. He descended the two shallow stone steps that led from the sidewalk, and addressed without hesitation the object of his designed munificence. His first words were no worse than salutatory and tentative. James Turner looked up coldly, with " Sartor Resartus " in one hand and " A Mad Marriage " in the other. " Beat it," said he. " I don't want to buy any coat hangers or town lots in Hankipoo, New Jersey. Run along, now, and play with your Teddy bear." " Young man," said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat cleaner, " I observe that you are of a studious disposition. Learning is one of the finest things in the world. I never had any of it worth mentioning, but I admire to see it in others. I come from the West, where we imagine nothing but facts. Maybe I couldn't under- stand the poetry and allusions in them books you are picking over, but I like to see somebody else seem to know what they mean. Now, I'd like to make you a proposition. I'm worth about $40,000,000, and I'm getting richer every day. I made the height of it man- facturing Aunt Patty's Silver Soap. I invented the art of making it. I experimented for three years before I got just the right quantity of chloride of sodium solu- tion and caustic potash mixture to curdle properly. And after I had taken some $9,000,000 out of the soap re What You Want " 307 Business I made the rest in corn and wheat futures. Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly turn of character; and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay for your education at the finest college in the world. I'll pay the expense of your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set you up in a good business. You needn't make it soap if you have any objections. I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are mighty poor ; and you can't afford to turn down the offer. Well, when do you want to begin ? " The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifi- able suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Ha- inan was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curi- osity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellow- ship that must be hidden when one walks among the " stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, house, booth, seat, path or room. " Say, Mike," said James Turner, " what's your line, anyway shoe laces ? I'm not buying anything. You better put an egg in your shoe and beat it before incidents occur to you. You can't work off any foun- tain pens, gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust company certificate house clearings on me. Say, 308 Strictly Business do I look like I'd climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall? What's vitiating you, anyhow ? " " Son," said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, "as I said, I'm worth $40,000,000. I don't want to have it all put in my coffin when I die. I want to do some good with it. I seen you handling over these here volumes of literature, and I thought I'd keep you. I've give the missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get out of it? Nothing but a receipt from the secre- tary. Now, you are just the kind of young man I'd like to take up and see what money could make of him." Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that even- ing at the Old Book Shop. And James Turner's smarting and aching feet did not tend to improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he had a spirit equal to any caliph's. " Say, you old faker," he said, angrily, " be on your way. I don't know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus $40,000,000 bill. Well, I don't carry that much around with me. But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you'll get if } T OU don't move on." " You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup," said the caliph. Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him by the collar and kicked him thrice; rf What You Want " 309 the hat cleaner rallied and clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A cop came up, took an arm of each, and marched them to the near- est station house. " Fighting and disorderly conduct,** said the cop to the sergeant. " Three hundred dollars bail," said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly and inquiringly. " Sixty-three cents," said James Turner with a harsh laugh. The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change amounting to four dollars. " I am worth," he said, " forty million dollars, but" " Lock 'em up," ordered the sergeant. In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. " Maybe he's got the money, and maybe he ain't. But if he has or he ain't, what does he want to go 'round butting into other folks's business for? When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it's the same as $40,000,000 to him." Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face. He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself out luxuriously, and placed his tor- tured feet against the cold bars of the cell door. Some- thing hard and bulky under the blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called 310 Strictly Business " A Sailor's Sweetheart." He gave a great sigh of contentment. Presently to his cell came the doorman and said : " Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping seems to have been the goods after all. He 'phoned to his friends, and he's out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a Pullman car pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out and see him." " Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner. THE END THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y, UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY ACIL TY || II A 001 424 967 6