HE VOICE OF 
 THE CITY^ 
 
 FURTHER STORIES OF 
 THE FOUR MILLION 
 
 BY 
 
 O. HEXRY 
 
 Author of "The Four Million," "The Trimmed 
 
 Lamp, "Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," 
 
 "Sixes and Sevens" Etc. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 FOB 
 
 REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO. 
 
 1919 
 
Acknowledgment is made to the New York World and to 
 
 Ainslee s Magazine for permission to re publish 
 
 these stories 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I9O8, BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
 
 TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 
 
 INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 Copyright, 1003, 1908, by Ainslee Magazine Company 
 Copyright, 1904, 1905, 1906, by Press Publishing Company 
 
 I 
 
6 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 v 
 
 PAGE 
 "THE VOICE OF THE ClTY 3 
 
 THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS . . .11 
 
 SA LICKPENNY LOVER 21 
 
 DOUGHERTY S EYE-OPENER , . 31 
 
 ""LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT" .... 40 
 
 , THE HARBINGER 49 
 
 WiiiLE THE AUTO WAITS ........ 58 
 
 A COMEDY IN RUBBER 67 
 
 -ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS . . 75 
 
 THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY . . . . ... . 85 
 
 * THE SHOCKS OF DOOM ..95 
 
 THE PLUTONIAN FIRE ........ 105 
 
 NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN . . . . .115 
 
 X SQUARING THE ClRCLE 125 
 
 RosES, RUSES AND ROMANCE . . . . . . . 132 
 
 x TiiE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 141 
 
 THE EASTER OF THE SOUL ....... 149 
 
 THE FOOL-KILLER . . . . . . . . 157 
 
 -TRANSIENTS IN ARCADIA ........ 170 
 
 HE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE . . * . . 179 
 
 THE CLARION CALL . . . . . . ... 188 
 
 EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA ....... 200 
 
 A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA 210 
 
 FROM EACH ACCORDING TO His ABILITY . . .219 
 THE MEMENTO * .... 230 
 
THE VOICE OF THE CITY 
 
THE VOICE OF THE CITY 
 
 TWENTY-FIVE years ago the school children used 
 to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery 
 was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an 
 Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. 
 I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and 
 sawdust. 
 
 I remember one beautiful and instructive little 
 lyric that emanated from the physiology class. The 
 most striking line of it was this : 
 
 "The shin-bone is the long-est bone in the hu-man 
 bod-y." 
 
 What an inestimable boon it would have been if 
 all the corporeal and spiritual facts pertaining to 
 man had thus been tunefully and logically inculcated 
 in our youthful minds ! But what we gained in 
 anatomy, music and philosophy was meagre. 
 
 The other da} I became confused. I needed a 
 ray of light. I turned back to those school days for 
 aid. But in all the nasal harmonies we whined forth 
 from those hard benches I could not recall one that 
 treated of the voice of agglomerated mankind. 
 
 In other words, of the composite vocal message of 
 massed humanity. 
 
 3 
 
4 The Voice of the City 
 
 In other words, of the Voice of a Big City. 
 
 Now, the individual voice is not lacking. We can 
 understand the song of the poet, the ripple of the 
 brook, the meaning of the man who wants $5 until 
 next Monday, the inscriptions on the tombs of the 
 Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" 
 of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 
 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that 
 they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum pro 
 duced by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. 
 H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning 
 of the voice of the city? 
 
 I went out for to see. 
 
 First, I asked Aurelia. She wore white Swiss and a 
 hat with flowers on it, and ribbons and ends of things 
 fluttered here and there. 
 
 "Tell me," I said, stammeringly, for I have no 
 voice of my own, "what does this big er 
 enormous er whopping city say? It must have 
 a voice of some kind. Does it ever speak to you? 
 How do you interpret its meaning? It is a tremen 
 dous mass, but it must have a key." 
 
 "Like a Saratoga trunk?" asked Aurelia. 
 
 "No," said I. "Please do not refer to the lid. I 
 have a fancy that every city has a voice. Each one 
 has something to say to the one who can hear it. 
 What docs the big one say to you?" 
 
 "All cities," said Aurelia, judicially, "say the 
 
The Voice of the City 5 
 
 same thing. When they get through saying it 
 there is an echo from Philadelphia. So, they are 
 unanimous." 
 
 "Here are 4,000,000 people," said I, scholastic- 
 ally, "compressed upon an island, which is mostly 
 lamb surrounded by Wall Street water. The con 
 junction of so many units into so small a space must 
 result in an identity or, or rather a homogeneity 
 that finds its oral expression through a common 
 channel. It is, as you might say, a consensus of 
 translation, concentrating in a crystallized, general 
 idea which reveals itself in what may be termed the 
 Voice of the City. Can you tell me what it is?" 
 
 Aurelia smiled wonderfully. She sat on the high 
 stoop. A spray of insolent ivy bobbed against her 
 right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight flickered 
 upon her nose. But I was adamant, nickel- 
 plated. 
 
 "I must go and find out," I said, "what is the 
 Voice of this City. Other cities have voices. It is 
 an assignment. I must have it. New York," I con 
 tinued, in a rising tone, "had better not hand me a 
 cigar and say: Old man, I can t talk for publication.* 
 No other city acts in that way. Chicago says, un 
 hesitatingly, "I will; Philadelphia says, I should; 
 New Orleans says, I used to; Louisville says, 
 Don t care if I do; St. Louis says, Excuse me; 
 Pittsburg says, Smoke up, Now, New York " 
 
6 The Voice of the City . 
 
 Aurelia smiled. 
 
 "Very well," said I, "I must go elsewhere and find 
 out." 
 
 I went into a palace, tile-floored, cherub-ceilinged 
 and square with the cop. I put my foot on the brass 
 rail and said to Billy Magnus, the best bartender in 
 the diocese : 
 
 "Billy, you ve lived in New York a long time 
 what kind of a song-and-dance does this old town give 
 you? What I mean is, doesn t the gab of it seem to 
 kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a 
 sort of amalgamated tip that hits off the burg in a 
 kind of an epigram with a dasli of bitters and a slice 
 of " 
 
 Excuse me a minute," said Billy, "somebody s 
 punching the button at the side door." 
 
 He went away ; came back with an empty tin 
 bucket; again vanished with it full; returned and 
 said to me: 
 
 "That was Maine. She rings twice. She likes a 
 glass of beer for supper. Her and the kid. If you 
 ever saw that little skeesicks of mine brace up in his 
 
 high chair and take his beer and But, say, what 
 
 was yours? I get kind of excited when I hear them 
 two rings was it the baseball score or gin fizz you 
 asked for?" 
 
 "Ginger ale," I answered. 
 
 I walked up to Broadway. I saw a cop on the cor- 
 
The Voice of the City 7 
 
 nor. The cops take kids up, women across, and men 
 in. I went up to him. 
 
 "If I m not exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let 
 me ask you. You see New York during its vocative 
 hours. It is the function of you and your brother 
 cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There 
 must be a civic voice that is intelligible to you. At 
 night during your lonely rounds you must have heard 
 it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting? 
 What does the city say to you?" 
 
 "Friend," said the policeman, spinning his club, 
 "it don t say nothing. I get my orders from the 
 man higher up. Say, I guess you re all right. 
 Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open 
 for the roundsman." 
 
 The cop melted into the darkness of the side street. 
 In ten minutes he had returned. 
 
 "Married last Tuesday," he said, half gruffly. 
 "You know how they are. She comes to that corner 
 at nine every night for a comes to say hello ! I 
 generally manage to be there. Say, what was it you 
 asked me a bit ago what s doing in the city ? Oh, 
 there s a roof-garden or two just opened, twelve 
 blocks up." 
 
 I crossed a crow s-foot of street-car tracks, and 
 skirted the edge of an unbrageous park. An 
 artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised, wind-ruled, 
 on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of her 
 
8 The Voice of the City 
 
 namesake in the sky. Along came my poet, hurry 
 ing, hatted, haired, emitting dactyls, spondees arid 
 dactylis. I seized him. 
 
 "Bill," said I (in the magazine he is Cleon), "give 
 me a lift. I am on an assignment to find out the 
 Voice of the city. You see, it s a special order. Or- 
 dinarily a symposium comprising the views of Henry 
 Clews, John L. Sullivan, Edwin Markham, May Ir- 
 win and Charles Schwab would be about all. But this . 
 is a different matter. We want a broad, poetic, 
 mystic vocalization of the city s soul and meaning. 
 You are the very chap to give me a hint. Some years 
 ago a man got at the Niagara Falls and gave us its 
 pitch. The note was about two feet below the lowest 
 G on the piano. Now, you can t put New York into 
 a note unless it s better indorsed than that. But give 
 me an idea of what it would say if it should speak. It 
 is bound to be a mighty and far-reaching utterance. 
 To arrive at it we must take the tremendous crash of 
 the chords of the day s traffic, the laughter and music 
 of the night, the solemn tones of Dr. Parkhurst, the 
 rag-time, the weeping, the stealthy hum of cab-wheels, 
 the shout of the press agent, the tinkle of fountains 
 on the roof gardens, the hullabaloo of the strawberry 
 vender and the covers of Everybody s Magazine, the 
 whispers of the lovers in the parks all these sounds 
 must go into your Voice not combined, but mixed, 
 and of the mixture an essence made ; and of the es- 
 
The Voice of the City 9 
 
 sencc an extract an audible extract, of which one 
 drop shall form the thing we seek." 
 
 "Do you remember," asked the poet, with a 
 chuckle, "that California girl we met at Stivers 
 studio last week? Well, I m on my way to see her. 
 She repeated that poem of mine, The Tribute of 
 Spring, word for word. She s the smartest proposi 
 tion in this town just at present. Say, how does this 
 confounded tie look? I spoiled four before I got one 
 to set right." 
 
 "And the Voice that I asked you about?" I in 
 quired. 
 
 "Oh, she doesn t sing," said Cleon. "But you 
 ought to hear her recite my Angel of the Inshore 
 Wind. " 
 
 I passed on. I cornered a newsboy and he Hashed 
 at me prophetic pink papers that outstripped the 
 news by two revolutions of the clock s longest hand, 
 
 "Son," I said, while I pretended to chase coins in 
 my penny pocket, "doesn t it sometimes seem to you 
 as if the city ought to be able to talk? All the ,e ups 
 and downs and funny business and queer things hap 
 pening every day what would it say, do 3 ; ou think, 
 if it could speak?" 
 
 "Quit yer kiddin ," said the boy. "Wot paper yer 
 want? I got no time to waste. It s Mag s birthday, 
 and I want thirty cents to git her a present." 
 
 Here was no interpreter of the city s mouthpiece. 
 
10 The Voice of the City 
 
 I bought a paper, and consigned its undeclared 
 treaties, its premeditated murders and unfought bat 
 tles to an ash can. 
 
 Again I repaired to the park and sat in the moon 
 shade. I thought and thought, and wondered why 
 none could tell me what I asked for. 
 
 And then, as swift as light from a fixed star, the 
 answer came to me. I arose and hurried hurried 
 as so many reasoners must, back around my circle. 
 I knew the answer and I hugged it in my breast as I 
 flew, fearing lest some one would stop me and demand 
 my secret. 
 
 Aureiia was still on the stoop. The moon was 
 higher and the ivy shadows were deeper. I sat at her 
 side and we watched a little cloud tilt at the drifting 
 moon and go asunder quite pale and discomfited. 
 
 And then, wonder of wonders and delight of de 
 lights ! our hands somehow touched, and our fingers 
 closed together and did not part. 
 
 After half an hour Aureiia said, with that smile 
 of hers : 
 
 "Do you know, you haven t spoken a word since 
 you came back !" 
 
 "That," said I, nodding wisely, "is the Voice of 
 the City." 
 
THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS 
 
 1 HERE is a saying that no man has tasted the full 
 flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and 
 war s The justness of this reflection commends it to 
 the lover of condensed philosophy. The three condi 
 tions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. 
 A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be 
 added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a 
 long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through 
 a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of 
 life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can 
 hope to cast. 
 
 It seems that the wise executive power that rules 
 life has thought best to drill man in these three con 
 ditions ; and none may escape all three. In rural 
 places the terms do not mean so much. Poverty is 
 less pinching; love is temperate; war shrinks to con 
 tests about boundary lines and the neighbors hens. 
 It is in the cities that our epigram gains in truth and 
 vigor; and it has remained for one John Hopkins to 
 crowd the experience into a rather small space of 
 time. 
 
 The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others. 
 
 There was a rubber plant in one window; a flea- 
 
 11 
 
12 The Voice of the City 
 
 bitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when he 
 was to have his day. 
 
 John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He 
 worked at $20 per week in a nine-story, red-brick 
 building at either Insurance, Buckle s Hoisting En 
 gines, Chiropody, Loans, Pullej s, Boas Renovated, 
 Waltz Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial 
 Limbs. It is not for us to wring Mr. Hopkins s avo 
 cation from these outward signs that be. 
 
 Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The 
 auriferous tooth, the sedentary disposition, the Sun 
 day afternoon wanderlust, the draught upon the 
 delicatessen store for home-made comforts, the 
 furor for department store marked-down sales, the 
 feeling of superiority to the lady in the third-floor 
 front who wore genuine ostrich tips and had two 
 names over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during 
 which she remained glued to the window sill, the vigi 
 lant avoidance of the instalment man, the tireless 
 patronage of the acoustics of the dumb-waiter shaft 
 all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were 
 hers. 
 
 One moment yet of sententiousness and the story 
 moves. 
 
 In the Big City large and sudden things happen. 
 You round a corner and thrust the rib of your um 
 brella into the eye of your old friend from Kootenai 
 Falls, You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the 
 
The Complete Life of John Hopkins 13 
 
 park and lo ! bandits attack you you are am- 
 bulanced to the hospital you marry your nurse ; 
 are divorced get squeezed while short on U. P. S. 
 and D. O. W. N. S. stand in the bread line marry 
 an heiress, take out your laundry and pay your club 
 dues seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You 
 travel the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a 
 handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped 
 upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a 
 table d hote or your wife disagrees with you, and Fate 
 tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by 
 an un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly young 
 ster, and you are red paint upon its toy, and you get 
 licked off. 
 
 John Hopkins sat, after a compressed dinner, in 
 his glove-fitting straight-front flat. He sat upon a 
 hornblende couch and gazed, with satiated eyes, at 
 Art Brought Home to the People in the shape of 
 "The Storm" tacked against the wall. Mrs. Hop 
 kins discoursed droningly of the dinner smells from 
 the flat across the hall. The flea-bitten terrier gave 
 Hopkins a look of disgust and showed a man-hating 
 tooth. 
 
 Here was neither poverty, love, nor war ; but upon 
 such barren sterns may be grafted those essentials of 
 a complete life. 
 
 John Hopkins sought to inject a few raisins of 
 conversation into the tasteless dough of existence. 
 
U The Voice of the City 
 
 "Putting a new elevator in at the office," he said, 
 discarding the nominative noun, "and the boss has 
 turned out his whiskers." 
 
 "You don t mean it!" commented Mrs. Hopkins. 
 
 "Mr. Whipples," continued John, "wore his new 
 spring suit down to-day. I liked it fine. It s a gray 
 
 with He stopped, suddenly stricken by a need 
 
 that made itself known to him. "I believe I ll walk 
 down to the corner and get a five-cent cigar," he 
 concluded. 
 
 John Hopkins took his hat and picked his way 
 down the musty halls and stairs oi the flat-house. 
 
 The evening air was mild, and the streets shrill 
 with the careless cries of children playing games con 
 trolled by mysterious rhythms and phrases. Their 
 elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe 
 and gossip. Paradoxically, the fire-escapes sup 
 ported lovers in couples who made no attempt to fly 
 the mounting conflagration they were there to fan. 
 
 The corner cigar store aimed at by John Hopkins 
 was kept by a man named Freshmayer, who looked 
 upon the earth as a sterile promontory. 
 
 Hopkins, unknown in the store, entered and called 
 genially for his "bunch of spinach, car-fare grade." 
 This imputation deepened the pessimism of Fresh 
 mayer ; but he set out a brand that came perilously 
 near to filling the order. Hopkins bit off the roots of 
 his purchase, and lighted up at the swinging gas 
 
The Complete Life of John Hopkins 15 
 
 jet. Feeling in his pockets to make payment, he 
 found not a penny there. 
 
 "Say, my friend," he explained, frankly, "I ve come 
 out without any change. Hand you that nickel first 
 time I pass," 
 
 Joy surged in Freshmayer s heart. Here was cor- 
 roboration of his belief that the world was rotten and 
 man a peripatetic evil. Without a word he rounded 
 the end of his counter and made earnest onslaught 
 upon his customer. Hopkins was no man to serve as 
 a punching-bag for a pessimistic tobacconist. He 
 quickly bestowed upon Freshmayer a colorado- 
 maduro eye in return for the ardent kick that he 
 received from that dealer in goods for cash only. 
 
 The impetus of the enemy s attack forced the 
 Hopkins line back to the sidewalk. There the con 
 flict raged ; the pacific wooden Indian, with his carven 
 smile, was overturned, and those of the street who 
 delighted in carnage pressed round to view the zealous 
 joust. 
 
 But then came the inevitable cop and imminent in 
 convenience for both the attacker and attacked. 
 John Hopkins was a peaceful citizen, who worked at 
 rebuses of nights in a flat, but he was not without the 
 fundamental spirit of resistance that comes with the 
 battle-rage. He knocked the policeman into a gro 
 cer s sidewalk display of goods and gave Freshmayer 
 a punch that caused him temporarily to regret that 
 
16 The Voice of the City 
 
 he had not made it a rule to extend a five-cent line 
 of credit to certain customers. Then Hopkins took 
 spiritedly to his heels down the sidewalk, closely fol 
 lowed by the cigar-dealer and the policeman, whose 
 uniform testified to the reason in the grocer s sign 
 that read : "Eggs cheaper than anywhere else in the 
 city." 
 
 As Hopkins ran he became aware of a big, low, 
 red, racing automobile that kept abreast of him in 
 the street. This auto steered in to the side of the 
 sidewalk, and the man guiding it motioned to Hopkins 
 to jump into it. He did so without slackening his 
 speed, and fell into the turkey-red upholstered seat 
 beside the chauffeur. The big machine, with a dimin 
 uendo cough, flew away like an albatross down the 
 avenue into which the street emptied. 
 
 The driver of the auto sped his machine without a 
 word. He was masked beyond guess in the goggles 
 and diabolic garb of the chauffeur. 
 
 "Much obliged, old man," called Hopkins, grate 
 fully. "I guess you ve got sporting blood in you, 
 all right, and don t admire the sight of two men 
 trying to soak one. Little more and I d have been 
 pinched." 
 
 The chauffeur made no sign that he had heard. 
 Hopkins shrugged a shoulder and chewed at his cigar, 
 to which his teeth had clung grimly throughout the 
 melee. 
 
The Complete Life of John Hopkins 17 
 
 Ten minutes and the auto turned into the open 
 carriage entrance of a noble mansion of brown stone, 
 and stood still. The chauffeur leaped out, and said : 
 
 "Come quick. The lady, she will explain. It is 
 the great honor you will have, monsieur. Ah, that 
 milady could call upon Armand to do this thing! 
 But, no, I am only one chauffeur." 
 
 With vehement gestures the chauffeur conducted 
 Hopkins into the house. He was ushered into a small 
 but luxurious reception chamber. A lady, young, 
 and possessing the beauty of visions, rose from a 
 chair. In her eyes smouldered a becoming anger. 
 Her high-arched, thread-like brows were ruffled into 
 a delicious frown. 
 
 "Milady," said the chauffeur, bowing low, "I have 
 the honor to relate to you that I went to the house of 
 Monsieur Long and found him to be not at home. As 
 I came back I see this gentleman in combat against 
 how you say greatest odds. He is fighting with 
 five ten thirty men gendarmes, aussi. Yes, 
 milady, he what you call swat one three eight 
 policemans. If that Monsieur Long is out I say to 
 myself this gentleman he will serve milady so well, and 
 I bring him here." 
 
 "Very well, Armand," said the lady, "you may go." 
 She turned to Hopkins. 
 
 "I sent my chauffeur," she said, "to bring my 
 cousin, Walter Long. There is a man in this house 
 
18 The Voice of the City 
 
 who has treated me with insult and abuse. I have 
 complained to my aunt, and she laughs at me. Ar- 
 mand says you are brave. In these prosaic days men 
 who are both brave and chivalrous are few. May I 
 count upon your assistance?" 
 
 John Hopkins thrust the remains of his cigar into 
 his coat pocket. He looked upon this winning crea 
 ture and felt his first thrill of romance. It was a 
 knightly love, and contained no disloyalty to the flat 
 with the flea-bitten terrier and the lady of his choice. 
 He had married her after a picnic of the Lady Label 
 Stickers Union, Lodge No. 2, on a dare and a bet of 
 new hats and chowder all around with his friend, Billy 
 McManus. This angel who was begging him to come 
 to her rescue was something too heavenly for chow 
 der, and as for hats golden, jewelled crowns for 
 her! 
 
 "Say," said John Hopkins, "just show me the guy 
 that you ve got the grouch at. I ve neglected my 
 talents as a scrapper heretofore, but this is my busy 
 night." 
 
 "He is in there," said the lady, pointing to a closed 
 door. "Come. Are you sure that you do not falter 
 or fear?" 
 
 "Me?" said John Hopkins. "Just give me one of 
 those roses in the bunch you are wearing, will you?" 
 
 The lady gave him a red, red rose. John Hopkins 
 kissed it, stuffed it into his vest pocket, opened the 
 
The Complete Life of John Hopkins 19 
 
 door and walked into the room. It was a handsome 
 library, softly but brightly lighted. A young man 
 was there, reading. 
 
 "Books on etiquette is what you want to study," 
 said John Hopkins, abruptly. "Get up here, and I ll 
 give you some lessons. Be rude to a lady, will you?" 
 
 The young man looked mildly surprised. Then he 
 arose Janguidh , dcxtrously caught the arms of John 
 Hopkins and conducted him irresistibly to the front 
 door of the house. 
 
 "Beware, Ralph Branscombc," cried the lady, who 
 had followed, "what you do to the gallant man who 
 has tried to protect me." 
 
 The young man shoved John Hopkins gently out 
 the door and then closed it. 
 
 "Bess," he said calmly, "I wish you would quit 
 reading historical novels. How in the world did that 
 fellow get in here?" 
 
 "Armand brought him," said the young lady. "I 
 think you are awfully mean not to let me have that 
 St. Bernard. I sent Armand for Walter. I was so 
 angry with you." 
 
 "Be sensible, Bess," said the young man, taking 
 her arm. "That dog isn t safe. He has bitten two 
 or three people around the kennels. Come now, let s 
 go tell auntie we are in good humor again." 
 
 Arm in arm, they moved away. 
 
 John Hopkins walked to his flat. The janitor s 
 
20 The Voice of the City 
 
 five-year-old daughter was playing on the steps. 
 Hopkins gave her a nice, red rose and walked up 
 stairs. 
 
 Mrs. Hopkins was philandering with curl-papers. 
 
 "Get your cigar?" she asked, disinterestedly. 
 
 "Sure," said Hopkins, "and I knocked around a 
 while outside. It s a nice night." 
 
 He sat upon the hornblende sofa, took out the 
 stump of his cigar, lighted it, and gazed at the grace 
 ful figures in "The Storm" on the opposite wall. 
 
 "I was telling you," said he, "about Mr. Whipple s 
 suit. It s a gray, with an invisible check, and it looks 
 fine." 
 
A LICKPENNY LOVER 
 
 THERE were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. 
 Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a 
 saleslady in the gents gloves. Here she became 
 versed in two varieties of human beings the kind of 
 gents who buy their gloves in department stores and 
 the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate 
 gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human 
 species, Masie had acquired other information. She 
 had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 
 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as 
 secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Per 
 haps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise 
 counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of 
 shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has en 
 dowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the 
 other animals with cunning. 
 
 For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted 
 blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter 
 cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in 
 the Biggest Store ; and as you closed your hand over 
 the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of 
 Hebe ; and as you looked again you wondered how she 
 
 had come by Minerva s eyes. 
 
 21 
 
22 The Voice of the City 
 
 When the floorwalker was not looking Mask 1 chewed 
 tutti frutti ; when he was looking she gazed up as if at 
 the clouds and smiled wistfully. 
 
 That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to 
 shun it unless you are well fortified with callosity of 
 the heart, caramels and a congeniality for the capers 
 of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie s recreation 
 hours and not to the store; but the floorwalker must 
 have his own. He is the Shylock ^ of the stores. 
 When he comes nosing around the bridge of Ins nose 
 is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when he 
 looks toward a pretty girl. Of course not all floor 
 walkers are thus. Only a few days ago the papers 
 printed news of one over eighty years of age. 
 
 One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, trav 
 eller, poet, automobilist, happened to enter the Big 
 gest Store. It is due to him to add that his visit was 
 not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar 
 and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered 
 among the bronze and terra-cotta statuettes. 
 
 Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order 
 to shoot a few minutes on the wing. His need for 
 gloves was genuine; he had forgotten to bring a pair 
 with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, be 
 cause he had never heard of glove-counter flirtations. 
 
 As he nearecl the vicinity of his fate he hesitated, 
 suddenly conscious of this unknown phase of Cupid s 
 less worthy profession. 
 
A Lickpenny Lover 23 
 
 Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, 
 were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the 
 mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls 
 played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the 
 strident string of coquetry. Carter would have re 
 treated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted 
 him behind her counter with a questioning look in 
 eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint 
 of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern 
 seas. 
 
 And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., 
 felt a warm Hush rise to his aristocratically pale face. 
 But not from diffidence. The blush was intellectual 
 in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the 
 ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the gig 
 gling girls at other counters. Himself leaned against 
 the oaken trysting place of a cockney Cupid with a 
 desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. 
 He was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. 
 And then he felt a sudden tolerance for them, and an 
 elating, courageous contempt for the conventions 
 upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating determina 
 tion to have this perfect creature for his own. 
 
 When the gloves were paid for and wrapped 
 Carter lingered for a moment. The dimples at the 
 corners of Masic s damask mouth deepened. All gen 
 tlemen who bought gloves lingered in just that way. 
 She curved an arm, showing like Psyche s through 
 
24 The Voice of the City 
 
 her shirt-waist sleeve, and rested an elbow upon the 
 show-case edge. 
 
 Carter had never before encountered a situation of 
 which he had not been perfect master. But now he 
 stood far more awkward than Bill or Jack or Mickey. 
 He had no chance of meeting this beautiful girl so 
 cially. His mind struggled to recall the nature and 
 habits of shopgirls as he had read or heard of them. 
 Somehow he had received the idea that they some 
 times did not insist too strictly upon the regular 
 channels of introduction. His heart beat loudly at 
 the thought of proposing an unconventional meeting 
 with this lovely and virginal being. But the tumult 
 in his heart gave him courage. 
 
 After a few friendly and well-received remarks on 
 general subjects, he laid his card by her hand on the 
 counter. 
 
 "Will you please pardon me," he said, "if I seem 
 too bold ; but I earnestly hope you will allow me the 
 pleasure of seeing you again. There is my name ; I 
 assure you that it is with the greatest respect that 
 I ask the favor of becoming one of your f r 
 acquaintances. May I not hope for the privilege?" 
 
 Masic knew men especially men who buy gloves. 
 Without hesitation she looked him frankly and smil 
 ingly in the eyes, and said : 
 
 Sure. I guess you re all right. I don t usually 
 go out with strange gentlemen, though. It ain t 
 
A Lick penny Lover 25 
 
 quite ladylike. When should you want to see me 
 again ? ?? 
 
 "As soon as I may," said Carter. "If you would 
 allow me to call at your home, I " 
 
 Masie laughed musically. "Oh, gee, no !" she said, 
 emphatically. "If you could see our flat once 1 
 There s five of us in three rooms. I d just like to 
 see ma s face if I was to bring a gentleman friend 
 there!" 
 
 "Anywhere, then," said the enamored Carter, "that 
 will be convenient to you." 
 
 "Say," suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look in 
 her peach-blow face; "I guess Thursday night will 
 about suit me. Suppose you come to the corner of 
 Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. I 
 live right near the corner. But I ve got to be back 
 home by eleven. Ma never lets me stay out after 
 eleven." 
 
 Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and 
 then hastened to his mother, who was looking about 
 for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze Diana. 
 
 A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, 
 strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer. 
 
 "Did you make a hit with his nobs, Masie?" she 
 asked, familiarly. 
 
 "The gentleman asked permission to call," an 
 swered Masie, with the grand air, as she slipped 
 Carter s card into the bosom of her waist. 
 
26 The Voice of the City 
 
 "Permission to call!" echoed small eyes, with a 
 snigger. "Did he say anything about dinner in the 
 Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?" 
 
 "Oh, cheese it !" said Masie, wearily. "You ve been 
 used to swell things, I don t think. You ve had a 
 swelled head ever since that hose-cart driver took you 
 out to a chop suey joint. No, he never mentioned 
 the Waldorf ; but there s a Fifth Avenue address on 
 his card, and if he buys the supper you can bet your 
 life there won t be no pigtail on the waiter what takes 
 the order." 
 
 As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store 
 with his mother in his electric runabout^ he bit his lip 
 with a dull pain at his heart. He knew that love had 
 come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine 
 years of his life. And that the object of it should 
 make so readily an appointment with him at a street 
 corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tor^- 
 tured him with misgivings. 
 
 Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not 
 know that her home is often either a scarcely habit 
 able tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with 
 kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the 
 park is her drawing-room ; the avenue is her garden 
 walk ; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mis 
 tress of herself in them as is my lady inside her 
 tapestried chamber. 
 
 One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first 
 
A Lickpenny Lover 27 
 
 meeting, Carter and Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a 
 little, dimly-lit park. They found a bench, tree- 
 shadowed and secluded, and sat there. 
 
 For the first time his arm stole gently around her. 
 Her golden-bronze head slid restfully against his 
 shoulder. 
 
 "Gee!" sighed Masie, thankfully. "Why didn t 
 you ever think of that before?" 
 
 "Masie," said Carter, earnestly, "you surely know 
 that I love you. I ask you sincerely to marry me. 
 You know me well enough by this time to have no 
 doubts of me. I want you, and I must have you. I 
 oare nothing for the difference in our stations. * 
 
 "What is the difference?" asked Masie, curi 
 ously. 
 
 "Well, there isn t any," said Carter, quickly, "ex 
 cept in the minds of foolish people. It is in my power 
 to give you a life of luxury. My social position is 
 beyond dispute, and my means are ample." 
 
 "They all say that," remarked Masie. "It s the 
 kid they all give you. I suppose you really work in 
 a delicatessen or follow the races. I ain t as green as 
 I look." 
 
 "I can furnish you all the proofs you want," said 
 Carter, gently. "And I want you, Masie. I loved 
 you the first day I saw you." 
 
 "They all do," said Masie, with an amused laugh, 
 "to hear em talk. If I could meet a man that got 
 
28 The Voice of the City 
 
 stuck on me the third time he d seen me I think I d 
 get mashed on him." 
 
 "Please don t say such things," pleaded Carter. 
 "Listen to me, dear. Ever since I first looked into 
 your eyes you have been the only woman in the world 
 for me." 
 
 "Oh, ain t you the kidder !" smiled Masie. "How 
 many other girls did you ever tell that?" 
 
 But Carter persisted. And at length he reached 
 the flimsy, fluttering little soul of the shopgirl that 
 existed somewhere deep down in her lovely bosom. 
 His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness 
 was its safest armor. She looked up at him with eyes 
 that saw. And a warm glow visited her cool cheeks. 
 Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and she 
 seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some 
 faint glimmer of life and its possibilities on the other 
 side of her glove counter dawned upon her. Carter 
 felt the change and crowded the opportunit3\ 
 
 "Marry me, Masie," he whispered softly, "and we 
 will go away from this ugly city to beautiful ones. 
 We will forget work and business, and life will be one 
 long holiday. I know where I should take you I 
 have been there often. Just think of a shore where 
 summer is eternal, where the waves are always rip 
 pling on the lovely beach and the people are happv 
 and free as children. We will sail to those shores and 
 remain there as long as you please. In one of those 
 
A Lick penny Lover 29 
 
 far-away cities there are grand and lovely palaces 
 and towers full of beautiful pictures and statues. 
 The streets of the city are water, and one travels 
 about in " 
 
 "I know," said Masie, sitting up suddenly. "Gon 
 dolas." 
 
 "Yes," smiled Carter. 
 
 "I thought so," said Masie. 
 
 "And then," continued Carter, "we will travel on 
 and see whatever we wish in the world. After the 
 European cities we will visit India and the ancient 
 cities there, and ride on elephants and see the wonder 
 ful temples of the Hindoos and Brahmins and the Jap 
 anese gardens and the camel trains and chariot races 
 in Persia, and ah 1 the queer sights of foreign coun 
 tries. Don t you think you would like it, Maisie?" 
 
 Maisie rose to her feet. 
 
 "I think we had better be going home," she said, 
 coolly. "It s getting late." 
 
 Carter humored her. He had come to know her 
 varying, thistle-down moods, and that it was useless 
 to combat them. But he felt a certain happy tri 
 umph. He had held for a moment, though but by a 
 silken thread, the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope 
 was stronger within him. Once she had folded her 
 wings and her cool hand had closed about his own. 
 
 At the Biggest Store the next day Maisie s chum, 
 Lulu, waylaid her in an angle of the counter. 
 
30 The Vdce of the City 
 
 "How are you and your swell friend making it?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Oh, him?" said Masie, patting her side curls. 
 "He ain t in it any more. Say, Lu, what do you 
 think that fellow wanted me to do ?" 
 
 "Go on the stage?" guessed Lulu, breathlessly. 
 
 "Nit ; he s too cheap a guy for that. He wanted 
 me to marry him and go down to Coney Island for a 
 wedding tour !" 
 
DOUGHERTY S EYE-OPENER 
 
 JIM DOUGHERTY was a sport, He be 
 longed to that race of men. In Manhattan it is a 
 distinct race. They are the Caribs of the North 
 strong, artful, self-sufficient, clannish, honorable 
 within the laws of their race, holding in lenient con 
 tempt neighboring tribes who bow to the measure of 
 Society s tapeline. I refer, of course, to the titled 
 nobility of sportdom. There is a class which bears 
 as a qualifying adjective the substantive belonging to 
 a wind instrument made of a cheap and base metal. 
 But the tin mines of Cornwall never produced the 
 material for manufacturing descriptive nomenclature 
 for "Big Jim" Dougherty. 
 
 The habitat of the sport is the lobby or the outside 
 corner of certain hotels and combination restaurants 
 and cafes. They are mostly men of different sizes, 
 running from small to large ; but they are unanimous 
 in the possession of a recently shaven, blue-black cheek 
 and chin and dark overcoats (in season) with black 
 velvet collars. 
 
 Of the domestic life of the sport little is known. It 
 has been said that Cupid and Hymen sometimes take 
 a hand in the game and copper the queen of hearts to 
 
32 The Voice of the City 
 
 lose. Daring theorists have averred not content 
 with simply saying that a sport often contracts a 
 *> spouse, and even incurs descendants. Sometimes he 
 sits in the game of politics; and then at chowder 
 picnics there is a revelation of a Mrs. Sport and 
 little Sports in glazed hats with tin pails. 
 
 But mostly the sport is Oriental. He believes his 
 women-folk should not be too patent. Somewhere 
 behind grilles or flower-ornamented fire escapes they 
 await him. There, no doubt, they tread on rugs from 
 Teheran and are diverted by the bulbul and play 
 upon the dulcimer and feed upon sweetmeats. But 
 away from his home the sport is an integer. He doesS 
 not, as men of other races in Manhattan do, become 
 the convo^y in his unoccupied hours of fluttering laces 
 and high heels that tick off delectably the happy 
 seconds of the evening parade. He herds with his 
 own race at corners, and delivers a commentary in his 
 Carib lingo upon the passing show, 
 
 "Big Jim" Dougherty had a wife, but he did not 
 wear a button portrait of her upon his lapel. He 
 had a home in one of those brown-stone, iron-railed 
 streets on the west side that look like a recently 
 excavated bowling alley of Pompeii. 
 
 To this home of his Mr. Dougherty repaired each 
 night when the hour was so late as to promise no 
 further diversion in the arch domains of sport. By 
 that time the occupant of the monogamistic harera 
 
Dougherty s Eye-opener 33 
 
 would be in dreamland, the bulbul silenced and the 
 hour propitious for slumber. 
 
 "Big Jim" always arose at twelve, meridian, for 
 breakfast, and soon afterward he would return to the 
 rendezvous of his "crowd." 
 
 He was always vaguely conscious that there was a 
 Mrs. Dougherty. He would have received without 
 denial the charge that the quiet, neat, comfortable 
 little woman across the table at home was his wife. 
 In fact, he remembered pretty well that they had been 
 married for nearly four years. She would often tell 
 him about the cute tricks of Spot, the canary, and 
 the light-haired lady that lived in the window of the 
 flat across the street. 
 
 "Big Jim" Dougherty even listened to this conver 
 sation of hers sometimes. He knew that she would 
 have a nice dinner ready for him every evening at 
 seven when he came for it. She sometimes went to 
 matinees, and she had a talking machine with six dozen 
 records. Once when her Uncle Amos blew in on a 
 wind from up-state, she went with him to the Eden 
 Musee. Surely these things were diversions enough 
 for any woman. 
 
 One afternoon Mr. Dougherty finished his break 
 fast, put on his hat and got away fairly for the door, i 
 When his hand was on the knob he heard his wife s 
 voice. 
 
 "Jim," she said, firmly, "I wish you would take me 
 
34 The Voice of the City 
 
 out to dinner this evening. It has been three years 
 since you have been outside the door with inc." 
 
 "Big Jim" was astounded. She had never asked 
 anything like this before. It had the flavor of a 
 totally new proposition. But he was a game sport. 
 
 "All right," he said. "You be ready when I come 
 at seven. None of this wait two minutes till I primp 
 an hour or two kind of business, now, Dele." 
 
 "I ll be ready," said his wife, calmly. 
 
 At seven she descended the stone steps in the Pora- 
 peian bowling alley at the side of "Big Jim" Dough 
 erty* She wore a dinner gown made of a stuff that 
 the spiders must have woven, and of a color that a 
 twilight sky must have contributed. A light coat with 
 many admirably unnecessary capes and adorably 
 inutile ribbons floated downward from her shoulders. 
 Fine feathers do make fine birds; and the only re 
 proach in the saying is for the man who refuses to 
 give up his earnings to the ostrich-tip industry. 
 
 "Big Jim" Dougherty was troubled. There was a 
 being at his side whom he did not know. lie thought 
 of the sober-hued plumage that this bird of paradise 
 was accustomed to wear in her cage, and this winged 
 revelation puzzled him. In some way she reminded 
 him of the Delia Cullen that he had married four 
 years before. Shyly and rather awkwardly he 
 stalked at her right hand. 
 
 "After dinner I ll take you back home, Dele," said 
 
Dougherty s Eye-opener 35 
 
 Mr. Dougherty, "and then I ll drop back up to Selt 
 zer s with the boys. You can have swell chuck to 
 night if you want it. I made a winning on Anaconda 
 yesterday ; so you can go as far as you like." 
 
 Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing 
 with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxori- 
 ousness was a weakness that the precepts of the 
 Caribs did not countenance. If any of his friends of 
 the track, the billiard cloth or the square circle had 
 wives they had never complained of the fact in public. 
 There were a number of table d hote places on the 
 cross streets near the broad and shining way ; and to 
 one of these lie had proposed to escort her, so that the 
 bushel might not be removed from the light of his 
 domesticity. 
 
 But while on the way Mr. Dougherty altered those 
 intentions. He had been casting stealthy glances at 
 his attractive companion and he was seized with the 
 conviction that she was no selling plater. He re 
 solved to parade with his wife past Seltzer s cafe, 
 where at this time a number of his tribe would be 
 gathered to view the daily evening procession. Yes ; 
 and he would lake her to dine at Hoogley s, the swell- 
 est slow-lunch warehouse on the line, he said to him 
 self. 
 
 The congregation of smooth-faced tribal gentle 
 men were on watch at Seltzer s. As Mr. Dougherty 
 and his reorganized Delia passed they stared, mo- 
 
36 The Voice of the City 
 
 mentarily petrified, and then removed their hats a 
 performance as unusual to them as was the astonish 
 ing innovation presented to their gaze by "Big Jim." 
 On the latter gentleman s impassive face there ap 
 peared a slight flicker of triumph a faint flicker, 
 no more to be observed than the expression called 
 there by the draft of little casino to a four-card spade 
 flush. 
 
 Hoogley s was animated. Electric lights shone 
 as, indeed, they were expected to do. And the nap- 
 ery, the glassware and the flowers also meritoriously 
 performed the spectacular duties required of them. 
 The guests were numerous, well-dressed and gay. 
 
 A waiter not necessarily obsequious con 
 ducted "Big Jim" Dougherty and his wife to a table. 
 
 "Play that menu straight across for what you like, 
 Dele," said "Big Jim." "It s you for a trough of the 
 gilded oats to-night. It strikes me that maybe we ve 
 been sticking too fast to home fodder." 
 
 "Big Jim s" wife gave her order. He looked at her 
 with respect. She had mentioned truffles ; and he had 
 not known that she knew what truffles were. From 
 the wine list she designated an appropriate and desir 
 able brand. He looked at her with some admiration. 
 
 She was beaming with the innocent excitement that 
 woman derives from the exercise of her gregarious- 
 ness. She was talking to him about a hundred things 
 with animation and delight. And as the meal pro- 
 
Dougherty s Eye-opener 37 
 
 gressed her cheeks, colorless from a life indoors, took 
 on a delicate flush. "Big Jim" looked around the 
 room and saw that none of the women there had her 
 charm. And then he thought of the three years she 
 had suffored immurement, uncomplaining, and a flush 
 of shame warmed him, for he carried fair play as an 
 item in his creed. 
 
 But when the Honorable Patrick Corrigan, leader 
 in Dougherty s district and a friend of his, saw them 
 and came over to the table, matters got to the three- 
 quarter stretch. The Honorable Patrick was a gal 
 lant man, both in deeds and words. As for the Blar 
 ney stone, his previous actions toward it must have 
 been pronounced. Heavy damages for breach of 
 promise could surely have been obtained had the 
 Blarney stone seen fit to sue the Honorable Patrick. 
 
 "Jimmy, old man !" he called ; he clapped Dough 
 erty on the back; he shone like a midday sun upon 
 Delia. 
 
 "Honorable Mr. Corrigan Mrs. Dougherty," 
 said "Big Jim." 
 
 The Honorable Patrick became a fountain of enter 
 tainment and admiration. The waiter had to fetch 
 a third chair for him ; he made another at the table, 
 and the wineglasses were refilled. 
 
 "You selfish old rascal !" he exclaimed, shaking an 
 arch finger at "Big Jim," "to have kept Mrs. Dough 
 erty a secret from us." 
 
38 The Voice of the City 
 
 And then "Big Jim" Dougherty, who was no talker, 
 sat dumb, and saw the wife who had dined every 
 evening for three years at home, blossom like a fairy 
 flower. Quick, witty, charming, full of light and 
 ready talk, she received the experienced attack of 
 the Honorable Patrick oa the field of repartee and 
 surprised, vanquished, delighted him. She unfolded 
 lies long-closed petals and around her the room 
 Itecame a garden. They tried to include "Big 
 Jim" in the conversation, but he was without a 
 vocabulary* 
 
 And then a stray bunch of politicians and good 
 fellows who lived for sport came into the room. 
 They saw "Big Jim" and the leader, and over they 
 came and were made acquainted with Mrs. Dougherty. 
 And in a few minutes she was holding a salon. Half 
 a dozen men surrounded her, courtiers all, and six 
 found her capable of charming. "Big Jim" sat, 
 grim, and kept saying to himself: ^Three years, 
 three years I" 
 
 The dinner came to an end. The Honorable Pat 
 rick reached for Mrs. Dougherty s cloak; but that 
 was a matter of action instead of words, and Dough 
 erty s big hand got it first by two seconds. 
 
 While the farewells were being said at the door the 
 Honorable Patrick smote Dougherty mightily be 
 tween the shoulders. 
 
 "Jimmy, me boy," he declared, in a giant whisper, 
 
Dougherty s Eye-opener 39 
 
 "the madam is a jewel of the first water. Ye re a 
 lucky dog." 
 
 "Big Jim" walked homeward with his wife. She 
 seemed quite as pleased with the lights and show 
 windows in the streets as with the admiration of the 
 men in Hoogley s. As they passed Seltzer s they 
 heard the sound of many voices in the cafe. The 
 boys would he starting the drinks around now and 
 discussing past performances. 
 
 At the door of their home Delia paused. The 
 pleasure of the outing radiated softly from her coun 
 tenance. She could not hope for Jim of evenings, 
 but the glory of this one would lighten her lonely 
 hours for a leng time. 
 
 "Thank you for taking me out, Jim," she said, 
 gratefully. You ll be going back up to Seltzer s 
 now, of course." 
 
 "To with Seltzer s," said "Big Jim," em 
 phatically. rt And d Pat Corrigan! Does he 
 think I haven t got any eyes?" 
 
 And the ior elosed behind both of them. 
 
"LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT" 
 
 iHE honeymoon was at its full. There was a flat 
 with the reddest of new carpets, tasselled portieres 
 and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge 
 above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The won 
 der of it was yet upon them. Neither of them had 
 ever seen a yellow primrose by the river s brim ; but if 
 such a sight had met their eyes at that time it would 
 ever seemed like well, whatever the poet expected 
 the right kind of people to see in it besides a prim 
 rose. 
 
 The bride sat in the rocker with her feet resting 
 upon the world. She was wrapt in rosy dreams and 
 a kimono of the same^Jhuc. She wondered what the 
 people in Greenland and Tasmania and Beloochistan 
 were saying one to another about her marriage to 
 Kid McGarry. Not that it made any difference. 
 There was no welter-weight from London to the 
 Southern Cross that could stand up four hours 
 no ; four rounds with her bridegroom. And he had 
 been hers for three weeks ; and the crook of her little 
 finger could sway him more than the fist of any 142- 
 pounder in the world. 
 
 Love, when it is ours, is the other name for self- 
 40 
 
"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit" 41 
 
 abnegation and sacrifice. When it belongs to people 
 across the airshaft it means arrogance and self- 
 conceit. 
 
 The bride crossed her oxfords and looked thought 
 fully at the distemper Cupids on the ceiling. 
 
 "Precious," said she, with the air of Cleopatra 
 asking Antony for Rome done up in tissue paper and 
 delivered at residence, "I think I would like a peach. 5 " 
 
 Kid McGarry arose and put on his coat and hat. 
 He was serious, shaven, sentimental, and spry. 
 
 "All right," said he, as coolly as though he were 
 only agreeing to sign articles to fight the champion 
 of England. "I ll step down and cop one out for 
 you see?" 
 
 "Don t be long," said the bride. "I ll be lonesome 
 without my naughty boy. Get a nice, ripe one." 
 
 After a series of farewells that would have befitted 
 ^an imminent voyage to foreign parts, the Kid went 
 down to the street. 
 
 Here he not unreasonably hesitated, for the season 
 was yet early spring, and there seemed small chance 
 of wresting anywhere from those chill streets and 
 stores the coveted luscious guerdon of summer s 
 golden prime. 
 
 At the Italian s fruit-stand on the corner he 
 stopped and cast a contemptuous eye over the dis 
 play of papered oranges, highly polished apples and 
 wan, sun-hungry bananas. 
 
42 The Voice of the City 
 
 "Gotta da peach?" asked the Kid in the tongue of 
 Dante, the lover of lovers. 
 
 "Ah, no," sighed the vender. "Not for one mont 
 eom-a da peach. Too soon. Gotta da nice-a orange. 
 Like-a da orange?" 
 
 Scornful, the Kid pursued his quest. He entered 
 the all-night chop-house, cafe, and bowling-alley of 
 his friend and admirer, Justus O Callahan. The 
 O Callahan was about in his institution, looking for 
 leaks. 
 
 "I want it straight," said the Kid to him. "The 
 old woman has got a hunch that she wants a peach. 
 Now, if you ve got a peach, Cal, get it out quick. I 
 want it and others like it if you ve got *em in plural 
 quantities." 
 
 "The house is yours," said O Callahan. "But 
 there s no peach in it. It s too soon. I don t sup 
 pose you could even find em at one of the Broadway 
 joints. That s too bad. When a lady fixes her 
 mouth for a certain kind of fruit nothing else won t 
 do. It s too late now to find any of the first-class 
 fruiterers open. But if you think the missis would 
 like some nice oranges I ve just got a box of fine ones 
 in that she might " 
 
 "Much obliged, Cal. It s a peach proposition 
 right from the ring of the gong. I ll try further." 
 
 The time was nearly midnight as the Kid walked 
 down the West-Side avenue. Few stores were open, 
 
"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit 33 43 
 
 and such as were practically hooted at the idea of a 
 peach. 
 
 But in her moated flat the bride confidently awaited 
 her Persian fruit. A champion welter-weight not find 
 a peach? not stride triumphantly over the seasons 
 and the zodiac and the almanac to fetch an Amsden s 
 June or a Georgia cling to his owny-own? 
 
 The Kid s eye caught sight of a window that was 
 lighted and gorgeous with nature s most entrancing 
 colors. The light suddenly went out. The Kid 
 sprinted and caught the fruiterer locking his door. 
 
 "Peaches?" said he, with extreme deliberation. 
 
 "Well, no, sir. Not for three or four weeks yet. 
 I haven t any idea where you might find some. There 
 may be a few in town from under the glass, but they d 
 be hard to locate. Maybe at one of the more ex 
 pensive hotels some place where there s plenty of 
 money to waste. I ve got some very fine oranges, 
 though from a shipload that came in to-day." 
 
 The Kid lingered on the corner for a moment, and 
 then set out briskly toward a pair of green lights 
 that flanked the steps of a building down a dark side 
 street. 
 
 "Captain around anywhere?" he asked of the desk 
 sergeant of the police station. 
 
 At that moment the captain came briskly forward 
 from the rear. He was in plain clothes and had a 
 busy air. 
 
44 The Voice of the City 
 
 "Hello, Kid," he said to the pugilist. "Thought 
 you were bridal-touring?" 
 
 "Got back yesterday. I m a solid citizen now. 
 Think I ll take an interest in municipal doings. How 
 would it suit you to get into Denver Dick s place 
 to-night, Cap?" 
 
 "Past performances," said the captain., twisting 
 his moustache. "Denver was closed up two months 
 ago." 
 
 "Correct," said the Kid. "Rafferty chased him 
 out of the Forty-third. He s running in your pre 
 cinct now, and his game s bigger than ever. I m 
 down on this gambling business. I can put you 
 against his game." 
 
 "In my precinct?" growled the captain. "Are 
 you sure, Kid? I ll take it as a favor. Have you 
 got the entree? How is it to be done?" 
 
 "Hammers," said the Kid. "They haven t got any 
 steel on the doors yet. You ll need ten men. No ; 
 they won t let me in the place. Denver has been 
 trying to do me. He thought I tipped him off for 
 the other raid. I didn t, though. You want to hurry. 
 I ve got to get back home. The house is only three 
 blocks from here." 
 
 Before ten minutes had sped the captain with a 
 dozen men stole with their guide into the hallway of 
 a dark and virtuous-looking building in which many 
 businesses were conducted bv dav. 
 
"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit" 45 
 
 "Third floor, rear," said the Kid, softly. "I ll lead 
 the way." 
 
 Two axemen faced the door that he pointed out to 
 them. 
 
 "It seems all quiet," said the captain, doubtfully. 
 "Are you sure your tip is straight?" 
 
 "Cut away!" said the Kid. "It s on me if it 
 ain t." 
 
 The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected 
 door. A blaze of light from within poured through 
 the smashed panels. The door fell, and the raiders 
 sprang into the room with their guns handy. 
 
 The big room was furnished with the gaudy mag 
 nificence dear to Denver Dick s western ideas. Vari 
 ous well-patronized games were in progress. About 
 fifty rnen"who were in the room rushed upon the police 
 in a grand break for personal liberty. The plain- 
 clothes men had to do a little club-swinging. More 
 than half the patrons escaped. 
 
 Denver Dick had graced his game with his own 
 presence that night. He led the rush that was in 
 tended to sweep away the smaller body of raiders. 
 But when he saw the Kid his manner became personal. 
 Being in the heavy-weight class he cast himself joy 
 fully upon his slighter enemy, and they rolled down a 
 flight of stairs in each other s arms. On the land 
 ing they separated and arose, and then the Kid was 
 able to use some of his professional tactics, which had 
 
46 The Voice of the City 
 
 been useless to him while in the excited clutch of a 
 200-pound sporting gentleman who was about to lose 
 $20,000 worth of paraphernalia. 
 
 After vanquishing his adversary the Kid hurried 
 upstairs and through the gambling-room into a 
 smaller apartment connecting by an arched doorway. 
 
 Here was a long table set with choicest china ware 
 and silver, and lavishly furnished with food of that 
 expensive and spectacular sort of which the devotees 
 of sport are supposed to be fond. Here again was 
 to be perceived the liberal and florid taste of the gen- 
 tleman with the urban cognomenal prefix. ^ 
 
 A No. 10 patent leather shoe protruded a few of 
 its inches outside the tablecloth along the floor. The 
 Kid seized this and plucked forth a black man in a 
 white tie and the garb of a servitor. 
 
 "Get up!" commanded the Kid. "Are you in 
 charge of this free lunch?" 
 
 "Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag in, 
 boss?" 
 
 "Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any 
 peaches in this layout? If there ain t I ll have to 
 throw up the sponge." 
 
 "There was three dozen, sah, when the game 
 opened this evenin ; but I reckon the gentlemen done 
 eat em all up. If you d like to eat a fust-rate 
 orange, sah, I kin find you some." 
 
 "Get busy," ordered the Kid sternly, "and move 
 
"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit" 47 
 
 whatever peach crop you ve got quick or there ll be 
 trouble. If anybody oranges me again to-night, I ll 
 knock his face off." 
 
 The raid on Denver Dick s high-priced arid prodi 
 gal luncheon revealed one lone, last peach that had 
 escaped the epicurean jaws of the followers of 
 chance. Into the Kid s pocket it went, and that in 
 defatigable forager departed immediately with his 
 prize. With scarcely a glance at the scene on the 
 sidewalk below, where the officers were loading their 
 prisoners into the patrol wagons, he moved homeward 
 with long, swift strides. 
 
 His heart was light as he went. So rode the 
 knights back to Camelot after perils and high deeds 
 done for their ladies fair. The Kid s lady had com 
 manded him and he had obeyed. True, it was but a 
 peach that she had craved ; but it had been no small 
 deed to glean a peach at midnight from that wintry 
 city where yet the February snows lay like iron. 
 She had asked for a peach ; she was his bride ; in his 
 pocket the peach was warming in his hand that held 
 it for fear that it might fall out and be lost. 
 
 On the way the Kid turned in at an all-night drug 
 store and said to the spectacled clerk: 
 
 "Say, sport, I wish you d size up this rib of mine 
 and see if it s broke. I was in a little scrap and 
 bumped down a flight or two of stairs." 
 
 The druggist made an examination. 
 
48 The Voice of the City 
 
 "It isn t broken," was his diagnosis ; "but you have 
 a bruise there that looks like you d fallen off the 
 Flatiron twice." 
 
 "That s all right," said the Kid. "Let s have 
 your clothesbrush, please." 
 
 The bride waited in the rosy glow of the pink lamp 
 shade. The miracles were not all passed away. By 
 breathing a desire for some slight thing a flower, 
 a pomegranate, a oh, yes, a peach she could 
 send forth her man into the night, into the world 
 which could not withstand him, and he would do her 
 bidding. 
 
 And now he stood by her chair and laid the peach 
 in her hand. 
 
 "Naughty boy !" she said, fondly. "Did I say a 
 peach? I think I would much rather have had an 
 orange." 
 
 Blest be the bride. 
 
THE HARBINGER 
 
 LONG before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom 
 of the yokel does the city man know that the grass- 
 green goddess is upon her throne. He sits at his 
 breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens 
 his morning paper and sees journalism leave vernal- 
 ism at the post. 
 
 For, whereas, spring s couriers were once the evi 
 dence of our finer senses, now the Associated Press 
 does the trick. 
 
 The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the 
 stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding 
 of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, 
 the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the 
 Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the 
 plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., 
 the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken 
 leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base 
 attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of 
 quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, 
 the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual 
 stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first 
 crack of the ice jam in the Allegheny River, the find 
 ing of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent 
 
 49 
 
50 The Voice of the City 
 
 at Round Corners these are the advance signs of 
 the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise 
 city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter upon 
 his dreary fields. 
 
 But these be mere externals. The true harbinger 
 is the heart. When Strcphon seeks his Chloe and 
 Mike his Maggie, then only is spring arrived and the 
 newspaper report of the five-foot rattier killed in 
 Squire Pettigrew s pasture confirmed. 
 
 Ere the first violet blew, Mr. Peters, Mr. Ragsdale 
 and Mr. Kidd sat together on a bench in Union 
 Square and conspired. Mr. Peters was the D Artag- 
 nan of the loafers there. He was the dingiest, the 
 laziest, the sorriest brown blot against the green back 
 ground of any bench in the park. But just then he 
 was the most important of the trio. 
 
 Mr. Peters had a wife. This had not heretofore 
 affected his standing with Ragsy and Kidd. But to 
 day it invested him with a peculiar interest. His 
 friends, having escaped matrimony, had shown a dis 
 position to deride Mr. Peters for his venture on that 
 troubled sea. But at last they had been forced to 
 acknowledge that either he had been gifted with a 
 large foresight or that he was one of Fortune s lucky 
 sons. 
 
 For, Mrs. Peters had a dollar. A whole dollar 
 bill, good and receivable by the Government for cus 
 toms, taxes and all public dues. How to get pos- 
 
The Harbinger 51 
 
 session of that dollar was the question up for discus 
 sion by the three musty musketeers. 
 
 "How do you know it was a dollar?" asked Ragsy, 
 the immensity of the sum inclining him to scepticism. 
 
 "The coalman seen her have it," said Mr. Peters. 
 "She went out and done some washing yesterday. 
 And look what she give me for breakfast the heel 
 of a loaf and a cup of coffee, and her with a dollar !" 
 
 "It s fierce," said Ragsy. 
 
 "Sa} r we go up and purich er and stick a towel 
 in er mouth and cop the coin," suggested Kidd, 
 viciously. "Y 5 ain t afraid of a woman, are you?" 
 
 "She might holler and have us pinched," demurred 
 Ragsy. "I don t believe in slugging no woman in a 
 houseful of people." 
 
 "Gent men," said Mr. Peters, severely, through his 
 russet stubble, "remember that you are speaking of 
 my wife. A man who would lift his hand to a lady 
 except in the way of " 
 
 "Maguire," said Ragsy, pointedly, "has got his 
 bock beer sign out. If we had a dollar we could " 
 
 "Hush up !" said Mr. Peters, licking his lips. 
 "We got to get that case note somehow, bovs. Ain t 
 what s a man s wife s his? Leave it to me. I ll go 
 over to the house and get it. Wait here for 
 me." 
 
 "I ve seen em give up quick, and tell you where 
 it s hid if you kick em in the ribs," said Kidd. 
 
52 The Voice of the City 
 
 "No man would kick a woman," said Peters, virtu 
 ously. "A little choking just a touch on the wind 
 pipe that gets away with em and no marks left. 
 Wait for me. I ll bring back that dollar, boys." 
 
 High up in a tenement-house between Second Ave 
 nue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room 
 so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent 
 for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing 
 odd jobs of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had 
 a pure, unbroken record of five years without having 
 earned a penny. And yet they clung together, shar 
 ing each other s hatred and misery, being creatures 
 of habit. Of habit, the power that keeps the earth 
 from flying to pieces ; though there is some silly theory 
 of gravitation. 
 
 Mrs. Peters reposed her 200 pounds on the safer 
 of the two chairs and gazed stolidly out the one win 
 dow at the brick wall opposite. Her eyes were red 
 and damp. The furniture could have been carried 
 away on a pushcart, but no pushcart man would have 
 removed it as a gift. 
 
 The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His fox- 
 terrier eyes expressed a wish. His wife s diagnosis 
 located correctly the seat of it, but misread it hunger 
 instead of thirst. 
 
 "You ll get nothing more to eat till night," she 
 said, looking out of the window again. "Take your 
 hound-dog s face out of the room." 
 
The Harbinger 53 
 
 Mr. Peters s eye calculated the distance betweeft 
 them. By taking her by surprise it might be possible 
 to spring upon her, overthrow her, and apply the 
 throttling tactics of which he had boasted to his 
 waiting comrades. True, it had been only a boast; 
 never yet had he dared to lay violent hands upon 
 her ; but with the thoughts of the delicious, cool bock 
 or Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near to up 
 setting his own theories of the treatment due by a 
 gentleman to a lady. But, with his loafer s love for 
 the more artistic and less strenuou s way, he chose 
 diplomacy first, the high card in the game the 
 assumed attitude of success already attained. 
 
 "You have a dollar," he said, loftily, but signifi 
 cantly in the tone that goes with the lighting of a 
 cigar when the properties are at hand. 
 
 "I have," said Mrs. Peters, producing the bill from 
 her bosom and crackling it, teasingly. 
 
 "I am offered a position in a in a tea store," 
 said Mr. Peters. "I am to begin work to-morrow. 
 But it will be necessary for me to buy a pair of " 
 
 "You are a liar," said Mrs. Peters, reinterring the 
 note. "No tea store, nor no A B C store, nor no 
 junk shop would have you. I rubbed the skin off 
 both me hands washin jumpers and overalls to make 
 that dollar. Do you think it come out of them suds 
 to buy the kind you put into you? Skiddoo! Get 
 your mind off of money." 
 
54 The Voice of the City 
 
 Evidently the poses of Talleyrand were not worth 
 one hundred cents on that dollar. But diplomacy is 
 dexterous. The artistic temperament of Mr. Peters 
 Jifted him by the straps of his congress gaiters and 
 set him on new ground. He called up a look of des 
 perate melancholy to his eyes. 
 
 "Clara," he said, hollowly, "to struggle further 
 is useless. You have always misunderstood me. 
 Heaven knows I have striven with all my might to 
 keep my head above the waves of misfortune, 
 but " 
 
 "Cut out the rainbow of hope and that stuff about 
 walkin one by one through the narrow isles of Spain," 
 said Airs. Peters, with a sigh. "I ve heard it so often. 
 There s an ounce bottle of carbolic on the shelf be 
 hind the empty coffee can. Drink hearty." 
 
 Mr. Peters reflected. What next ! The old expe 
 dients had failed. The two musty musketeers were 
 awaiting him hard by the ruined chateau that is to 
 say, on a park bench with rickety cast-iron legs. His 
 honor was at stake. He had engaged to storm the 
 castle single-handed and bring back the treasure that 
 was to furnish them wassail and solace. And all that 
 stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, 
 once a little girl whom he could aha ! why not 
 again? Once with soft words he could, as they say, 
 twist her around his little finger. Why not again? 
 Not for years had he tried it. Grim poverty arid 
 
The Harbinger 55 
 
 mutual hatred had killed all that. But Ragsy and 
 Kidd were waiting for him to bring that dollar ! 
 
 Mr. Peters took a surreptitiously keen look at his * 
 wife. Her formless bulk overflowed the chair. She 
 kept her eyes fixed out the window in a strange kind 
 of trance. Her eyes showed that she had been re 
 cently weeping. 
 
 "I wonder," said Mr. Peters to himself, "if there d 
 be anything in it." 
 
 The window was open upon its outlook of brick 
 walls and drab, barren back yards. Except for the 
 mildness of the air that entered it might have been 
 midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frown 
 ing face to besieging spring. But spring doesn t 
 come with the thunder of cannon. She is a sapper 
 and a miner, and you must capitulate. 
 
 "I ll try it," said Mr. Peters to himself, making a 
 wry face. 
 
 He went up to his wife and put his arm across her 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Clara, darling," he said in tones that shouldn t 
 have fooled a baby seal, "why should we have hard 
 words? Ain t you my own tootsuin wootsum?" 
 
 A black mark against you, Mr. Peters, in the sacred 
 ledger of Cupid. Charges of attempted graft are 
 filed against you, and of forgery and utterance of two 
 of Love s holiest of appellations. 
 
 But the miracle of spring was wrought. Into the 
 
56 The Voice of the City 
 
 back room over the back alley between the black walls 
 had crept the Harbinger. It was ridiculous, and 
 
 yet Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam 
 
 and sir and all of us, are in it. 
 
 Red and fat and crying like Niobe or Niagara, 
 Mrs. Peters threw her arms around her lord and dis 
 solved upon him. Mr. Peters would have striven to 
 extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his 
 arms were bound to his sides. 
 
 "Do you love me, James?" asked Mrs. Peters. 
 
 "Madly," said James, "but " 
 
 "You are ill !" exclaimed Mrs. Peters. "Why are 
 you so pale and tired looking?" 
 
 "I feel weak," said Mr. Peters. "I " 
 
 "Oh, wait; 1 know what it is. Wait, James. I ll 
 be back in a minute." 
 
 With a parting hug that revived in Mr. Peters 
 recollections of the Terrible Turk, his wife hurried 
 out of the room and down the stairs. 
 
 Mr. Peters hitched his thumbs under his sus 
 penders. 
 
 "All right," he confided to the ceiling. "I ve got 
 her going. I hadn t any idea the old girl was soft 
 any more under the foolish rib. Well, sir; ain t I 
 the Claude Melnotte of the lower East Side? What? 
 It s a 100 to 1 shot that I get the dollar. I wonder 
 what she went out for. I guess she s gone to tell 
 Mrs. Muldoon on the second floor, that we re recon- 
 
The Harbinger 57 
 
 ciled. I ll remember this. Soft soap ! And Ragsy 
 was talking about slugging her !" 
 
 Mrs. Peters came back with a bottle of sarsapa- 
 rilla. 
 
 "I m glad I happened to have that dollar," she said. 
 "You re all run down, honey." 
 
 Mr. Peters had a tablespoonful of the stuff in 
 serted into him. Then Mrs. Peters sat on his lap 
 and murmured : 
 
 "Call me tootsum wootsums again, James." 
 
 He sat still, held there by his materialized goddess 
 of spring. 
 
 Spring had come. 
 
 On the bench in Union Square Mr. Ragsdale and 
 Mr. Kidd squirmed, tongue-parched, awaiting D ? Ar- 
 tagnan and his dollar. 
 
 "I wish I had choked her at first," said Mr. Peters 
 to himself. 
 
sWHILE THE AUTO WAITS 
 
 PROMPTLY at the beginning of twilight, came 
 again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park 
 the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a 
 book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which 
 ^ print could be accomplished. 
 
 To repeat : Her dress was gray, and plain enough 
 to mask its impeccancy of style and fit. A large- * 
 meshed veil imprisoned her turban hat and a face that 
 shone through it with a cairn and unconscious beauty, 
 She had come there at the same hour on the day 
 previous, and on the day before that ; and there was 
 one wlio knew it. 
 
 The young man who knew it hovered near, relying 
 
 ^upon burnt sacrifices to the great joss, Luck. His 
 
 piety was rewarded, for, in turning a page, her book 
 
 sL-jjped from her fingers and bounded from the bench 
 
 a f-ill yard away. 
 
 The young man pounced upon it with instant avid 
 ity, returning it to its owner with that air that seems 
 to flourish in parks and public places a compound 
 of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the 
 policeman on the beat. In a pleasant voice, he risked 
 an inconsequent remark upon the weather that in- 
 
 58 
 
While the Auto Waits 59 
 
 troductory topic responsible for so much of the 
 world s unhappiness and stood poised for a mo 
 ment, awaiting his fate. 
 
 The girl looked him over leisurely ; at his ordinary, 
 neat dress and his features distinguished by nothing 
 particular in the way of expression. 
 
 "You may sit down, if you like," she said, in a, 
 full, deliberate contralto. "Really, I would like to 
 have you do so. The light is too bad for reading. 
 I would prefer to talk." 
 
 The vassal of Luck slid upon the seat by her side 
 with complaisance. 
 
 "Do you know," he said, speaking the formula with 
 which park chairmen open their meetings, "that you 
 are quite the stunningest girl I have seen in a long 
 time? I had my eye on you yesterday. Didn t know 
 somebody was bowled over by those pretty lamps of 
 yours, did you, honeysuckle?" 
 
 "Whoever you are," said the girl, in icy tones, 
 "you must remember that I am a lady. I will excuse 
 the remark you have just made because the mistake 
 was, doubtless, not an unnatural one in your circle. 
 I asked you to sit down; if the invitation must, 
 constitute me your honeysuckle, consider it with 
 drawn." 
 
 I earnestly beg your pardon," pleaded the young 
 man. His expression of satisfaction had changed to 
 one of penitence and humility. "It was my fault, 
 
60 The Voice of the City 
 
 you know I mean, there are girls in parks, you 
 know that is, of course, you don t know, but " 
 
 "Abandon the subject, if you please. Of course 
 I know. Now, tell me about these people passing 
 and crowding, each way, along these paths. Where 
 are they going? Why do they hurry so? Are they 
 happy ?" 
 
 The young man had promptly abandoned his air/ 
 of coquetry. His cue was now for a waiting part; 
 he could not guess the role he would be expected to 
 play. 
 
 "It is interesting to watch them," he replied, pos 
 tulating her mood. "It is the wonderful drama of 
 life. Some are going to supper and some to er 
 other places. One wonders what their histories are." 
 
 "I do not," said the girl ; "I am not so inquisi 
 tive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I 
 be near the great, common, throbbing heart of hu- , 
 manity. My part in afe is cast where its beats are 
 never felt. Can you surmise why I spoke, to you, 
 Mr. ?" 
 
 "Parkenstacker," supplied the young man. Then 
 he looked eager and hopeful. 
 
 "No," said the girl, holding tip a slender finger, 
 and smiling slightly. "You would recognize it im 
 mediately. It is impossible to keep one s name out 
 of print. Or even one s portrait. This veil and this 
 hat of my maid furnish me with an incog. You 
 
While the Auto Waits 61 
 
 should have seen the chauffeur stare at it when he 
 thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six 
 names that belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by 
 the accident of birth, is one of them. I spoke to you, 
 Mr. Stackenpot " 
 
 "Parkenstacker," corrected the young man, mod 
 estly. 
 
 " Mr. Parkenstacker, because I wanted to talk, 
 for once, with a natural man one unspoiled by the 
 despicable gloss of wealth and supposed social supe- 
 riorit3 r . Oh ! you do not know how weary I am of 
 it money, money, money ! And of the men who 
 surround me, dancing like little marionettes all cut by 
 the same pattern. I am sick of pleasure, of jewels, 
 of travel, of society, of luxuries of all kinds." 
 
 "I always had an idea," ventured the young man, 
 hesitatingly, "that money must be a pretty good 
 thing." 
 
 "A competence is to be 1 desired. But when you 
 
 have so many millions that !" She concluded 
 
 the sentence with a gesture of despair. "It is the 
 monotony of it," she continued, "that palls. Drives, 
 dinners, theatres, balls, suppers, with the gilding of 
 superfluous wealth over it all. Sometimes the very 
 tinkle of the ice in my champagne glass nearly drives 
 me mad." 
 
 Mr. Parkenstacker looked ingenuously interest- 
 
 "I have always liked," he said, "to read and Lear 
 
62 The Voice of the City 
 
 about the ways of wealthy and fashionable folks. I 
 suppose I am a bit of a snob. But I like to have my 
 information accurate. Now, I had formed the opin 
 ion that champagne is cooled in the bottle and not by 
 placing ice in the glass." 
 
 The girl gave a musical laugh of genuine amuse 
 ment. 
 
 "You should know," she explained, in an indul 
 gent tone, "that we of the non-useful class depend 
 for our amusement upon departure from precedent. * 
 Just now it is a fad to put ice in champagne. The 
 idea was originated by a visiting Prince of Tartary 
 while dining at the Waldorf. It will soon give way 
 to some other whim. Just as at a dinner party this 
 week on Madison Avenue a green k;id glove was laid 
 by the plate of each guest to be put on and used while * 
 eating olives." 
 
 "I see," admitted the young man, humbly. "These 
 special diversions of the inner circle do not become 
 familiar to the common public." 
 
 "Sometimes," continued the girl, acknowledging 
 his confession of error by a slight bow, "I have 
 thought that if I ever should love a man it would be 
 one of lowly station. One who is a worker and not a 
 drone. But, doubtless, the claims of caste and wealth 
 will prove stronger than my inclination. Just now 
 I am besieged by two. One is a Grand Duke of a 
 German principality. I think he has, or has had, a 
 
While the Auto Waits 63 
 
 wife, somewhere, driven mad by his intemperance and 
 cruelty. The other is an English Marquis, so cold 
 and mercenary that I even prefer the diabolism of 
 the Duke. What is it that impels me to tell you these 
 things, Mr. Packenstacker?" 
 
 "Parkenstacker," breathed the young man. "In 
 deed, you cannot know how much I appreciate your 
 confidences." 
 
 The girl contemplated him with the calm, imper 
 sonal regard that befitted the difference in their sta 
 tions. 
 
 "What is your line of business, Mr. Parken 
 stacker?" she asked. 
 
 "A very humble one. But I hope to rise in the 
 world. Were you really in earnest when you said 
 that you could love a man of lowly position?" 
 
 "Indeed I was. But I said might. There is the 
 Grand Duke and the Marquis, you know. Yes; no 
 calling could be too humble were the man what I would 
 wish him to be." 
 
 "I work," declared Mr. Parkenstacker, "in a res 
 taurant." 
 
 The girl shrank slightly. 
 
 "Not as a waiter?" she said, a little imploringly, 
 "Labor is noble, but personal attendance, you 
 know valets and " 
 
 "I am not a waiter. I am cashier in" on the 
 street they faced that bounded the opposite side of 
 
64 The Voice of the City 
 
 the park was the brilliant electric sign "RESTAU 
 RANT" "I am cashier in that restaurant you see 
 there." 
 
 The girl consulted a tiny watch set in a bracelet of 
 rich design upon her left wrist, and rose, hurriedly. 
 She thrust her book into a glittering reticule sus 
 pended from her waist, for which, however, the book 
 was too large. 
 
 "Why are you not at work?" she asked. 
 
 "I am on the night turn," said the young man; 
 "it is yet an hour before my period begins. May I 
 not hope to see you again?" 
 
 "I do not know. Perhaps but the whim may 
 not seize me again. I must go quickly now. There 
 is a dinner, and a box at the play and, oh ! the 
 same old round. Perhaps you noticed an automobile 
 at the upper corner of the park as you came. One 
 with a white body." 
 
 "And red running gear?" asked the young man, 
 knitting his brows reflectively. 
 
 "Yes. I always come in that. Pierre waits for 
 me there. He supposes me to be shopping in the 
 department store across the square. Conceive of the 
 bondage of the life wherein we must deceive even our 
 chauffeurs. Good-night." 
 
 "But it is dark now," said Mr. Parkenstacker, 
 "and the park is full of rude raen. May I not 
 
While the Auto Waits 65 
 
 "If you have the slightest regard for my wishes," 
 said the girl, firmly, "you will remain at this bench 
 for ten minutes after I have left. I do not mean to 
 accuse you, but you are probably aware that autos 
 generally bear the monogram of their owner. Again,, 
 good-night." 
 
 Swift and stately she moved away through the 
 dusk. The young man watched her graceful form 
 as she reached the pavement at the park s edge, and 
 turned up along it toward the corner where stood the 
 automobile. Then he t readier ously and unhesitat 
 ingly began to dodge and skim among the park trees 
 and shrubbery in a course parallel to her route, keep 
 ing her well in sight. 
 
 When she reached the corner she turned her head 
 to glance at the motor car, and then passed it, con 
 tinuing on across the street. Sheltered behind a con 
 venient standing cab, the young man followed her 
 movements closely with his eyes. Passing down the 
 sidewalk of the street opposite the park, she entered 
 the restaurant with the blazing sign. The place was 
 one of those frankly glaring establishments, all white 
 paint and glass, where one may dine cheaply and con 
 spicuously. The girl penetrated the restaurant to 
 some retreat at its rear, whence she quickly emerged 
 without her hat and veil. 
 
 The cashier s desk was well to the front. A red- 
 haired girl on the stool climbed down, glancing point- 
 
66 The Voice of the City 
 
 edly at the clock as she did so. The girl in gray 
 mounted in her place. 
 
 The young man thrust his hands into his pockets 
 and walked slowly back along the sidewalk. At the 
 corner his foot struck a small, paper-covered volume 
 lying there, sending it sliding to the edge of the turf. 
 By its picturesque cover he recognized it as the book 
 the girl had been reading. He picked it up carelessly, 
 and saw that its title was <6 New Arabian Nights," 
 the author being of the name of Stevenson. He 
 dropped it again upon the grass, and lounged, irreso 
 lute, for a minute. Then he stepped into the auto 
 mobile, reclined upon the cushions, and said two words 
 to the chauffeur: 
 
 "Club, Henri" 
 
A COMEDY IN RUBBER 
 
 may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid 
 the breath of the deadly upas tree ; one may, by great 
 good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basi 
 lisk ; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus 
 and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the 
 gaze of the Rubberer. 
 
 New York is the Caoutchouc City. There are 
 many, of course, who go their ways, making money, 
 without turning to the right or the left, but there is 
 a tribe abroad wonderfully composed, like the Mar 
 tians, solely of eyes and means of locomotion. 
 
 These devotees of curiosity swarm, like flies, in a 
 moment in a struggling, breathless circle about the 
 scene of an unusual occurrence. If a workman opens 
 a manhole, if a street car runs over a man from 
 North Tarrytown, if a little boy drops an egg on his 
 way home from the grocery, if a casual house or two 
 drops into the subway, if a lady loses a nickel through 
 a hole in the lisle thread, if the police drag a telephone 
 and a racing chart forth from an Ibsen Society 
 reading-room, if Senator Depew or Mr. Chuck 
 Connors walks out to take the air if any of these 
 incidents or accidents takes place, you will see 
 
 67 
 
68 The Voice of the City 
 
 the mad, irresistible rush of the "rubber" tribe to 
 the spot. 
 
 The importance of the event does not count. They 
 gaze with equal interest and absorption at a chorus 
 girl or at a man painting a liver pill sign. They 
 will form as deep a cordon around a man with a club- 
 foot as they will around a balked automobile. They 
 have the furor rubbercndi. The} are optical glut 
 tons, feasting and fattening on the misfortunes of 
 their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and glare 
 and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggle- 
 eyed perch at the hook baited with calamity. 
 
 It would seem that Cupid would find these ocular 
 vampires too cold game for his calorific shafts, but 
 have we not yet to discover an immune even among 
 the Protozoa? Yes, beautiful Romance descended 
 upon two of this tribe, and love came into their 
 hearts as they crowded about the prostrate form 
 of a man who had been run over by A brewery 
 wagon. 
 
 William Pry was the first on the spot. He was an 
 expert at such gatherings. With an expression of 
 intense happiness on his features, he stood over the 
 victim of the accident, listening to his groans as if to 
 the sweetest music. When the crowd of spectators 
 had swelled to a closely packed circle William saw a 
 violent commotion in the crowd opposite him. Men 
 were hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of some 
 
A Comedy in Rubber 69 
 
 moving body that clove them like the rush of a tor 
 nado. With elbows, umbrella, hat-pin, tongue, and 
 fingernails doing their duty, Violet Seymour forced 
 her way through the mob of onlookers to the first row. 
 Strong men who* even had been able to secure a seat 
 on the 5.30 Harlem express staggered back like chil 
 dren as she bucked centre. Two large lady specta 
 tors who had seen the Duke of Roxburgh married and 
 had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street fell 
 back into the second row with ripped shirt-waists when 
 Violet had finished with them. William Pry loved her 
 at first sight. 
 
 The ambulance removed the unconscious agent of 
 Cupid. William and Violet remained after the crowd 
 had dispersed. They were true Rubberers. People 
 who leave the scene of an accident with the ambulance 
 have not genuine caoutchouc in the cosmogony of 
 their necks. The delicate, fine flavor of the affair is 
 to be had only in the after-taste in gloating over 
 the spot, in gazing fixedly at the houses opposite, in 
 hovering there in a dream more exquisite than the 
 opium-eater s ecstasy. William Pry and Violet Sey 
 mour were connoisseurs in casualties. They knew 
 how to extract full enjoyment from every incident. 
 
 Presently they looked at each other. Violet had a 
 brown birthmark on her neck as large as a silver 
 half-dollar. William fixed his eyes upon it. \Villiam 
 Pry had inordinately bowed legs. Violet allowed her 
 
70 The Voice of the City 
 
 gaze to linger unswervingly upon them. Face to face 
 they stood thus for moments, each staring at the 
 other. Etiquette would not allow them to speak ; but 
 in the Caoutchouc City it is permitted to gaze with 
 out stint at the trees in the parks and at the physical 
 blemishes of a fellow creature. 
 
 At length with a sigh they parted. But Cupid had 
 been the driver of the brewery wagon, and the wheel 
 that broke a leg united two fond hearts. 
 
 The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in 
 front of a board fence near Broadway. The day 
 had been a disappointing one. There had been no 
 fights on the street, children had kept from under the 
 wheels of the street cars, cripples and fat men in negli 
 gee shirts were scarce ; nobody seemed to be inclined to 
 slip on banana peels or fall down with heart disease. 
 Even the sport from Kokomo, Ind., who claims to be 
 a cousin of ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from 
 a cab window, had not put in his appearance. There 
 was nothing to stare at, and William Pry had premo 
 nitions of ennui. 
 
 But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing 
 excitedly in front of a billboard. Sprinting for it, 
 he knocked down an old woman and a child carrying 
 a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon into 
 the mass of spectators. Already in the inner line 
 stood Violet Seymour with one sleeve and two gold 
 fillings gone, a corset steel puncture and a sprained 
 
A Comedy in Rubber 71 
 
 wrist, but happy. She was looking at what there was 
 to see. A man was painting upon the fence : "Eat 
 Bricklets They Fill Your Face." 
 
 Violet blushed when she saw William Pry. William 
 jabbed a lady in a black silk raglan in the ribs, kicked 
 a boy in the shin, hit an old gentleman on the left ear 
 and managed to crowd nearer to Violet. They stood 
 for an hour looking at the man paint the letters. 
 Then William s love could be repressed no longer. 
 He touched her on the arm. 
 
 "Come with me," he said. "I know where there is 
 a bootblack without an Adam s apple." 
 
 She looked up at him shyly, yet with unmistakable 
 love transfiguring her countenance. 
 
 "And you have saved it for me?" she asked, 
 trembling with the first dim ecstasy of a woman be 
 loved. 
 
 Together they hurried to the bootblack s stand. 
 An hour they spent there gazing at the malformed 
 youth. 
 
 A window-cleaner fell from the fifth story to the 
 sidewalk beside them. As the ambulance came clang 
 ing up William pressed her hand joyously. "Four 
 ribs at least and a compound fracture," he whispered, 
 swiftly. "You are not sorry that you met me, are 
 ;you, dearest?" 
 
 "Me?" said Violet, returning the pressure. "Sure 
 not. I could stand all day rubbering with you." 
 
72 The Voice of the City 
 
 The climax of the romance occurred a few days 
 later. Perhaps the reader will remember the intense 
 excitement into which the city was thrown when Eliza 
 Jane, a colored woman, was served with a subpoena. 
 The Rubber Tribe encamped on the spot. With his 
 own hands William Pry placed a board upon two beer 
 kegs in the street opposite Eliza Jane s residence. 
 He arid Violet sat there for three days and nights. 
 Then it occurred to a detective to open the door and 
 serve the subpoena. He sent for a kinetoscope and 
 did so. 
 
 Two souls with such congenial tastes could not long 
 remain apart. As a policeman drove them away with 
 his night stick that evening they plighted their troth. 
 The seeds of love had been well sown, and had grown 
 up, hardy and vigorous, into a let us call it a 
 rubber plant. 
 
 The wedding of William Pry and Violet Seymour 
 was set for June 10. The Big Church in the Middle 
 of the Block was banked high with flowers. The 
 populous tribe of Ilubberers the world over is ram 
 pant over weddings. They are the pessimists of the 
 pews. They are the guyers of the groom and the 
 banterers of the bride. They come to laugh at your 
 marriage, and should you escape from Hymen s tower 
 on the back of death s pale steed they will come to the 
 funeral and sit in the same pew and cry over your 
 luck. Rubber will stretch. 
 
A Comedy in Rubber 73 
 
 The church was lighted. A grosgrain carpet lay 
 over the asphalt to the edge of the sidewalk. JJ rides- 
 maids were patting one another s sashes awry and 
 speaking of the Bride s freckles. Coachmen tied 
 white ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space 
 of time between drinks. The minister was musing 
 over his possible fee, essaying conjecture whether it 
 would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for 
 lumself and a photograph of Laura Jane Libbey for 
 his wife. Yea, Cupid was in the air. 
 
 And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged 
 and heaved the rank and file of the tribe of Uubberers. 
 In two bodies they were, with the grosgrain carpet 
 and cops with clubs between. They crowded like 
 cattle, the} 7 fought, they pressed and surged and 
 swayed and trampled one another to see a bit of a 
 girl in a white veil acquire license to go through a 
 man s pockets while he sleeps. 
 
 But the hour for the wedding came and went, and 
 the bride and bridegroom came not. And impatience 
 gave way to alarm and alarm brought about search, 
 and they were not found. And then two big police 
 men took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob 
 of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a 
 wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and 
 hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet s 
 edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous. 
 
 William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of 
 
74 The Voice of the City 
 
 habit, had joined in the seething game of the specta 
 tors, unable to resist the overwhelming desire to gaze 
 upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, 
 the rose-decked church. 
 Rubber will out. 
 
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS 
 
 ONE thousand dollars," repeated Lawyer Tolman, 
 solemnly and severely, "and here is the money." 
 
 Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as 
 he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes. 
 
 "It s such a confoundedly awkward amount," he 
 explained, genially, to the lawyer. "If it had been 
 ten thousand a fehow might wind up with a lot of 
 fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars 
 would have been less trouble." 
 
 "You heard the reading of your uncle s will," con 
 tinued Lawyer Tolman, professionally dry in his 
 tones. "I do not know if you paid much attention 
 to its details. I must remind you of one. You are 
 required to render to us an account of the manner of 
 expenditure of this $1,000 as soon as you have dis 
 posed of it. The will stipulates that. I trust that 
 you will so far comply with the late Mr. Gillian s 
 wishes." 
 
 "You may depend upon it," said the young man, 
 politely, "in spite of the extra expense it will entail. 
 I may have to engage a secretary. I was never good 
 at accounts." 
 
 Gillian went to his club. There he hunted out one 
 whom he called Old Bryson. 
 
 75 
 
76 The Voice of the City 
 
 Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. 
 He was in a corner reading a book, and when he saw 
 Gillian approaching he sighed, laid down his book and 
 took off his glasses. 
 
 "Old Bryson, wake up," said Gillian. "I ve a 
 funny story to tell you." 
 
 "I wish you would tell it to some one in the billiard 
 room," said Old Bryson. "You know how I hate your 
 stories." 
 
 "This is a better one than usual," said Gillian, 
 rolling a cigarette; "and I m glad to tell it to you. 
 It s too sad and funny to go with the rattling of 
 billiard balls. I ve just come from my late uncle s 
 firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thou 
 sand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do with 
 a thousand dollars?" 
 
 "I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much 
 interest as a bee shows in a vinegar cruet, "that the 
 late Septimus Gillian was worth something like half 
 a million." 
 
 "He was," assented Gillian, joyously, "and that s 
 where the joke comes in. He s left his whole cargo of 
 doubloons to a microbe. That is, part of it goes to 
 the man who invents a new bacillus and the rest to 
 establish a hospital for doing away with it again. 
 There are one or two trifling bequests on the side. 
 The butler and the housekeeper get a seal ring and 
 $10 each. His nephew gets $1,000." 
 
One Thousand Dollars 77 
 
 "You ve always had plenty of money to spend," 
 observed Old Bryson. 
 
 "Tons," said Gillian. "Uncle was the fairy god 
 mother as far as an allowance was concerned." 
 
 "Any other heirs?" asked Old Bryson. 
 
 "None." Gillian frowned at his cigarette and 
 kicked the upholstered leather of a divan uneasily. 
 "There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my uncle, who 
 lived in his house. She s a quiet thing musical 
 the daughter of somebody who was unlucky enough to 
 be his friend. I forgot to say that she was in on the 
 seal ring and $10 joke, too. I wish I had been. 
 Then I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped the 
 waiter with the ring and had the whole business off 
 my hands. Don t be superior and insulting, Old Bry 
 son tell me what a fellow can do with a thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And 
 when Old Bryson smiled, Gillian knew that he in 
 tended to be more offensive than ever. 
 
 "A thousand dollars," he said, "means much or 
 little. One man may buy a happy home with it and 
 laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send his wife 
 South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars 
 would buy pure milk for one hundred babies during 
 June, July, and August and save fifty of their lives. 
 You could count upon a half hour s diversion with it 
 at faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would 
 
78 The Voice of the City 
 
 furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told 
 that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount 
 in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a 
 New Hampshire town and live respectably two years 
 on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for 
 one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you 
 should have one, on the precariousness of the profes 
 sion of heir presumptive." 
 
 "People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, 
 always unruffled, "if you wouldn t moralize. I asked 
 you to tell me what I could do with a thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 "You ?" said Bryson, with a gentle laugh. "Why, 
 Bobby Gillian, there s only one logical thing you 
 could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta Lauriere a 
 diamond pendant with the money, and then take your 
 self off to Idaho and inflict your presence upon a 
 ranch. I advise a sheep ranch, as I have a particular 
 dislike for sheep." 
 
 "Thanks," said Gillian, rising. "I thought I 
 could depend upon you, Old Bryson. You ve hit 
 on the very scheme. I wanted to chuck the money in 
 a lump, for I ve got to turn in an account for it, and 
 I hate itemizing." 
 
 Gillian phoned for a cab and said to the driver : 
 "The stage entrance of the Columbine Theatre." 
 Miss Lotta Lauriere was assisting nature with a 
 powder puff, almost ready for her call at a crowded 
 
One Thousand Dollars 79 
 
 matinee, when her dresser mentioned the name of Mr. 
 GilJian. 
 
 "Let it in," said Miss Lauriere. "Now, what is it, 
 Bobby? I m going on in two minutes." 
 
 "Rabbit-foot jour right ear a little," suggested 
 Gillian, critically. "That s better. It won t take 
 two minutes for me. What do you say to a little 
 thing in the pendant line? I can stand three ciphers 
 with a figure one in front of em." 
 
 "Oh, just as you say," carolled Miss Lauriere. 
 "My right glove, Adams. Say, Bobby, did you see 
 that necklace Delia Stacey had on the other night? 
 Twenty-two hundred dollars it cost at Tiffany s. 
 But, of course pull my sash a little to the left, 
 Adams." 
 
 "Miss Lauriere for the opening chorus !" cried the 
 call boy without. 
 
 GiDian strolled out to where his cab was waiting. 
 
 "What would you do with a thousand dollars if 
 you had it ?" he asked the driver. 
 
 "Open a s loon," said the cabby, promptly and 
 huskily. "I know a place I could take money in with 
 both hands. It s a four-story brick on a corner. 
 I ve got it figured out. Second story Chinks and 
 chop suey ; third floor manicures and foreign mis 
 sions ; fourth floor poolroom. If } 7 ou was think 
 ing of putting up the cap " 
 
 "Oh, no," said Gillian, "I merely asked from curi- 
 
80 The Voice of the City 
 
 osity. I take you by the hour. Drive till I tell you 
 to stop." 
 
 Eight blocks down Broadway Gillian poked up the 
 trap with his cane and got out. A blind man sat 
 upon a stool on the sidewalk selling pencils. Gillian 
 went out and stood before him. 
 
 "Excuse me," he said, "but would you mind tell 
 ing me what you would do if you had a thousand 
 dollars?" 
 
 "You got out of that cab that just drove up, didn t 
 you?" asked the blind man. 
 
 "I did," said Gillian. 
 
 "I guess you are all right," said the pencil dealer, 
 "to ride in a cab by daylight. Take a look at that, 
 if you like." 
 
 He drew a small book from his coat pocket and 
 held it out. Gillian opened it and saw that it was a 
 bank deposit book. It showed a balance of $1,785 to 
 the blind man s credit. 
 
 Gillian returned the book and got into the cab. 
 
 "I forgot something," he said. "You may drive to 
 the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at Broad 
 way." 
 
 Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquir 
 ingly through his gold-rimmed glasses. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Gillian, cheerfully, 
 "but may I ask you a question? It is not an im 
 pertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left any- 
 
One Thousand Dollars 81 
 
 thing by my uncle s will besides the ring and the 
 $10 r" 
 
 "Nothing," said Mr. Tolman. 
 
 "I thank you very much, sir," said Gillian, and 
 out he went to his cab. He gave the driver the ad 
 dress of his late uncle s home. 
 
 Miss Hayden was writing letters in the library. 
 She was small and slender and clothed in black. But 
 you would have noticed her eyes. Gillian drifted 
 in with his air of regarding the world as incon 
 sequent. 
 
 "I ve just come from old Tolman s," he explained. 
 "They ve been going over the papers down there. 
 They found a" Gillian searched his memory for a 
 legal term "they found an amendment or a post 
 script or something to the will. It seemed that the 
 old boy loosened up a little on second thoughts and 
 willed you a thousand dollars. I was driving up this 
 way and Tolman asked me to bring you the money. 
 Here it is. You d better count it to see if it s right." 
 Gillian laid the money beside her hand on the desk. 
 
 Miss Hayden turned white. "Oh!" she said, and 
 again "Oh !" 
 
 Gillian half turned and looked out the window. 
 
 "I suppose, of course," he said, in a low voice, 
 "that you know I love you." 
 
 "I am sorry," said Miss Hayden, taking up her 
 money. 
 
82 The Voice of the City 
 
 "There is no use?" asked Gillian, almost light- 
 heartedly. 
 
 "I am sorry," she said again. 
 
 "May I write a note?" asked Gillian, with a smile. 
 He seated himself at the big library table. She sup 
 plied him with paper and pen, and then went back to 
 her secretaire. 
 
 Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of 
 the thousand dollars in these words : 
 
 "Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 
 on account of the eternal happiness, owed by Heaven 
 to the best and dearest woman on earth." 
 
 Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed 
 and went his way. 
 
 His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman 
 Sharp. 
 
 "I have expended the thousand dollars," he said, 
 cheerily, to Tolman of the gold glasses, "and I have 
 corne to render account of it, as I agreed. There is 
 quite a feeling of summer in the air do you not 
 think so, Mr. Tolrnan?" He tossed a white envelope 
 on the lawyer s table. "You will find there a memo 
 randum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing 
 of the dollars." 
 
 Without touching the envelope, Mr. Tolman went 
 to a door and called his partner, Sharp. Together 
 they explored the caverns of an immense safe. Forth 
 they dragged as trophy of their search a big envelope 
 
One Thousand Dollars 83 
 
 sealed with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and 
 wagged their venerable heads together over its con 
 tents. Then Tolinan became spokesman. 
 
 "Mr. Gillian," he said, formally, "there was a 
 codicil to your uncle s will. It was intrusted to us 
 privately, with instructions that it be not opened 
 until you had furnished us with a full account of your 
 handling of the $1,000 bequest in the will. As you 
 have fulfilled the conditions, my partner and I have 
 read the codicil. I do not wish to encumber your 
 understanding with its legal phraseology, but I will 
 
 * acquaint you with the spirit of its contents. 
 
 "In the event that your disposition of the $1,000 
 demonstrates that you possess any of the qualifica 
 tions that deserve reward, much benefit will 
 accrue to you. Mr. Sharp and I are named 
 as the judges, and I assure you that we will do our 
 duty strictly according to justice with liberality. 
 We are not at all unfavorably disposed toward you, * 
 Mr. Gillian. But let us return to the letter of the 
 codicil. If your disposal of the money in question 
 has been prudent, wise, or unselfish, it is in our power 
 to hand you over bonds to the value of $50,000, which 
 have been placed in our hands for that purpose. But 
 if as our client, the late Mr. Gillian, explicitly 
 
 jprovides you have used this money as you have 
 used money in the past I quote the late Mr. Gillian 
 in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable 
 
84 The Voice of the City 
 
 associates the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam 
 Hay den, ward of the late Mr. Gillian, without delay. 
 Now, Mr. Gillian, Mr. Sharp and I will examine your 
 account in regard to the $1,000. You submit it in 
 writing, I believe. I hope you will repose confidence 
 in our decision." 
 
 Mr. Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian 
 was a little the quicker in taking it up. He tore the 
 account and its cover leisurely into strips and 
 dropped them into his pocket. 
 
 "It s all right," he said, smilingly. "There isn t a 
 bit of need to bother you with this. I don t suppose 
 you d understand these itemized bets, anyway. I 
 lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good-day to 
 you, gentlemen." 
 
 Tolman Sharp shook their heads mournfully at 
 each other when Gillian left, for they heard him whis 
 tling gayly in the hallway as he waited for tha ele 
 vator. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY 
 
 ROBERT WALMSLEY S descent upon the 
 
 resulted in a Kilkenny struggle. He came out of- the\ 
 fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the 
 other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The 
 city gave him what he demanded and then branded 
 him with its brand. It remodelled, cut, trimmed and / 
 stamped him to the pattern it approves. It opened) 
 its social gates to him and shut him in on a close- 
 cropped, formal lawn with the select herd of rumi 
 nants. In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, 
 routine and narrowness he acquired that charming in- 
 solence, that irritating completeness, that sophisti 
 cated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes-, 
 the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in 
 his greatness. 
 
 One of the up-state rural counties pointed with 
 pride to the successful young metropolitan lawyer as 
 a product of its soil. Six years earlier this county 
 had removed the wheat straw from between its huckle 
 berry-stained teeth and emitted a derisive and bucolic 
 laugh as old man Walmsley s freckle-faced "Bob" 
 abandoned the certain three-per-diem meals of the 
 one-horse farm for the discontinuous quick lunch 
 counters of the three-ringed metropolis. At the end 
 
 85 
 
86 The Voice of the City 
 
 of the six years no murder trial, coaching party, au 
 tomobile accident or cotillion was complete in which 
 the name of Robert Wahnsley did not figure. Tailors 
 waylaid him in the street to get a new wrinkle from 
 the cut of his un wrinkled trousers. Hyphenated fel 
 lows in the clubs and members of the oldest sub 
 poenaed families were glad to clap him on the back and 
 allow him three letters of his name. 
 
 But the Matterhorn of Robert Walmslcy s success 
 was not scaled until he married Alicia Van Der Pool. 
 I cite the Matterhorn, for just so high and cool and 
 white and inaccessible was this daughter of the old 
 burghers. The social Alps that ranged about her 
 over whose bleak passes a thousand climbers struggled 
 reached only to her knees. She towered in her own 
 atmosphere, serene, chaste, prideful, wading in no 
 fountains, dining no monkeys, breeding no dogs for 
 bench shows. She was a Van Der Pool. Fountains 
 were made to play for her ; monkeys were made for 
 other people s ancestors ; dogs, she understood, were 
 created to be companions of blind persons and objec 
 tionable characters who smoked pipes. 
 
 This was the Matterhorn that Robert Walmsley 
 accomplished. If he found, with the good poet with 
 the game foot and artificially curled hair, that he who 
 ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest peaks 
 most wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his 
 chilblains beneath a brave and smiling exterior. He 
 
The Defeat of the City 87 
 
 was a lucky man and knew it, even though he were 
 imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream freezer 
 beneath his doublet frappeeing the region of his 
 heart. 
 
 After a brief wedding tour abroad, the couple re 
 turned to create a decided ripple in the calm cistern 
 (so placid and cool and sunless it is) of the best so 
 ciety. They entertained at their red brick mauso 
 leum of ancient greatness in an old square that is 
 a cemetery of crumbled glory. And Robert Walms- 
 ley was proud of his wife ; although while one of 
 his hands shook his guests the other held tightly 
 to his alpenstock and thermometer. 
 
 One day Alicia found a letter written to Robert by 
 his mother. It was an unerudite letter, full of crops 
 and motherly love and farm notes. It chronicled the 
 health of the pig and the recent red calf, and asked 
 concerning Robert s in return. It was a letter directj 
 from the soil, straight from home, full of biographies! 
 of bees, tales of turnips, paeans of new-laid eggs, 
 neglected parents and the slump in dried apples. 
 
 "Why have I not been shown your mother s let 
 ters?" asked Alicia. There was always something in 
 her voice that made you think of lorgnettes, of ac 
 counts at Tiffany s, of sledges smoothly gliding on 
 the trail from Dawson to Forty Mile, of the tinkling 
 of pendant prisms on your grandmothers chandeliers, 
 of snow lying on a convent roof ; of a police sergeant 
 
88 The Voice of the City 
 
 refusing bail. "Your mother," continued Alicia, 
 "invites us to make a visit to the farm. I have 
 never seen a farm. We will go there for a week or 
 two, Robert." 
 
 "We will," said Robert, with the grand air of an 
 associate Supreme Justice concurring in an opinion. 
 "I did not lay the invitation before you because I 
 thought you would not care to go. I am much 
 pleased at your decision." 
 
 "I will write to her myself," answered Alicia, with 
 a faint foreshadowing of enthusiasm. "Felice shall 
 pack my trunks at once. Seven, I think, will be 
 enough. I do not suppose that your mother entertains 
 a great deal. Does she give many house parties?" 
 
 Robert arose, and as attorney for rural places filed 
 a demurrer against six of the seven trunks. He en 
 deavored to define, picture, elucidate, set forth and 
 describe a farm. His own words sounded strange in 
 his cars. He had not realized how thoroughly urbsi- 
 dized he had become. 
 
 A week passed and found them landed at the little 
 country station five hours out from the city. A grin 
 ning, stentorian, sarcastic youth driving a mule to a 
 spring wagon hailed Robert savagely. 
 
 "Hallo, Mr. Walmsley. Found your way back at 
 last, have you? Sorry I couldn t bring in the auto 
 mobile for you, but dad s bull-tonguing the ten-acre 
 clover patch with it to-day. Guess you ll excuse my 
 
The Defeat of the City 89 
 
 not wearing a dress suit over to meet you it ain t 
 six o clock yet, you know." 
 
 "I m glad to see you, Tom," said Robert, grasp 
 ing his brother s hand. "Yes, I ve found my way at 
 last. You ve a right to say at last. It s been over 
 two years since the last time. But it will bo oftener 
 after this, my boy." 
 
 Alicia, cool in the summer heat as an Arctic wraith, 
 white as a Norse snow maiden in her flimsy muslin and 
 fluttering hice parasol, came round the corner of the 
 station ; and Tom was stripped of his assurance. He 
 became chiefly eyesight clothed in blue jeans, and on 
 the homeward drive to the mule alone did he confide 
 in language the inwardness of his thoughts. 
 
 They drove homeward. The low sun dropped a 
 spendthrift flood of gold upon the fortunate fields of 
 wheat. The cities were far away. The road lay curl 
 ing around wood and dale and hill like a ribbon lost 
 from the robe of careless summer. The wind followed 
 like a whinnying colt in the track of Phoebus s steeds. 
 
 By and by the farmhouse peeped gray out of its 
 faithful grove; they saw the long lane with its convoy 
 of walnut trees running from the road to the house ; 
 they smelk-d the wild rose and the breath of cool, 
 damp willows in the creek s bed. And then in unison 
 all the voices of the soil began a chant addressed to 
 the soul of Robert Walmslcy. ) Out of the tilted aisles 
 of the dim wood they came hollowly ; they chirped and 
 
90 The Voice of the City 
 
 buzzed from the parched grass ; they trilled from the 
 ripples of the creek ford ; they floated up in clear 
 Pan s pipe notes from the dimming meadows : the 
 vvhippoorwills joined in as they pursued midges in the 
 upper air; slow-going cow-bells struck out a homely 
 accompaniment and this was what each one said: 
 "You ve found your way back at last, have you?" 
 
 The old voices of the soil spoke to him. Leaf and 
 bud and blossom conversed with him in the old vocabu 
 lary of his careless youth the inanimate things, the 
 familiar stones and rails, the gates and furrows and 
 roofs and turns of the road had an eloquence, too, anJ 
 a power in the transformation. The country had 
 smiled and he had felt the breath of it, and his heart" 
 was drawn as if in a moment back to his old love. 
 The city was far away. 
 
 This rural atavism, then, seized Robert Walusley j 
 and possessed him. A queer thing he noticed ir con 
 nection with it was that Alicia, sitting at his sick 1 , 
 suddenly seemed to him a stranger. She did not be 
 long to this recurrent phase. Never before had she 
 seemed so remote, so colorless and high so intan 
 gible and unreal. And yet he had never admired her 
 more than when she sat there by him in the rickety 
 spring wagon, chiming no more with his mood and ( 
 with her environment than the Matterhorn chimes . : 
 with a peasant s cabbage garden. 
 
 "That night when the greetings and the supper were 
 
The Defeat of the City 91 
 
 over, the entire family, including Buff, the yellow dog, 
 bestrewed itself upon the front porch. Alicia, not 
 haughty but silent, sat in the shadow dressed in an 
 exquisite pale-gray tea gown. Robert s mother dis 
 coursed to her happily concerning marmalade and 
 lumbago. Tom sat on the top step ; Sisters Millie J 
 and Pam on the lowest step to catch the lightning 
 bugs. Mother had the willow rocker. Father sat in 
 the big armchair with one of its arms gone. Buff 
 sprawled in the middle of the porch in everybody s 
 way. The twilight pixies and pucks stole forth un 
 seen and plunged other poignant shafts of memory , 
 into the heart of Robert. A rural madness entered 
 his soul. The city was far away. 
 
 Father sat without his pipe, writhing in his heavy- 
 boots, a sacrifice to rigid courtesy. Robert shouted : 
 "No. you don t !" He fetched the pipe and lit it ; he 
 seized the old gentleman s boots and tore them off. 
 The last one slipped suddenly, and Mr. Robert 
 Walmsley, of Washington Square, tumbled off the 
 porch backward with Buff on top of him, howling 
 fearfully. Tom laughed sarcastically. 
 
 Robert tore off his coat and vest arid hurled them 
 into a lilac bush. 
 
 "Come out here, you landlubber," he cried to Tom, 
 "and I ll put grass seed on your back. I think you 
 called me a dude a while ago. Come along and cut \ 
 your capers." 
 
92 The Voice of the City 
 
 Tom understood the invitation and accepted it with 
 delight. Three times they wrestled on the grass, 
 "side holds," even as the giants of the mat. And 
 twice was Tom forced to bite grass at the hands of 
 the distinguished lawyer. Dishevelled, panting, each 
 still hoasting of his own prowess, they stumbled back 
 to the porch. Millie cast a pert reflection upon the 
 qualities of a city brother. In an instant Robert had 
 secured a horrid katydid in his fingers and bore down 
 upon her. Screaming wildly, she fled up the lane, 
 pursued by the avenging glass of form. A quarter 
 of a mile and they returned, she full of apology to 
 the victorious "dude." The rustic mania possessed* 
 him unabatedly. 
 
 "I can do up a cowpenful of you slow hayseeds," 
 he proclaimed, vaingloriously. "Bring on your bull 
 dogs, your hired men and your log-rollers." 
 
 He turned handsprings on the grass that prodded^ 
 Tom to envious sarcasm. And then, with a whoop, 
 he clattered to the rear and brought back Uncle Ike, \ 
 a battered colored retainer of the family, with his 
 banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced j 
 "Chicken in the Bread Tray" and did buck-and- 
 wing wonders for half an hour longer. Incredibly f 
 wild and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told 
 stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the 
 yokel, the humorous clodhopper ; he was mad, mad 
 with the revival of the old life in his blood. 
 
The Defeat of the City 93 
 
 He became so extravagant that once his mother 
 sought gently to reprove him. Then-Alicia moved as 
 though she were about to speak, but she did not. 
 Through it all she sat immovable, a slim, white spirit 
 in the dusk that no man might question or read. 
 
 By and by she asked permission to ascend to her 
 room, saying that she was tired. On her way she 
 passed Robert. He was standing in the door, the 
 figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened 
 face and unpardonable confusion of attire no trace \ 
 there of the immaculate Robert Walmsley, the courted ! 
 clubman and ornament of select circles. He was do 
 ing a conjuring trick with some household utensils, 
 and the family, now won over to him without excep 
 tion, was beholding him with worshipful admiration. 
 
 As Alicia passed in Robert started suddenly. He 
 had forgotten for the moment that she was present. 
 Without a glance at him she went on upstairs. 
 
 After that the fun grew quiet. An hour passed 
 in talk, and then Robert went up himself. 
 
 She was standing by the window when he entered 
 their room. She was still clothed as when they were 
 on the porch. Outside and crowding against the 
 window was a giant apple tree, full blossomed. 
 
 Robert sighed and went near the window. He was 
 ready to meet his fate. A confessed vulgarian, he 
 foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape of that 
 still, whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a 
 
94 The Voice of the City 
 
 Van Der Pool would draw. He was a peasant gam 
 bolling indecorously in the valley, and the pure, cold, 
 white, unthavved summit of the Matterhorn could not 
 but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his! 
 own actions. All the polish, the poise, the form that! 
 the city had given him had fallen from him like an] 
 ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a county 
 breeze. Dully he awaited the approaching condem 
 nation. 
 
 "Robert," said the calm, cool voice of his judge. 
 "I thought I married a gentleman." 
 
 Yes, it was coming. And yet, in the face of it, 
 Robert Walmsley was eagerly regarding a certain 
 branch of the apple tree upon which he used to climb 
 out of that very window. He believed he could do it 
 now. He wondered how many blossoms there were 
 on the tree ten millions? But here was some one 
 speaking again : 
 
 "I thought I married a gentleman," the voice 
 went on, "but " 
 
 Why had she come and was standing so close by 
 
 his side? 
 
 > 
 
 "But I find that I have married" was this Alicia 
 talking? "something better a man Bob, dear, 
 kiss me, won t you?" 
 
 The city was far away. 
 
THE SHOCKS OF DOOM 
 
 1HERE is an aristocracy of the public parks and 
 even of the vagabonds who use them for their private 
 apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew this, 
 but when he stepped down out of his world into 
 chaos his feet brought him directly to Madison 
 Square. 
 
 Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl of the old 
 order young May breathed austerely among the 
 budding trees. Vallance buttoned his coat, lighted 
 his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench. 
 For three minutes he mildly regretted the last hun 
 dred of his last thousand that it had cost him when 
 the bicycle cop put an end to his last automobile ride. 
 Then he felt in every pocket and found not a 
 single penny. He had given up his apartment that 
 morning. His furniture had gone toward certain 
 debts. His clothes, save what were upon him, had 
 descended to his man-servant for back wages. As he 
 sat there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a 
 broiled lobster or a street-car fare or a carnation for 
 his buttonhole unless he should obtain them by spong 
 ing on his friends or by false pretenses. Therefore 
 he had chosen the park. 
 
 95 
 
06 The Voice of the City 
 
 And all this was because an uncle had disinherited 
 him, and cut down his allowance from liberality to 
 nothing. And all that was because his nephew had 
 disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes 
 not into this story therefore, all readers who 
 brush their hair toward its roots may be warned to 
 read no further. There was another nephew, of a 
 different branch, who had once been the prospective 
 heir and favorite. Being without grace or hope, he 
 had long ago disappeared in the mire. Now drag 
 nets were out for him ; he was to be rehabilitated and 
 restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer 
 to the lowest pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the 
 little park. 
 
 Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench 
 and laughed a jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest 
 tree branches. The sudden severing of all his life s 
 ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous 
 elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the aero 
 naut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his 
 balloon drift away. 
 
 The hour was nearly ten. Not many loungers 
 were on the benches. The park-dweller, though a 
 stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is slow 
 to attack the advance line of spring s chilly cohorts. 
 
 Then arose one from a seat near the leaping foun 
 tain, and came and sat himself at Vallance s side. 
 He was either young or old; cheap lodging-houses 
 
The Shocks of Doom 97 
 
 had flavored him mustily ; razors and combs had 
 passed him by; in him drink had been bottled and 
 sealed in the devil s bond. He begged a match, which 
 is the form of introduction among park benchers, and 
 then he began to talk. 
 
 "You re not one of the regulars," he said to Val- 
 lance. "I know tailored clothes when I see em. 
 You just stopped for a moment on your way through 
 the park. Don t mind my talking to you for a while? 
 I ve got to be with somebody. I m afraid I m 
 afraid. I ve told two or three of those bummers over 
 there about it. They think I m crazy. Say let 
 me tell you all I ve had to eat to-day was a couple 
 of bretzcls and an apple. To-morrow I ll stand in 
 line to inherit three millions ; and that restaurant you 
 see over there with the autos around it will be too 
 cheap for me to eat in. Don t believe it, do 3^ou?" 
 
 "Without the slightest trouble," said Vallance, 
 with a laugh. "I lunched there yesterday. To 
 night I couldn t buy a five-cent cup of coffee." 
 
 "You don t look like one of us. Well, I guess those 
 things happen. I used, to be a high-flyer myself 
 some years ago. What knocked you out of the game ?" 
 
 "I oh, I lost my job," said Vallance. 
 
 "It s undiluted Hades, this city," went on the 
 other. "One day you re eating from china ; the 
 next you are eating in China a chop-suey joint. 
 I ve had more than my share of hard luck. For five 
 
98 The Voice of the City 
 
 years I ve been little better than a panhandler. I 
 was raised up to live expensively and do nothing. 
 Say I don t mind telling you I ve got to talk 
 to somebody, you see, because I m afraid I m 
 afraid. My name s Ide. You wouldn t think that 
 old Paulding, one of the millionaires on Riverside 
 Drive, was my uncle, would you? Well, he is. I 
 lived in his house once, and had all the money I 
 wanted. Say, haven t you got the price of a couple 
 of drinks about you er what s your name " 
 
 "Dawson," said Vallance. "No; I m sorry to say 
 that I m all in, financially." 
 
 "I ve been living for a week in a coal cellar on 
 Division Street," went on Idc, "with a crook they 
 called Blinky Morris. I didn t have anywhere else 
 to go. While I was out to-day a chap with some pa 
 pers in his pocket was there, asking for me. I didn t 
 know but what he was a fly cop, so I didn t go around 
 again till after dark. There was a letter there he 
 had left for me. Say Dawson, it was from a big 
 downtown lawyer, Mead. I ve seen his sign on Ann 
 Street. Paulding wants me to play the prodigal 
 nephew wants me to come back and be his heir 
 again and blow in his money. I m to call at the 
 lawyer s office at ten to-morrow and step into my old 
 shoes again heir to three million, Dawson, and 
 $10,000 a year pocket money. And I m afraid 
 I m afraid." 
 
The Shocks of Doom 99 
 
 The vagrant leaped to his feet and raised both 
 trembling arms above his head. He caught his 
 breath and moaned hysterically. 
 
 Vallance seized his arm and forced him back to the 
 bench. 
 
 "Be quiet !" he commanded, with something like 
 disgust in his tones. "One would think you had lost 
 a fortune, instead of being about to acquire one. 
 Of what are ;> T ou afraid?" 
 
 Ide cowered and shivered on the bench. He clung 
 to Vallance s sleeve, and even in the dim glow of the 
 Broadway lights the latest disinherited one could see 
 drops on the other s brow wrung out by some strange 
 terror. 
 
 "Why, I m afraid something will happen to me be 
 fore morning. I don t know what something to 
 keep me from coming into that money. I m afraid a 
 tree will fall on me I m afraiu a cab will run over 
 me, or a stone drop on me from a housetop, or some 
 thing. I never was afraid before. I ve sat in this 
 park a hundred nights as cairn as a graven image 
 without knowing where my breakfast was to come 
 from. But now it s different. I love money, Daw- 
 son I m happy as a god when it s trickling through 
 my fingers, and people are bowing to me, with the 
 music and the flowers and fine clothes all around. As 
 long as I knew I was out of the game I didn t mind. 
 I was even happy sitting here ragged and hungry, 
 
100 The Voice of the City 
 
 listening to the fountain jump and watching the 
 carriages go up the avenue. But it s in reach of my 
 hand again now almost and I can t stand it to 
 wait twelve hours, Dawson I can t stand it. 
 There are fifty things that could happen to me I 
 could go blind I might be attacked with heart 
 disease the world might come to an end before I 
 could " 
 
 Ide sprang to his feet again, with a shriek. Peo 
 ple stirred on the benches and began to look. Val- 
 lance took his arm. 
 
 "Come and walk," he said, soothingly. "And try 
 to calm yourself. There is no need to become ex 
 cited or alarmed. Nothing is going to happen to 
 you. One night is like another." 
 
 "That s right," said Ide. "Stay with me, Daw- 
 son that s a good fellow. Walk around with me 
 awhile. I never went to pieces like this before, and 
 I ve had a good many hard knocks. Do you think 
 you could hustle something in the way of a little 
 lunch, old man? I m afraid my nerve s too far gone 
 to try any panhandling." 
 
 Vallancc led his companion up almost deserted 
 Fifth Avenue, and then westward along the Thirties 
 toward Broadway. "Wait here a few minutes," he 
 said, leaving Ide in a quiet and shadowed spot. He 
 entered a familiar hotel, and strolled toward the bar 
 quite in his old assured way. 
 
The Shocks of Doom 101 
 
 "There s a poor devil outside, Jimmy," he said to 
 the bartender, "who says he s hungry and looks it. 
 You know what they do when you give them money. 
 Fix up a sandwich or two for him ; and I ll see that 
 he doesn t throw it away." 
 
 "Certainly, Mr. Vallance," said the bartender. 
 "They ain t all fakes. Don t like to see anybody go 
 hungry." 
 
 He folded a liberal supply of the free lunch into a 
 napkin. Vallance went with it and joined his com 
 panion. Ide pounced upon the food ravenously. "I 
 haven t had any free lunch as good as this in a 
 year," he said. "Aren t you going to eat any, Daw- 
 son?" 
 
 "I m not hungry thanks," said Vallance. 
 
 "We ll go back to the Square," said Ide. "The 
 cops won t bother us there. I ll roll up the rest of 
 this ham and stuff for our breakfast. I won t eat 
 any more ; I m afraid I ll get sick. Suppose I d die 
 of cramps or something to-night, and never get to 
 touch that money again! It s eleven hours yet till 
 time to see that lawyer. You won t leave me, will 
 you, Dawson? I m afraid something might happen. 
 You haven t any place to go, have you?" 
 
 "No," said Vallance, "nowhere to-night. I ll have 
 a bench with you." 
 
 "You take it cool," said Ide, "if you ve told it to 
 me straight. I should think a man put on the bum 
 
102 The Voice of the City 
 
 from a good job just in one day would be tearing 
 his hair." 
 
 "I believe I ve already remarked," said Vallance, 
 laughing, "that I would have thought that a man 
 who was expecting to come into a fortune on the 
 next day would be feeling pretty easy and quiet." 
 
 "It s funny business," philosophized Ide, "about 
 the way people take things, anyhow. Here s your 
 bench, Dawson, right next to mine. The light don t 
 shine in your eyes here. Say, Dawson, I ll get the 
 old man to give you a letter to somebody about a job 
 when I get back home. You ve helped me a lot to 
 night. I don t believe I could have gone through 
 the night if I hadn t struck you." 
 
 "Thank you," said Vallance. "Do you lie down 
 or sit up on these when you sleep?" 
 
 For hours Vallance gazed almost without winking 
 at the stars through the branches of the trees and 
 listened to the sharp slapping of horses hoofs on the 
 sea of asphalt to the south. His mind was active, 
 but his feelings were dormant. Every emotion 
 seemed to have been eradicated. He felt no regrets, 
 no fears, no pain or discomfort. Even when he 
 thought of the girl, it was as of an inhabitant of one 
 of those remote stars at which he gazed. He re 
 membered the absurd antics of his companion and 
 laughed softly, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon 
 the daily army of milk wagons made of the city a 
 
The Shocks of Doom 103 
 
 roaring drum to which they marched. Vallancc fell 
 asleep on his comfortless bench. 
 
 At ten o clock on the next day the two stood at the 
 door of Lawyer Mead s office in Ann Street. 
 
 Ide s nerves fluttered worse than ever when the 
 hour approached; and Vallance could not decide to 
 leave him a possible prey to the dangers he dreaded. 
 
 When they entered the office, Lawyer Mead looked 
 at them wonder ingly. He and Vallance were old 
 friends. After his greeting, he turned to Ide, who 
 stood with white face and trembling limbs before the 
 expected crisis. 
 
 "I sent a second letter to your address last night, 
 Mr. Ide," he said. "I learned this morning that 
 you were not there to receive it. It will inform you 
 that Mr. Paulding has reconsidered his off cr to take 
 you back into favor. He has decided not to do so, 
 and desires you to understand that no change will be 
 made in the relations existing between you and 
 him." 
 
 Ide s trembling suddenly ceased. The color came 
 back to his face, and he straightened his back. His 
 jaw went forward half an inch, and a gleam came 
 into his eye. He pushed back his battered hat with 
 one hand, and extended the other, with levelled fin 
 gers, toward the lawyer. He took a long breath and 
 then laughed sardonically. 
 
 "Tell old Paulding he may go to the devil," he 
 
104 The Voice of the City 
 
 said, loudly and clearly, and turned and walked out 
 of the office with a firm and lively step. 
 
 Lawyer Mead turned on his heel to Vallance and 
 smiled. 
 
 "I am glad you came in," he said, genially. 
 "Your uncle wants you to return home at once. He 
 is reconciled to the situation that led to his hasty 
 action, and desires to say that all will be as " 
 
 "Hey, Adams !" cried Lawyer Mead, breaking his 
 sentence, and calling to his clerk. "Bring a glass of 
 water Mr. Vallance has fainted." 
 
THE PLUTONIAN FIRE 
 
 THERE are a few editor men with whom I am privi 
 leged to come in contact. It has not been long since 
 it was their habit to come in contact with me. There 
 is a difference. 
 
 They tell me that with a large number of the 
 manuscripts that are submitted to them come advices 
 (in the way of a boost) from the author asseverating 
 that the incidents in the story are true. The des 
 tination of such contributions depends wholly upon 
 the question of the inclosure of stamps. Some are 
 returned, the rest are thrown on the floor in a corner 
 on top of a pair of gum shoes, an overturned statu 
 ette of the Winged Victory, and a pile of old maga 
 zines containing a picture of the editor in the act 
 of reading the latest copy of Le Petit Journal, right 
 side up you can tell by the illustrations. It is 
 only a legend that there are waste baskets in editors 
 offices. 
 
 Thus is truth held in disrepute. But in time truth 
 and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. 
 Things will happen logically, and the villain be dis 
 comfited instead of being elected to the board of 
 directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only 
 
 105 
 
106 The Voice of the City 
 
 be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be 
 awarded custody of the press despatches. 
 
 This preamble is to warn you off the grade cross 
 ing of a true story. Being that, it shall be told 
 simply, with conjunctions substituted for adjectives 
 wherever possible, and whatever evidences of style 
 may appear in it shall be due to the linotype msfn. 
 It is a story of the literary life in a great city, arid 
 it should be of interest to every author within a $0- 
 mile radius of Gosport, Ind., whose desk holds a MS. 
 story beginning thus : "While the cheers following 
 his nomination were still ringing through the old 
 court-house, Harwood broke away from the congrat 
 ulating handclasps of his henchmen and hurried to 
 Judge Creswell s house to find Ida." 
 
 Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction. 
 The Southern papers had printed eight of his stories 
 under an editorial caption identifying the author as 
 the son of "the gallant Major Pettingill Pettit, our 
 former County Attorney and hero of the battle of 
 Lookout Mountain." 
 
 Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame 
 faced culture, and rny good friend. His father kept 
 a general store in a little town called Hosea. Pettit 
 had been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedge 
 fields adjacent thereto. He had in his gripsack two 
 manuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy of 
 one Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, in 
 
The Plutonian Fire 107 
 
 the year 1329. That s nothing. We all do that. 
 And some day when we make a hit with the little 
 sketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the editor 
 prints the other one for us or "on us," as the say 
 ing is and then and then we have to get a big 
 valise and peddle those patent air-draft gas burners. 
 At $1.25 everybody should have em. 
 
 I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was to 
 appear in an article entitled "Literary Landmarks 
 of Old New York," some day when we got through 
 with it. He engaged a room there, drawing on the 
 general store for his expenses. I showed New York 
 to him, and he did not mention how much narrower 
 Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea. This 
 seemed a good sign, so I put the final test. 
 
 "Suppose you try your hand at a descriptive arti 
 cle," I suggested, "giving your impressions of New 
 York as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. The fresh 
 point of view, the 
 
 "Don t be a fool," said Pettit. "Let s go have 
 some beer. On the whole I rather like the city." 
 
 We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. 
 Every da} and night we repaired to oi.e of those 
 palaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goes 
 on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla 
 itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The 
 classic marble on which we ate, the great, light- 
 flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white 
 
108 The Voice of the City 
 
 scrolls ; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups 
 and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cut 
 lery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned 
 grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the 
 recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register it was a 
 gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a 
 deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and em 
 blematic life. And the beans were only ten cents. 
 We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine at 
 sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restau 
 rants ; and we shuddered lest they should seek out our 
 resorts and make them conspicuous with their pres 
 ence. 
 
 Pettit wrote many stories, which the editors re 
 turned to him. He wrote love stories, a thing I have 
 always kept free from, holding the belief that the 
 well-known and popular sentiment is not properly a 
 matter for publication, but something to be privately 
 handled by the alienists and florists. But the editors 
 had told him that they wanted love stories, because 
 they said the women read them. 
 
 Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course. 
 Women do not read the love stories in the magazines. 
 They read the poker-game stories and the recipes 
 for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by 
 fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I 
 am not criticising the judgment of editors. They 
 are mostly very fine men, but a man can be but one 
 
The Plutonian Fire 109 
 
 man, with individual opinions and tastes. I knew 
 two associate editors of a magazine who were won 
 derfully alike in almost everything. And yet one of 
 them was very fond of Flaubert, while the other pre 
 ferred gin. 
 
 Pettit brought me his returned manuscripts, and 
 we looked them over together to find out why they 
 were not accepted. They seemed to me pretty fair 
 stories, written in a good style, and ended, as they 
 should, at the bottom of the last page. 
 
 They were well constructed and the events were 
 marshalled in orderly and logical sequence. But I 
 thought I detected a lack of living substance it 
 was much as if I gazed at a symmetrical array of 
 presentable clamshells from which the succulent and 
 vital inhabitants had been removed. I intimated that 
 the author might do well to get better acquainted with 
 his theme. 
 
 "You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about 
 a gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which the 
 hero drew his Colt s .45 and shot seven bandits as 
 fast as they came in the door. Now, if a six-shooter 
 could " 
 
 "Oh, well," said I, "that s different. Arizona is 
 a long way from New York. I could have a man 
 stabbed with a lariat or chased by a pair of chap- 
 arreras if I wanted to, and it wouldn t be noticed 
 until the usual error-sharp from around McAdams 
 
110 The Voice of the City 
 
 Junction isolates the erratum and writes in to the 
 papers about it. But you are up against another 
 proposition. This thing they call love is as common 
 around New York as it is in Sheboygan during the 
 young onion season. It may be mixed here with a 
 little commercialism they read Byron, but they 
 look up Bradstreet s, too, while they re among the 
 B s, and Brigham also if they have time but it s 
 pretty much the same old internal disturbance every 
 where. You can fool an editor with a fake picture 
 of a cowboy mounting a pony with his left hand on 
 the saddle horn, but you can t put him up a tree with 
 a love story. So, you ve got to fall in love and then 
 write the real thing." 
 
 Pettit did. I never knew whether he was taking 
 my advice or whether he fell an accidental victim. 
 
 There was a girl he had met at one of these studio 
 contrivances a glorious, impudent, lucid, open- 
 minded girl with hair the color of Culmbacher, and a 
 good-natured way of despising you. She was a New 
 York girl. 
 
 Well (as the narrative style permits us to say in 
 frequently), Pettit went to pieces. All those pains, 
 those lover s doubts, those heart-burnings and 
 tremors of which he had written so unconvincingly 
 were his. Talk about Shylock s pound of flesh! 
 Twenty-five pounds Cupid got from Pettit. Which 
 is the usurer? 
 
The Plutonian Fire 111 
 
 One night Pettit came to my room exalted. Pale 
 arid haggard but exalted. She had given him a 
 j oriquil. 
 
 "Old Hoss," said he, with a new smile flickering 
 around his mouth, "I believe I could write that story 
 to-night the one, you know, that is to win out. 
 I can feel it. I don t know whether it will come out 
 or not, but I can feel it." 
 
 I pushed him out of my door. "Go to your room 
 and write it," I ordered. "Else I can see your finish. 
 I told you this must come first. Write it to-night 
 and put it under my door when it is done. Put it 
 under my door to-night when it is finished don t 
 keep it until to-morrow." 
 
 I was reading my bully old pal Montaigne at two 
 o clock when I heard the sheets rustle under my door. 
 I gathered them up and read the story. 
 
 The hissing of geese, the languishing cooing of 
 doves, the braying of donkeys, the chatter of irre 
 sponsible sparrows these were in my mind s ear as 
 I read. "Suffering Sappho !" I exclaimed to myself. 
 "Is this the divine fire that is supposed to ignite 
 genius and make it practical and wage-earning?" 
 
 The story was sentimental drivel, full of whimper 
 ing soft-heartedness and gushing egoism. All the 
 art that Pettit had acquired was gone. A perusal 
 of its buttery phrases would have made a cynic of a 
 sighing chambermaid. 
 
112 The Voice of the City 
 
 In the morning Pettit came to my room. I read 
 him his doom mercilessly. He laughed idiotically. 
 
 "All right, Old Hoss," he said, cheerily, "make 
 cigar-lighters of it. What s the difference? I m 
 going to take her to lunch at Claremont to-day." 
 
 There was about a month of it. And then Pettit 
 came to me bearing an invisible mitten, with the for 
 titude of a dish-rag. He talked of the grave and 
 South America and prussic acid; and I lost an after 
 noon getting him straight. I took him out and saw 
 that large and curative doses of whiskey were ad 
 ministered to him. I warned you this was a true 
 story ware your white ribbons if you follow this 
 tale. For two weeks I fed him whiskey and Omar, 
 and read to him regularly every evening the column 
 in the evening paper that reveals the secrets of fe 
 male beauty. I recommend the treatment. 
 
 After Pettit was cured he wrote more stories. He 
 recovered his old-time facility and did work just 
 short of good enough. Then the curtain rose on 
 the third act. 
 
 A little, dark-eyed, silent girl from New Hamp 
 shire, who was studying applied design, fell deeply 
 in love with him. She was the intense sort, but ex 
 ternally glace, such as New England sometimes fools 
 us with. Pettit liked her mildly, and took her about 
 a good deal. She worshipped him, and now and then 
 bored him. 
 
The Plutonian Fire 113 
 
 There came a climax when she tried to jump out 
 of a window, and he had to save her by some perfunc 
 tory, unmeant wooing. Even I was shaken by the 
 depths of the absorbing affection she showed. Home, 
 friends, traditions, creeds went up like thistle-down 
 in the scale against her love. It was really discom 
 posing. 
 
 One night again Pettit sauntered in, yawning. As 
 he had told me before, he said he felt that he could 
 do a great story, and as before I hunted him to his 
 room and saw him open his inkstand. At one o clock 
 the sheets of paper slid under my door. 
 
 I read that story, and I jumped up, late as it was, 
 with a whoop of joy. Old Pettit had done it. Just 
 as though it lay there, red and bleeding, a woman s 
 heart was written into the lines. You couldn t see 
 the joining, but art, exquisite art, and pulsing na 
 ture had been combined into a love story that took 
 you by the throat like the quinsy. I broke into 
 Pettit s room and beat him on the back and called 
 him names names high up in the galaxy of the 
 immortals that we admired. And Pettit yawned and 
 begged to be allowed to sleep. 
 
 On the morrow, I dragged him to an editor. The 
 great man read, and, rising, gave Pettit his hand. 
 That was a decoration, a wreath of bay, and a guar 
 antee of rent. 
 
 And then old Pettit smiled slowly. I call him Gen- 
 
The Voice of the City 
 
 tleman Pettit now to myself. It s a miserable name 
 to give a man, but it sounds better than it looks in 
 print. 
 
 "I see," said old Pettit, as he took up his story 
 and began tearing it into small strips. "I see the 
 game now. You can t Write with ink, and you can t 
 write with your own heart s blood, but you can write 
 with the heart s blood of some one else. You have 
 to be a cad before you can be an artist. Well, I am 
 for old Alabam and the Major s store. Have you 
 got a light, Old Hoss?" 
 
 I went with Pettit to the depot and died hard. 
 
 "Shakespeare s sonnets?" I blurted, making a last 
 stand. "How about him?" 
 
 "A cad," said Pettit. "They give it to you, and 
 you sell it love, you know. I d rather sell ploughs 
 for father." 
 
 "But," I protested, "you are reversing the deci 
 sion of the world s greatest " 
 
 "Good-by, Old Hoss," said Pettit. 
 
 "Critics," I continued. "But say if the 
 Major can use a fairly good salesman and book 
 keeper down there in the store, let me know, will 
 your" 
 
NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN 
 
 VV E sail at eight in the morning on the Celtic," 
 said Honoria, plucking a loose thread from her lace 
 sleeve. 
 
 "I heard so," said young Ives, dropping his hat, 
 and muffing it as he tried to catch it, "and I came 
 around to wish you a pleasant voyage." 
 
 "Of course you heard it," said Honoria, coldly 
 sweet, "since we have had no opportunity of inform 
 ing you ourselves." 
 
 Ives looked at her pleadingly, but with little hope. 
 
 Outside in the street a high-pitched voice chanted, 
 not unmusically, a commercial gamut of "Cand-ee-ee- 
 ee-s ! Nice, fresh cand-ee-ee-ee-ees !" 
 
 "It s our old candy man," said Honoria, leaning 
 out the window and beckoning. "I want some of his 
 motto kisses. There s nothing in the Broadway 
 shops half so good." 
 
 The candy man stopped his pushcart in front of 
 the old Madison Avenue home. He had a holiday 
 and festival air unusual to street peddlers. His tie 
 was new and bright red, and a horseshoe pin, almost 
 life-size, glittered speciously from its folds. His 
 
 115 
 
116 The Voice of the City 
 
 brown, thin face was crinkled into a semi-foolish 
 smile. Striped cuffs with dog-head buttons covered 
 the tan on his wrists. 
 
 "I do belie\ 7 e he s going to get married," said 
 Plonoria, pityingly. "I never saw him taken that 
 way before. And to-day is the first time in months 
 that he has cried his wares, I am sure." 
 
 Ives threw a coin to the sidewalk. The candy man 
 knows his customers. He filled a paper bag, climbed 
 the old-fashioned stoop and handed it in. 
 
 "I remember " said Ives. 
 
 "Wait," said Honoria. 
 
 She took a small portfolio from the drawer of a 
 writing desk and from the portfolio a slip of flimsy 
 paper one-quarter of an inch by two inches in size. 
 
 "This," said Honoria, inflexibly, "was wrapped 
 about the first one we opened." 
 
 "It was a year ago," apologized Ives, as he held 
 out his hand for it, 
 
 "As long as skies above are blue 
 To you, my love, I will be true. * 
 
 This he read from the slip of flimsy paper. 
 
 "We were to have sailed a fortnight ago," said 
 Honoria, gossipingly. "It has been such a warm 
 summer. The town is quite deserted. There is no 
 where to go. Yet I am told that one or two of the 
 roof gardens are amusing. The singing and the 
 
Nemesis and the Candy Man 117 
 
 dancing on one or two seem to have met with 
 approval." 
 
 Ives did not wince. When you are in the ring you 
 are not surprised when your adversary taps you on 
 the ribs. 
 
 "I followed the candy man that time," said Ives, 
 irrelevantly, "and gave him five dollars at the corner 
 of Broadway." 
 
 He reached for the paper bag in Honoria s lap, 
 took out one of the square, wrapped confections and 
 slowly unrolled it. 
 
 "Sara Chillingworth s father," said Honoria, "has 
 given her an automobile." 
 
 "Read that," said Ives, handing over the slip that 
 had been wrapped around the square of candy. 
 
 "Life teaches us how to live, 
 Love teaches us to forgive." 
 
 Honoria s cheeks turned pink. 
 
 "Honoria!" cried Ives, starting up from his 
 chair. 
 
 "Miss Clinton," corrected Honoria, rising like 
 Venus from the bead on the surf. "I warned you 
 not to speak that name again." 
 
 "Honoria," repeated Ives, "you must hear me. I 
 know I do not deserve your forgiveness, but I must 
 have it. There is a madness that possesses one some 
 times for which his better nature is not responsible. 
 
118 The Voice of the City 
 
 I throw everything else but you to the winds. I 
 strike off the chains that have bound me. I renounce 
 the siren that lured me from you. Let the bought 
 verse of that street peddler plead for me. It is you 
 only whom I can love. Let your love forgive, and I 
 swear to you that mine will be true as long as skies 
 above are blue. " 
 
 On the west side, between Sixth and Seventh Ave 
 nues, an alley cuts the block in the middle. It per 
 ishes in a little court in the centre of the block. The 
 district is theatrical ; the inhabitants, the bubbling 
 froth of half a dozen nations. The atmosphere is 
 Bohemian, the language polyglot, the locality pre 
 carious. 
 
 In the court at the rear of the alley lived the candy 
 man. At seven o clock he pushed his cart into the 
 narrow entrance, rested it upon the irregular stone 
 slats and sat upon one of the handles to cool himself. 
 There was a great draught of cool wind through the 
 alley. 
 
 There was a w r indow above the spot where he al 
 ways stopped his pushcart. In the cool of the after 
 noon, Mile. Adele, drawing card of the Aerial Hoof 
 Garden, sat at the window and took the air. Gen 
 erally her ponderous mass of dark auburn hair was 
 down, that the breeze might have the felicity of aid 
 ing Sidonie, the maid, in drying and airing it. About 
 
Nemesis and the Candy Man 119 
 
 her shoulders the point of her that the photog 
 raphers always made the most of was loosely 
 draped a heliotrope scarf. Her arms to the elbow 
 were bare there were no sculptors there to rave 
 over them but even the stolid bricks in the walls 
 of the alley should not have been so insensate as to 
 disapprove. While she sat thus Felice, another maid, 
 anointed and bathed the small feet that twinkled and 
 so charmed the nightly Aerial audiences. 
 
 Gradually Mademoiselle began to notice the candy 
 man stopping to mop his brow and cool himself be 
 neath her window. In the hands of her maids she 
 was deprived for the time of her vocation the 
 charming and binding to her chariot of man. To 
 lose time was displeasing to Mademoiselle. Here was 
 the candy man no fit game for her darts, truly 
 but of the sex upon which she had been born to make 
 war. 
 
 After casting upon him looks of unseeing coldness 
 for a dozen times, one afternoon she suddenly 
 thawed and poured down upon him a smile that put 
 to shame the sweets upon his cart. 
 
 "Candy man," she said, cooingly, while Sidonie 
 followed her impulsive dive, brushing the heavy au 
 burn hair, "don t you think I am beautiful?" 
 
 The candy man laughed harshly, and looked up, 
 with his thin jaw set, while he wiped his forehead 
 with a red-and-blue handkerchief. 
 
120 The Voice of the City 
 
 "Yer d make a dandy magazine cover," he said, 
 grudgingly. "Beautiful or not is for them that 
 cares. It s not my line. If yer lookin for bou 
 quets apply elsewhere between nine and twelve. I 
 think we ll have rain." 
 
 Truly, fascinating a candy man is like killing rat> 
 bits in a deep snow ; but the hunter s blood is widely 
 diffused. Mademoiselle tugged a great coil of 
 hair from Sidonie s hands and let it fall out the 
 window. 
 
 "Candy man, have you a sweetheart anywhere with 
 hair as long and soft as that? And with an arm so 
 round?" She flexed an arm like Galatea s after the 
 miracle across the window-sill. 
 
 The candy man cackled shrilly as he arranged a 
 stock of butter-scotch that had tumbled down. 
 
 "Smoke up !" said he, vulgarly. "Nothin doin* 
 in the complimentary line. I m too wise to be bam 
 boozled by a switch of fcair and a newly massaged 
 arm. Oh, I guess you ll make good in the calcium, 
 all right, with plenty of powder and paint on and 
 the orchestra playing Under the Old Apple Tree. 
 But don t put on your hat and chase downstairs to 
 fly to the Little Church Around the Corner with me. 
 I ve been up against peroxide and make-up boxes 
 before. Say, all j oking aside don t you think we ll 
 have rain?" 
 
 "Candy man," said Mademoiselle, softty, with her 
 
Nemesis and the Candy Man 121 
 
 lips curving and her chin dimpling, "don t you think 
 Tin pretty?" 
 
 The candy man grinned. 
 
 "Savin money, ain t yer?" said he, "by bein yer 
 own press agent. I smoke, but I haven t seen yer 
 mug on any of the five-cent cigar boxes. It d take 
 a new brand of woman to get me go in , anyway. I 
 know em from sidecombs to shoelaces. Gimme a 
 good day s sales and steak-and-onions at seven and 
 a pipe and an evenin paper back there in the court, 
 and I ll not trouble Lillian Russell herself to wink at 
 me, if you please." 
 
 Mademoiselle pouted. 
 
 "Candy man," she said, softly and deeply, "yet 
 you shall say that I am beautiful. All men say so 
 and so shall you." 
 
 The candy man laughed and pulled out his pipe. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I must be goin in. There is a 
 story in the evenin paper that I am readin . Men 
 are divin* in the seas for a treasure, and pirates are 
 watchin them from behind a reef. And there ain t 
 a woman on land or water or in the air. Good- 
 evenin ." And he trundled his pushcart down the 
 alley and back to the musty court where he lived. 
 
 Incredibly to him who has not learned woman, 
 Mademoiselle sat at the window each day and spread 
 her nets for the ignominious game. Once she kept a 
 grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for 
 
122 The Voice of the City 
 
 half an hour while she battered in vain the candy 
 man s tough philosophy. His rough laugh chafed 
 her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in 
 the breeze of the alley while her hair was being minis 
 tered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded 
 from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Un 
 worthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she 
 glowed upon him in a way that would have sent her 
 higher adorers into an egoistic paradise. The candy 
 man s hard eyes looked upon her with a half-con 
 cealed derision that urged her to the use of the 
 sharpest arrow in her beauty s quiver. 
 
 One afternoon she leaned far over the sill, and she 
 did not challenge and torment him as usual. 
 
 "Candy man," said she, "stand up and look into 
 my eyes." 
 
 He stood up and looked into her eyes, with his 
 harsh laugh like the sawing of wood. He took out 
 his pipe, fumbled with it, and put it back into his 
 pocket with a trembling hand. 
 
 "That will do," said Mademoiselle, with a slow 
 smile. "I must go now to my masseuse. Good- 
 
 The next evening at seven the candy man came and 
 rested his cart under the window. But was it the 
 candy man? His clothes were a bright new check. 
 His necktie was a flaming red, adorned by a glit 
 tering horseshoe pin, almost life-size. His shoes were 
 
Nemesis and the Candy Man 123 
 
 polished; the tan of his checks had paled his hands 
 had been washed. The window was empty, and lie 
 waited under it with his nose upward, like a hound 
 hoping for a bone. 
 
 Mademoiselle came, with Sidonie carrying her load 
 of hair. She looked at the candy man and smiled 
 a slow smile that faded away into ennui. Instantly 
 she knew that the game was bagged ; and so quickly 
 she wearied of the chase. She began to talk to 
 Sidonie. 
 
 "Been a fine day," said the candy man, hollowly. 
 "First time in a month I ve felt first-class. Hit it 
 up down old Madison, hollering out like I usetcr. 
 Think it ll rain to-morrow?" 
 
 Mademoiselle laid two round arms on the cushion 
 on the window-sill, and a dimpled chin upon them. 
 
 "Candy man," said she, softly, "do you not 
 love me?" 
 
 The candy man stood up and leaned against the 
 brick wall. 
 
 "Lady," said he, chokingly, "I ve got $800 saved 
 up. Did I say you wasn t beautiful? Take it every 
 bit of it and buy a collar for your dog with it." 
 
 A sound as of a hundred silvery bells tinkled in the 
 room of Mademoiselle. The laughter filled the alley 
 and trickled back into the court, as strange a thing 
 to enter there as sunlight itself. Mademoiselle was 
 amused. Sidonie, a wise echo, added a sepulchral 
 
124 The Voice of the City 
 
 but faithful contralto. The laughter of the two 
 seemed at last to penetrate the candy man. He 
 fumbled with his horseshoe pin. At length Made 
 moiselle, exhausted, turned her flushed, beautiful face 
 to the window. 
 
 "Candy man," said she, "go away. When I laugh 
 Sidonie pulls my hair. I can but laugh while you 
 remain there." 
 
 "Here is a note for Mademoiselle," said Felice, 
 coming to the window in the room. 
 
 "There is no justice," said the candy man, lifting 
 the handle of his cart and moving away. 
 
 Three yards he moved, and stopped. Loud shriek 
 after shriek came from the window of Mademoiselle. 
 Quickly he ran back. He heard a body thumping 
 upon the floor and a sound as though heels beat alter 
 nately upon it. 
 
 "What is it?" he called. 
 
 Sidonie s severe head came into the window. 
 
 "Mademoiselle is overcome by bad news," she said. 
 "One whom she loved with all her soul has gone 
 you may have heard of him he is Monsieur Ives. 
 He sails across the ocean to-morrow. Oh, you men !" 
 
SQUARING THE CIRCLE 
 
 AT the hazard of wearying you this tale of vehe 
 ment emotions must be prefaced by a discourse on 
 geometry. 
 
 Nature moves in circles; Art in straight lines. % 
 The natural is rounded ; the artificial is made up of 
 angles. A man lost in the snow wanders, in spite of! 
 himself, in perfect circles ; the/ city man s feet, de-, 
 naturalized by rectangular streets and floors, carry, 
 him ever away from himself. 
 
 The round eyes of childhood typify innocence ; the 
 narrowed line of the flirt s optic proves the invasion 
 of art. The horizontal mouth is the mark of deter 
 mined cunning; who has not read Nature s most spon 
 taneous lyric in lips rounded for the candid kiss? 
 
 Beauty is Nature in perfection ; circularity is its\ 
 chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchant 
 ing gold ball, the domes of splendid temples, the/ 
 huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring) 
 the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks. 
 
 On the other hand, straight lines show that Nature * 
 has been deflected. Imagine Venus s girdle trans- 
 formed into a "straight front" ! 
 
 When we begin to move in straight lines and turn 
 125 I 
 
126 The Voice of the City 
 
 sharp corners our natures begin to change. The \ 
 consequence is that Nature, being more adaptive than ; 
 Art, tries to conform to its sterner regulations. The ^ 
 result is often a rather curious product - for in 
 stance: A prize chrysanthemum, wood alcohol whis 
 key, a Republican Missouri, cauliflower an gratin, s - 
 and a New Yorker. 
 
 Nature is lost quickest in a big city. The cause 
 is geometrical, not moral. The straight lines of its 
 streets and architecture, the rectangular ity of itsl 
 laws and social customs, the undeviating pavements.! 
 the hard, severe, depressing, uncompromising rules of { 
 all its ways even of its recreation and sports 
 coldly exhibit a sneering defiance of the curved line j 
 of Nature. 
 
 Wherefore, it may be said that the big city has 
 demonstrated the problem of squaring the circltv, 
 And it may be added that this mathematical intro-f 
 duction precedes an account of the fate of a Kentucky ! 
 feud that was imported to the city that has a habit 
 of making its importations conform to its angles. 
 \ The feud began in the Cumberland Mountains be 
 tween the Folwell and the Harkness families. The 
 first victim of the homespun vendetta was a possum 
 dog belonging to Bill Harkness. j The Harkness fam 
 ily evened up this dire loss by laying out the chief 
 of the Folwell clan. The Folwells were prompt at 
 repartee. They oiled up their squirrel rifles and 
 
Squaring the Circle 127 
 
 made it feasible for Bill Harkness to follow his dog 
 to a land where the possums come down when treed 
 without the stroke of an ax. 7 
 
 The feud flourished for forty years. Harknesses 
 were shot at the plough, through their lamp-lit cabin 
 windows, coming from camp-meeting, asleep, in 
 duello, sober and otherwise, singly and in family 
 groups, prepared and unprepared. Folwells had the 
 branches of their family tree lopped off in similar 
 ways, as the traditions of their country prescribed 
 and authorized. 
 
 By and by the pruning left but a single member 
 of each family. And then Cal Harkness, probably 
 reasoning that further pursuance of the controversy 
 would give a too decided personal flavor to the feud, 
 suddenly disappeared from the relieved Cumberlands, 
 baulking the avenging hand of Sam, the ultimate 
 opposing Folwell. 
 
 A 3 T ear afterward Sam Folwell learned that his 
 hereditary, unsuppressed enemy was living in New 
 York City./ Sam turned over the big iron wash-pot 
 in the yard, scraped off some of the soot, which he 
 mixed with lard and shined his boots with the com 
 pound. He put on his store clothes of butternut 
 dyed black, a white shirt and collar, and packed a 
 carpet-sack with Spartan lingerie. He took his 
 squirrel rifle from its hooks, but put it back again 
 with a sigh. However ethical and plausible the habit 
 
128 The Voice of the City 
 
 might be in the Cumberlands, perhaps New York 
 would not swallow his pose of hunting squirrels among 
 the skyscrapers along Broadway. An ancient but 
 reliable Colt s revolver that he resurrected from a 
 bureau drawer seemed to proclaim itself the pink of 
 weapons for metropolitan adventure and vengeance. 
 This and a hunting-knife in a leather sheath, Sam 
 packed in the carpet-sack. As he started, muleback, 
 for the lowland railroad station the last Folwell 
 turned in his saddle and looked grimly at the little 
 cluster of white-pine slabs in the clump of cedars 
 that marked the Folwell buryirig-ground. . 
 
 Sam Folwell arrived in New York jn the 
 Still moving and living in the free circles of nature, 
 he did not perceive the formidable, pitiless, restless, 
 fierce angles of the great city waiting in the dark 
 to close about the rotundity of his heart and brain 
 and mould him to the form of its millions of re-; 
 shaped victims. I A cabby picked him out of the 
 whirljas Sam himself had often picked a nut from a 
 bed of wind-tossed autumn leaves, fend whisked him 
 away to a hotel commensurate to his boots and 
 carpet-sack. 
 
 On the next morning the last of the Folwell s made 
 his sortie into the city that sheltered the last H ark- 
 ness. The Colt was thrust beneath his coat and se 
 cured by a narrow leather belt ; the hunting-knife 
 hung between his shoulder-blades, with the haft an 
 
Squaring tlie Circle 129 
 
 inch below his coat collar. He knew this much 
 that Cal Harkncss drove an express wagon somewhere 
 in that town, and that he, Sam Folwell, had come 
 to kill him. And as he stepped- upon the sidewalk 
 the red came into his eye and the feud-hate into his 
 heart. 
 
 The clamor of the central avenues drew him thith 
 erward. He had half expected to see Cal coming 
 down the street in his shirt-sleeves, with a jug And 
 a whip in his hand, just as he would have seen him 
 in Frankfort or Laurel City. But an hour went by 
 and Cal did not appear. Perhaps he was waiting in 
 ambush, to shoot him from a door or a window. Sam 
 kept a sharp eye on doors and windows for a while. 
 
 About noon the city tired of playing with its mouse, 
 and suddenly squeezed him with its straight lines. , 
 
 Sam Folwell stood where two great, rectangular; 
 arteries of the city cross. ( He looked fuur ways, and 
 saw the world hurled from its orbit and reduced 
 by spirit level and tape to an edged and cornered 
 plane. /All life moved on tracks, in grooves, accord 
 ing to system, within boundaries, by rote. The root 
 of life was the^cube root ; the measure of existence 
 was square measure. 1 People streamed by in straight 
 rows ; the horrible din and crash stupefied him. 
 
 Sam leaned against the sharp corner of a stone 
 building. T^ nose faces passed him by thousands, and 
 none of them were turned toward him. A sudden 
 
ISO The Voice of the City 
 
 foolish fear that he had died and was a spirit, and 
 that they could not see him, seized him. And then 
 the city smote him with loneliness. 
 
 A fat man dropped out of the stream and stood 
 a few feet distant, waiting for his car. Sam crept 
 to his side and shouted above the tumult into his 
 ear: 
 
 "The Rankinses hogs weighed more n ourn a whole 
 passel, but the mast in thar neighborhood was a fine 
 chance better than what it was down " 
 
 The fat man moved away unostentatiously, and 
 bought roasted chestnuts to cover his alarm. 
 
 Sam felt the need of a drop of mountain dew. 
 Across the street men passed in and out through 
 swinging doors. Brief glimpses could be had of a 
 glistening bar and its bedeckings. The feudist 
 crossed and essayed to enter. /Again had Art elimi 
 nated the familiar circlcA Sam s hand found no 
 door-knob it slid, in vain, over a rectangular brass 
 plate and polished oak with nothing even so large as 
 a pin s head upon which his fingers might close. 
 
 Abashed, reddened, heartbroken, he walked away 
 from the bootless door arid sat upon a step. A 
 locust club tickled him in the ribs. 
 
 "Take a walk for yourself," said the policeman. 
 "You ve been loafing around here long enough.* 
 
 At the next corner a shrill whistle sounded in 
 Sam s ear. He wheeled around and saw a black- 
 
Squaring the Circle 131 
 
 browed villain scowling at him over peanuts heaped 
 on a steaming machine. He started across the street. 
 An immense engine, running without mules, with the 
 voice of a bull and the smell of a smoky lamp, whizzed 
 past, grazing his knee. A cab-driver bumped him 
 with a hub and explained to him that kind words were 
 invented to be used on other occasions. A motorman 
 clanged his bell wildly and, for once in his life, cor 
 roborated a cab-driver. A large lady in a change 
 able silk waist dug an elbow into his back, and a 
 newsy pensively pelted him with banana rinds, mur 
 muring, "I hates to do it but if anybody seen me 
 let it pass !" 
 
 Cal Harkness, his day s work over and his express 
 wagon stabled, turned the sharp edge of the buildii 
 I that, by the cheek of architects, is modelled upon j. 
 safety razor) Out of the mass of hurrying people 
 his eye picked up, three yards away, the surviving 
 bloody and implacable foe of his kith and kin. 
 
 He stopped short and wavered for a moment, being 
 unarmed and sharply surprised. But the keen moun 
 taineer s eye of Sam Folwcil had picked him out. 
 
 There was a sudden spring, a ripple in the stream 
 of passers-by and the sound of Sam s voice cr} r ing: 
 
 "Howdy, Cal! I m durned glad to see ye." 
 
 And in the angles of Broaduay, Fifth Avenue and ; 
 Twentj: third Street the Cumberland feudists shook \ 
 hands. 
 
ROSES, RUSES AND ROMANCE 
 
 RAVENEL Ravencl, the traveller, artist and poet, 
 threw his magazine to the floor. Sammy Brown, 
 broker s clerk, who sat by the window, jumped. 
 
 "What is it, Ravvy?" he asked. "The critics been 
 hammering your stock down?" 
 
 "Romance is dead," said Ravenel, lightly. When 
 Ravenel spoke lightly he was generally serious. He 
 picked up the magazine and fluttered its leaves. 
 
 "Even a Philistine, like you, Sammy," said Rave 
 nel, seriously (a tone that insured him to be speak 
 ing lightly), "ought to understand. Now, here is 
 a magazine that once printed Poe and Lowell and 
 Whitman and Bret Harte and Du Maurier and Lanier 
 and well, that gives you the idea. The current 
 number has this literary feast to set before you: an 
 article on the stokers and coal bunkers of battle 
 ships, an expose of the methods employed in making 
 liverwurst, a continued story of a Standard Pre 
 ferred International Baking Powder deal in Wall 
 Street, a poem on the bear that the President 
 missed, another story by a young woman who spent 
 a week as a spy making overalls on the Bast Side, 
 another fiction story that reeks of the garage and 
 
 132 
 
Roses, Ruses and Romance 133 
 
 a certain make of automobile. Of course, the title 
 contains the words Cupid and Chauffeur an ar 
 ticle on naval strategy, illustrated with cuts of the 
 Spanish Armada, and the new Staten Island ferry 
 boats ; another story of a political boss who won the . 
 love of a Fifth Avenue belle by blackening her eye 
 and refusing to vote for an iniquitous ordinance (it 
 doesn t say whether it was in the Street-Cleaning 
 Department or Congress), and nineteen pages by the 
 editors bragging about the circulation. The whole 
 thing, Sammy, is an obituary on Romance." 
 
 Sammy Brown sat comfortably in the leather arm 
 chair by the open window. His suit was a vehement 
 brown with visible checks, beautifully matched in 
 shade by the ends of four cigars that his vest pocket 
 poorly concealed. Light tan were his shoes, gray his 
 socks, sky-blue his apparent linen, snowy and high 
 and adamantine his collar, against which a black but 
 terfly had alighted and spread his wings. Sammy s 
 face least important was round and pleasant 
 and pinkish, and in his eyes you saw no haven for 
 fleeing Romance. 
 
 That window of Ravenel s apartment opened upon 
 an old garden full of ancient trees and shrubbery. 
 The apartment-house towered above one side of it; 
 a high brick wall fended it from the street ; opposite 
 Ravenel s window an old, old mansion stood, half- 
 hidden in the shade of the summer foliage. The 
 
134 The Voice of the City 
 
 house was a castle besieged. The city howled and 
 roared and shrieked and beat upon its double doors, 
 and shook white, fluttering checks above the wall, 
 offering terms of surrender. The gray dust settled 
 upon the trees ; the siege was pressed hotter, but the 
 drawbridge was not lowered. No further will the 
 language of chivalry serve. Inside lived an old gen 
 tleman who loved his home and did not wish to sell it. 
 That is all the romance of the besieged castle. 
 
 Three or four times every week came Sammy 
 Brown to RavenePs apartment. He belonged to the 
 poet s club, for the former Browns had been conspicu 
 ous, though Sammy had been vulgarized by Business. 
 He had no tears for departed Romance. The song 
 of the ticker was the one that reached his heart, and 
 when it came to matters equine and batting scores 
 he was something of a pink edition. He loved to sit 
 in the leather armchair by RavenePs window. And 
 Ravenel didn t mind particularly. Sammy seemed to 
 enjoy his talk; and then the broker s clerk was such 
 a perfect embodiment of modernity and the day s 
 sordid practicality that Ravenel rather liked to use 
 him as a scapegoat. 
 
 "I ll tell 3 r ou what s the matter with you," said 
 Sammy, with the shrewdness that business had taught 
 him. "The magazine has turned down some of your 
 poetry stunts. That s why you are sore at it." 
 
 "That would be a good guess in Wall Street or in 
 
Roses, R uses and Romance 135 
 
 a campaign for the presidency of a woman s club," 
 said Ravenel, quietly. "Now, there is a poem if 
 you will allow me to call it that of my own in this 
 number of the magazine." 
 
 Head it to me," said Sammy, watching a cloud of 
 pipe-smoke he had just blown out the window. 
 
 Ravenel was no greater than Achilles. No one is. 
 There is bound to be a spot. The Somebody -or- 
 Other must take hold of us somewhere when she dips 
 us in the Something-or-Other that makes us invulner 
 able. He read aloud this verse in the magazine : 
 
 THE FOUR ROSES 
 
 "One rose I twined within your hair 
 
 (White rose, that spake of worth) ; 
 And one you placed upon your breast 
 
 (Red rose, love s seal of birth). 
 You plucked another from its stem 
 
 (Tea rose, that means for aye) ; 
 And one you gave that bore for me 
 
 The thorns of memory." 
 
 "That s a cracker jack," said Sammy, admiringly. 
 
 "There are five more verses," said Ravenel, pa 
 tiently sardonic. "One naturally pauses at the end 
 of each. Of course " 
 
 "Oh, let s have the rest, old man," shouted Sammy, 
 contrite^, "I didn t mean to cut you off. I ir not 
 much of a poetry expert, you know. I never saw a 
 poem that didn t look like it ought to have terminal 
 
136 The Voice of the City 
 
 facilities at the end of every verse. Reel off the rest 
 of it." 
 
 Ravenel sighed, and laid the magazine down. "All 
 right," said Sammy, cheerfully, "we ll have it next 
 time. I ll be off now. Got a date at five o clock." 
 
 He took a last look at the shaded green garden 
 and left, whistling in an off key an untuneful air from 
 a roofless farce comedy. 
 
 The next afternoon Ravenel, while polishing a 
 ragged line of a new sonnet, reclined by the window 
 overlooking the besieged garden of the unmercenary 
 baron. Suddenly he sat up, spilling two rhymes and 
 a syllable or two. 
 
 Through the trees one window of the old mansion 
 could be seen clearly. In its window, draped in flow 
 ing white, leaned the angel of all his dreams of ro 
 mance and poesy. Young, fresh as a drop of dew, 
 graceful as a spray of clematis, conferring upon the 
 garden hemmed in by the roaring traffic the air of a 
 princess s bower, beautiful as any flower sung by 
 poet thus Ravenel saw her for the first time. She 
 lingered for a while, and then disappeared within, 
 leaving a few notes of a birdlike ripple of song to 
 reach his entranced ears through the rattle of cabs 
 and the snarling of the electric cars. 
 
 Thus, as if to challenge the poet s flaunt at ro 
 mance and to punish him for his recreancy to the 
 undying spirit of youth and beauty, this vision had 
 
Roses, Ruses and Romance 137 
 
 dawned upon him with a thrilling and accusive power. 
 And so metabolic was the power that in an instant 
 the atoms of llavenel s entire world were redistrib 
 uted. The laden drays that passed the house in 
 which she lived rumbled a deep double-bass to the 
 tune of love. The newsboys shouts were the notes 
 of singing birds; that garden was the pleasance of 
 the Capulets; the janitor was an ogre; himself a 
 knight, ready with sword, lance or lute. 
 
 Thus does romance show herself amid forests of 
 brick and stone when she gets lost in the city, and 
 there has to be sent out a general alarm to find her 
 again. 
 
 At four in the afternoon Ravenel looked out across 
 the garden. In the window of his hopes were set 
 four small vases, each containing a great, full-blown 
 rose red and white. And, as he gazed, she leaned 
 above them, shaming them with her loveliness and 
 seeming to direct her eyes pensively toward his own 
 window. And then, as though she had caught his 
 respectful but ardent regard, she melted away, leav 
 ing the fragrant emblems on the window-sill. 
 
 Yes, emblems ! he w r ould be unworthy if he had 
 not understood. She had read his poem, "The Four 
 Roses" ; it had reached her heart ; and this was its 
 romantic answer. Of course she must know that 
 Ravenel, the poet, lived there across her garden. His 
 picture, too, she must have seen in the magazines. 
 
138 The Voice of the City 
 
 The delicate, tender, modest, flattering message could 
 not be ignored. 
 
 Ravenel noticed beside the roses a small flowcring- 
 pot containing a plant. Without shame he brought 
 his opera-glasses and employed them from the cover 
 of his window-curtain. A nutmeg geranium! 
 
 With the true poetic instinct he dragged a book 
 of useless information from his shelves, and tore open 
 the leaves at "The Language of Flowers." 
 
 "Geranium, Nutmeg I expect a meeting/ 
 
 So ! Romance never does things by halves. If she 
 comes back to you she brings gifts and her knitting, 
 and will sit in your chimney-corner if you will let. 
 her. 
 
 And now Ravenel smiled. The lover smiles 
 when he thinks he has won. The woman who loves 
 ceases to smile with victory. He ends a battle ; she 
 begins hers. What a pretty idea to set the four 
 roses in her window for him to see! She must have 
 a sweet, poetic soul. And now to contrive the 
 meeting. 
 
 A whistling and slamming of doors preluded the 
 coming of Sammy Brown. 
 
 Ravenel smiled again. Even Sammy Brown was 
 shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. 
 Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his 
 plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending 
 admiration of Ravenel the broker s clerk made an 
 
Roses, Ruses and Romance 139 
 
 excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to the 
 poet s sombre apartment. 
 
 Sammy went to his old seat by the window, and 
 looked out over the dusty green foliage in the 
 garden. Then he looked at his watch, and rose 
 hastily. 
 
 "By grabs!" he exclaimed. "Twenty after four! 
 I can t stay, old man ; I ve got a date at 4 :30." 
 
 "Why did you come, then?" asked Ravenel, with 
 sarcastic jocularity, "if you had an engagement at 
 that time. I thought you business men kept better 
 account of your minutes and seconds than that." 
 
 Sammy hesitated in the doorway and turned 
 pinker. 
 
 "Fact is, Ravvy," he explained, as to a customer 
 whose margin is exhausted, "I didn t know I had it 
 till I caine. I ll tell you, old man there s a dandy 
 girl in that old house next door that I m dead gone 
 on. I put it straight we re engaged. The old 
 man says c nit but that don t go. He keeps her 
 pretty close. I can see Edith s window from yours 
 here. She gives me a tip when she s going shopping, 
 and I meet her. It s 4 :30 to-day. Maybe I ought 
 to have explained sooner, but I know it s all right 
 with you so long." 
 
 "How do you get your Hip, as you call it?" asked 
 Ravenel, losing a little spontaneity from his smile. 
 
 "Roses," said Sammy, briefly. "Four of em to- 
 
140 The Voice of the City 
 
 day. Means four o clock at the corner of Broadway 
 and Twenty-third." 
 
 "But the geranium?" persisted Ravenel, clutching 
 at the end of flying Romance s trailing robe. 
 
 "Means half-past," shouted Sammy from the hall. 
 "See you to-morrow." 
 
THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 
 
 DURING the recent warmed-over spell," said my 
 friend Carney, driver of express wagon No. 8,606, 
 u a good many opportunities was had of observing 
 human nature through peekaboo waists. 
 
 "The Park Commissioner and the Commissioner of 
 Polis and the Forestry Commission gets together and 
 agrees to let the people sleep in the parks until the 
 Weather Bureau gets the thermometer down again to 
 a living basis. So they draws up open-air resolu 
 tions and has them O.K. d by the Secretary of Agri 
 culture, Mr. Comstock and the Village Improvement 
 Mosquito Exterminating Society of South Orange, 
 N. J. 
 
 "When the proclamation was made opening up to 
 the people by special grant the public parks that be 
 long to em, there was a general exodus into Central 
 Park by the communities existing along its borders. 
 In ten minutes after sundown you d have thought 
 that there was an undress rehearsal of a potato 
 famine in Ireland and a Kishineff massacre. They 
 come by families, gangs, clambake societies, clans, 
 clubs and tribes from all sides to enjoy a cool sleep on 
 the grass. Them that didn t have oil stoves brought 
 along plenty of blankets, so as not to be upset with 
 
 141 
 
142 The Voice of the City 
 
 the cold and discomforts of sleeping outdoors. By 
 building fires of the shade trees and huddling together 
 in the bridle paths, and burrowing under the grass 
 where the ground was soft enough, the likes of 5,000 
 head of people successfully battled against the night 
 air in Central Park alone. 
 
 "Ye know I live in the elegant furnished apart 
 ment house called the Beersheba Flats, over against 
 the elevated portion of the New York Central Rail 
 road. 
 
 "When the order come to the fiats that all hands 
 must turn out and sleep in the park, according to the 
 instructions of the consulting committee of the City 
 Club and the Murphy Draying, Returfing and Sod 
 ding Company, there was a look of a couple of fires 
 and an eviction all over the place. 
 
 "The tenants began to pack up feather beds, rub 
 ber boots, strings of garlic, hot-water bags, portable 
 canoes and scuttles of coal to take along for the 
 sake of comfort. The sidewalk looked like a Russian 
 camp in Oyama s line of march. There was wailing 
 and lamenting up and down stairs from Danny Geog- 
 hegan s flat on the top floor to the apartments of 
 Missis Goldsteinupski on the first. 
 
 " For why, saj-s Danny, coming down and raging 
 in his blue yarn socks to the janitor, should I be 
 turned out of me comfortable apartmints to lay in 
 the dirty grass like a rabbit? Tis like Jerome to 
 
The City of Dreadful Night 143 
 
 stir up trouble wid small matters like this instead 
 of " 
 
 " *Whist ! says Officer Reagan on the sidewalk, 
 rapping with his club. * Tis not Jerome. Tis by 
 order of the Polis Commissioner. Turn out every 
 one of yez and hike yerselvcs to the park. 
 
 "Now, twas a peaceful and happy home that all 
 of us had in them same Beersheba Flats. The 
 O Dowds and the Steinowitzes and the Callahans and 
 the Cohens and the Spizzinellis and the McManuscs 
 and the Spiegel may ers and the Joneses all the na 
 tions of us, we lived like one big family together. 
 And when the hot nights come along we kept a line of 
 childher reaching from the front door to Kelly s on 
 the corner, passing along the cans of beer from one to 
 another without the trouble of running after it. And 
 with no more clothing on than is provided for in the 
 statutes, sitting in all the windies, with a cool growler 
 in every one, and your feet out in the air, and the 
 Rosenstein girls singing on the fire-escape of the sixth 
 floor, and Patsy Rourke s flute going in the eighth, 
 and the ladies calling each other synonyms out the 
 windies, and now and then a breeze sailing in over 
 Mister Depew s Central I tell } T OU the Beersheba 
 Flats was a summer resort that made the Catskills 
 look like a hole in the ground. With his person fall 
 of beer and his feet out the windy and his old woman 
 frying pork chops over a charcoal furnace and the 
 
144 The Voice of the City 
 
 childher dancing in cotton slips on the sidewalk around 
 the organ-grinder and the rent paid for a week 
 what does a man want better on a hot night than 
 that? And then comes this ruling of the polis driv 
 ing people out o their comfortable homes to sleep in 
 parks twas for all the world like a ukase of them 
 Russians twill be heard from again at next election 
 time. 
 
 "Well, then, Officer Reagan drives the whole lot of 
 us to the park and turns us in by the nearest gate. 
 Tis dark under the trees, and all the childher sets 
 up to howling that they want to go home. 
 
 " Ye ll pass the night in this stretch of woods and 
 scenery, says Officer Reagan. * Twill be fine and 
 imprisonment for insoolting the Park Commissioner 
 and the Chief of the Weather Bureau if ye refuse. 
 I m in charge of thirty acres between here and the 
 Agyptian Monument, and I advise ye to give no 
 trouble. Tis sleeping on the grass yez all have been 
 condemned to by the authorities. Yez ll be permitted 
 to leave in the morning, but ye must retoorn be night. 
 Me orders was silent on the subject of bail, but I ll 
 find out if tis required and there ll be bondsmen at 
 the gate. 
 
 "There being no lights except along the automobile 
 drives, us 179 tenants of the Beersheba Flats pre 
 pared to spend the night as best we could" in the 
 raging forest. Them that brought blankets and kin- 
 
The City of Dreadful Night 145 
 
 dling wood was best off. They got fires started and 
 wrapped the blankets round their heads and laid 
 down, cursing, in the grass. There was nothing to 
 see, nothing to drink, nothing to do. In the dark we 
 had no way of telling friend or foe except by feeling 
 the noses of em. I brought along me last winter 
 overcoat, me tooth-brush, some quinine pills and the 
 red quilt off the bed in me flat. Three times during 
 the night somebody rolled on me quilt and stuck his 
 knees against the Adam s apple of me. And three 
 times I judged his character by running me hand over 
 his face, and three times I rose up and kicked the 
 intruder down the hill to the gravelly walk below. 
 Arid then some one with a flavor of Kelly s whiskey 
 snuggled up to me, and I found his nose turned up 
 the right way, and I says : Is that you, then, Patsey ? 
 and he says, It is, Carney. How long do you think 
 it ll last? 
 
 " Tin no weather-prophet, says I, but if they 
 bring out a strong anti-Tammany ticket next fall it 
 ought to get us home in time to sleep on a bed once 
 or twice before they line us up at the polls. 
 
 " A-playing of my flute into the airshaft, says 
 Patsev liourke, and a-perspiring in me own windy 
 to the joyful noise of the passing trains and the 
 smell of liver and onions and a-reading of the latest 
 murder in the smoke of the cooking is well enough for 
 me, says he. What is this herding us in grass for, 
 
146 The Voice of the City 
 
 not to mention the crawling things with legs that walk 
 up the trousers of us, and the Jersey snipes that 
 peck at us, masquerading under the name and denomi 
 nation of mosquitoes. What is it all for, Carney, and 
 the rint going on just the same over at the flats? 
 
 " * Tis the great annual Municipal Free Night 
 Outing Lawn Party, says I, given by the polis, 
 Hetty Green and the Drug Trust. During the 
 heated season they hold a week of it in the principal 
 parks. Tis a scheme to reach that portion of the 
 people that s not worth taking up to North Beach 
 for a fish fry. 
 
 " I can t sleep on the ground, sa3 s Patsey, wid 
 any benefit. I have the hay fever and the rheuma 
 tism, and me ear is full of ants. 
 
 "Well, the night goes on, and the ex-tenants of 
 the Flats groans and stumbles around in the dark, 
 trying to find rest and recreation in the forest. The 
 childher is screaming with the coldness, and the jan 
 itor makes hot tea for em and keeps the fires going 
 with the signboards that point to the Tavern and the 
 Casino. The tenants try to lay down on the grass 
 by families in the dark, but you re lucky if you can 
 sleep next to a man from the same floor or believing 
 in the same religion. Now and then a Murphy, acci 
 dental, rolls over on the grass of a Rosonstein, or M 
 Cohen tries to crawl under the O Grady bush, and 
 then there s a feeling of noses and somebody is rolled 
 
The City of Dreadful Night 147 
 
 down the hill to the driveway and stays there. There 
 is some hair-pulling among the women folks, and 
 everybody spanks the nearest howling kid to him by 
 the sense of feeling only, regardless of its parentage 
 and ownership. Tis hard to keep up the social dis 
 tinctions in the dark that flourish by da} light in the 
 Beersheba Flats. Mrs. Rafferty, that despises the 
 asphalt that a Dago treads on, w r akes up in the morn 
 ing with her feet in the bosom of Antonio Spizzinelli. 
 And Mike O Dowd, that always threw peddlers down 
 stairs as fast as he came upon em, has to unwind old 
 Isaacstein s whiskers from around his neck, and wake 
 up the whole gang at daylight. But here and there 
 some few got acquainted and overlooked the discom 
 forts of the elements. There was five engagements to 
 be niarried announced at the flats the next morning. 
 
 "About midnight I gets up and wrings the dew out 
 of my hair, and goes to the side of the driveway and 
 sits down. At one side of the park I could see the 
 lights in the streets and houses; and I was thinking 
 how happy them folks was who could chase the duck 
 and smoke their pipes at their windows, and keep cool 
 and pleasant like nature intended for em to. 
 
 "Just then an automobile stops by me, and a fine- 
 looking, well-dressed man steps out. 
 
 " Me man, says he, can you tell me why all these 
 people are Iving around on the grass in the park? 
 I thought it was against the rules. 
 
The Voice of the City 
 
 ""Twas an ordinance, says I, just passed by 
 the Polls Department and ratified by the Turf Cut 
 ters Association, providing that all persons not 
 carrying a license number on their rear axles shall 
 keep in the public parks until further notice. Fortu 
 nately, the orders comes this year during a spell of 
 fine weather, and the mortality, except on the borders 
 of the lake and along the automobile drives, will not 
 be any greater than usual. 
 
 " Who are these people on the side of the hill? 
 asks the man. 
 
 " 4 Sure, says I, none others than the tenants of 
 the Beersheba Flats a fine home for any man, espe 
 cially on hot nights. May daylight come soon ! 
 
 " They come here be night, says he, and breathe 
 in the pure air and the fragrance of the flowers and 
 trees. They do that, says he, coming every night 
 from the burning heat of dwellings of brick arid stone. 
 
 "And wood, says I, And marble and plaster 
 and iron. 
 
 " The matter will be attended to at once, says the 
 man, putting up his book. 
 
 " Are ye the Park Commissioner? I asks. 
 
 " I own the Beersheba Flats, says he. God bless 
 the grass and the trees that give extra benefits to a 
 man s tenants. The rents shall be raised fifteen per 
 cent, to-morrow. Good-night, says he." 
 
THE EASTER OF THE SOUL 
 
 IT is hardly likely that a goddess may die. Then 
 Eastre, the old Saxon goddess of spring, must be 
 laughing in her muslin sleeve at people .who believe 
 that Easter, her namesake, exists only along certain 
 strips of Fifth Avenue pavement after church service. 
 
 Aye ! It belongs to the world. The ptarmigan in 
 Chilkoot Pass discards his winter white feathers for 
 brown; the Patagonian Beau Brummell oils his chi 
 gnon and clubs him another sweetheart to drag to his 
 skull-strewn fiat. And down in Chrystie Street 
 
 Mr. "Tiger" McQuirk arose with a feeling of dis 
 quiet that he did not understand. With a practised 
 foot he rolled three of his younger brothers like logs 
 out of his way as they lay sleeping on the floor. 
 Before a foot-square looking glass that hung by the 
 window he stood and shaved himself. If that may 
 seem to you a task too slight to be thus impressively 
 chronicled, I bear with you ; you do not know of the 
 areas to be accomplished in traversing the cheek and 
 chin of Mr. McQuirk. 
 
 McQuirk, senior, had gone to work long before. 
 The big son of the house was idle. He was a marble- 
 cutter, and the marble-cutters were out on a strike. 
 
 "What ails ye?" asked his mother, looking at him 
 149 
 
150 The Voice of the City 
 
 curiously ; "are ye not feeling well the morning, 
 maybe now?" 
 
 "He s thinking along of Annie Maria Doyle," im 
 pudently explained younger brother Tim, ten years 
 old. 
 
 "Tiger" reached over the hand of a champion and 
 swept the small McQuirk from his chair. 
 
 "1 feel fine," said he, "beyond a touch of the 1- 
 don t-know-what-you-call-its. I feel like there was 
 going to be earthquakes or music or a trifle of chills 
 and fever or maybe a picnic. I don t know how T 
 feel. I feel like knocking the face off a policeman, 
 or else maybe like playing Coney Island straight 
 across the board from pop-corn to the elephant 
 houdahs." 
 
 "It s the spring in yer bones," said Mrs. McQuirk. 
 "It s the sap risin . Time was when I couldn t keep 
 me feet still nor me head cool when the earthworms 
 began to crawl out in the dew of the mornin . Tis 
 a bit of tea will do ye good, made from pipsissewa 
 and gentian bark at the druggist s." 
 
 "Back up !" said Mr. McQuirk, impatiently. 
 "There s no spring in sight. There s snow yet on the 
 shed in Donovan s backyard. And yesterday they 
 puts open cars on the Sixth Avenue lines, and the 
 janitors have quit ordering coal. And that means 
 six weeks more of winter, by all the signs that be." 
 
 After breakfast Mr. McQuirk spent fifteen min- 
 
The Easter of the Soul 151 
 
 utcs before the corrugated mirror, subjugating his 
 hair and arranging his green-and-purple ascot with 
 its amethyst tombstone pin eloquent of his chosen 
 calling. 
 
 Since the strike had been called it was this par 
 ticular striker s habit to hie himself each morning to 
 the corner saloon of Flaherty Brothers, and there 
 establish himself upon the sidewalk, with one foot 
 resting on the bootblack s stand, observing the 
 panorama of the street until the pace of time brought 
 twelve o clock and the dinner hour. And Mr. 
 "Tiger" McQuirk, with his athletic seventy inches, 
 well trained in sport and battle; his smooth, pale, 
 solid, amiable face- blue where the razor had trav 
 elled; his carefully considered clothes and air of capa 
 bility, was himself a spectacle not displeasing to the 
 eye. 
 
 But on this morning Mr. McQuirk did not hasten 
 immediately to his post of leisure and observation. 
 Something unusual that he could not quite grasp was 
 in the air. Something disturbed his thoughts, ruf 
 fled his senses, made him at once languid, irritable, 
 elated, dissatisfied and sportive. He was no diagnos 
 tician, and he did not know that Lent was breaking 
 up physiologically in his system. 
 
 Mrs, McQuirk had spoken of spring. Sceptically 
 "Tiger" looked about him for signs. Few they were. 
 The organ-grinders were at work; but they were al- 
 
152 The Voice of the City 
 
 ways precocious harbingers. It was near enough 
 spring for them to go penny-hunting when the skat 
 ing ball dropped at the park. In the milliners 
 windows Easter hats, grave, gay and jubilant, blos 
 somed. There were green patches among the side 
 walk debris of the grocers. On a third-story window- 
 sill the first elbow cushion of the season old gold 
 stripes on a crimson ground supported the kimo- 
 noed arms of a pensive brunette. The wind blew 
 cold from the East River, but the sparrows were fly 
 ing to the eaves with straws. A second-hand store, 
 combining foresight with faith, had set out an ice- 
 chest and baseball goods. 
 
 And then "Tiger s" eye, discrediting these signs, 
 fell upon one that bore a bud of promise. From a 
 bright, new lithograph the head of Capricornus con 
 fronted him, betokening the forward and heady brew. 
 
 Mr. McQuirk entered the saloon and called for his 
 glass of bock. He threw his nickel on the bar, raised 
 the glass, set it down without tasting it and strolled 
 toward the door. 
 
 "Wot s the matter, Lord Bolinbroke?" inquired 
 the sarcastic bartender ; "want a chiny vase or a 
 gold-lined epergne to drink it out of hey?" 
 
 "Say," said Mr. McQuirk, wheeling and shooting 
 out a horizontal hand and a forty-five-degree chin, 
 "you know your place only when it comes for givin 
 titles. I ve changed me mind about drinkin see? 
 
The Easter of the Soul 153 
 
 You got your money, ain t you? Wait till you get 
 stung before you get the droop to your lip, will 
 you?" 
 
 Thus Mr. Quirk added mutability of desires to the 
 strange humors that had taken possession of him. 
 
 Leaving the saloon, he walked away twenty steps 
 and leaned in the open doorway of Lutz, the barber. 
 He and Lutz were friends, masking their sentiments 
 behind abuse and bludgeons of repartee. 
 
 "Irish loafer," roared Lutz, "how do you do? 
 So, not yet haf der bolicemans or der catcher of 
 dogs done deir duty !" 
 
 "Hello, Dutch," said Mr. McQuirk. "Can t get 
 your mind off of frankfurters, can you?" 
 
 "Bah !" exclaimed the German, coming and leaning 
 in the door. "I haf a soul above frankfurters to 
 day. Dere is springtime in der air. I can feel it 
 corning in ofer der mud of der streets and das ice 
 in der river. Soon will dere be bicnics in der islands, 
 mit kegs of beer under der trees." 
 
 "Say," said Mr. McQuirk, setting his hat on one 
 side, "is everybody kiddin me about gentle Spring? 
 There ain t any more spring in the air than there 
 is in a horsehair sofa in a Second Avenue furnished 
 room. For me the winter underwear yet and the 
 buckwheat cakes." 
 
 "You haf no boetry," said Lutz. "True, it is yedt 
 cold, und in der city we haf not many of der signs ; 
 
154 The Voice of the City 
 
 but dere are dree kinds of beoble dot should always 
 feel der approach of spring first dey are boets, 
 lovers and poor vidows." 
 
 Mr. McQuirk went on his way, still possessed by 
 the strange perturbation that he did not understand. 
 Something was lacking to his comfort, and it made 
 him half angry because he did not know what it was. 
 
 Two blocks away he came upon a foe, one Conover, 
 whom he was bound in honor to engage in combat. 
 
 Mr. McQuirk made the attack with the character 
 istic suddenness and fierceness that had gained for 
 him the endearing sobriquet of "Tiger." The de 
 fence of Mr. Conover was so prompt and admirable 
 that the conflict was protracted until the onlookers 
 unselfishly gave the warning cry of "Cheese it the 
 cop 1" The principals escaped easily b} T running 
 through the nearest open doors into the communi 
 cating backyards at the rear of the houses. 
 
 Mr. McQuirk emerged into another street. He 
 stood by a lamp-post for a few minutes engaged in 
 thought and then he turned and plunged into a small 
 notion and news shop. A red-haired young woman, 
 eating gum-drops, came and looked freezingly at him 
 across the ice-bound steppes of the counter. 
 
 "Say, lady," he said, "have you got a song book 
 with this in it? Let s see how it leads off 
 "When the springtime comes we ll wander in the dale, love, 
 
 And whisper of those days of yore 
 
 "I m having a friend," explained Mr. McQuirk, 
 
The Easter of the Soul 155 
 
 "laid up with a broken leg, and he sent me after it. 
 He s a devil for songs and poetry when he can t get 
 out to drink." 
 
 "We have not," replied the young woman, with un 
 concealed contempt. "But there is a new song out 
 that begins this way: 
 "Lot us sit together in the old arm-chair; 
 
 And while the firelight flickers we ll be comfortable there. " 
 
 There will be no profit in following Mr. "Tiger" 
 McQuirk through his further vagaries of that day 
 until he comes to stand knocking at the door of 
 Annie Maria Doyle. The goddess Eastre, it seems, 
 had guided his footsteps aright at last. 
 
 "Is that you now, Jimmy McQuirk?" she cried, 
 smiling through the opened door (Anna Maria had 
 never accepted the "Tiger"). "Well, whatever!" 
 
 "Come out in the hall," said Mr. McQuirk. "I 
 want to ask } our opinion of the weather on the 
 level." 
 
 " Are you crazy, sure?" said Annie Maria. 
 
 "I am," said the "Tiger." "They ve been telling 
 me all day there was spring in the air. Were they 
 liars? Or am I?" 
 
 "Dear me !" said Annie Maria "haven t you no 
 ticed it? I can almost smell the violets. And the 
 green grass. Of course, there ain t any } T et it s 
 just a kind of feeling, you know." 
 
 "That s what I m getting at," said Mr. McQuirk. 
 "I ve had it. I .didn t recognize it at first. I 
 
156 The Voice of the City 
 
 thought maybe it was en-wee, contracted the other 
 day when I stepped above Fourteenth Street. But 
 the katzen jammer I ve got don t spell violets. It 
 spells yer own name, Annie Maria, and it s you I 
 want. I go to work next Monday, and I make four 
 dollars a day. Spiel up, old girl do we make a 
 team?" 
 
 "Jimmy," sighed Annie Maria, suddenly disap 
 pearing in his overcoat, "don t you see that spring 
 is all over the world right this minute?" 
 
 But you yourself remember how that day ended. 
 Beginning with so fine a promise of vernal things, 
 late in the afternoon the air chilled and an inch of 
 snow fell even so late in March. On Fifth Ave 
 nue the ladies drew their winter furs close about 
 them. Only in the florists windows could be per 
 ceived any signs of the morning smile of the coming 
 goddess Eastre. 
 
 At six o clock Herr Lutz began to close his shop. 
 He heard a well-known shout : "Hello, Dutch !" 
 
 "Tiger" McQuirk, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat 
 on the back of his head, stood outside in the whirling 
 snow, puffing at a black cigar. 
 
 "Donnerwetter !" shouted Lutz, "der vinter, he has 
 come back again yet !" 
 
 "Yer a liar, Dutch," called back Mr. McQuirk, 
 with friendly geniality, "it s springtime, by the 
 watch." 
 
TPIE FOOL-KILLER 
 
 DOWN South whenever any one perpetrates some 
 particularly monumental piece of foolishness every 
 body says: "Send for Jesse Holmes." 
 
 Jesse Holmes is the Fool-Killer. Of course he is a 
 myth, like Santa Claus and Jack Frost and General 
 Prosperity and all those concrete conceptions that 
 are supposed to represent an idea that Nature has 
 . failed to embody. The wisest of the Southrons can 
 not tell you whence comes the Fool-Killer s name ; 
 but few and happy are the households from the Ro- 
 anoke to the Rio Grande in which the name of Jesse 
 Holmes has not been pronounced or invoked. Always 
 with a smile, and often with a tear, is he summoned 
 to his official duty. A busy man is Jesse Holmes. 
 
 I remember the clear picture of him that hung on 
 the walls of my fancy during my barefoot days when 
 I was dodging his oft-threatened devoirs. To me 
 he was a terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a 
 long, ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes. 
 I looked to see him come stumping up the road in 
 a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his hand 
 and his shoes tied with leather thongs. I may 
 
 yet 
 
 157 
 
158 The Voice of the City 
 
 But this is a story, not a sequel. 
 
 I have taken notice with regret, that few stories 
 worth reading have been written that did not con 
 tain drink of some sort. Down go the fluids, from 
 Arizona Dick s three fingers of red pizcn to the in 
 efficacious Oolong that nerves Lionel Montressor to 
 repartee in the "Dotty Dialogues." So, in such good 
 company I may introduce an absinthe drip one 
 absinthe drip, dripped through a silver dripper, or 
 derly, opalescent, cool, green-eyed deceptive. 
 
 Kerner was a fool. Besides that, he was an artist 
 and my good friend. Now, if there is one thing on 
 earth utterly despicable to another, it is an artist 
 in the eyes of an author whose story he has illus 
 trated. Just try it once. Write a story about a 
 mining camp in Idaho. Sell it. Spend the money, 
 anil then, six months later, borrow a quarter (or a 
 dime), and buy the magazine containing it. You 
 find a full-page wash drawing of your hero, Black 
 Bill, the cowboy. Somewhere in your story you em 
 ployed the word "horse." Aha! the artist has 
 grasped the idea. Black Bill has on the regulation 
 trousers of the M. F. H. of the Westchester County 
 Hunt. He carries a parlor rifie, and wears a mono 
 cle. In the distance is a section of Forty-second 
 Street during a search for a lost gas-pipe, and the 
 Taj Mahal, the famous mausoleum in India. 
 
 Enough ! I hated Kerner, and one day I met him 
 
The Fool-killer 159 
 
 and we became friends. He was young and glori 
 ously melancholy because his spirits were so high and 
 life had so much in store for him. Yes, he was al 
 most riotously sad. That was his youth. When a 
 man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you 
 can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair. Ker- 
 ner s hair was plentiful and carefully matted as an 
 artist s thatch should be. He was a cigaretteur, and 
 he audited his dinners with red wine. But, most of 
 all, he was a fool. And, wisely, I envied him, and 
 listened patiently while he knocked Velasquez and 
 Tintoretto. Once he told me that he liked a story of 
 mine that he had come across in an anthology. He 
 described it to me, and I was sorry that Mr. Fitz- 
 James O Brien was dead and could not learn of the 
 eulogy of his work. But mostly Kerner made few 
 breaks and was a consistent fool. 
 
 I d better explain what I mean by that. There 
 was a girl. Now, a girl, as far as I am concerned, 
 is a thing that belongs in a seminary or an album ; 
 but I conceded the existence of the animal in order 
 to retain Kerner s friendship. He showed me her 
 picture in a locket she was a blonde or a brunette 
 1 have forgotten which. She worked in a factory 
 for eight dollars a week. Lest factories quote this 
 wage by way of vindication, I will add that the girl 
 had worked for five years to reach that supreme ele 
 vation of remuneration, beginning at $1.50 per week. 
 
160 The Voice of the City 
 
 Kerner s father was worth a couple of millions. 
 He was willing to stand for art, but he drew the 
 line at the factory girl. So Kerner disinherited his 
 father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived 
 on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner. 
 Farroni had the artistic soul and a line of credit 
 for painters and poets, nicely adjusted. Sometimes 
 Kerner sold a picture and bought some new tapestry, 
 a ring and a dozen silk cravats, and paid Farroni 
 two dollars on account. 
 
 One evening Kerner had me to dinner with himself 
 and the factory girl. They were to be married as 
 soon as Kerner could slosh paint profitably. As for 
 the ex- father s two millions pouf ! 
 
 She was a wonder. Small and half-way pretty, 
 and as much at her ease in that cheap cafe as though 
 she were only in the Palmer House, Chicago, with a 
 souvenir spoon already safely hidden in her shirt 
 waist. She was natural. Two things I noticed 
 about her especially. Her belt buckle was exactly in 
 the middle of her back, and she didn t tell us that a 
 large man with a ruby stick-pin had followed her up 
 all the way from Fourteenth Street. Was Kerner 
 such a fool? I wondered. And then I thought of 
 the quantity of striped cuffs and blue glass beads 
 that $2,000,000 can buy for the heathen, and I said 
 to myself that he was. And then Elise certainly 
 that was her name told us, merrily, that the brown 
 
The Fool-killer 1G1 
 
 spot on her waist was caused by her landlady knock 
 ing at the door while she (the girl confound the 
 English language) was heating an iron over the gas 
 jet, and she hid the iron under the bedclothes until 
 the coast was clear, and there was the piece of chew 
 ing gum stuck to it when she began to iron the waist, 
 and well, I wondered how in the world the chewing 
 gum came to be there don t they ever stop chew 
 ing it? 
 
 A while after that don t be impatient, the ab 
 sinthe drip is coming now Kerner and I were dining 
 at Farroni s. A mandolin and a guitar were being 
 attacked ; the room was full of smoke in nice, long 
 crinkly layers just like the artists draw the steam 
 from a plum pudding on Christmas posters, and a 
 ladj^ in a blue silk and gasolined gauntlets was be 
 ginning to hum an air from the Catskills. 
 
 "Kerner," said I, "you are a fool." 
 
 "Of course," said Kerner, "I wouldn t let her go 
 on working. Not my wife. What s the use to wait? 
 She s willing. I sold that water color of the Pali 
 sades yesterday. We could cook on a two-burner gas 
 stove. You know the ragouts I can throw together? 
 Yes, I think we will marry next week." 
 
 "Kerner," said I, "you are a fool." 
 
 "Have an absinthe drip?" said Kerner, grandly. 
 "To-night you are the guest of Art in paying quan 
 tities. I think we will get a fiat with a bath." 
 
l(>-2 The Voice of the City 
 
 "I never tried one I mean an absinthe drip," 
 said I. 
 
 The waiter brought it and poured the water slowly 
 over the ice in the dripper. 
 
 "It looks exactly like the Mississippi River water 
 in the big bend below Natchez," said I, fascinated, 
 gazing at the be-rmiddled drip. 
 
 "There are such flats for eight dollars a week," 
 said Kerner. 
 
 "You are a fool," said I, and began to sip the 
 filtration. "What you need," I continued, "is the 
 official attention of one Jesse Holmes." 
 
 Kerner, not being a Southerner, did not compre 
 hend, so he sat, sentimental, figuring on his flat in 
 his sordid, artistic way, while I gazed into the green 
 eyes of the sophisticated Spirit of Wormwood. 
 
 Presently I noticed casually that a procession of 
 bacchantes limned on the wall immediately below the 
 ceiling had begun to move, traversing the room from 
 right to left in a gay and spectacular pilgrimage. 
 I did not confide my discovery to Kerner. The artis 
 tic temperament is too high-strung to view devia 
 tions from the natural laws of the art of kalsomining. 
 I sipped my absinthe drip and sawed wormwood. 
 
 One absinthe drip is not much but I said again 
 to Kerner, kindly : 
 
 "You are a fool." And then, in the vernacular: 
 "Jesse Holmes for yours." 
 
The Fool-killer 163 
 
 And then I looked around and saw the Fool-Killer, 
 as he had always appeared to my imagination, sitting 
 at a nearby table, and regarding us with his reddish, 
 fatal, relentless eyes. He was Jesse Holmes from top 
 to toe ; he had the long, gray, ragged beard, the 
 gray clothes of ancient cut, the executioner s look, 
 and the dusty shoes of one who had been called from 
 afar. His eyes were turned fixedly upon Kerner. I 
 shuddered to think that I had invoked him from his 
 assiduous southern duties. I thought of flying, arid 
 then I kept my seat, reflecting that many men had es 
 caped his ministrations when it seemed that nothing 
 short of an appointment as Ambassador to Spain 
 could save thorn from him. I had called my brother 
 Kerner a fool arid was in danger of hell fire. That 
 was nothing ; but I would try to save him from Jesse 
 Holmes. 
 
 The Fool-Killer got up from his table and came 
 over to ours. He rested his hands upon it, and 
 turned his burning, vindictive eyes upon Kerner, ig 
 noring me. 
 
 "You are a hopeless fool," he said to the artist. 
 "Haven t you had enough of starvation yet? I of 
 fer you one more opportunity. Give up this girl and 
 come back to your home. Refuse, and you must take 
 the consequences." 
 
 The Fool-Killer s threatening face was within a 
 foot of his victim s; but- to my horror, Kerner made 
 
164 The Voice of the City 
 
 not the slightest sign of being aware of his presence. 
 
 "We will be married next week," he muttered ab 
 sent-mindedly. "With my studio furniture and some 
 second-hand stuff we can make out." 
 
 "You have decided your own fate," said the Fool- 
 Killer, in a low but terrible voice. "You may con 
 sider yourself as one dead. You have had your last 
 chance." 
 
 "In the moonlight," went on Kerner, softly, "we 
 will sit under the skylight with our guitar and sing 
 away the false delights of pride and money." 
 
 "On your own head be it," hissed the Fool-Killer, 
 arid my scalp prickled when I perceived that neither 
 Kerner s eyes nor his ears took the slightest cog 
 nizance of Jesse Holmes. And then I knew that for 
 some reason the veil had been lifted for me alone, and 
 that I had been elected to save my friend from de 
 struction at the Fool-Killer s hands. Something of 
 the fear and wonder of it must have showed itself in 
 my face. 
 
 "Excuse me," said Kerner, with his wan, amiable 
 smile ; "was I talking to myself? I think it is getting 
 to be a habit with me." 
 
 The Fool-Killer turned and walked out of Far- 
 roni s. 
 
 "Wait here for me," said I, rising ; "I must speak 
 to that man. Had you no answer for him? Because 
 you are a fool must you die like a mouse under his 
 
The Fool-killer 165 
 
 foot? Could you not utter one squeak in your own 
 defence?" 
 
 "You are drunk," said Kerner, heartlessly. "No 
 one addressed me." 
 
 "The destroyer of your mind," said I, "stood 
 above you just now and marked you for his victim. 
 You are not blind or deaf." 
 
 "I recognized no such person," said Kerner. "I 
 have seen no one but you at this table. Sit down. 
 Hereafter you shall have no more absinthe drips." 
 
 "Wait here," said I, furious; "if you don t care 
 for your own life, I will save it for you." 
 
 I hurried out and overtook the man in gray half 
 way down the block. He looked as I had seen him in 
 my fancy a thousand times truculent, gray and 
 awful. He walked with the white oak staff, and but 
 for the street-sprinkler the dust would have been fly 
 ing under his tread. 
 
 I caught him by the sleeve and steered him to a 
 dark angle of a building. I knew he was a myth, and 
 I did not want a cop to see me conversing with va 
 cancy, for I might land in Bellevue minus my silver 
 matchbox and diamond ring. 
 
 "Jesse Holmes," said I, facing him with apparent 
 bravery, "I know you. I have heard of you all my 
 life. I know now what a scourge you have been to 
 your country. Instead of killing fools you have been 
 murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to 
 
166 The Voice of the City 
 
 make a people live and grow great. You are a fool 
 yourself, Holmes ; you began killing off* the brightest 
 and best of your countrymen three generations ago, 
 when the old and obsolete standards of society and 
 honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted. You 
 proved that when you put your murderous mark upon 
 my friend Kerner the wisest chap I ever knew in. 
 my life." 
 
 The Fool-Killer looked at me grimly and closely. 
 
 "You ve a queer jag," said he, curiously. "Oh, 
 yes ; I see who you are now. You were sitting with 
 him at the table. Well, if I m not mistaken, I heard 
 you call him a fool, too." 
 
 "I did," said I. "I delight in doing so. It is 
 from envy. By all the standards that you know he is 
 the most egregious and grandiloquent and gorgeous 
 fool in all the world. That s why } r ou want to kill 
 him." 
 
 "Would you mind telling me who or what you 
 think I am?" asked the old man. 
 
 I laughed boisterously and then stopped suddenly, 
 for I remembered that it would not do to be seen so 
 hilarious in the company of nothing but a brick 
 wall. 
 
 "You are Jesse Holmes, the Fool-Killer," I said, 
 solemnly, "and you are going to kill my friend Ker 
 ner. I don t know who rang you up, but if you do 
 kill him I ll see that you get pinched for it. That 
 
The Fool-killer 1C7 
 
 is," I alded, despairingly, "if I can get a cop to see 
 you. Tltey have a poor eye for mortals, and I think 
 it would take the whole force to round up a myth mur 
 derer." 
 
 "Well," said the Fool-Killer, briskly, "I must be 
 going. You had better go home and sleep it off. 
 Good-night." 
 
 At this I was moved by a sudden fear for Kerner to 
 a softer and more pleading mood. I leaned against 
 the gray man s sleeve and besought him : 
 
 "Good Mr. Fool-Killer, please don t kill little Ker 
 ner. Why can t you go back South and kill Con 
 gressmen and clay-eaters and let us alone? Why 
 don t you go up on Fifth Avenue and kill millionaires 
 that keep their money locked up and won t let young 
 fools marry because one of cm lives on the wrong 
 street? Come and have a drink, Jesse. Will you 
 never get on to your job?" 
 
 "Do you know this girl that your friend has made 
 himself a fool about?" asked the Fool-Killer. 
 
 "I have the honor," said I, "and that s why I 
 called Kerner a fool. He is a fool because he has 
 waited so long before marrying her. He is a fool 
 because he has been waiting in the hopes of getting 
 the consent of some absurd two-million-dollar-fool 
 parent or something of the sort." 
 
 "Maybe," said the Fool-Killer "maybe I I 
 might have looked at it differently. Would you mind 
 
168 The Voice of the City 
 
 going back to the restaurant and bringing your 
 friend Kerner here?" 
 
 "Oh, what s the use, Jesse," I yawned. "He can t 
 see you. He didn t know you were talking to him 
 at the table. You are a fictitious character, you 
 know." 
 
 "Maybe he can this time. Will you go fetch 
 him?" 
 
 "All right," said I, "but I ve a suspicion that 
 you re not strictly sober, Jesse. You seem to be wa 
 vering and losing your outlines. Don t vanish before 
 I get back." 
 
 I went back to Kerner and said : 
 
 "There s a man with an invisible homicidal mania 
 waiting to see you outside. I believe he wants to 
 murder you. Come along. You won t see him, so 
 there s nothing to be frightened about." 
 
 Kerner looked anxious. 
 
 "Why," said he, "I had no idea one absinthe 
 would do that. You d better stick to Wiirzburger. 
 I ll walk home with you." 
 
 I led him to Jesse Holmes s. 
 
 "Rudolf," said the Fool-Killer, "I ll give in. 
 Bring her up to the house. Give me your hand, 
 boy." 
 
 "Good for you, dad," said Kerner, shaking hands 
 with the old man. "You ll never regret it after you 
 know her." 
 
The Fool-killer 169 
 
 "So, you did see him when he was talking to you 
 at the table?" I asked Kerner. 
 
 "We hadn t spoken to each other in a year," said 
 Kerner. "It s all right now." 
 
 I walked away. 
 
 "Where are you going?" called Kerner. 
 
 "I am going to look for Jesse Holmes," I an 
 swered, with dignity and reserve. 
 
TRANSIENTS IN ARCADIA 
 
 TlIERE is a hotel on Broadway that has escaped 
 discovery by the summer-resort promoters. It is 
 vlcep and wide and cool. Its rooms are finished in 
 dark oak of a low temperature. Home-made breezes 
 and deep-green shrubbery give it the delights without 
 the inconveniences of the Adirondacks. One can 
 mount its broad staircases or glide dreamily upward 
 in its aerial elevators, attended by guides in brass 
 buttons, with a serene joy that Alpine climbers have 
 never attained. There is a chef in its kitchen who 
 will prepare for you brook trout better than the 
 White Mountains ever served, sea food that would 
 turn Old Point Comfort "by Gad, sah !" green 
 with envy, and Maine venison that would melt the 
 official heart of a game warden. 
 
 A few have found out this oasis in the July desert 
 of Manhattan. During that month you will see the 
 hotel s reduced array of guests scattered luxuriously 
 about in the cool twilight of its lofty dining-room, 
 gazing at one another across the snowy waste of un 
 occupied tables, silently congratulatory. 
 
 Superfluous, watchful, pneumatically moving wait 
 ers hover near, supplying every want before it is ex 
 pressed. The temperature is perpetual April. The 
 
 170 
 
Transients in Arcadia 171 
 
 ceiling is painted in water colors to counterfeit a sum 
 mer sky across which delicate clouds drift and do not 
 vanish as those of nature do to our regret. 
 
 The pleasing, distant roar of Broadway is trans 
 formed in the imagination of the happy guests to the 
 noise of a waterfall filling the woods with its restful 
 sound. At every strange footstep the guests turn an 
 anxious ear, fearful lest their retreat be discovered 
 and invaded by the restless pleasure-seekers who are 
 forever hounding nature to her deepest lairs. 
 
 Thus in the depopulated caravansary the little 
 band of connoisseurs jealously hide themselves during 
 the heated season, enjoying to the uttermost the de 
 lights of mountain and seashore that art and skill 
 have gathered and served to them. 
 
 In this July came to the hotel one whose card that 
 she sent to the clerk for her name to be registered 
 read "Mme. Heloise D Arcy Beaumont." 
 
 Madame Beaumont was a guest such as the Hotel 
 Lotus loved. She possessed the fine air of the elite, 
 tempered and sweetened by a cordial graciousness 
 that made the hotel employes her slaves. Bell-boys 
 fought for the honor of answering her ring; tht 
 clerks, but for the question of ownership, would have 
 deeded to her the hotel and its contents ; the other 
 guests regarded her as the final touch of feminine 
 exclusiveness and beauty that rendered the entourage 
 perfect. 
 
172 The Voice of the City 
 
 This super-excellent guest rarely left the hotel. 
 Her habits were consonant with the customs of the 
 discriminating patrons of the Hotel Lotus. To en 
 joy that delectable hostelry one must forego the city 
 as though it were leagues away. By night a brief 
 excursion to the nearby roofs is in order ; but during 
 the torrid day one remains in the umbrageous fast 
 nesses of the Lotus as a trout hangs poised in the pel 
 lucid sanctuaries of his favorite pool. . 
 
 Though alone in the Hotel Lotus, Madame Beau 
 mont preserved the state of a queen whose loneliness 
 was of position only. She breakfasted at ten, a cool, 
 sweet, leisurely, delicate being who glowed softly in 
 the dimness like a jasmine flower in the dusk. 
 
 But at dinner was Madame s glory at its height. 
 She wore a gown as beautiful and immaterial as the 
 mist from an unseen cataract in a mountain gorge. 
 The nomenclature of this gown is beyond the guess 
 of the scribe. Always pale-red roses reposed against 
 its lace-garnished front. It was a gown that the 
 head-waiter viewed with respect and met at the door. 
 You thought of Paris when you saw it, and maybe of 
 mysterious countesses, and certainly of Versailles and 
 rapiers and Mrs. Fiske and rouge-et-noir. There 
 was an untraceable rumor in the Hotel Lotus that 
 Madame was a cosmopolite, and that she was pulling 
 with her slender white hands certain strings between 
 the nations in the favor of Russia. Being a citi- 
 
Transients in Arcadia 173 
 
 zeness of the world s smoothest roads it was small 
 wonder that she was quick to recognize in the refined 
 purlieus of the Hotel Lotus the most desirable spot in 
 America for a restful sojourn during the heat of mid 
 summer. 
 
 On the third day of Madame Beaumont s residence 
 in the hotel a young man entered and registered him 
 self as a guest. His clothing to speak of his 
 points in approved order was quietly in the mode; 
 his features good and regular ; his expression that of 
 a poised and sophisticated man of the world. He in 
 formed the clerk that he would remain three or four 
 days, inquired concerning the sailing of European 
 steamships, and sank into the blissful inanition of the 
 nonpareil hotel with the contented air of a traveller in 
 his favorite inn. 
 
 The young man not to question the veracity of 
 the register was Harold Farrington. He drifted 
 into the exclusive and calm current of life in the Lotus 
 so tactfully and silently that not a ripple alarmed his 
 fellow-seekers after rest. He ate in the Lotus and 
 of its patronym, and was lulled into blissful peace 
 with the other fortunate mariners. In one day he 
 acquired his table and his waiter and the fear lest the 
 panting chasers after repose that kept Broadway 
 warm should pounce upon and destroy this contiguous 
 but covert haven. 
 
 After dinner on the next day after the arrival of 
 
174 The Voice of the City 
 
 Harold Farrington Madame Beaumont dropped her 
 handkerchief in passing out. Mr. Farrington recov 
 ered and returned it without the effusiveness of a 
 seeker after acquaintance. 
 
 Perhaps there was a mystic freemasonry between 
 the discriminating guests of the Lotus. Perhaps 
 they were drawn one to another by the fact of their 
 common good fortune in discovering the acme of sum 
 mer resorts in a Broadway hotel. Words delicate in 
 courtesy and tentative in departure from formality 
 passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient 
 atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance 
 grew, flowered and fructified on the spot as does the 
 mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few moments 
 they stood on a balcony upon which the corridor 
 ended, and tossed the feathery ball of conversation. 
 
 "One tires of the old resorts," said Madame Beau 
 mont, with a faint but sweet smile. "What is the use 
 to fly to the mountains or the seashore to escape noise 
 and dust when the very people that make both follow 
 us there?" 
 
 "Even on the ocean," remarked Farrington, sadly, 
 "the Philistines be upon you. The most exclusive 
 steamers are getting to be scarcely more than ferry 
 boats. Heaven help us when the summer resorter dis 
 covers that the Lotus is further away from Broadway 
 than Thousand Islands or Mackinac." 
 
 "I hope our secret will be safe for a week, any- 
 
Transients in Arcadia 175 
 
 how," said Madame, with a sigh and a smile. "I do 
 not know where I would go if they should descend 
 upon the dear Lotus. I know of but one place so de 
 lightful in summer, and that is the castle of Count 
 Polinski, in the Ural Mountains." 
 
 "I hear that Baden-Baden and Cannes are almost 
 deserted this season," said P arrington. "Year by 
 year the old resorts fall in disrepute. Perhaps many 
 others, like ourselves, are seeking out the quiet nooks 
 that are overlooked by the majority." 
 
 "I promise myself three days more of this delicious 
 rest," said Madame Beaumont. "On Monday the 
 Cedric sails." 
 
 Harold Farrington s eyes proclaimed his regret. 
 "I too must leave on Monday," he said, "but I do 
 not go abroad." 
 
 Madame Beaumont shrugged one round shoulder 
 in a foreign gesture. 
 
 "One cannot hide here forever, charming though it 
 may be. The chateau has been in preparation for me 
 longer than a month. Those house parties that one 
 must give what a nuisance ! But I shall never for 
 get my week in the Hotel Lotus." 
 
 "Nor shall I," said Farrington in a low voice, 
 "and I shall never forgive the Cedric." 
 
 On Sunday evening, three days afterward, the two 
 sat at a little table on the same balcony. A discreet 
 waiter brought ices and small glasses of claret cup. 
 
176 The Voice of the City 
 
 Madame Beaumont wore the same beautiful even 
 ing gown that she had worn each day at dinner. She 
 seemed thoughtful. Near her hand on the table lay a 
 small chatelaine purse. After she had eaten her ice 
 she opened the purse a?:d took out a one-dollar bill. 
 
 "Mr. Farrington," she said, with the smile that 
 had won the Hotel Lotus, "I want to tell you some 
 thing. I m going to leave before breakfast in the 
 morning, because I ve got to go back to my work. 
 I m behind the hosiery counter at Casey s Mammoth 
 Store, and my vacation s up at eight o clock to 
 morrow. That paper dollar is the last cent I ll see 
 till I draw my eight dollars salary next Saturday 
 night. You re a real gentleman, and you ve been 
 good to me, and I wanted to tell you before I went. 
 
 "I ve been saving up out of my wages for a year 
 just for this vacation. I wanted to spend one week 
 like a lady if I never do another one. I wanted to 
 get up when I please instead of having to crawl out 
 at seven every morning; and I wanted to live on the 
 best and be waited on and ring bells for things just 
 like rich folks do. Now I ve done it, and I ve had the 
 happiest time I ever expect to have in my life. I m 
 going back to my work and my little hall bedroom 
 satisfied for another year. I wanted to tell you 
 about it, Mr. Farrington, because I I thought you 
 kind of liked me, and I I liked you. But, oh, I 
 couldn t help deceiving you up till now, for it was all 
 
Transients in Arcadia 177 
 
 just like a fairy tale to me. So I talked about Eu 
 rope and the things I ve read about in other countries, 
 and made you think I was a great lady. 
 
 "This dress I ve got on it s the only one I have 
 that s fit to wear I bought from O Dowd & Levin- 
 sky on the instalment plan. 
 
 "Seventy-five dollars is the price, and it was made 
 to measure. I paid $10 down, and they re to collect 
 $1 a week till it s paid for. That ll be about all I 
 have to say, Mr. Farrington, except that my name is 
 Mamie Siviter instead of Madame Beaumont, and I 
 thank you for your attentions. This dollar will pay 
 the instalment due on the dress to-morrow. I guess 
 I ll go up to my room now." 
 
 Harold Farrington listened to the recital of the 
 Lotus s loveliest guest with an impassive countenance. 
 When she had concluded he drew a small book like a 
 checkbook from his coat pocket. He wrote upon a 
 blank form in this with a stub of pencil, tore out the 
 leaf, tossed it over to his companion and took up the 
 paper dollar. 
 
 "I ve got to go to work, too, in the morning," he 
 said, "and I might as well begin now. There s a 
 receipt for the dollar instalment. I ve been a col 
 lector for O Dowd & Levinsky for three years. 
 Funny, ain t it, that you and me both had the same 
 idea about spending our vacation? I ve always 
 wanted to put up at a swell hotel, and I saved up out 
 
178 The Voice of the City 
 
 of my twenty per, and did it. Say , Mame, how about 
 a trip to Coney Saturday night on the boat 
 what?" 
 
 The face of the pseudo Madame Heloise D Arcy 
 Beaumont beamed. 
 
 "Oh, you bet I ll go, Mr. Farrington. The store 
 closes at twelve on Saturdays. I guess Coney ll be 
 all right even if we did spend a week with the swells." 
 
 Below the balcony the sweltering city growled and 
 buzzed in the July night. Inside the Hotel Lotus 
 the tempered, cool shadows reigned, and the solicitous 
 waiter single-footed near the low windows, ready at 
 a nod to serve Madame and her escort. 
 
 At the door of the elevator Farrington took his 
 leave, and Madame Beaumont made her last ascent. 
 But before they reached the noiseless cage he said: 
 "Just forget that Harold Farrington, will you? 
 McManus is the name James McManus. Some 
 call me Jimmy." 
 
 "Good-night, Jimmy," said Madame. 
 
THE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE 
 
 MlSS POSIE CARRINGTON had earned her suc 
 cess. She began life handicapped by the family name 
 of "Boggs," in the small town known as Cranberry 
 Corners. At the age of eighteen she had acquired 
 the name of "Carrington" and a position in the 
 chorus of a metropolitan burlesque company. 
 Thence upward she had ascended by the legitimate 
 and delectable steps of "broiler," member of the fa 
 mous "Dickey-bird" octette, in the successful musical 
 comedy, "Fudge and Fellows," leader of the potato- 
 bug dance in "Fol-de-Rol," and at length to the part 
 of the maid " Toinette" in "The King s Bath-Robe," 
 which captured the critics and gave her her chance. 
 And when we come to consider Miss Carrington she 
 is in the heydey of flattery, fame and fizz ; and that 
 astute manager Herr Timothy Goldstein, has her 
 signature to iron-clad papers that she will star the 
 corning season in Dyde Rich s new play, "Paresis by 
 Gaslight." 
 
 Promptly there came to Herr Timothy a capable 
 twentieth-century young character actor by the name 
 of Highsmith, who besought engagement as "Sol 
 
 179 
 
180 The Voice of the City 
 
 Haytosser," the comic and chief male character part 
 in "Paresis by Gaslight." 
 
 "My boy," said Goldstein, "take the part if you 
 can get it. Miss Carrington won t listen to any of 
 my suggestions. She has turned down half a dozen 
 of the best imitators of the rural dub in the city. 
 She declares she won t set a foot on the stage un 
 less "Haytosser" is the best that can be raked up. 
 She was raised in a village, you know, and when a 
 Broadway orchid sticks a straw in his hair and tries 
 to call himself a clover blossom she s on, all right. 
 I asked her, in a sarcastic vein, if she thought Den- 
 man Thompson would make any kind of a show in the 
 part. Oh, no, says she. I don t want him or 
 John Drew or Jim Corbett or any of these swell 
 actors that don t know a turnip from a turnstile. I 
 want the real article. So, my boy, if you want to 
 play Sol Haytosser you will have to convince Miss 
 Carrington. Luck be with you." 
 
 Highsmith took the train the next day for Cran 
 berry Corners. He remained in that forsaken and 
 inanimate village three days. He found the Boggs 
 family and corkscrewed their history unto the third 
 and fourth generation. He amassed the facts and the 
 local color of Cranberry Corners. The village had 
 not grown as rapidly as had Miss Carrington. The 
 actor estimated that it had suffered as few actual 
 changes since the departure of its solitary follower 
 
The Rathskeller and the Rose 181 
 
 of Thcspis as had a stage upon which "four years 
 is supposed to have elapsed." He absorbed Cran 
 berry Corners and returned to the city of chameleon 
 changes. 
 
 It was in the rathskeller that Highsmith made the 
 hit of his histrionic career. There is no need to 
 name the place; there is but one rathskeller where 
 you could hope to find Miss Posic Carrington after a 
 performance of "The King s Bath-Robe." 
 
 There was a jolly small party at one of the tables 
 that drew man} 7 eyes. Miss Carrington, petite, mar 
 vellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken, shall be 
 named first. Ilerr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curty- 
 haired, heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had 
 caught, somehow, a butterfly in his claws. Next, 
 a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted, 
 armed, analyzing for press agent s dross every sen 
 tence that was poured over him, eating his a la New- 
 burg in the silence of greatness. To conclude, a 
 youth with parted hair, a name that is ochre to red 
 journals and gold on the back of a supper check. 
 These sat at a table while the musicians played, while 
 waiters moved in the mazy performance of their duties 
 with their backs toward all who desired their service, 
 and all was bizarre and merry because it was nine feet 
 below the level of the sidewalk. 
 
 At 11.45 a being entered the rathskeller. The 
 first violin perceptibly flatted a C that should have 
 
182 The Voice of the City 
 
 been natural ; the clarionet blew a bubble instead of a 
 grace note; Miss Carrington giggled and the youth 
 with parted hair swallowed an olive seed. 
 
 Exquisitely and irreproachably rural was the new 
 entry. A lank, disconcerted, hesitating young man 
 it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth, awkward, 
 stricken to misery by the lights and company. His 
 clothing was butternut, with. bright blue tie, showing 
 four inches of bony wrist and white-socked ankle. 
 He upset a chair, sat in another one, curled a foot 
 around a table leg and cringed at the approach of 
 a waiter. 
 
 "You may fetch me a glass of lager beer," he said, 
 in response to the discreet questioning of the 
 servitor. 
 
 The eyes of the rathskeller were upon him. He 
 was as fresh as a collard and as ingenuous as a hay 
 rake. He let his eye rove about the place as one who 
 regards, big-eyed, hogs in the potato patch. His 
 gaze rested at length upon Miss Carrington. He 
 rose and went to her table with a lateral, shining smile 
 and a blush of pleased trepidation. 
 
 "How re ye, Miss Posie?" he said in accents not 
 to be doubted. Don t ye remember me Bill Sum 
 mers the Summerses that lived back of the black 
 smith shop? I reckon I ve growcd up some since ye 
 left Cranberry Corners. 
 
 " Liza Perry lowed I might see ye in the city 
 
The Rathskeller and the Rose 183 
 
 while I was here. You know Liza married Benny 
 Stanfield, and she says " 
 
 "Ah, say !" interrupted Miss Carrington, brightly, 
 "Lize Perry is never married what! Oh, the 
 freckles of her !" 
 
 "Married in June," grinned the gossip, "and livin 
 in the old Tatum Place. Ham Ililey perfessed reli 
 gion ; old Mrs. Blithers sold her place to Cap n 
 Spooner; the youngest Waters girl run away with a 
 music teacher ; the court-house burned up last March ; 
 your uncle Wiley was elected constable ; Matilda Hos- 
 kins died from runnin a needle in her hand, and Tom 
 Beedle is courtin Sallie Lathrop they say he don t 
 miss a night but what he s settin on their porch." 
 
 "The wall-eyed thing!" exclaimed Miss Carring 
 ton, with asperity. "Why, Tom Beedle once say, 
 you folks, excuse me a while this is an old friend 
 of mine Mr. what was it? Yes, Mr. Summers 
 
 ~- Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Ricketts, Mr. Oh, what s 
 
 yours? * Johnny 11 do come on over here and 
 tell me some more." 
 
 She swept him to an isolated table in a corner. 
 Herr Goldstein shrugged his fat shoulders and beck 
 oned to the waiter. * The newspaper man brightened 
 a little and mentioned absinthe. The youth with 
 parted hair was plunged into melancholy. The 
 guests of the rathskeller laughed, clinked glasses and 
 enjoyed the comedy that Posie Carrington was treat- 
 
184 TT*e Voice of the City 
 
 ing them to aii^r her regular performance* A few 
 cynical ones whispered "press agent" and smiled 
 wisely. 
 
 Posie Carrington laid her dimpled and desirable 
 chin upon her hands, and forgot her audience a 
 faculty that had won her laurels for her. 
 
 "I don t seem to recollect any Bill Summers," she 
 said, thoughtfully gazing straight into the innocent 
 blue eyes of the rustic young man. "But I know the 
 Summerses, all right. I guess there ain t many 
 changes in the old town. You see any of my folks 
 lately?" 
 
 And then Kighsmith played his trump. The part 
 of "Sol Kaytosser" called for pathos as well as 
 comedy. Miss Carrington should see that he could 
 do that as well. 
 
 "Hiss Posie," said "Bill Summers," "I was up to 
 your folkeses house jist two or three days ago. No, 
 there ain t many changes to speak of. The lilac bush 
 by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the 
 elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. 
 And ret it don t seem the same place that it used 
 to be." 
 
 "How s ma?" asked Miss Carrington. 
 
 "She was settin by the front door, crocheting a 
 lamp-mat when I saw her last," said "Bill." "She s 
 older n she was, Miss Posie. But everything in the 
 house looked jest the same. Yur ma asked me to set 
 
The Rathskeller and the Rose 185 
 
 down. Don t touch that willow rocker, William, 
 says she. It ain t been moved since Posie left ; and 
 that s the apron she was hemmin , layin over the arm 
 of it, jist as she flung it. I m in hopes, she goes on, 
 that Posie ll finish runnin out that hem some day. " 
 
 Miss Carrington beckoned peremptorily to a 
 waiter. 
 
 "A pint of extra dry," she ordered, briefly ; "and 
 give the check to Goldstein." 
 
 "The sun was shinin in the door," went on the 
 chronicler from Cranberry, "and your ma was settin 
 night in it. I asked her if she hadn t better move 
 back a little. William, says she, when I get sot 
 down and lookin down the road, I can t bear to move. 
 Never a day, says she, but what I set here every 
 minute that I can spare and watch over them palin s 
 for Posie. She went away down that road in the 
 night, for we seen her little shoe tracks in the dust, 
 and somethin tells me she ll come back that way ag in 
 when she s weary of the world and begins to think 
 about her old mother. 
 
 "When I was comin away," concluded "Bill," 
 "I pulled this off n the bush by the front steps. I 
 thought maybe I might see you in the city, and I 
 knowed you d like somethin from the old home." 
 
 He took from his coat pocket a rose a drooping, 
 yellow, velvet, odorous rose, that hung its head in 
 the foul atmosphere of that tainted rathskeller like 
 
186 The Voice of the City 
 
 a virgin bowing before the hot breath of the lions in 
 a Roman arena. 
 
 Miss Carrington s penetrating but musical laugh 
 rose above the orchestra s rendering of "Bluebells." 
 
 "Oh, say !" she cried, with glee, "ain t those poky 
 places the limit? I just know that two hours at 
 Cranberry Corners would give me the horrors now. 
 Well, I m awful glad to have seen you, Mr. Summers. 
 I guess I ll hustle around to the hotel now and get 
 my beauty sleep." 
 
 She thrust the yellow rose into the bosom of her 
 wonderful, dainty, silken garments, stood up and 
 nodded imperiously at Herr Goldstein. 
 
 Her three companions and "Bill Summers" at 
 tended her to her cab. When her flounces and 
 streamers were all safely tucked inside she dazzled 
 them with au revoirs from her shining eyes and teeth. 
 
 "Come around to the hotel and see me, Bill, before 
 you leave the city," she called as the glittering cab 
 rolled away. 
 
 Highsmith, still in his make-up, went with Herr 
 Goldstein to a cafe booth. 
 
 "Bright idea, eh?" asked the smiling actor. 
 "Ought to land Sol Haytosser for me, don t you 
 think? The little lady never once tumbled." 
 
 "I didn t hear your conversation," said Goldstein, 
 "but your make-up and acting was O. K. Here s to 
 your success. You d better call on Miss Carrington 
 
The Rathskeller and the Rose 187 
 
 early to-morrow and strike her for the part. I don t 
 see how she can keep from being satisfied with your 
 exhibition of ability." 
 
 At 11. 45 A. M. on the next day Highsmith, hand 
 some, dressed in the latest mode, confident, with a 
 fuchsia in his button-hole, sent up his card to Miss 
 Carrington in her select apartment hotel. 
 
 He was shown up and received by the actress s 
 French maid. 
 
 "I am sorree," said Mile. Hortense, "but I am to 
 say this to all. It is with great regret. Mees Car 
 rington have cancelled all engagements on the stage 
 and have returned to live in that how you call that 
 town? Cranberry Cornaire!" 
 
THE CLARION CALL 
 
 ilALF of this story caii be found in the records of 
 the Police Department ; the other half belongs behind 
 the business counter of a newspaper office. 
 
 One afternoon two weeks after Millionaire Nor- 
 cross was found in his apartment murdered by a bur 
 glar, the murderer, while strolling serenely down 
 Broadway, ran plump against Detective Barney 
 Woods. 
 
 "Is that you, Johnny Kernan?" asked Woods, 
 who had been near-sighted in public for five years. 
 
 "No less," cried Kernan, heartily. "If it isn t 
 Barney Woods, late and early of old Saint Jo 1 
 You ll have to show me! What are you doing East? 
 Do the green-goods circulars get out that far?" 
 
 "I ve been in New York some years," said Woods. 
 "I m on the city detective force." 
 
 "Well, well!" said Kernan, breathing smiling joy 
 and patting the detective s arm. 
 
 "Come into Muller s," said Woods, "and let s hunt 
 a quiet table. I d like to talk to you awhile." 
 
 It lacked a few minutes to the hour of four. The 
 tides of trade were not yet loosed, and they found a 
 quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, 
 
 188 
 
The Clarion Call 189 
 
 slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself op 
 posite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mus 
 tache, squinting eyes and ready-made cheviot suit. 
 
 "What business are you in now?" asked Woods. 
 "You know you left Saint Jo a year before I did." 
 
 "I m selling shares in a copper mine," said Kcr- 
 nan. "I may establish an office here. Well, well ! 
 and so old Barney is a New York detective. You 
 alwa^ys had a turn that way. You were on the po 
 lice in Saint Jo after I left there, weren t you?" 
 
 "Six months," said Woods. "And now there s one 
 more question, Johnnj^. I ve followed your record 
 pretty close ever since you did that hotel job in Sara 
 toga, and I never knew you to .use your gun before. 
 Why did you kill Norcross?" 
 
 Kcrnan stared for a few moments with concen 
 trated attention at the slice of lemon in his high-ball ; 
 and then he looked at the detective with a sudden, 
 crooked, brilliant smile. 
 
 "How did you guess it, Barney?" he asked, ad 
 miringly. "I swear I thought the job was as clean 
 and as smooth as a peeled onion. Did I leave a 
 string hanging out anywhere?" 
 
 Woods laid upon the table a small gold pencil in 
 tended for a watch-charm. 
 
 "It s the one I gave you the last Christmas we 
 were in Saint Jo. I ve got your shaving mug yet. 
 I found this under a corner of the rug in Norcross s 
 
190 The Voice of the City 
 
 room. I warn you to be careful what you say. I ve 
 got it put on to you, Johnny. We were old friends 
 once, but I must do my duty. You ll have to go to 
 the chair for Norcross." 
 
 Kernan laughed. 
 
 "My luck stays with me," said he. "Who d have 
 thought old Barney was on my trail!" He slipped 
 one hand inside his coat. In an instant Woods had 
 a revolver against his side. 
 
 "Put it away," said Kernan, wrinkling his nose. 
 "I m only investigating. Aha ! It takes nine tailors 
 to make a man, but one can do a man up. There s 
 a hole in that vest pocket. I took that pencil off my 
 chain and slipped it in there in case of a scrap. Put 
 up your gun, Barney, and I ll tell you why I had 
 to shoot Norcross. The old fool started down the 
 hall after me, popping at the buttons on the back of 
 my coat with a peevish little .22 and I had to stop 
 him. The old lady was a darling. She just lay in 
 bed and saw her $12,000 diamond necklace go with 
 out a chirp, while she begged like a panhandler to 
 have back a little thin gold ring with a garnet worth 
 about $3. I guess she married old Norcross for his 
 money, all right. Don t they hang on to the little 
 trinkets from the Man Who Lost Out, though? 
 There were six rings, two brooches and a chatelaine 
 watch. Fifteen thousand would cover the lot." 
 
 "I warned you not to talk," said W^oods. 
 
The Clarion Call 191 
 
 "Oh, that s all right," said Kernan. "The stuff 
 is in iny suit case at the hotel. And now I ll tell you 
 why I m talking. Because it s safe. I m talking to 
 a man I know. You owe me a thousand dollars, Bar 
 ney Woods, and even if you wanted to arrest me your 
 hand wouldn t make the move." 
 
 "I haven t forgotten," said Woods. "You counted 
 out twenty fifties without a word. I ll pay it back 
 some day. That thousand saved me and well, they 
 were piling my furniture out on the sidewalk when I 
 got back to the house." 
 
 "And so," continued Kernan, "you being Barney 
 Woods, born as true as steel, and bound to play a 
 white man s game, can t lift a finger to arrest the 
 man you re indebted to. Oh, I have to study men 
 as well as Yale locks and window fastenings in my 
 business. Now, keep quiet while I ring for the 
 waiter. I ve had a thirst for a year or two that wor 
 ries me a little. If I m ever caught the lucky sleuth 
 will have to divide honors with old boy Booze. But I 
 never drink during business hours. After a job I 
 can crook elbows with my old friend Barney with a 
 clear conscience. What are you taking?" 
 
 The waiter came with the little decanters and the 
 siphon and left them alone again. 
 
 "You ve called the turn," said Woods, as he rolled 
 the little gold pencil about with a thoughtful fore 
 finger. "I ve got to pass you up. I can t lay a 
 
192 The Voice of the City 
 
 hand on you. If I d a-paid that money back but 
 I didn t, and that settles it. It s a bad break I m 
 making, Johnny, but I can t dodge it. You helped 
 me once, and it calls for the same." 
 
 "I knew it," said Kernan, raising his glass, with 
 a flushed smile of self-appreciation. "I can judge 
 men. Here s to Barney, for he s a jolly good 
 fellow. " 
 
 "I don t believe," went on Woods quietly, as if he 
 were thinking aloud, "that if accounts had been 
 square between you and me, all the money in all the 
 banks in New York could have bought you out of 
 my hands to-night." 
 
 "I know it couldn t," said Kernan. "That s why 
 I knew I was safe with you." 
 
 "Most people," continued the detective, "look side 
 ways at my business. They don t class it among the 
 fine arts and the professions. But I ve always taken 
 a kind of fool pride in it. And here is where I go 
 busted. I guess I m a man first and a detective 
 afterward. I ve got to let you go, and then I ve got 
 to resign from the force. I guess I can drive an ex 
 press wagon. Your thousand dollars is further off 
 than ever, Johnny." 
 
 "Oh, you re welcome to it," said Kernan, with a 
 lordly air. "I d be willing to call the debt off, but 
 I know you wouldn t have it. It was a lucky day 
 for me when you borrowed it. And now, let s drop 
 
The Clarion Call 193 
 
 the subject. I m off to the West on a morning train. 
 I know a place out there where I can negotiate the 
 Norcross sparks. Drink up, Barney, and forget your 
 troubles. We ll have a jolly time while the police 
 are knocking their heads together over the case. 
 I ve got one of my Sahara thirsts on to-night. But 
 I m in the hands the unofficial hands of my old 
 friend Barney, and I won t even dreain of a cop." 
 
 And then, as Kernan s ready finger kept the but 
 ton and the waiter working, his weak point a tre 
 mendous vanity and arrogant egotism, began to show 
 itself. He recounted story after story of his suc 
 cessful plunderings, ingenious plots and infamous 
 transgressions until Woods, with all his familiarity 
 with evil-doers, felt growing within him a cold ab 
 horrence toward tRe utterly vicious man who had 
 once been his benefactor. 
 
 "I m disposed of, of course," said Woods, at 
 length. "But I advise you to keep under cover for a 
 spell. The newspapers may take up this Norcross 
 affair. There has been an epidemic of burglaries and 
 manslaughter in town this summer." 
 
 The word sent Kernan into a high glow of sullen 
 and vindictive rage. 
 
 "To h 1 with the newspapers," he growled. 
 "What do they spell but brag and blow and boodle in 
 box-car letters? Suppose they do take up a case 
 what does it amount to? The police are easy enough 
 
194 The Voice of the City 
 
 to fool; but what do the newspapers do? They send 
 a lot of pin-head reporters around to the scene ; and 
 they make for the nearest saloon and have beer while 
 they take photos of the bartender s oldest daughter 
 in evening dress, to print as the fiancee of the young 
 man in the tenth story, who thought he heard a noise 
 below on the night of the murder. That s about as 
 near as the newspapers ever come to running down 
 Mr. Burglar." 
 
 "Well, I don t know," said Woods, reflecting. 
 "Some of the papers have done good work in that 
 line. There s the Morning Mars, for instance. It 
 warmed up two or three trails, and got the man after 
 the police had let em get cold." 
 
 "I ll show you," said Kernan, rising, and expand 
 ing his chest. "I ll show you what I think of news 
 papers in general, and your Morning Mars in par 
 ticular." 
 
 Three feet from their table was the telephone 
 booth. Kernan went inside and sat at the instrument, 
 leaving the door open. He found a number in the 
 book, took down the receiver and made his demand 
 upon Central. Woods sat still, looking at the sneer 
 ing, cold, vigilant face waiting close to the trans 
 mitter, and listened to the words that came from the 
 thin, truculent lips curved into a contemptuous smile. 
 
 "That the Morning Mars? ... I want to 
 speak to the managing editor . . . Why, tell 
 
The Clarion Call 195 
 
 him it s some one who waats to talk to him about the 
 Norcross murder. 
 
 "You the editor? . . . All right. ... I 
 am the man who killed old Norcross . . . Wait ! 
 Hold the wire ; I m not the usual crank . . . Oh, 
 there isn t the slightest danger. I ve just been dis 
 cussing it with a detective friend of mine. I killed 
 the old man at 2.30 A. M. two weeks ago to 
 morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, 
 hadn t you better leave that kind of talk to your 
 funny man? Can t you tell whether a man s guying 
 you or whether you re being offered the biggest scoop 
 your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . 
 Well, that s so; it s a bobtail scoop but you can 
 hardly expect me to phone in my name and address. 
 . . . Why ! Oh, because I heard you make a 
 specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the 
 police. . . . No, that s not all. I want to tell 
 you that your rotten, lying, penny sheet is of no more 
 use in tracking an intelligent murderer or highway 
 man than a blind poodle would be. ... What ? 
 . . . Oil, no, this isn t a rival newspaper office; 
 you re getting it straight. I did the Norcross job, 
 and I ve got the jewels in my suit case at the 
 name of the hotel could not be learned you recog 
 nize that phrase, don t you? I thought so. You ve 
 used it often enough. Kind of rattles you, doesn t 
 it, to have the mysterious villain call up your great, 
 
196 The Voice of the City 
 
 big, all-powerful organ of right and justice and good 
 government and tell you what a helpless old gas-bag 
 you are? . . . Cut that out ; you re not that big 
 a fool no, you don t think I m a fraud. I can tell 
 it by your voice. . . . Now, listen, and I ll give 
 you a pointer that will prove it to you. Of course 
 you ve had this murder case worked over by your staff 
 of bright young blockheads. Half of the second 
 button on old Mrs. Norcross s nightgown is broken 
 off. I saw it when I took the garnet ring off her 
 finger. I thought it was a ruby. . . . Stop 
 that ! It won t work." 
 
 Kernan turned to Woods with a diabolic smile. 
 
 "I ve got him going. He believes me now. He 
 didn t quite cover the transmitter with his hand when 
 he told somebody to call up Central on another phone 
 and get our number. I ll give him just one more dig, 
 and then we ll make a get-away. 
 
 "Hello ! . . . Yes. I m here yet. You 
 didn t think I d run from such a little subsidized, turn 
 coat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . . Have 
 me inside of forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit 
 being funny? Now, you let grown men alone and at 
 tend to your business of hunting up divorce cases and 
 street-car accidents and printing the filth and 
 scandal that you make your living by. Good-bv, old 
 boy sorry I haven t time to call on you. I d feel 
 perfectly safe in your sanctum asinorum. Tra-la !" 
 
The Clarion Call 197 
 
 "He s as mad as a cat that s lost a mouse," said 
 Kernan, hanging up the receiver and coming out. 
 "And now, Barney, rny boy, we ll go to a show and 
 enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four 
 hours sleep for me, and then the west-bound." 
 
 The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan 
 was pleased with himself. He spent money like a 
 prince of fiction. And then a weird and gorgeous 
 musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward 
 there was a late supper in a grillroom, with 
 champagne, and Kernan at the height of his com 
 placency. 
 
 Half-past three in the morning found them in a 
 corner of an all-night cafe, Kernan still boasting in 
 a vapid and rambling way, Woods thinking moodily 
 over the end that had come to his usefulness as an 
 upholder of the law. 
 
 But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a 
 speculative light. 
 
 "I wonder if it s possible," he said to himself, "I 
 won-der if it s pos-si-ble !" 
 
 And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness 
 of the early morning was punctured by faint, uncer 
 tain cries that seemed mere fireflies of sound, some 
 growing louder, some fainter, w r axing and waning 
 amid the rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. 
 Shrill cries they were when near well-known cries 
 that conveyed many meanings to the ears of those of 
 
198 The Voice of the City 
 
 the slumbering millions of the great city who waked 
 to hear them. Cries that bore upon their significant, 
 small volume the weight of a world s woe and laugh 
 ter and delight and stress. To some, cowering be 
 neath the protection of a night s ephemeral cover, 
 they brought news of the hideous, bright day; to 
 others, wrapped in happy sleep, they announced a 
 morning that would dawn blacker than sable night. 
 To many of the rich they brought a besom to sweep 
 away what had been theirs while the stars shone ; to 
 the poor they brought another day. 
 
 All over the city the cries were starting up, keen 
 and sonorous, heralding the chances that the slip 
 ping of one cogwheel in the machinery of time had 
 made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay 
 at the mercy of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, 
 reward and doom that the new figure in the calen 
 dar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive 
 were the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so 
 much evil and so little good was in their irresponsible 
 hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the helpless 
 city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, 
 the cries of the newsboys the Clarion Call of the 
 Press. 
 
 Woods flipped a dime to the waiter, and said : 
 
 "Get me a Morning Mars" 
 
 When the paper came he glanced at its first page, 
 and then tore a leaf out of his memorandum book 
 
The Clarion Call 199 
 
 and began to write on it with the little gold pencil. 
 "What s the news?" yawned Kernan. 
 Woods flipped over to him the piece of writing: 
 
 The New York Morning Mars: 
 
 "Please pay to the order of John Kernan the one thousand 
 dollars reward coming to me for his arrest and conviction. 
 
 "BARXARD WOODS." 
 
 "I kind of thought they would do that," said 
 Woods, "when you were jollying em so hard. Now, 
 Johnny, you ll come to the police station with me." 
 
EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA 
 
 Jr ROM near the village of Harmony, at tlio foot 
 of the Green Mountains, came Miss Me dor a Martin 
 to New York with her color-box ami easel. 
 
 Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autum 
 nal frosts had spared the longest of all her sister 
 blossoms. In Harmony, when she started alone to 
 the wicked city to study art, they said she was a mad, 
 reckless, headstrong girl. In New York, when she 
 first took her seat at a West Side boarding-house 
 table, the boarders asked : "Who is the nice-look 
 ing old maid?" 
 
 Medora took heart, a cheap hall bedroom and two 
 art lessons a week from Professor Angelini, a retired 
 barber who had studied his profession in a Harlem 
 dancing academy. There was no one to set her right, 
 for here in the big city they do it unto all of us. 
 How many of us are badly shaved daih and taught 
 the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le 
 Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New 
 York except the manners of the rush-hour crowds 
 is the dreary march of the hopeless arm} of Me 
 diocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a 
 Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and 
 Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, 
 
 200 
 
Extradited from Bohemia 201 
 
 unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of 
 tiie critics. Some of us creep back to our native vil 
 lages to the skim-milk of "I told you so"; but most 
 of us prefer to remain in the cold courtyard of our 
 mistress s temple, snatching the scraps that fall from 
 her divine table d hote. But some of us grow weary 
 at last of the fruitless service. And then there are 
 two fates open to us. We can get a job driving a 
 grocer s wagon, or we can get swallowed up in the 
 Vortex of Bohemia. The latter sounds good ; but the 
 former really pans out better. For, when the grocer 
 pays us off we can rent a dress suit and the cap 
 italized system of humor describes it best Get Bo 
 hemia On the Run. 
 
 Miss Mcclora chose the Vortex and thereby fur 
 nishes us with our little story. 
 
 Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively. 
 One when she had made a neat study of a horse- 
 chestnut tree in the park he declared she would be 
 come a second Rosa Bonheur. Again a great art 
 ist has his moods -he would say cruel and cutting 
 things. For example, Medora had spent an after 
 noon patiently sketching the statue and the archi 
 tecture at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with 
 a sneer, the professor informed her that Giotto had 
 once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his 
 hand. 
 
 One day it rained, the weekly remittance from Har- 
 
202 The Voice of the City 
 
 mony was overdue, Medora had a headache, the pro 
 fessor had tried to borrow two dollars from her, her 
 art dealer had sent back all her water-colors unsold, 
 and Mr. Binkley asked her out to dinner. 
 
 Mr. Binkley was the gay boy of the boarding- 
 house. He was forty-nine, and owned a fishstall in 
 a downtown market. But after six o clock he wore 
 an evening suit and w T hooped things up connected 
 with the beaux arts. The young men said he was an 
 "Indian." He was supposed to be an accomplished 
 habitue of the inner circles of Bohemia. It was no 
 secret that he had once loaned $10 to a young man 
 who had had a drawing printed in Puck. Often has 
 one thus obtained his entree into the charmed circle, 
 while the other obtained both his entree and roast. 
 
 The other boarders enviously regarded Medora as 
 she left at Mr. Binkley s side at nine o clock. She 
 was as sweet as a cluster of dried autumn grasses 
 in her pale blue oh er that very thin stuff 
 in her pale blue Comstockized silk waist and box- 
 pleated voile skirt, with a soft pink glow on her thin 
 cheeks and the tiniest bit of rouge powder on her 
 face, with her handkerchief and room key in her 
 brown walrus, pebble-grain hand-bag. 
 
 And Mr. Binkley looked imposing and dashing with 
 his red face and gray mustache, and his tight dress 
 coat, that made the back of his neck roll up just 
 like a successful novelist s. 
 
Extradited from Bohemia 203 
 
 They drove in a cab to the Cafe Terence, just off 
 the most glittering part of Broadway, which, as 
 every one knows, is one of the most popular and 
 widely patronized, jealously exclusive Bohemian re 
 sorts in the city. 
 
 Down between the rows of little tables tripped 
 Medora, of the Green Mountains, after her escort. 
 Thrice in a lifetime may woman walk upon clouds 
 once when she trippeth to the altar, once when she 
 first enters Bohemian halls, the last when she marches 
 back across her first garden with the dead hen of her 
 neighbor in her hand. 
 
 There was a table set, with three or four about it. 
 A waiter buzzed around it like a bee, and silver and 
 glass shone upon it. And, preliminary to the meal, 
 as the prehistoric granite strata heralded the pro 
 tozoa, the bread of Gaul, compounded after the for 
 mula of the recipe for the eternal hills, was there set 
 forth to the hand and tooth of a long-suffering city, 
 while the gods lay beside their nectar and home-made 
 biscuits and smiled, and the dentists leaped for joy 
 in their gold-leafy dens. 
 
 The eye of Binkley fixed a young man at his table 
 with the Bohemian gleam, which is a compound of 
 the look of the Basilisk, the shine of a bubble of 
 Wurzburger, the inspiration of genius and the plead 
 ing of a panhandler. 
 
 The young man sprang to his feet. "Hello, Bink, 
 
204 The Voice of the City 
 
 old boy!" he shouted. "Don t tell me you were go 
 ing to pass our table. Join us unless you ve an 
 other crowd on hand." 
 
 "Don t mind, old chap," said Binkley, of the fish- 
 stall. "You know how I like to butt up against the 
 fine arts. Mr. Vandyke Mr. Madder er 
 Miss Martin, one of the elect also in art er 
 
 The introduction went around. There were also 
 Miss Elise and Miss Toinette. Perhaps they were 
 models, for they chattered of the St. Regis decora 
 tions and Henry James and they did it not badly. 
 
 Medora sat in transport. Music wild, intoxi 
 cating music made by troubadours direct from a rear 
 basement room in Elysium set her thoughts to 
 dancing. Here was a world never before penetrated 
 by her warmest imagination or any of the lines con 
 trolled by Harriman. With the Green Mountains 
 external calm upon her she sat, her soul flaming in 
 her with the fire of Andalusia. The tables were filled 
 with Bohemia. The room was full of the fragrance 
 of flowers both mille and cauli. Questions and 
 corks popped; laughter and silver rang; champagne 
 flashed in the pail, wit flashed in the pan. 
 
 Vandyke ruffled his long, black locks, disarranged 
 his careless tie and leaned over to Madder. 
 
 "Say, Maddy," he whispered, feelingly, "some 
 times I m tempted to pay this Philistine his ten doi- 
 lars and get rid of him." 
 
Extradited from Bohemia 205 
 
 Madder ruffled his long, sandy locks and disar 
 ranged his careless tie. 
 
 "Don t think of it, Vandy," he replied. "We are 
 short, and Art is long." 
 
 Medora ate strange viands and drank elderberry 
 wine that they poured in her glass. It was just the 
 color of that in the Vermont home. The waiter 
 poured something in another glass that seemed to 
 be boiling, but when she tasted it it was not hot. She 
 had never felt so light-hearted before. She thought 
 lovingly of the Green Mountain farm and its fauna. 
 She leaned, smiling, to Miss Elisc. 
 
 "If I were at home," she said, beamingly, "I could 
 show you the cutest little calf !" 
 
 "Nothing for you in the White Lane," said Miss 
 Elise. "Why don t you pad?" 
 
 The orchestra played a wailing waltz that Medora 
 had learned from the hand-organs. She followed 
 the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. 
 Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered 
 in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in 
 bis seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses 
 and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. 
 Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the 
 unusual spring catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged 
 the palette-and-maul-stick tie pin of Mr. Vandyke. 
 A Philistine at some distant table was maundering 
 volubly either about Jerome or Gerome. A famous 
 
206 The Voice of the City 
 
 actress was discoursing excitably about monogrammed 
 hosiery. A hose clerk from a department store was 
 loudly proclaiming his opinions of the drama. A 
 writer was abusing Dickens. A magazine editor and 
 a photographer were drinking a dry brand at a re 
 served table. A 36-25-42 young lad}^ was saying to 
 an eminent sculptor : "Fudge for your Prax Itah r s ! 
 Bring one of your Venus Anno Dominis down to 
 Cohen s and see how quickty she d be turned down for 
 a cloak model. Back to the quarries with your 
 Greeks and Dagos !" 
 
 Thus went Bohemia. 
 
 At eleven Mr. Binkley took Medora to the board 
 ing-house and left her, with a society bow, at the foot 
 of the hall stairs. She went up to her room and lit 
 the gas. 
 
 And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose 
 in vapor from the copper vase of the fisherman, 
 arose in that room the formidable shape of the New 
 England Conscience. The terrible thing that Me 
 dora had done was revealed to her in its full enor 
 mity. She had sat in the presence of the ungodly 
 and looked upon the wine both when it was red and 
 effervescent. 
 
 At midnight she wrote this letter: 
 
 "MR. BERIAH HOSKLNS, Harmony, Vermont. 
 
 "Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to 
 
Extradited from Bohemia 207 
 
 you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your 
 career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-stained 
 life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this 
 wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of 
 Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering 
 iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to 
 combat my decision. There is no rising from the 
 depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget 
 me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze 
 of awful Bohemia. Farewell. 
 
 "ONCE YOUR MEDORA." 
 
 On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. 
 Beelzebub, flung from heaven, was no more cast down. 
 Between her and the apple blossoms of Harmony 
 there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her 
 from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, 
 by the aid of Binkley and Mumm, Bohemia had gath 
 ered her into its awful midst. 
 
 There remained to her but one thing a life of 
 brilliant, but irremediable error. Vermont was a 
 shrine that she never would dare to approach again. 
 But she would not sink there were great and com 
 pelling ones in history^ upon whom she would model 
 her meteoric career Camille, Lola Montez, Royal 
 Mary, Zaza such a name as one of these would 
 that of Medora Martin be to future generations. 
 
 For two days Medora kept her room. On the third 
 
208 The Voice of the City 
 
 she opened a magazine at the portrait of the King 
 of Belgium, and laughed sardonically. If that far- 
 famed breaker of women s hearts should cross her 
 path, he would have to how before her cold and im 
 perious beauty. She would not spare the old or the 
 young. All America all Europe should do hom 
 age to her sinister, but compelling charm. 
 
 As yet she could not bear to think of the life she 
 had once desired a peaceful one in the shadow of 
 the Green Mountains with Beriah at her side, and 
 orders for expensive oil paintings coming in by each 
 mail from New York. Her one fatal misstep had 
 shattered that dream. 
 
 On the fourth day Medora powdered her face and 
 rouged her lips. Once she had seen Carter in 
 "Zaza." She stood before the mirror in a reckless 
 attitude and cried: "Zut! zut!" She rhymed it 
 with "nut," but with the lawless word Harmony 
 seemed to pass away forever. The Vortex had her. 
 She belonged to Bohemia for evermore. And never 
 would Beriah 
 
 The door opened and Beriah walked in. 
 
 " Dory," said he, "what s all that chalk and pink \ 
 stuff on your face, honey?" 
 
 Medora extended an arm. 
 
 "Too late," she said, solemnly. "The die is cast 
 I belong in another world. Curse me if you will 
 it is your right. Go, and leave me in the path 1 
 
Extradited from Bohemia 2C9 
 
 have chosen. Bid them all at home never to mention 
 my name again. And sometimes, Boriah, pray for me 
 when I am revelling in the gaudy, but hollow, pleas 
 ures of Bohemia." 
 
 "Get a towel, Dory," said Beriah, "and wipe that 
 paint off your face. I came as soon as I got your 
 letter. Them pictures of yours ain t amounting to 
 anything. I ve got tickets for both of us back on 
 the evening train. Hurry and get your things in 
 vour trunk." 
 
 *> 
 
 "Fate was too strong for me, Beriah. Go while 
 I am strong to bear it." 
 
 "How do you fold this easel, Dory? now begin\ 
 to pack, so we have time to eat before train time. 
 The maples is all out in full-grown leaves, Dory 
 you just ought to see em !" 
 
 "Not this early, Beriah?" 
 
 "You ought to see em, Dory; they re like an 
 ocean of green in the morning sunlight." 
 
 "Oh ? Beriah !" 
 
 On the train she said to him suddenly: 
 
 "I wonder why you came when you got my let 
 ter." 
 
 "Oh, shucks!" said Beriah. #*Did you think you 
 could fool me? How could you be run away to that 
 Bohemia country like you said when your letter was 
 postmarked New York as plain as day?" 
 
A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON, with his right arm up 
 raised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of 
 Union Square, forever signalling the Broadway cars 
 to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth 
 Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at 
 the beck of a private citizen, and the great General 
 must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid 
 transit gloria mundi. 
 
 Should the General raise his left hand as he has 
 raised his right it would point to a quarter of the 
 city that forms a haven for the oppressed and sup 
 pressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national 
 or personal freedom they have found a refuge here, 
 and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, 
 overlooking their district, while he listens through his 
 left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity 
 of his proteges. Italy, Poland, the former Spanish 
 possessions and the polyglot tribes of Austria-Hun 
 gary have spilled here a thick lather of their effer 
 vescent sons. In the eccentric cafes and lodging- 
 houses of the vicinity they hover over their native 
 wines and political secrets. The colony changes 
 with much frequency. Faces disappear from the 
 
 210 
 
A Philistine in Bohemia 211 
 
 haunts to be replaced by others. Whither do these 
 uneasy birds fit? For half of the answer observe 
 carefully the suave foreign air and foreign courtesy 
 of the next waiter who serves your table d hote. 
 For the other half, perhaps if the barber shops had 
 tongues (and who will dispute it?) they could tell 
 their share. 
 
 Titles are as plentiful as finger rings among these 
 transitory exiles. For lack of proper exploitation a 
 stock of title goods large enough to supply the trade 
 of upper Fifth Avenue is here condemned to a mere 
 pushcart traffic. The new-world landlords who en 
 tertain these offshoots of nobility are not dazzled by 
 coronets and crests. They have doughnuts to sell 
 instead of daughters. With them it is a serious 
 matter of trading in flour and sugar instead of pearl 
 powder and bonbons. 
 
 These assertions are deemed fitting as an intro 
 duction to the tale, which is of plebeians and contains 
 no one with even the ghost of a title. 
 
 Katy Dempsey s mother kept a furnished-room 
 house in this oasis of the aliens. The business was 
 not profitable. If the two scraped together enough 
 to meet the landlord s agent on rent day and nego 
 tiate for the ingredients of a daily Irish stew they 
 called it success. Often the stew lacked both meat 
 and potatoes. Sometimes it became as bad as con 
 somme with music. 
 
212 The Voice of the City 
 
 In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and 
 pert and wholesome and as beautiful and freckled as 
 a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who was guilt\- 
 of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers 
 of freshly laundered Croton in the lodgers rooms. 
 
 You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of 
 astronomical discovery) that the star lodger s name 
 was Mr. Brunelli. His wearing a yellow tic and pay 
 ing his rent promptly distinguished him from the 
 other lodgers. His raiment was splendid, his com 
 plexion olive, his mustache fierce, his manners a. 
 prince s, his rings and pins as magnificent as those 
 of a travelling dentist. 
 
 He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it 
 in a red dressing gown with green tassels. He left 
 the house at noon and returned at midnight. Those 
 were mysterious hours, but there was nothing mys 
 terious about Mrs. Deinpsey s lodgers except the 
 things that were not mysterious. One of Mr. Kip 
 ling s poems is addressed to "Ye who hold the un 
 written clue to all save all unwritten things." The 
 same "readers* are invited to tackle the foregoing 
 assertion. 
 
 Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, 
 fell to conjugating the verb "amare," with Katy in 
 the objective case, though not because of antipathy. 
 She talked it over with her mother. 
 
 "Sure, I like him," said Katy. "He s more polite- 
 
A Philistine in Bohemia 213 
 
 ness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and he 
 makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side. 
 But what is he, I dinno? I ve me suspicions. The 
 marnin Il cooiu whin he ll throt out the picture av his 
 baronial halls and ax to have the week s rint hung up 
 in the ice chist along wid all the rist of em." 
 
 " Tis thrue," admitted Mrs. Dempsey, "that he 
 seems to be a sort iv a Dago, and too coolchured in 
 his spaclie for a rale gintlernan. But ye may be 
 inisjudgin 9 him. Ye should niver suspect any wan of 
 bein of noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes 
 the laundry rig lar." 
 
 "He s the same thricks of spakin and blarneyin 
 wid his hands," sighed Katy, "as the Frinch noble 
 man at Mrs. Toole s that ran away wid Mr. Toole s 
 Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, 
 his grandfather s chat-taw, as security for tin weeks 
 rint." 
 
 Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy 
 continued to hesitate. One day he asked her out to 
 <line and she felt that a denouement was in the air. 
 While they are on their way, with Katy in her best 
 muslin, you must take as an entr acte a brief peep at 
 New York s Bohemia. 
 
 Tonio s restaurant is in Bohemia. The very loca 
 tion of it is secret. If you wish to know where it is 
 ask the first person you meet. He will tell you in a 
 whisper. Tonio discountenances custom ; he keeps 
 
214 The Voice of the City 
 
 his house-front black and forbidding ; he gives you a 
 pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining 
 hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boarding-house 
 knows cold veal ; and he has deposited many dollars 
 
 in a certain Banco di something with many gold 
 
 vowels in the name on its windows. 
 
 To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. 
 The house was dark and the shades were lowered ; but 
 Mr. Brunelli touched an electric button by the base 
 ment door, and they were admitted. 
 
 Along a long, dark, narrow hallway thej r went an<l 
 then through a shining and spotless kitchen that- 
 opened directly upon a back yard. 
 
 The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the 
 yard; a high, board fence, surrounded by cats, the 
 other. A wash of clothes was suspended high upon 
 a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were 
 property clothes, and were never taken in by Tonio. 
 They were there that wits with defective pronuncia 
 tion might make puns in connection with the ragout. 
 
 A dozen and a half little tables set up the bare 
 ground were crowded with Bohemia-hunters, who 
 flocked there because Tonio pretended not to want 
 them and pretended to give them a good dinner. 
 There was a sprinkling of real Bohemians present 
 who came for a change because they were tired of 
 the real Bohemia, and a smart shower of the men who 
 originate the bright sayings of Congressmen and the 
 
A Philistine in Bohemia 215 
 
 little nephew of the well-known general passenger 
 agent of the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad 
 Company. 
 
 Here is a bon mot that was manufactured at 
 Tonio s: 
 
 "A dinner at Tonio s," said a Bohemian, "always 
 amounts to twice the price that is asked for it." 
 
 Let us assume that an accommodating voice in 
 quires : 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 "The dinner costs you 40 cents ; you give 10 cents 
 to the waiter, and it makes you feel like 30 cents." 
 
 Most of the diners were confirmed table d hoters 
 gastronomic adventurers, forever seeking the El 
 Dorado of a good claret, and consistently coming to 
 grief in California. 
 
 Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table em 
 bowered with shrubbery in tubs, and asked her to 
 excuse him for a while. 
 
 Katy sat, enchanted by a scene so brilliant to her. 
 The grand ladies, in splendid dresses and plumes and 
 sparkling rings; the fine gentlemen who laughed so 
 loudly, the cries of "Garsong!" and "We, monscer," 
 and "Hello, Mame!" that distinguish Bohemia; the 
 lively chatter, the cigarette smoke, the interchange 
 of bright smiles and eye-glances all this display 
 and magnificence overpowered the daughter of Mrs. 
 Dempscy and held her motionless. 
 
210 The Voice of the City 
 
 Mr. Brunelli stepped into the yard and seemed to 
 spread his smile and bow over the entire company. 
 And everywhere there was a great clapping of hands 
 and a few cries of "Bravo !" and " Tonio ! Tonio !" 
 whatever those words might mean. Ladies waved 
 their napkins at him, gentlemen almost twisted their 
 necks off, trying to catch his nod. 
 
 When the ovation was concluded Mr. Brunelli, with 
 a final bow, stepped nimbly into the kitchen and flung 
 off his coat and waistcoat. 
 
 Flaherty, the nimblest "gar song" among the 
 waiters, had been assigned to the special service of 
 ICaty. She was a little faint from hunger, for the 
 Irish stew on the Dempsey table had been particu 
 larly weak that day. Delicious odors from unknown 
 dishes tantalized her. And Flaherty began to bring 
 to her table course after course of ambrosial food 
 that the gods might have pronounced excellent. 
 
 But even in the midst of her Lucullian repast Katy 
 laid down her knife and fork. Her heart sank as 
 lead, and a tear fell upon her filet mignon. Her 
 haunting suspicions of the star lodger arose again, 
 fourfold. Thus courted and admired and smiled 
 upon by that fashionable and gracious assembly, 
 what else could Mr. Brunelli be but one of these 
 dazzling titled patricians, glorious of name but shy 
 of rent money, concerning whom experience had made 
 her wise? With a sense of his ineligibility growing 
 
A Philistine in Bohemia 217 
 
 within her there was mingled a torturing conviction 
 that his personality was becoming more pleasing to 
 her day by day. And why had he left her to dine 
 alone? 
 
 But here he was coining again, now coatless, his 
 snowy shirt-sleeves rolled high above his Jeffries- 
 onian elbows, a white yachting cap perched upon his 
 jetty curls. 
 
 " Tonio! Tonio!" shouted many, and "The 
 spaghetti ! The spaghetti 1" shouted the rest. 
 
 Never at Tonio s did a waiter dare to serve a dish 
 of spaghetti until Tonio came to test it, to prove 
 the sauce and add the needful dash of seasoning that 
 gave it perfection. 
 
 From table to table moved Tonio, like a prince in 
 his palace s greeting his guests. White, jewelled 
 hands signalled him from every side. 
 
 A glass of wine with this one and that, smiles for 
 all, a jest and repartee for any that might challenge 
 truly few princes could be so agreeable a host! 
 And what artist could ask for further appreciation 
 of his handiwork? Katy did not know that the 
 proudest consummation of a New Yorker s ambition , 
 is to shake hands with a spaghetti chef or to receive 
 a nod from a Broadway head-waiter. 
 
 At last the company thinned, leaving but a few 
 couples and quartettes lingering over new wine and 
 old stories. And then came Mr. Brunelli to Katy s 
 
218 The Voice of the City 
 
 secluded table, and drew a chair close to hers. 
 
 Katy smiled at him dreamily. She was eating the 
 last spoonful of a raspberry roll with Burgundy 
 sauce. 
 
 "You have seen!" said Mr. Brunelli, laying one 
 hand upon his collar bone. "I am Antonio Brunelli ! 
 Yes ; I am the great Tonio ! You have not suspect 
 that ! I loave you, Katy, and you shall marry with 
 me. Is it not so? Call me *Antonio, and say that 
 you will be mine." 
 
 Katy s head drooped to the shoulder that was 
 now freed from all suspicion of having received the 
 knightly accolade. 
 
 "Oh, Andy," she sighed, "this is great! Sure, 
 I ll marry wid ye. But why didn t ye tell me ye was 
 the cook? I was near turnin ye down for bein one 
 of thim foreign counts !" 
 
FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS 
 ABILITY 
 
 VUYNING left his club, cursing it softly, without 
 any particular anger. From ten in the morning 
 until eleven it had bored him immeasurably. Kirk 
 with his fish story, Brooks with his Porto Rico cigars, 
 old Morrison with his anecdote about the widow, Hep 
 burn with his invariable luck at billiards all these 
 afflictions had been repeated without change of bill or 
 scenery. Besides these morning evils Miss Alison 
 had refused him again on the night before. But that 
 was a chronic trouble. Five times she had laughed at 
 his offer to make her Mrs. Vuyning. He intended to 
 ask her again the next Wednesday evening. 
 
 Vuyning walked along Forty-fourth Street to 
 Broadway, and then drifted down the great sluice 
 that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham. 
 He wore a morning suit of light gray, low, dull kid 
 shoes, a plain, finely woven straw hat, and his visible 
 linen was the most delicate possible shade of helio 
 trope. His necktie was the blue-gray of a November 
 sky, and its knot was plainly the outcome of a lordly 
 carelessness combined with an accurate conception of 
 the most recent dictum of fashion. 
 
 Now, to write of a man s haberdashery is a worse 
 219 
 
220 The Voice of the City 
 
 thing than to write a historical novel "around" 
 Paul Jones, or to pen a testimonial to a hay-fever 
 cure. 
 
 Therefore, let it be known that the description of 
 Vuyning s apparel is germane to the movements of 
 the storjr, and not to make room for the new fall 
 stock of goods. 
 
 Even Broadway that morning was a discord in 
 Vuyning s ears ; and in his eyes it paralleled for a 
 few dreamy, dreary minutes a certain howling, 
 scorching, seething, malodorous slice of street that 
 he remembered in Morocco. lie saw the struggling 
 mass of dogs, beggars, fakirs, slave-drivers and 
 veiled women in carts without horses, the sun blaz 
 ing brightly among the bazaars, the piles of rubbish 
 from ruined temples in the street and then a lady, 
 passing, jabbed the ferrule of a parasol in his side 
 and brought him back to Broadway. 
 
 Five minutes of his stroll brought him to a certain 
 corner, where a number of silent, pale-faced men are 
 accustomed to stand, immovably, for hours, busy 
 with the file blades of their penknives, with their hat 
 brims on a level with their ej^elids. Wall Street 
 speculators, driving home in their carriages, love to 
 point out these men to their visiting friends and tell 
 them of this rather famous lounging-place of the 
 "crooks." On Wall Street the speculators never 
 use the file blades of their knives. 
 
Each According to His Ability 221 
 
 Vuyning was delighted when one of this company 
 stepped forth and addressed him as he was passing. 
 He was hungry for something out of the ordinary, 
 and to be accosted by this smooth-faced, keen-eyed, 
 low-voiced, athletic member of the under world, with 
 his grim, yet pleasant smile, had all the taste of an 
 adventure to the convention-weary Vuyning. 
 
 "Excuse me, friend," said he. "Could I have a 
 few minutes talk with you on the level?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Vuyning, with a smile. "But, 
 suppose we step aside to a quieter place. There is a 
 divan a cafe over here that will do. Schrumni 
 will give us a private corner." 
 
 Schrumm established them under a growing palm, 
 with two seidls between them. Vuyning made a 
 pleasant reference to meteorological conditions, thus 
 forming a hinge upon which might be swung the 
 door leading from the thought repository of the 
 other, 
 
 "In the first place," said his companion, with the 
 air of one who presents his credentials, "I want you 
 to understand that I am a crook. Out West I am 
 known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, 
 second-story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round bur 
 glar, card-sharp and slickest con man west of the 
 Twenty- third Street ferry landing that s my his 
 tory. That s to show I m on the square with you. 
 My name s Emerson." 
 
222 The Voice of the City 
 
 "Confound old Kirk with his fish stories," said 
 Vuyning to himself, with silent glee as he went 
 through his pockets for a card. "It s pronounced 
 Vining, " he said, as he tossed it over to the other. 
 "And I ll be as frank with you. I m just a kind of 
 a loafer, I guess, living on my daddy s money. At 
 the club they call me Left-at-the-Post. I never did 
 a day s work in my life; and I haven t the heart to 
 run over a chicken when I m motoring. It s a pretty 
 shabby record, altogether." 
 
 "There s one thing you can do," said Emerson, 
 admiringly ; "you can carry duds. I ve watched you 
 several times pass on Broadway. You look the best 
 dressed man I ve seen. And I ll bet you a gold mine 
 I ve got $50 worth more gent s furnishings on my 
 frame than you have. That s what I wanted to see 
 you about. I can t do the trick. Take a look at 
 me. What s wrong?" 
 
 "Stand up," said Vuyning. 
 
 Emerson arose, and slowly revolved. 
 
 "You ve been outfitted, " declared the clubman. 
 "Some Broadway window-dresser has misused you. 
 That s an expensive suit, though, Emerson." 
 
 "A hundred dollars," said Emerson. 
 
 "Twenty too much," said Vuyning. "Six months 
 old in cut, one inch too long, and half an inch too 
 much lapel. Your hat is plainly dated one year ago, 
 although there s only a sixteenth of an inch lacking 
 
Each According to His Ability 223 
 
 in the brim to tell the story. That English poke in 
 your collar is too short by the distance between Troy 
 and London. A plain gold link cuff-button would 
 take all the shine out of those pearl ones with dia 
 mond settings. Those tan shoes would be exactly 
 the articles to work into the heart of a Brooklyn 
 school-ma am on a two weeks visit to Lake Ronkon- 
 koma. I think I caught a glimpse of a blue silk 
 sock embroidered with russet lilies of the valley when 
 you improperly drew up your trousers as you 
 sat down. There are always plain ones to be had 
 in the stores. Have I hurt your feelings, Emer 
 son?" 
 
 "Double the ante !" cried the criticised one, greed 
 ily. "Give me more of it. There s a way to tote 
 the haberdashery, and I want to get wise to it. Say, 
 you re the right kind of a swell. Anything else to 
 the queer about me ?" 
 
 "Your tie," said Vuyning, "is tied with absolute 
 
 precision and correctness." 
 
 "Thanks," gratefully "I spent over half an hour 
 
 at it before I " 
 
 "Thereby," interrupted Vuyning, "completing 
 
 your resemblance to a dummy in a Broadway store 
 
 window." 
 
 "Yours truly," said Emerson, sitting down again. 
 
 "It s bully of you to put me wise. I knew there 
 
 was something wrong, but I couldn t just put my 
 
224 The Voice of the City 
 
 finger on it. I guess it comes by nature to know how 
 to wear clothes." 
 
 "Oh, I suppose," said Vuyning, with a laugh, 
 "that my ancestors picked up the knack while they 
 were peddling clothes from house to house a couple 
 of hundred years ago. I m told they did that." 
 
 "And mine," said Emerson, cheerfully, "were 
 making their visits at night, I guess, and didn t have 
 a chance to catch on to the correct styles." 
 
 "I tell you what," said Vuyning, whose ennui had 
 taken wings, "I ll take you to my tailor. He ll 
 eliminate the mark of the beast from your exterior. 
 That is, if you care to go any further in the way 
 of expense." 
 
 "Play em to the ceiling," said Emerson, with a 
 boyish smile of joy. "I ve got a roll as big around 
 as a barrel of black-eyed peas and as loose as the 
 wrapper of a two-for-fiver. I don t mind telling you 
 that I was not touring among the Antipodes when 
 the burglar-proof safe of the Farmers National 
 Bank of Butterville, la., flew open some moonless 
 nights ago to the tune of $16,000." 
 
 "Aren t you afraid," asked Vuyning, "that I ll call 
 a cop and hand you over?" 
 
 "You tell me," said Emerson, coolly, "why I didn t 
 keep them." 
 
 He laid Vuyning s pocketbook and watch the 
 Vuyning 100-year-old family watch on the table. 
 
Each According to His Ability 225 
 
 "Man," said Vuyning, revelling, "did you ever hear 
 the tale Kirk tells about the six-pound trout and the 
 old fisherman?" 
 
 "Seems not," said Emerson, politely. "I d 
 like to." 
 
 "But you won t," said Vuyning. "I ve heard it 
 scores of times. That s why I won t tell you. I was 
 just thinking how much better this is than a club. 
 Now, shall we go to my tailor?" 
 
 "Boys, and elderly gents," said Vuyning, five days 
 later at his club, standing up against the window 
 where his coterie was gathered, and keeping out the 
 breeze, "a friend of mine from the West will dine at 
 our table this evening." 
 
 "Will he ask if we have heard the latest from 
 Denver?" said a member, squirming in his chair. 
 
 "Will he mention the new twenty-three-story Ma 
 sonic Temple, in Quincy, 111.?" inquired another, 
 dropping his nose-glasses. 
 
 "Will he spring one of those Western Mississippi 
 River catfish stories, in which they use yearling calves 
 for bait?" demanded Kirk, fiercely. 
 
 "Be comforted," said Vuyning. "Ke has none of 
 the little vices. He is a burglar and safe-blower, 
 and a pal of mine." 
 
 "Oh, Mary Ann !" said they. "Must } ou always 
 adorn every statement with your alleged humor?" 
 
226 The Voice of the City 
 
 It came to pass that at eight in the evening a calm, 
 smooth, brilliant, affable man sat at Vujning s right 
 hand during dinner. And when the ones who pass 
 their lives in city streets spoke of skyscrapers or of 
 the little Czar on his far, frozen throne, or of insig 
 nificant fish from inconsequential streams, this big, 
 deep-chested man, faultlessly clothed, and eyed like 
 an Emperor, disposed of their Lilliputian chatter 
 with a wink of his eyelash. 
 
 And then he painted for them with hard, broad 
 strokes a marvellous lingual panorama of the West. 
 He stacked snow-topped mountains on the table, 
 freezing the hot dishes of the waiting diners. With 
 a wave of his hand he swept the clubhouse into a 
 pine-crowned gorge, turning the waiters into a grim 
 posse, and each listener into a blood-stained fugitive, 
 climbing with torn fingers upon the ensanguined 
 rocks. lie touched the table and spake, and the five 
 panted as they gazed on barren lava beds, and each 
 man took his tongue between his teeth and felt his 
 mouth bake at the tale of a land empty of water and 
 food. As simply as Homer sang, while he dug a tine 
 of his fork leisurely into the tablecloth, he opened a 
 new world to their view, as does one who tells a child 
 of the Looking-Glass Country. 
 
 As one of his listeners might have spoken of tea 
 too strong at a Madison Square "afternoon," so he 
 depicted the ravages of "redeye" in a border town 
 
Each According to His Ability 227 
 
 when the caballeros of the lariat and "forty-five" 
 reduced ennui to a minimum. 
 
 And then, with a sweep of his white, unringcd 
 hands, he dismissed Melpomene, and forthwith Diana 
 and Amaryllis footed it before the mind s eyes of the 
 clubmen. 
 
 The savannas of the continent spread before them. 
 The wind, humming through a hundred leagues of 
 sage brush and mesquite, closed their ears to the city s 
 staccato noises. He told them of camps, of ranches 
 marooned in a sea of fragrant prairie blossoms, of 
 gallops in the stilly night that Apollo would have 
 forsaken his daytime steeds to enjoy; he read them 
 the great, rough epic of the cattle and the hills that 
 had not been spoiled by the hand of man, the mason. 
 His words were a telescope to the city men, whose 
 eyes had looked upon Youngstown, O., and whose 
 tongues had called it "West." 
 
 In fact, Emerson had them "going." 
 
 The next morning at ten he met Vuyning, by ap 
 pointment, at a Forty-second Street cafe. 
 
 Emerson was to leave for the West that day. He 
 wore a suit of dark cheviot that looked to have been 
 draped upon him by an ancient Grecian tailor who 
 was a few thousand years ahead of the styles. 
 
 "Mr. Vuyning," said he, with the clear, ingenuous 
 smile of the successful "crook," "it s up to me to go 
 
228 The Voice of the City 
 
 the limit for you any time I can do so. You re the 
 real thing; and if I can ever return the favor, you 
 bet your life I ll do it." 
 
 "What was that cow-puncher s name?" asked 
 Vuyning, "who used to catch a mustang by the nose 
 and mane, and throw him till he put the bridle on?" 
 
 "Bates," said Emerson. 
 
 "Thanks," said Vuyning. "I thought it was 
 Yates. Oh, about that toggery business I d for 
 gotten that." 
 
 "I ve been looking for some guy to put me on the 
 right track for years," said Emerson. "You re the 
 goods, duty free, and half-way to the warehouse in a 
 red wagon." 
 
 "Bacon, toasted on a green willow switch over red 
 coals, ought to put broiled lobsters out of business," 
 said Vuyning. "And you say a horse at the end of 
 a thirty-foot rope can t pull a ten-inch stake out of 
 wet prairie? Well, good-bye, old man, if you must 
 be off." 
 
 At one o clock Vuyning had luncheon with Miss 
 Allison by previous arrangement. 
 
 For thirty minutes he babbled to her, unaccount 
 ably, of ranches, horses, canons, cyclones, round-ups, 
 Rocky Mountains and beans and bacon. She looked 
 at him with wondering and half-terrified eyes. 
 
 "I was going to propose again to-day," said Vuy 
 ning, cheerily, "but I won t. I ve worried you often 
 
Each According to His Ability 229 
 
 enough. You know dad has a ranch in Colorado. 
 What s the good of staying here? Jumping jon 
 quils ! but it s great out there. I m going to start 
 next Tuesday." 
 
 "No, you won t," said Miss Allison. 
 
 "What?" said Vuyning. 
 
 "Not alone," said Miss Allison, dropping a tear 
 upon her salad. "What do you think?" 
 
 "Betty!" exclaimed Vuyning, "what do you 
 mean ?" 
 
 "I ll go too," said Miss Allison, forcibly. 
 
 Vuyning filled her glass with Apollinaris. 
 
 "Here s to Rowdy the Dude!" he gave a toast 
 mysterious. 
 
 "Don t know him," said Miss Allison; "but if he s 
 your friend, Jimmy here goes!" 
 
THE MEMENTO 
 
 MlSS LYNNETTE D ARMANDE turned her 
 back on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, be 
 cause Broadway had often done the same thing to 
 Miss D Armande. Still, the "tats" scorned to have 
 it, for the ex-leading lady of the "Reaping the 
 Whirlwind" company had everything to ask of 
 Broadway, while there was no vice-versa. 
 
 So Miss Lynnette D Armande turned the back of 
 her chair to her window that overlooked Broadway, 
 and sat down to stitch in time the lisle-thread heel 
 of a black silk stocking. The tumult and glitter of 
 the roaring Broadway beneath her window had no 
 charm for her; what she greatly desired was the 
 stifling air of a dressing-room on that fairyland 
 street and the roar of an audience gathered in that 
 capricious quarter. In the meantime, those stock 
 ings must not be neglected. Silk does wear out so, 
 but after all, isn t it just the only goods there is? 
 
 The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon 
 looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above 
 the whirlpool where the tides of two great thorough 
 fares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end 
 of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the 
 sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking- 
 
 230 
 
The Memento 231 
 
 offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster- 
 palaces to which those thorny paths lead. 
 
 Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dim 
 and fusty Thalia, you seem to have found yourself 
 in some great ark or caravan about to sail, or fly, or 
 roll away on wheels. About the house lingers a sense 
 of unrest, of expectation, of transientness, even of 
 anxiety and apprehension. The halls are a laby 
 rinth. Without a guide, you wander like a lost soul 
 in a Sam Lloyd puzzle. 
 
 Turning any corner, a dressing-sack or a cul-de-sac 
 may bring you up short. You meet alarming tra 
 gedians stalking in bath-robes in search of rumored 
 bathrooms. From hundreds of rooms come the buzz 
 of talk, scraps of new and old songs, and the ready 
 laughter of the convened players. 
 
 Summer has come; their companies have disbanded, 
 and they take their rest in their favorite caravan 
 sary, while they besiege the managers for engage 
 ments for the coming season. 
 
 At this hour of the afternoon the day s work of 
 tramping the rounds of the agents offices is o.er. 
 Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the 
 mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, 
 starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of 
 silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of 
 gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young 
 comedians, with versatile Adam s apples, gather in 
 
232 The Voice of the City 
 
 doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from 
 somewhere conies the smell of ham and red cabbage, 
 and the crash of dishes on the American plan. 
 
 The indeterminate hum of life in the Thalia is 
 enlivened by the discreet popping at reasonable 
 and salubrious intervals of beer-bottle corks. 
 Thus punctuated, life in the genial hostel scans 
 easily the comma being the favorite mark, semi 
 colons frowned upon, and periods barred. 
 
 Miss D Armande s room was a small one. There 
 was room for her rocker between the dresser and the 
 wash-stand if it were placed longitudinally. On the 
 dresser were its usual accoutrements, plus the ex- 
 leading lady s collected souvenirs of road engage 
 ments and photographs of her dearest and best pro 
 fessional friends. 
 
 At one of these photographs she looked twice or 
 thrice as she darned, and smiled friendlily. 
 
 "I d like to know where Lee is just this minute," 
 she said, half-aloud. 
 
 If you had been privileged to view the photograph 
 thus flattered, you would have thought at the first 
 glance that you saw the picture of a manj-petalled 
 white flower, blown through the air by a storm. But 
 the floral kingdom was not responsible for that swirl 
 of petalous whiteness. 
 
 You saw the filiiry, brief skirt of Miss Rosalie Ray 
 as she made a complete heels-over-head turn in her 
 
The Memento 233 
 
 wistaria-entwined swing, far out from the stage, 
 high above the heads of the audience. You saw the 
 camera s inadequate representation of the graceful, 
 strong kick, with which she, at this exciting moment, 
 sent flying, high and far, the yellow silk garter that 
 each evening spun from her agile limb and descended 
 upon the delighted audience below. 
 
 You saw, too, amid the black-clothed, mainly mas 
 culine patrons of select-vaudeville a hundred hands 
 raised with the hope of staying the flight of the 
 brilliant aerial token. 
 
 Forty weeks of the best circuits this act had 
 brought Miss Rosalie Ray, for each of two years. 
 She did other things during her twelve minutes a 
 song and dance, imitations of two or three actors who 
 are but imitations of themselves, and a balancing 
 feat with a step-ladder and feather-duster ; but when 
 the blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies, 
 and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, with 
 the golden circlet conspicuous in the place whence it 
 was soon to slide and become a soaring and coveted 
 guerdon then it was that the audience rose in its 
 seat as a single man or presumably so and in 
 dorsed the specialty that made Miss Ray s name a 
 favorite in the booking-offices. 
 
 At the end of the two years Miss Ray suddenly an 
 nounced to her dear friend, Miss D Armande, that 
 she was going to spend the summer at an antediluvian 
 
234 The Voice of the City 
 
 village on the north shore of Long Island, and that 
 the stage would see her no more. 
 
 Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D Armande 
 had expressed her wish to know the whereabouts of 
 her old chum, there were sharp raps at her door. 
 
 Doubt not that it was Rosalie Raj. At the shrill 
 command to enter she did so, with something of a 
 tired flutter, and dropped a heavy hand-bag on the 
 floor. Upon my word, it was Rosalie, in a loose, 
 travel-stained automobileless coat, closely tied brown 
 veil with yard-long, flying ends, gray walking suit and 
 tan oxfords with lavender overgaiters. 
 
 When she threw off her veil and hat, you saw a 
 pretty enough face, now flushed and disturbed by 
 some unusual emotion, and restless, large eyes with 
 discontent marring their brightness. A heavy pile 
 of dull auburn hair, hastily put up, was escaping in 
 crinkly, waving strands and curling, small locks from 
 the confining combs and pins. 
 
 The meeting of the two was not marked by the 
 effusion vocal, gymnastical, osculatory and catecheti 
 cal that distinguishes the greetings of their unpro 
 fessional sisters in society. There was a brief clinch, 
 two simultaneous labial dabs and they stood on the 
 same footing of the old days. Very much like the 
 short salutations of soldiers or of travellers in for 
 eign wilds are the welcomes between the strollers at 
 the corners of their criss-cross roads. 
 
The Memento 235 
 
 "I ve got the hall-room two flights up above vours," 
 said Rosalie, "but I came straight to sec you before 
 going up. I didn t know you were here till they 
 told me." 
 
 "I ve been in since the last of April," said Lyn- 
 nette. "And I m going on the road with a Fatal 
 Inheritance company. We open next week in Eliza 
 beth. I thought you d quit the stage, Lee. Tell me 
 about yourself." 
 
 Rosalie settled herself with a skilful wriggle on 
 the top of Miss D Armande s wardrobe trunk, and 
 leaned her head against the papered wall. From 
 long habit, thus can peripatetic leading ladies 
 and their sisters make themselves as comfort 
 able as though the deepest armchairs embraced 
 them. 
 
 "I m going to tell you, Lynn," she said, with a 
 strangely sardonic and yet carelessly resigned look 
 on her youthful face. "And then to-morrow I ll 
 strike the old Broadway trail again, and wear some 
 more paint off the chairs in the agents offices. If 
 anybody had told me any time in the last three 
 months up to four o clock this afternoon that I d 
 ever listen to that Leave-your-name-and-address rot 
 of the booking bunch again, I d have given em the 
 real Mrs. Fiske laugh. Loan me a handkerchief, 
 Lynn. Gee ! but those Long Island trains are fierce. 
 I ve got enough soft-coal cinders on my face to go on 
 
236 The Voice of the City 
 
 and play Topsy without using the cork. And, speak 
 ing of corks got anything to drink, Lynn?" 
 
 Miss D Armande opened a door of the wash-stand 
 and took out a bottle. 
 
 "There s nearly a pint of Manhattan. There s a 
 cluster of carnations in the drinking glass, but 
 
 "Oh, pass the bottle. Save the glass for com 
 pany. Thanks ! That hits the spot. The same to 
 you. My first drink in three months ! 
 
 "Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of last 
 season. I quit it because I was sick of the life. And 
 especially because my heart and soul were sick of men 
 of the kind of men we stage people have to be up 
 against. You know what the game is to us it s a 
 fight against em all the way down the line from the 
 manager who wants us to try his new motor-car to the 
 bill-posters who want to call us by our front names. 
 
 "And the men we have to meet after the show are 
 the worst of all. The stage-door kind, and the man 
 ager s friends who take us to supper and show their 
 diamonds and talk about seeing Dan and Dave and 
 Charlie for us. They re beasts, and I hate em. 
 
 "I tell you, Lynn, it s the girls like us on the stage 
 that ought to be pitied. It s girls from good homes 
 that are honestly ambitious and work hard to rise ID 
 the profession, but never do get there. You hear a 
 lot of sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls and 
 their fifteen dollars a week. Piffle! There ain t a 
 
The Memento 237 
 
 sorrow in the chorus that a lobster cannot heal. 
 
 "If there s any tears to shed, let em fall for the 
 actress that gets a salary of from thirty to forty-five 
 dollars a week for taking a leading part in a bum 
 show. She knows she ll never do any better ; but she 
 hangs on for years, hoping for the chance that never 
 comes. 
 
 "And the fool plays we have to work in ! Having 
 another girl roll you around the stage by the hind 
 legs in a Wheelbarrow Chorus in a musical comedy 
 is dignified drama compared with the idiotic things 
 I ve had to do in the thirty-centers. 
 
 "But what I hated most was the men the men 
 leering and blathering at you across tables, trying 
 to buy you with Wiirzburger or Extra Dry, accord 
 ing to their estimate of your price. And the men in 
 the audiences, clapping, yelling, snarling, crowding, 
 writhing, gloating like a lot of wild beasts, with 
 their eyes fixed on you, ready to eat you up if you 
 come in reach of their claws. Oh, how I hate em ! 
 
 "Well, I m not telling you much about myself, am 
 I, Lynn? 
 
 "I had two hundred dollars saved up, and I cut 
 the stage the first of the summer. I went over on 
 Long Island and found the sweetest little village that 
 ever was, called Soundport, right on the water. I 
 was going to spend the summer there, and study up 
 on elocution, and try to get a class in the fall. There 
 
238 The Voice of the City 
 
 was an old widow lady with a cottage near the beach 
 who sometimes rented a room or two just for com 
 pany, and she took me in. She had another boarder, 
 too the Reverend Arthur Lyle. 
 
 "Yes, he was the head-liner. You re on, Lynn. 
 I ll tell you all of it in a minute. It s only a one- 
 act play. 
 
 "The first time he walked on, Lynn, I felt myself 
 going; the first lines he spoke, he had me. He was 
 different from the men in audiences. He was tall 
 and slim, and you never heard him come in the room, 
 but you felt him. He had a face like a picture of a 
 knight like one of that Round Table bunch and 
 a voice like a cello solo. And his manners ! 
 
 "Lynn, if you d take John Drew in his best draw 
 ing-room scene and compare the two, you d have John 
 arrested for disturbing the peace. 
 
 "I ll spare you the particulars ; but in less than a 
 month Arthur and I were engaged. He preached at 
 a little one-night stand of a Methodist church. 
 There was to be a parsonage the size of a lunch- 
 wagon, a?nd hens and honeysuckles when we were mar 
 ried. Arthur used to preach to me a good deal about 
 Heaven, but he never could get my mind quite off 
 those honeysuckles and hens. 
 
 "No ; I didn t tell him I d been on the stage. I 
 hated the business and all that went with it ; I d cut 
 it out forever, and I didn t see any use of stirring 
 
The Memento 239 
 
 things up. I was a good girl, and I didn t have any 
 thing to confess, except being an elocutionist, and 
 that was about all the strain my conscience would 
 stand. 
 
 "Oh, I tell you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang in 
 the choir and attended the sewing society, and re 
 cited that Annie Laurie thing with the whistling 
 stunt in it, in a manner bordering upon the profes 
 sional, as the weekly village paper reported it. And 
 Arthur and I went rowing, and walking in the woods, 
 and clamming, and that poky little village seemed to 
 me the best place in the world. I d have been happy 
 
 to live there always, too, if 
 
 "But one morning old Mrs. Gurley, the widow 
 lady, got gossipy while I was helping her string beans 
 on the back porch, and began to gush information, 
 as folks who rent out their rooms usually do. Mr. 
 Lyle was her idea of a saint on earth as he was 
 mine, too. She went over all his virtues and graces, 
 and wound up by telling me that Arthur had had an 
 extremely romantic love-affair, not long before, that 
 had ended unhappily. She didn t seem to be on to 
 the details, but she knew that he had been hit pretty 
 hard. He was paler and thinner, she said, and he 
 had some kind of a remembrance or keepsake of the 
 lady in a little rosewood box that he kept locked in 
 his desk drawer in his study. 
 
 " Several times, says she, I ve seen him 
 
240 The Voice of the City 
 
 gloomeria over that box of evenings, and he always 
 locks it up right away if anybody comes into the 
 room. 
 
 "Well, you can imagine how long it was before I 
 got Arthur by the wrist and led him down stage and 
 hissed in his ear. 
 
 "That same afternoon we were lazying around in 
 a boat among the water-lilies at the edge of the bay. 
 
 " Arthur, says I, you never told me you d had 
 another love-affair. But Mrs. Gurley did, I went 
 on, to let him know I knew. I hate to hear a man lie. 
 
 " Before you came, says he, looking me frankly 
 in the eye, there was a previous affection a strong 
 one. Since you know of it, I will be perfectly candid 
 with you. 
 
 " I am waiting, says I. 
 
 " My dear Ida, says Arthur of course I went 
 by my real name, while I was in Soundport this 
 former affection was a spiritual one, in fact. Al 
 though the lady aroused my deepest sentiments, and 
 was, as I thought, my ideal woman, I never met her, 
 and never spoke to her. It was an ideal love. My 
 love for you, while no less ideal, is different. You 
 wouldn t let that come between us. 
 
 " Was she pretty? I asked. 
 
 " She was very beautiful, said Arthur. 
 
 " Did you see her often ? I asked. 
 
 " Something like a dozen times, 1 says he. 
 
The Memento 241 
 
 " Always from a distance? says I. 
 
 " Always from quite a distance, says he. 
 
 " And you loved her? I asked. 
 
 " She seemed my ideal of beauty and grace and 
 soul, says Arthur. 
 
 " And this keepsake that you keep under lock and 
 key, and moon over at times, is that a remembrance 
 from her? 
 
 " A memento, says Arthur, that I have treas 
 ured. 
 
 " Did she send it to you? 
 
 " It came to me from her, says he. 
 
 "In a roundabout way? I asked. 
 
 " Somewhat roundabout, says he, and yet rather 
 direct. 
 
 " Why didn t you ever meet her? I asked. Were 
 your positions in life so different? 
 
 " She was far above me, says Arthur. Now, 
 Ida, he goes on, this is all of the past. You re not 
 going to be jealous, are you? 
 
 " Jealous! says I. Why, man, what are you 
 talking about? It makes me think ten times as much 
 of you as I did before I knew about it. 
 
 "And it did, Lynn if you can understand it. 
 That ideal love was a new one on me, but it struck 
 me as being the most beautiful and glorious thing I d 
 ever heard of. Think of a man loving a woman he d 
 never even spoken to, and being faithful just to what 
 
242 The Voice of the City 
 
 his mind and heart pictured her! Oh, it sounded 
 great to me. The men I d always known come at 
 you with either diamonds, knock-out drops or a raise 
 of salary, and their ideals ! well, we ll say no 
 more. 
 
 " Yes, it made me think more of Arthur than I did 
 before. I couldn t be jealous of that far-away divin 
 ity that he used to worship, for I was going to have 
 him myself. And I began to look upon him as a saint 
 on earth, just as old lady Gurley did. 
 
 "About four o clock this afternoon a man came to 
 the house for Arthur to go and see somebody that was 
 sick among his church bunch. Old lady Gurley was 
 taking her afternoon snore on a couch, so that left 
 me pretty much alone. 
 
 "In passing by Arthur s study I looked in, and 
 saw his bunch of keys hanging in the drawer of his 
 desk, where he d forgotten em. Well, I guess we re 
 all to the Mrs. Bluebeard now and then, ain t we, 
 Lynn? I made up my mind I d have a look at that 
 memento he kept so secret. Not that I cared what 
 it was it was just curiosity. 
 
 "While I was opening the drawer I imagined one 
 or two things it might be. I thought it might be 
 a dried rosebud she d dropped down to him from 
 a balcony, or maybe a picture of her he d cut. 
 out of a magazine, she being so high up in the 
 world. 
 
The Memento 243 
 
 "I opened the drawer, and there was the rosewood 
 casket about the size of a gent s collar box. I found 
 the little key in the bunch that fitted it, and unlocked 
 it and raised the lid. 
 
 "I took one look at that memento, and then I went 
 to my room and packed my trunk. I threw a few 
 things into my grip, gave my hair a flirt or two with 
 a side-comb, put on my hat, and went in and gave 
 the old lady s foot a kick. I d tried awfully hard to 
 use proper and correct language while I was there 
 for Arthur s sake, and I had the habit down pat, but 
 it left me then. 
 
 " Stop sawing gourds, says I, and sit up and 
 take notice. The ghost s about to walk. I m going 
 away from here, and I owe you eight dollars. The 
 expressman will call for my trunk. 
 
 "I handed her the money. 
 
 " Dear me, Miss Crosby! says she. Is any 
 thing wrong? I thought you were pleased here. 
 Dear me, young women are so hard to understand, 
 and so different from what you expect em 
 to be. 
 
 " You re damn right, says I. Some of em are. 
 But you can t say that about men. When you know 
 one man you know em all! That settles the human- 
 race question. 
 
 "And then I caught the four-thirty-eight, soft- 
 coal unlimited ; and here I am." 
 
244 The Voice of the City 
 
 "You didn t tell me what was in the box, Lee," 
 said Miss D Armande, anxiously. 
 
 "One of those yellow silk garters that I used to 
 kick off my leg into the audience during that old 
 vaudeville swing act of mine. Is there any of the 
 cocktail left, Lynn?" 
 
 THE END 
 
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