Introductory material (continued 2)

For the sake of speed, do not ever interrupt his kind!

XXV THE CONFESSIONS OF A CRITIC

I met a prominent literary critic the other evening. A review signed with his name or even with his initials is apt to make or mar the work treated therein.

Now, I have not a little hypnotic power, and the mischievous idea came into my head to hypnotize him and make him “confess.”

We were sitting in the reading-room of an up-town club. I led the conversation to the subject of hypnotism, and soon gained the critic’s consent to be put into a trance.

I did not influence him any more than to put his mind in the attitude of truthfully answering what questions I might ask him.

Q. Which do you prefer to criticize, a book that has already been reviewed or one that is perfectly fresh?

A. Oh, one that has been reviewed, and the oftener the better. I thus gain some idea of the trend of critical opinion and shape my review accordingly.

Q. Do you ever run counter to the general sentiment?

A. Yes; if I find that a book has been damned with faint praise, I sometimes laud it to the skies and thus gain a reputation for independence that is very useful to me. Or if a book has been heralded by the best critics of both countries as “the book of the year,” I sometimes pick it to pieces, taking its grammar as a basis, or some other point that I think I can attack without injury to my reputation for discernment, and again I score a victory for my independence.

Q. Why don’t you like to be the first to review a new book?

A. For the same reason that most critics hate to—unless, indeed, they are just out of college and are cock-sure of everything. I fear that its author may be one of the numerous coming men. I may be entirely at sea about the book. I prefer to get some idea of what the consensus of the best opinion is.

Q. Then you do not consider your own the best opinion?

A. No; no one critic’s opinion is worth much.

Q. Can you tell an author by his style?

A. Always, if I know who he is before I begin to read. But it is hazardous work to say such-and-such a work is by such-and-such a man unless there are internal evidences aside from the style. Once a book was sent to me for criticism. Before I opened it I lent it to a waggish friend of mine, and he returned it next day. I looked at the title-page, saw that it was by an absolutely unknown man and that the scene was laid in India, and, of course, I felt safe in giving it fits on the principle that Rudyard Kipling is not likely to be equaled in this generation as a depicter of Indian life. Well, I said that it was painfully crude and amateurish; that it might do for the “Servants’ Own,” but was not a book for ladies and gentlemen; that it had absolutely no style or local coloring; that the scene might as well have been laid in Kamchatka; and that it was marked by but one thing, audacity, for the author had borrowed some of Kipling’s characters—to the extent of the names only. In short, I had fun with that book, for I knew that my fellow-critics would with one accord turn and rend it. By mere chance I didn’t sign it.

Q. And who had written the book?

A. Why, Kipling. My friend had cut another name out of a book and had pasted it so neatly over Kipling’s wherever his occurred that I was, of course, taken unawares. You can’t bank on style. Look how positive people were Mark Twain had not written “Jeanne d’Arc.”

I here interrupted the flow of his conversation to say: “Your experience is not unlike that of the reviewer who criticized ‘Silas Lapham,’ and who had a sort of hazy notion from the similarity of titles that it was by the author of ‘Silas Marner.’ You may remember, it created a good deal of amusement at the time. He said that it was a mistake for George Eliot to try to write a novel of American life; that the vital essence—American humor—was lacking; that Silas Lapham was a dull Englishman transplanted bodily into a very British Boston; that his daughters were mere puppets, and the attempts at Americanisms doleful in the extreme. He concluded by saying that her ‘Romola’ had shown that she was best on British soil, and that she would better keep to the snug little isle in the future.”

“Yes,” said he, with a grin; “I remember that. It was my first criticism. Most people supposed it was a humorous skit, even the editors who accepted it, but I never was more in earnest. I was young then.”

Q. If you received a book to review with the name of Hardy on the title-page, would you give it a good send-off?

A. I certainly should, for I am a great admirer of Hardy; but I should prefer to wait until some one else had done so, for fear it might be another put-up job and turn out to be the work of some fifth-rate English author.

I then brought him out of his trance. He sat silent for a moment. I picked up the “Saturday Review” from the table and said, “Criticism is a very noble calling.”

“It is indeed,” he responded earnestly. “It is one that requires great insight into human nature, absolute independence, and not a little charity.”

With which beautiful sentiments he rose and, bowing, left the room.

XXVI HOW ’RASMUS PAID THE MORTGAGE

A DIALECT STORY

I

Up the vista formed by a narrow, tortuous Virginia lane, came Uncle ’Rasmus, an aged darky, singing one of the songs of his race that never grow old—because they die young, it may be.

As he hobbled along the path, he talked to himself, as was his wont:

“Golly! Ah mus’ hurry up, o’ de fo’kses won’ hab no dinnah; for, be jabers, ’tis mesilf that has got to git riddy dthat same. Och, worra! worra! but ’tis no synekewer Oi’m havin’, an’ dthat’s dther trut’.”

Just then his watch struck five minutes to six, and he ran off toward the homestead of Squire Lamar, saying, as he did so, in his quaint way: “Veepin’ Rachel! der boss will kick der live out mit me.”

Before the war Squire Lamar had been the richest man in Oconee County; but the conflict had ruined him, and he now had little except his plantation, horses, and stables. He lived in his ancestral house, which was heavily mortgaged, with his wife and children.

’Rasmus, his only servant, an ex-slave, supported the family by collecting dollars—at night.

As he ran toward the house, he saw Squire Lamar on the veranda. Just then a horseman dashed up. He was the sheriff of Oconee County. ’Rasmus took advantage of the commotion, and ran into the kitchen to cook the dinner. On seeing the squire, the sheriff called out to him: “The mortgage on this place will be foreclosed if the $3600 due is not forthcoming by to-morrow noon.”

“Alas!” said the squire; “you see how we are situated. I haven’t a dollar, and wouldn’t know how to earn one if I had.”

At this juncture, ’Rasmus, who had cooked the dinner during the conversation, came up and said: “Massa, Ah’s a free man, Ah know Ah is; but avick, ’t is a mighty shmall wan Oi’d be if I wouldn’t help out a poor omadhaun like yerself. ‘Caed mille fail the Bryn Mawr dolce far niente.’ Zat ees mon motto, an’ so, deah massah, I will guarantee to git de money by to-morrow noon.” Then turning to the sheriff, he said in a manly tone that contrasted ill with his ragged garments: “Ye maun fash awee, laddie, doon the skim.”

After a few more words, the sheriff, who was really a kind man at heart, rode off, saying he would be on hand the next day, and if the money were not forthcoming, he would march them all off to the county jail, ten miles distant. After blowing the dinner-horn, ’Rasmus hobbled off to his humble cottage.

II

On arriving at his cabin, ’Rasmus took a bolster-case full of dollars from under the bed, and proceeded to count them. There were just $3000. “Now, Ah mus’ git $600 more before to-morrow, or else me poor masther’ll be wor-r-rkin’ in the chain-gang. Ach, Himmel!” said the good old darky, his eyes suffused with tears, “if dot took blace, it zeems as if mein herz would break.”

He calmly decided on a plan of action, however. Waiting until night had flung over the earth a pall, through which the silvery moon cast shimmering beams aslant the quivering aspens of the forest, and the snoring of the birds told him that nature slept, he left his house and walked briskly off to the highway.

About that time a lawyer was riding along the road on horseback, with a wallet containing a share of an estate worth $600, which he had secured for an old woman.

’Rasmus saw the traveler, saw the horse, saw the wallet.

The traveler saw no one. He was blind—drunk.

’Rasmus cut a stout bludgeon.

The traveler ambled on.

’Rasmus clasped the bludgeon.

The traveler continued to amble.

’Rasmus stole up beside him....

The traveler lay in the ditch.

’Rasmus jumped on the horse, the wallet in his hand, and galloped home, stabling the beautiful animal in his cabin to avoid being suspected of the murder.

Placing his shoe in front of the one window of the cabin, that none might see him, he counted the money, and found it amounted to just $600, which, together with the $3000, formed the sum required by the sheriff. This made him so happy that he picked up a banjo and played Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” through once or twice, accompanying himself on his throat in a rich tenor. He then turned out the gas and retired, to sleep as only a good, unselfish soul can.

III

It is 11:45 A. M. The squire and his family, who have heard nothing from ’Rasmus, are on the veranda, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the sheriff.

11:50 A. M.! Is ’Rasmus dead? Has the sheriff relented?

11:55. Good lack! The sheriff is seen galloping toward the house, and yet there is no sign of ’Rasmus.

That individual, who is nothing if not dramatic, is sitting behind the house on horseback, awaiting the stroke of twelve.

The door of the ormolu cuckoo-clock in the kitchen opens, the cuckoo advances. At her first note the sheriff jumps from his horse; at the second he walks sternly upon the veranda; at the third he asks for the money; at the fourth and fifth they tell him that ’Rasmus has disappeared; at the sixth, seventh, and eighth he handcuffs them all together; at the ninth, tenth, and eleventh he jumps on his horse and rides off, dragging them behind him; and at the twelfth ’Rasmus trots leisurely out from behind the house, and, opening a carpet-bag, counts out $3600 in silver!

The astonished sheriff puts the money into his pocket, gives Squire Lamar a receipt in full for it, unlocks the handcuffs, and the family resume their wonted places on the veranda.

But all was not yet done. ’Rasmus still had his bludgeon with him, and a few deft strokes on the sheriff’s head were all-sufficient. ’Rasmus then took back the money and gave it to Squire Lamar. Then he told them all to remain perfectly still, and whistling three times, an amateur photographer made his appearance, adjusted his apparatus, and took their pictures.

Sarony could have wished for no better subjects. On the broad veranda lay the old lady prone on the floor, reading the “Tallahassee Inland Mariner”; at her side sat her daughter, Turk-fashion, shelling a pea; while the son and heir reclined near by, reading an account by a Prussian officer of the third battle of Bull Run. The father, weighted down with dollars, snored in the background.

And beaming on them all with the consciousness of having done his best and done it well, old ’Rasmus stood, singing ventriloquially, so as not to injure the picture, this negro plantation song:

XXVII ’MIDST ARMED FOES

BY THE AUTHOR OF “DUNN TO DEATH; OR, THE WEATHER PROPHET’S FATE,” “SARAH THE SALES-WOM-LADY; OR, FROM COUNTER TO COUNTESS,” ETC.

Raoul Chevreuilly stood within a rude hut in the dark recesses of the forest of Fontainebleau. By his side stood his lady-love, the beautiful Perichole Perihelion. Without, the night was black and the wind roared as it is wont to do in stories of this type.

“Dost fear aught, my precious?” asked Raoul, gazing at the French face of the lovely Parisian.

“Why should I fear when I am protected by my Raoul—how do you pronounce Raoul, anyway?” replied she.

“I long ago gave up trying. But, Perichole, while I would not have you fear, yet it is no light task that I have undertaken—your defense against as fierce a pack of roistering thieves as ever beset the forest and who now surround this hut. Let but the wind die down so that they may be heard, and they will hurl execrations at me and beat down the door. Réné Charpentier seeks my life because I have promised to be yours, or rather because you have promised to be mine. But he shall kill me only at the expense of my life. Yea, though he had twice a hundred myrmidons at his back and beck.”

For answer the entrancing girl took a mother-of-pearl jews’ harp off the wall and played “Mlle. Rosie O’Grady,” “There’ll be a chaud temps in the vieux ville ce soir,” and other simple French ditties.

Instead of admiring her pluck, Raoul was moved to fury, and he cried in French,—this whole business is supposed to be in French, except the descriptions,—“Is it impossible to move you to a realization of my bravery? Know, then, that, save for ourselves, there is not a human being within three miles of this hut. I had thought that you would be moved to added love by such an exhibition of bravery on my part as your defense against a hundred bravos; but, viol di gamba! you have no imagination.”

“And Réné Charpentier?”

“There is no such fellow. He is but a pigment—I mean figment of my brain.”

Flinging a pair of arms around his French neck, the adorable Perichole kissed Raoul again and once more. Then she said, “My adored one, that you were brave I suspected—are you not the hero of a French novel? But I never knew that you were such a lovely liar. Raoul, my own forevermore!”

And her beautiful face beamed with a love-light whose wick had been newly trimmed.

XXVIII AT THE SIGN OF THE CYGNET

A COSMOPOLITAN ROMANCE

I

It was late spring in New England. Buttercups bespangled the grass and nodded and smiled at the apple-blossoms in the trees. And the apple-blossoms nodded in return, and in a few days fluttered down to the buttercups.

On the front stoop of an old baronial castle in the south of France stood Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre. He had been standing there all the morning, he knew not why. True, he looked well, but he would have looked as well anywhere else, and he might have been doing something. Still, there is time. It is but the first chapter.

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, the only daughter of her widowed mother and widowered father, cantered slowly down the roadway that led to Churchill Hall, the home of the Churchills for seven centuries. Her right cheek was overflushed, and ever and anon she bit her chin. England could boast of no prettier girl than Godiva, nor did England boast of it as much as Godiva did.

II

It is summer in New England. The as yet colorless spears of goldenrod give warning that the year is speeding speedily. The buttercups fled long ago with the apple-blossoms, and from the verdant limbs of the apple-trees hang bullet-like apples.

Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre is still in the south of France. My French map is mislaid, and I cannot spell the name of the place he is at, but it is on bottles, I think. He has left the front stoop, and passes his time gazing at the goldfish in the fountain and waiting to be drawn into the plot of my story. Patient man!

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, is still in the saddle, filled with vague longings.

III

Purple asters fringe the highways of New England, and rosy apples depend from the boughs in countless orchards. (I think that scenery is my strong point.)

Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre is chafing at my delay, but continues to reside in the south of France from sheer inertia.

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, has worn out the left fore foot of her horse by her incessant cantering upon the graveled paths of Churchill Hall. She is beginning to feel resentment at me for the enforced monotony of her existence, but heavens! how can I help it? I’m trying my level best to evolve a plot.

IV

The flowers that gladdened the meads and highways and shady lanes of New England are gone. Winter’s robes of office are thrown carelessly over the landscape, and apples in innumerable barrels stand in the cellars, waiting for better prices.

The reason why I have so faithfully described New England scenery is because that’s the only kind of scenery I know anything about.

I am ashamed to confess it, but this is the last chapter, and blamed if I can think of any good reason for the departure of Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre from the south of France. He can’t speak a word of English, and if you’re thinking of Godiva, she can’t speak a syllable of French.

Poor Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb! She is quite lame from her long-continued exercise in the saddle, but still canters aimlessly about. She has become the laughing-stock of all the tenants of Churchill Wolde, and it’s all my fault.

If she saw Armand she’d fall in love with him, but I can’t think of a way to bring about their meeting. That’s what it is to lack invention.

Just imagine me trying to write a novel!

Anyhow, I’ve got a good title for the story.

THE END

XXIX A SCOTCH SKETCH

The shadows lengthened on old Ben Nevis. Surely none of my readers imagines that Ben Nevis is the hero of my simple Scotch sketch. If so, he is awa off. Ben Nevis is a mountain, and I have flung it in as a suitable background for the following conversation:

“Mither, mither, ye’ll mek nae doot o’ haein’ roast beef fer supper,” said Hillocks Kilspindie, as he sat on the old bench in front of their cottage door.

With a troubled look, his mother, old Margaret Kilspindie, replied: “Man, Hillocks, div ye no see me buyin’ the haggis?”

“Yes, mither; but I’m sair sick o’ haggis. Syne Scotch literatoor kem in it’s hard put we are to live at all. I say may the plague take Maclaren and Barrie and Crockett. Before they began to write”—and in his excitement Hillocks was using as good English as any other Scotchman in real life—“roast beef and wheat bread and chops and tomato-sauce and other Christian dishes were good enough for us all. Then came the influx of Americans who wanted to see the scenes made immortal by the ‘Bonnie Brier Bush’ (I wish Ian might have scratched his writing-hand upon it) and the ‘Window in Thrums’ (which I wish some one had broken before Barrie saw it), and now it is haggis in the morning, and haggis at noon, and haggis at night, and Scotch dialect that tears my tongue to pieces all the time.”

“Hech, my bairnie; but thae are wrang words, an’ fu’ o’ unchristian bitterness.”

“Oh, mother! drop your ‘hechs’ and your ‘fu’s.’ There are no Americans about this evening. It’s hard enough to talk the abominable gibberish when we have to, without keeping it up all the time. But, tell me, mother, couldn’t you smuggle in a little roast beef to-night, and let me eat in the cellar?” And a pleading look came into the young man’s eyes that was hard to resist.

“My bairn—I mean my boy, I’d like to, but I dare not. Maclaren’s inspectors are due here any minute, and I could ill afford to pay the heavy fine that would be levied if we were found with as English a thing as roast beef in the house. No, lad, we maun stick to parritch and haggis—I mean we must stick to oatmeal and haggis.”

Just then the sentry that was stationed at the outskirts of the village to warn the villagers of the approach of Americans gave the laugh of warning: “H-O! H-O! H-O!” And, with a bitter look on his face, and a shake of his fist in the direction of Loch Lomond, Ben Nevis, Ben Bolt, and various other bits of Scotch scenery that were scattered about, Hillocks Kilspindie said to his mother: “Weel, as surees deith a’ c’u’dna help it; tae be sittin’ on peens for mair than twa oors, tryin’ tae get a grup o’ a man’s heads. (I learned that this morning, mother. Isn’t it a looloo?)”

“(Indeed it is, my son. Look out! The Americans are almost within ear-shot.) Noo we’ve tae begin an’ keep it up till they gang awa, for there mauna be a cheep aboot the hoose, for Annie’s sake! Here they are.”

“Mither! Mither! if ye lo’e me bring me mair haggis.”

Chorus of Americans. Oh, how adorably Scotch!

“Losh keep us a’, but the childie’ll eat his mither oot o’ hoose an’ hame wi’ his haggis. Ye’ll find some o’ it i’ the cupboard.”

American (politely to Hillocks). Have some haggis on me.

Hillocks (with a canny Scotch leer). Thanks; but I prefer a plate.

UNRELATED STORIES—RELATED

XXX EPHRATA SYMONDS’S DOUBLE LIFE

I

Ephrata Symonds was a knave. Of that there was no doubt. It stuck out all over him. His face was a chart of wickedness, and it was his open boast that he had never done any good in his life, and, please the devil, he never intended doing any. He had married early in life (in a fit of absent-mindedness), but he had long since forsaken his wife and children.

“Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do”; but, to speak in a paradox, Satan never gave him any employment, for he was ever busy—at evil. It was when he was just turned fifty that he was elected a member of the Evil-doers’ Club. He soon became popular, and upon the incarceration of the president of the club, the trusted cashier of the Tyninth National Bank, Symonds was unanimously elected president in his place.

That he was the right man for the position he immediately proved by presenting the club with a fine new club-house, which he assured them was not his to give, or he would not have presented it. In the first six months of his presidency he eloped with two married women at once, and so managed the trip that neither suspected that she was not quite alone in his company. He deserted them both in the West, and returned to pose before his fellow club-members. He diverted to his use the little property of a friendless woman, and in many characteristic ways showed himself to be thoroughly bad.

It was at this period of his life that his death came, and his last words were: “I am thankful that no man is the better for my having lived.”

His fellow Evil-doers mourned his departure with sincerity. They felt that in losing such a thoroughly bad man they had suffered a loss which it would be impossible to repair. As the secretary feelingly put it, “Hell is the worse for having him.” “Yes,” said another; “he was admirably bad. And it is the more to his credit that he was bad in spite of adverse influences. His parents were pious people, and Ephrata had every temptation to lead a life of virtue; but in the face of all the obstacles that his father put in the way of his becoming vicious, he persevered, and yesterday I had the honor of telling his old mother that her son was undoubtedly the most wicked man in New York. It made quite an impression on her. We shall ne’er see his like again.”

The parlors of the Evil-doers’ Club were draped in black, and mock resolutions of sympathy were sent to his deserted wife.

II

Great was the chagrin of the members of the club when it began to be bruited among them that Symonds had been leading a double life; that his wickedness was but a cloak to hide his goodness. The rumors were at first pooh-poohed, but when it was remembered that every third week he had always absented himself from town, the story that he was really a good man began to wear an air of truth. Detectives were set to work, and the damning proofs of his deceitful goodness multiplied rapidly, and at last the facts came out, but only to the club-members. They felt that it would not be creditable to allow such scandalous stories to be repeated to the world at large, which would only too willingly point the finger of scorn at them on learning that their chief officer had, in spite of every lure, gone right. Some might even go so far as to insinuate that maybe other members were better than they seemed to be. No; Symonds’s disreputable goodness should continue to be as well cloaked as he had cloaked it while alive.

The story of his goodness is as follows: It seems that every third week of his life had been spent in Boston, and while there he had earned a large income as a life-insurance agent. It was his wont to spend this money in doing good. Nothing was known in the Hub of his private life. He lived at the Adams House, and cultivated an austerity of manner that repelled people; but by underhand means he contrived to ameliorate a deal of misery.

Having become convinced in his early youth that unostentatious benevolence was preferable to a life of good works blazoned forth to an admiring world, he had habituated himself to every form of vice, in order, under cover of it, to pursue unobserved the efforts he was to put forth for the good of his fellow-men. And he had well succeeded. When Elias Hapgood, who had for thirty years subsisted on the bounty of an unknown benefactor, read in the Boston “Herald” an account of the death of Ephrata Symonds, “the wickedest man in New York,” he breathed a prayer of thankfulness that the world was rid of such a man, little knowing that he was misjudging his best friend. And Elias was but one of scores that had been similarly benefited. Symonds’s charities had been literally endless and invariably anonymous. And now, after having, as it were, lived down his good works, it was a little hard that death should have torn from him the lifelong mask of deceit, and set him before his fellow-members for what he was—a thoroughly good man.

III

It was a special business meeting of the Evil-doers’ Club. The chairman rapped for order, and the secretary read the following resolutions:

“Whereas, It has pleased Nature to take from among us Ephrata Symonds, for some time our honored president;

“Whereas, We had always supposed him to be a man of the most exemplary wickedness, a man before whom all Evil-doers might well hide their diminished heads in despair of ever approaching his level of degradation;

“Whereas, His life had always seemed to us a perfectly unbroken and singularly consistent chain of crimes and enormities to be emulated by us all; and

“Whereas, It has lately come to be known that his wickedness was but a mask to hide a life of well-doing, occupied in its every third week with deeds of kindness and generosity;

“Therefore be it Resolved, That we, as members of this club, have been most shamefully imposed upon;

“Resolved, That we hereby express our contempt for a man who, with every incentive to be always bad, should have so far forgotten himself as to lead a third of a worthy life.”

The secretary had not finished reading the resolutions when a messenger brought in a letter which he handed to the chairman as the clock pointed to eight fifty-eight.

It ran in this fashion:

Fellow-Members: It is, by the time of reading this, probably plain to you that you have been taken in by me, and that, so far from my really having been a wicked person, I was a credit to my race and time.

True to my desire that to the rest of the world I should be accounted a bad man, I have caused to be delivered with this letter a box. It works its purpose at nine o’clock. Sit where you are and do not attempt to escape. The secret of my goodness rests, and shall rest, with you.

Yours insincerely, Ephrata Symonds.

As the chairman finished reading he glanced at the clock. It was on the stroke of nine! He seized the box, and with a wild cry attempted to throw it through the window, but it was too late. A whirring noise was heard, followed by a terrific explosion, that left of club-house and -members naught save a hole in the ground.

Symonds’s culpable goodness remained unknown to the world.

XXXI A STRANGER TO LUCK

When I got off the train at Darbyville, which, as all will remember, is the junction of the L. M. & N. and O. P. & Q. railroads, and found that, owing to an accident, it would be an hour before the train came in on the latter road, I was vexed. Although ordinarily my own thoughts are agreeable companions, yet events of the past week, in which my good judgment had not borne a conspicuous part, made it likely that for the nonce these thoughts of mine would be more or less unpleasant, and so I cast about for some human nature to study.

At one end of the platform three or four farmers were seated upon trunks. They were alert-looking men, and, like me, were waiting for the train. As I neared them, one of their number, a tall, lanky, sharp-boned, knife-featured fellow, imperturbably good-natured-looking, and with an expression of more than ordinary intelligence in his eyes, left them and sauntered off down the road with long, irregular strides.

It was one of those calm, clear, dry days when sounds carry well, and although I did not join them, yet I heard every word of the conversation. Indeed, as their glances from time to time showed, they were not averse to having an auditor.

“It’s cur’us,” said one of them, a ruddy-faced man with a white beard, “how unlucky a man c’n be an’ yit manage to live.” His eyes followed the shambling figure that had just left them. “I’ll help myself to some of thet terbacker, Jed. Left mine to hum, an’ I have the teethache—awful.” This to a short, stout man with a smooth face, who had just taken a liberal mouthful of tobacco from a paper that he drew from his hip-pocket.

“He’p ’se’f!” said the one addressed. Then he added, “Meanin’ Seth, I s’pose?”

“Yes,” replied the other. “I b’lieve thet ef Seth was to hev anythin’ really fort’nit happen to him, it would throw him off his balance.”

“’N’ yit ther’ never was a feller thet better deserved good luck than Seth. Most obligin’ man I ever saw. Ain’t no fool, nuther,” remarked the third and last member of the group, a typical Uncle Sam in appearance, with prominent front teeth, and a habit of laughing dryly at everything that he or any one else said.

“He don’t suffer fer the actooal needs of life, doos he?” asked the stout man whom the others called Jed.

“No—oh, no,” answered Sam (for it turned out that so the typical Yankee was called). “No; he gits enough to eat and wear, but he never hez a cent to lay by, and never will.”

“Don’t drink, doos he?” asked Jed, who seemed to belong to a different town from the one wherein the others and Seth abode. His acquaintance with the one under discussion was evidently by no means intimate.

“No; he ain’t got no vices ’t I know of. Jes’ onlucky.”

“It’s s’prisin’ haow tantalizin’ly clus good fortin hez come to him—different times,” said the one who had asked for the tobacco, and whom the others called Silas.

“You’re right, Silas,” assented Sam. “He c’n come nearer to good luck ’thout techin’ it ’an any man I ever see.”

“Don’t seem to worrit him much,” said Jed. “He seems cheerful.”

“Don’t nothin’ worrit him,” Sam continued. “Most easy-goin’ man on the face of the airth. He don’t ask fer sympathy. He takes great doses of bad luck ’s ef ’twas good fer his health.”

“Never fergit,” said Silas, “the time when he bought a fine new milch Jarsey at auction fer five dollars. Why, he hed two offers fer her nex’ day, an’ I know one of ’em was forty dollars—”

“Well, naow I call that purty lucky,” interrupted Jed.

“Wait!” continued Silas, seating himself more comfortably on a trunk. “Seth he wouldn’t sell. Said he never did hev his fill of milk, an’ he was goin’ to keep her. Very nex’ day, b’ George! she choked on a turnip, an’ when he faound her she was cold. Man sympathized with him. ‘Too bad, Seth,’ says he; ‘ye ’r’ aout forty dollars.’ ‘Five’s all I figger it at,’ says Seth. ‘Didn’t keer to sell.’

“Closest call ’at fortune ever made him was time his uncle Ralzemon aout West died and left him $5000. Everybody was glad, fer every one likes Seth. I was with him when he got the letter f’om the lawyer sayin’ it was all in gold, an’ hed be’n expressed to him, thet bein’ one of the terms of the will. Mos’ shif’less way of sendin’ it, I thought,” declared Silas, compressing his lips. “‘What ye goin’ to do with it, Seth?’ says I. ‘Put it in the bank?’ ‘Ain’t got it yit,’ says he; ‘an’, what’s more, I never will.’ ‘Why d’ ye think so?’ says I. ‘On gin’al principles,’ says he, a-laafin’.

“Sure ’nough, a few days later it was printed in the paper thet a train aout in Wisconsin hed be’n held up by robbers. I was in the post-office when I saw it in the paper, an’ Seth was there too. ‘Bet ye a cooky thet my $5000 was on thet train,’ says he. ‘Won’t take ye,’ says I; ‘fer I’ll bet ye five dollars ’twas, myse’f.’ ‘I’ll take ye,’ says he. B’ George! he lost the five and the $5000 too, fer ’twas on the train, an’ they never could git a trace of it. The robbers hed took to the woods, an’ they never found ’em.”

“Well, I swan!” ejaculated Jed, chewing hard, and regarding with ominous look a knot-hole in the platform.

Silas continued: “I says, ‘I’m sorry fer ye, Seth.’ Says he: ‘I ain’t no poorer ’an I was before I heard he’d left it to me.’”

“He was aout the five dollars he bet, though,” said Jed.

“Wa’n’t, nuther,” said Silas, rather shamefacedly. “I told him thet the bet was off.”

“Why didn’t he sue the comp’ny?” asked Jed.

“’At’s what I advised him doin’, but he said ’twa’n’t no use.”

“I think I heard ’baout his havin’ a fortin left him at the time, but I thought it was f’om a cousin down in South America,” Jed went on, looking inquiringly at Sam.

“Heh, heh! thet was another time,” said Sam, with his dry little laugh. “Good nation! ef all the luck thet’s threatened to hit him hed done it, he’d be the richest man in this caounty. I tell ye, good luck’s allers a-sniffin’ at his heels, but he don’t never git bit. This time he got a letter f’om his cousin, tellin’ him he’d allers felt sorry he hed sech poor luck, an’ he’d made him sole heir of his estate, prob’ly wuth a couple o’ thousand dollars. He hed some oncurable disease, he wrote, an’ the doctors didn’t give him over three months to live—”

“S’pose he lived forever,” put in Jed, chuckling.

“No, sir; he died in good shape, an’ in fac’ he bettered his word, for he didn’t live two months f’om the time he wrote to Seth; but I’m blessed ef they didn’t find there was some claim against the estate thet et it all up. Well, sir, I never saw any one laugh so hard ez Seth when he heard the news. It struck him ez a dretful good joke.”

“He must hev a purty paowerful sense of the ridikerlus,” said Jed, dryly.

“Well, he hez,” assented Sam, rubbing his knees with his horny hands. “Ain’t no better comp’ny ’an Seth. Ain’t never daownhearted.”

After a moment’s silence Silas smiled, and, closing his eyes, pinched them between thumb and forefinger as if calling up some pleasing recollection. At last he said: “Ye know, Seth allers works by the day. He gin’ally has enough to do to keep him busy, an’ allers doos his work up slick, but he never hed stiddy employment, on’y once, an’ then it lasted on’y one day. ’Member that, Sam? Time he went to work at the Nutmeg State clock-shop?”

“Yes, yes,” laughed Sam, driving a loose nail into the platform with his heel.

“Stiddy employment fer a day, eh?” said Jed, grinning. “Thet’s ’baout ez stiddy ez my hired man, an’ he ain’t stiddy at all.”

“It was this way,” Silas went on. “Seth allers was purty slick at han’lin’ tools, an’ Zenas Jordan was foreman of the shop, an’ he offered Seth a place there at twelve dollars a week, which was purty good pay an’ more ’n Seth could make outside, ’thout it was hayin’-time. I met him on his way to work fust mornin’. ‘Well, luck’s with you this time, Seth,’ says I. ‘Sh!’ says he. ‘Don’t say thet, or I’ll lose my job sure. It’s jes better ’n nothin’, thet’s all. Don’t call it good luck’; an’ he laafed an’ went along a-whistlin’. B’ Gosht! ef the blamed ol’ shop didn’t burn daown thet very night, an’, ez ye know, they never rebuilt. Seth he come to me nex’ day, an’ he says, kinder reproachful: ‘You’d orter held yer tongue, Silas. I’d be’n hopin’ thet was a stroke er luck thet hed hit me by mistake, an’ I wasn’t goin’ to whisper its name for fear it’d reckernize me an’ leave me, and you hed to go an’ yell it aout when ye met me.’” And Silas laughed heartily at recollection of the whimsicality.

“Cur’us, ain’t it, what a grudge luck doos hev against some men?” remarked Jed, rubbing his smooth chin meditatively.

Far down the valley I heard the faint whistle of a locomotive.

“Las’ story they tell ’baout Seth ’s this,” Silas said, rising and stretching himself, and then leaning against the wall of the station. “He’s a very good judge o’ poultry, an’, in fac’, he gin’ally judges at the caounty fair every fall. Well, a man daown in Ansony told him he’d pay him ten dollars apiece for a couple of fine thoroughbred Plymouth Rock roosters. Seth knowed a man daown Smithfield way named Jones thet owned some full-blooded stock, but ez he on’y kep’ ’em fer home use he didn’t set a fancy price on ’em, an’ Seth knowed he could git ’em fer seventy-five cents or a dollar apiece. Well, it happened a day or two later he was engaged to do a day’s work fer this man Jones, an’ he went daown there. He see two all-fired fine roosters a-struttin’ raound the place, an’ he cal’lated to buy them; but fer some reason he didn’t say nothin’ ’baout it jes then to Jones, but went to work at choppin’ or sawin’ or whatever it was he was doin’.”

“Said nothin’, did he? Must ha’ sawed wood, then,” interrupted Jed, looking over at me and winking.

“Sure! Well, when it kem time fer dinner he hed got up a good appetite, an’ he was glad to set daown to table, fer Jones is a purty good feeder an’ likes to see people hev enough. Hed stewed chicken fer dinner, an’ Seth says he never enjoyed any so much in his life. After dinner he says, ‘By the way, Jones, what’ll ye take fer those two Plymouth Rock roosters ’t I saw this mornin’?’ Jones bust aout a-laafin’, an’ he says, ‘Ye kin take what’s left on ’em home in a basket an’ welcome!’ Blamed ef Seth hedn’t be’n eatin’ a dinner that cost him nigh on to twenty dollars.”

“Thet must hev riled him some,” remarked Jed.

“No, sir; he never seemed to realize the sitooation.”

XXXII CUPID ON RUNNERS

Littlewood Phillips had been in love with Mildred Farrington for two years, ever since he first met her at the Hollowells’ card-party. He had no good reason to doubt that his love was returned, yet so fearful was he that he had misread her feelings that he had never hinted that she was more to him than any of the girls he met at the church sociables and card-parties in Newington.

So matters stood when a snowfall that brought sleighing in its wake visited Newington, and Littlewood became conscious of the fact that he had actually asked Miss Farrington to take a ride with him. Of course he must perforce bring matters to a crisis now.

The evening was soon at hand. A crescent moon shone in the west, and the stars were cold and scintillating. He walked to the livery-stable and asked for the cutter, and a few moments later he was driving a handsome chestnut to the house where his thought spent most of the time.

Miss Farrington kept him waiting a good half-hour, but he reflected that it was the privilege of her glorious sex, and it only made him love her the more. If she had come out and placed her dainty foot upon his neck he would have been overcome with rapture.

It was cold waiting, so he got out and hitched his horse and paced in front of her house, her faithful sentinel until death—if need be. Not that there was any reason to think that his services would be required, but it pleased his self-love to imagine himself dying for this lovely being of whom his tongue stood in such awe that it could scarce loose itself in her presence.

At last she appears. The restive horse slants his ears at her and paws the ground in admiration of her beauty, for Mildred was as pretty as regular features, a fair skin, and melting eyes could make her.

Littlewood handed her into the sleigh, stepped in himself, tucked in the robes, and chirruped to the horse.

That intelligent animal did not move. A flush of mortification overspread the face of the would-be amorous swain. A balky horse, and at the start! What chance would he have to deliver his precious message that was to make two hearts happy? He clicked again to the horse, but again the horse continued to stand still.

“You might unhitch him, Mr. Phillips. That would help,” said Mildred, in her sweet voice.

“Oh, yes—t-to be sure! I must have tied him. I mean I—er—I di—I think I did hitch—er—”

“There seems to have been a hitch somewhere,” she answered.

He stepped out of the sleigh and looked over his shoulder at her in a startled way. Could she mean anything? Was this encouragement? Oh, no! It was too soon. (Too soon, and he had been in love two years!) He unhitched the horse and once more placed himself beside his loved one.

The frosty night seemed to have set a seal upon her lips, for as they sped over the crunching snow and left the town behind them she was silent.

“I must have offended her. I’ve probably made a break of some kind,” said Littlewood to himself. “How unfortunate! But I must tell her to-night. It is now or never. She knows I never took anybody but my mother sleigh-riding before.”

Then began a process of nerving himself to the avowal. He ground his knees together until the bones ached. His breathing was feverish.

Finally he made bold to say: “Mildewed.” And then he stopped. He had never called her Mildred before. He had never called her Mildewed either, but that was accidental, and he hoped that she had not noticed the slip.

“I have something of the greatest importance to say to you.”

Did he imagine it, or did she nestle closer to him? He must have been mistaken, and to show that he was quite sure he edged away from her as much as the somewhat narrow confines of the sleigh would allow.

“What do you wish to say, Mr. Phillips?”

“Mr.” Phillips! Ah, then she was offended. To be sure, she had always called him that, but after his last remark it must have an added significance.

“I—er—do you like sleigh-riding?”

“Why, of course, or else I shouldn’t have come.”

Did she mean that as a slap at him? Was it only for the ride, and not for his company, that she had come? Oh, he could never make an avowal of love after that! He knew his place. This beautiful girl was not for a faint-hearted caitiff like himself.

“Nun—nun—no, to be sure not. I—er—thought that was why you came.”

Mildred turned her gazelle-like eyes upon him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

That settled it. If she didn’t understand him when he talked of nothing in particular, he must be very blind in his utterance, and he could never trust his tongue to carry such a heavy freight as a declaration of love. No, there was nothing to do but postpone it.

Mildred drank in the beauty of the scenes, and wished that it were decorous for women to propose.

Under the influence of sweet surroundings, Mildred at last said pointedly: “Is it so that more people get engaged in winter than in summer?”

She blushed as she spoke. It was unmaidenly, but he was such a dear gump. Now he would declare himself. But she did not know the capabilities for self-repression of her two-year admirer.

He said to himself: “What a slip! What a delightful slip! If I were unprincipled I would take advantage of it and propose, but I would bitterly reproach myself forever, whatever her answer was.”

So he said in as matter-of-fact tone as he could master when his heart was beating his ribs like a frightened cageling: “I really can’t answer offhand, but I’ll look it up for you.”

“Do. Write a letter to the newspaper.”

Her tones were as musical as ever, but Littlewood thought he detected a sarcastic ring in them, and he thanked his stars that he had not yielded to his natural desire to propose at such an inauspicious time.

“What was that important thing you wanted to say?” asked Miss Farrington, after several minutes of silence, save for the hoofs and the runners and the bells.

“Oh, it wasn’t of any importance! I mean it will keep. I—er—I was thinking of something else.”

“I think you have gone far enough,” said she, innocently, looking over her shoulder in the direction of home. Maybe the return would loosen his obdurate tongue.

His heart stopped beating and lay a leaden thing in his breast. Had he, then, gone too far? What had he said? Oh, why had he come out with this lovely being, the mere sight of whom was enough to make one cast all restraint to the winds and declare in thunderous tones that he loved her?

“I think that we’d better go back,” he said, and turned so quickly that he nearly upset the sleigh. “Your mother will be anxious.”

“Yes; when one is accountable to one’s mother one has to remember time. I suppose it is different when one is accountable to a—”

“Father?” said Littlewood, asininely.

“No; that wasn’t the word I wanted.”

“A-a-aunt?”

Could Mildred love him if he gave many more such proofs of being an abject idiot?

“No; husband is what I want.”

Littlewood’s brain swam. He had been tempted once too often. This naïve girl had innocently played into his hands, and now the Rubicon must be crossed, even if its angry waters engulfed him.

“Pardon me, Miss—er—Mildred,”—he did not say Mildewed this time,—“if I twist your words into another meaning, but if you—er—want a husband—do you think I would do?”

A head nestled on his shoulder, a little hand was in his, and when he passed the Farrington mansion neither he nor she knew it.

XXXIII MY TRUTHFUL BURGLAR

I had an experience with a burglar night before last. My family are all away, and I have been living alone in the house, a detached villa in New Jersey, for upward of a month. Several burglaries have occurred in the vicinity.

Night before last I was awakened about four o’clock by a noise made by a clicking door, and opening my eyes, I saw a smooth-faced, determined-looking man at my bedside. I did not cry out, nor hide under the bedclothes, nor do any of the conventional things that one does when a burglar comes to him.

I looked at him calmly for a moment, and then I said, “How d’ do?”

An expression of surprise passed over his intelligent features, but he said mechanically, “Pretty well, thank you. And you?”

“Oh, I’m as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Are you the burglar who has been doing this village?”

“I am,” said he, drawing up a chair and sitting down.

“Why don’t you deny it?” I asked. I wasn’t afraid. He amused me, this nonchalant burglar.

“Well, because I’m not ashamed of my profession, for one reason, and mainly because I was brought up by my father to tell the truth.”

“You tell the truth, and yet you are a burglar. How can you reconcile those facts?”

“They are not irreconcilable,” said he, taking a corn-cob pipe out of his pocket and filling it. “I am a burglar, and my father was one before me, but he was a perfectly honorable man. He never lied, and I never lie. I steal because that is my profession, but I make it a rule to tell the truth upon all occasions. Why, if the success of my venture to-night depended upon my lying to you, I’d immediately leave this place, as innocent of plunder as when I came in. Where’s the silver?”

“Top drawer of the sideboard.” There was a magnetism, a bonhomie, about the man that captivated me.

“Are you armed?” asked he, as he puffed at his pipe.

“If I had been I’d have winged you before this,” said I, laughing.

“I believe you, and I honor you for being perfectly frank with me.”

“Why, as to that, I’m not to be outdone in frankness by a thief.”

“That will make my task so much the easier. After I’ve finished this pipe I want you to give me your word that you’ll lie still until I’ve taken all I want.”

I admired the man’s nerve, and I said: “For the time being I consider you my guest, and, Spanish fashion, my house is at your disposal.”

“Don’t put it on that basis, or I will leave at once. This is no time for aping the Spanish.”

“You are right. But I tell you candidly that I would far rather have found out that you were a liar than a burglar. Your lies would not be likely to injure me, but I’ll be out just so much by what you take. I’d much rather you were a liar.”

“And I would not. If I steal, I do but take something that, to paraphrase Shakspere, was yours, is mine, and has been slave to thousands; but to lie would be to ‘lay perjury to my soul,’ and that I would not do, ‘no, not for Venice’!”

“I see you know Shakspere,” said I, punching my pillow so that I could be more comfortable. I was reading this odd fellow, and I believed that I could dissuade him from his purpose.

“Know Shakspere? I was an actor once.”

I felt that I had him, for I know actors better than he knew Shakspere.

“Did you ever play Hamlet?” I asked, sitting up in bed.

“I did; and I made such a hit that if it hadn’t been for the venality of the press and my sense of honor, I would have been adjudged one of the greatest Hamlets of the day.”

“Give me the soliloquy. I give you my word that ordinarily I’d rather be robbed than hear it, but I like your voice and I believe that you can do it justice.”

A self-satisfied smile illuminated his face. He laid down the pipe and gave me the soliloquy, and it wasn’t bad.

“Bully!” I said, when he had finished. “Why, man, you make an indifferent thief, else you would have decamped long ago; but the stage has lost an actor that would have in time compelled the unwilling admiration of the press.”

And so I jollied him, and he gave me the trial scene from “The Merchant of Venice,” and other selections, until dawn began to show in the east, when he picked up his bag and said, “It would be a shame to rob a white man like you.” Then he bade me good-by and left.

And I congratulated myself upon my knowledge of human nature, until I began to dress, when I found that the fellow had finished his burgling before I woke, and he has all my silver.

XXXIV THE MAN WITHOUT A WATCH

Thomas Morley knew the value of promptitude. He was a young man on whom ninety-two seasons had poured benefits and adversities, although many of the latter he took to be the former, his temperament shedding sorrow as a duck does water, to use a castanean simile.

He was a born and bred New-Yorker, but at the time of which we write he had been living for the last ten or twelve months in Uxton, up among the hills of northwestern Connecticut, studying the natives; for he was a writer.

Having filled a portfolio with material for enough dialect stories to run one of the great magazines for a year, he determined to seek his matter in the metropolis, and to that end applied for a reportership on the New York “Courier-Journal,” in which paper many of his brightest things had appeared at remunerative rates.

As has been said, he knew the value of promptitude, so when, at eight o’clock one night, Farmer Phelps’s hired man handed him a letter from James Fitzgerald, managing editor of the “Courier-Journal,” asking him to come and see him in regard to a reportership as soon as possible, he made up his mind to take the train which left Winsonia, four miles distant, at six o’clock next morning. This would enable him to reach the office by half-past ten, and probably catch Mr. Fitzgerald on his arrival at his desk.

Next morning he arose at four, and when he left the house he had sixty minutes in which to walk four miles downhill—ample time, surely.

It was so ample that he would have had fifteen minutes to spare if the home clock had been right. As it was, he arrived at the station in time to see the train rapidly disappearing around a curve, on its way to New York. He laughed good-naturedly with the baggageman, and asked him when the next down train was due.

“Seven-thirty, sharp. You’ll not have to wait long.”

Seven-thirty. That would bring him into the presence of Mr. Fitzgerald at just about the time he arrived at his sanctum. “Better than to have to wait in a presumably stuffy room,” said he to himself, philosophically. He lit a cigar, and, as the air was bracing and he was fond of walking, he struck out into a five-mile-an-hour gait down the main street of Winsonia.

His footsteps led him farther than he had intended going, and when he reached the Baptist church at East Winsonia, he saw by its clock that it lacked but forty minutes of train-time, and he had four miles to make. He threw away the stump of his cigar, which had been out for some time, broke into a jog-trot, and, after covering a mile, he caught his second wind and mended his pace.

His fleetness would have served its turn had not a malicious breeze blown his hat over a high iron fence that surrounded a churchyard. By the time he had climbed the fence and recovered his hat he had consumed so many precious minutes that, although he sprinted the last mile, he arrived at the station only in time to see train No. 2 disappearing around that hateful curve.

The baggageman was standing on the platform, and he said:

“Ain’t once enough?”

“More than enough for most people,” said Thomas, whose rare good nature was proof against even such a remark at such a time.

The next train for New York was due at nine fifty-six. Being somewhat blown, he walked around the corner to a billiard-room, meaning to sit down and watch whatever game might be in progress.

“It may be,” soliloquized Thomas, “that Fitzgerald won’t reach the office until after lunch, and I’ll get there at half-past two, in time to see him when he’s feeling good.”

He met Ned Halloway at the billiard-room, and when Ned asked him to take a cue he consented. Billiards was a game in which he was apt to lose—himself, at any rate; yet to-day his mind was enough on the alert to enable him, after a time, to glance at the clock over the bar in the next room. It was forty-five minutes past eight.

They began another game. Later he looked again at the clock. A quarter of nine. After another game he looked up once more. “Fifteen minutes to ni—. Say, Ned, what’s the matter with that clock?” Ned looked at it, then at his watch. “Why, it’s stopped!”

“You settle—see you later.” And Thomas was gone like a shot.

This time he had the rare pleasure of noting how the rear car of a train grows rapidly smaller as it recedes. In a moment the train disappeared around the curve before mentioned.

“Say, Mr. Morley, you’ve time to miss the next, easy,” said the baggageman, dryly.

Thomas was vexed, but he said pleasantly: “When is it due?”

“Half-past two. Better wait here and make sure of it.”

“Oh, dry up! No; do the other thing; it’s on me.”

After this little duty had been performed, Thomas, with an irrelevancy of action that might have struck an observer as amusing, made his way to the Y.M.C.A. rooms to read the magazines.

“Let’s see,” said he; “I’ll get to his desk at seven. He’ll be hard at work, and, if he engages me, he may send me out on an assignment at once. Glad I missed the other trains.”

Thus was Thomas wont to soliloquize. At one o’clock he went to Conley’s Inn, and sat down to one of those dinners that attract drummers to a hotel. Necessarily, then, it was a good dinner, and one over which he lingered until nearly two. Then he went into the office and sat down.

The room was warm, and his dinner had made him drowsy. He decided to take a little nap. He had the faculty of waking when he pleased, and he willed to do so at fifteen minutes past two. It would be weakness for him to get to the station with too much time to spare, but this would give him a quarter-hour in which to go a half-mile.

His awakening faculty would seem to have been slightly out of order that day, however, and he did not arouse until twenty-nine minutes past two by the hotel clock.

Of course he did not make a fool of himself by trying to do a half-mile in sixty seconds; but he walked leisurely toward the station, intending to get his ticket and have that off his mind.

He laughed heartily at a corpulent fellow who darted by him, carrying a grip.

His laughter ceased, however, when, on turning the corner, he discerned the aforesaid fat man in the act of being assisted on to the platform of the last car by the brakeman, the train having acquired considerable momentum. Then he saw it disappear around a curve which was part of the road at that point. There were three explanations possible: either the train was behind time, or else his awakening faculty was in good repair, or the hotel clock was fourteen minutes fast. The latter proved to be the correct explanation of the somewhat vexing occurrence.

“Say, that’s a bad habit you have of missing trains,” said his friend the baggageman. “Goin’ to miss another—or do anything else?”

“No,” said Thomas, shortly.

He knew that the next train at five was the last. This would make it possible to reach Fitzgerald at half-past nine. “Right in the heat of the work. He’ll engage me to get rid of me,” laughed Thomas to himself. Then he continued: “I never heard of a man missing every train in a day, so I’ll risk calling on Laura before the next one starts.”

Miss Sedgwick, the one he called Laura, lived out of town near the railroad track, and two miles nearer New York than Winsonia station.

She was a captivating girl, and when Thomas was in her presence he never took heed of time. He was lucky enough to find her at home. She seemed glad to see him, and was much interested in his account of how near he had come to catching some trains that day; and as nothing is so engaging as a good listener, the minutes passed on pneumatic tires. When at last he took note of the hour, it was five o’clock.

“That clock isn’t right, is it?”

“Yes, sir. Father keeps it at railroad time. Mercy! you’ve lost your train again, haven’t you?”

“Laura, this time it’s bad. I won’t see him to-day, now, and to-morrow may not do. Let me go and kick myself.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Tom. I hope to-morrow won’t be too late.”

Thomas squeezed her hand and left her, feeling rather blue.

The railroad track was but a block away, and he walked over to it, not with suicidal intent, but just that he might tantalize himself with a view of the train as it sped by, which it should do in about a minute.

“At any rate,” said he, “it won’t be going around that dreadful curve.”

It was the last of December, and the sun had set. When he reached the track he saw, far away, a glimmer of the headlight of the five-o’clock express.

Nearer and nearer it came. A moment more and it would rush by like a meteor. But it didn’t. It slackened up at the very corner on which Thomas stood, to allow an official of the road to jump off.

Thomas was not slow, if he did miss trains now and then. He swung himself on to the smoker.

“Go’n’ far?” asked the brakeman.

“To New York,” was his reply.

“You’re in luck.”

“Well, I’ve not missed more than three or four trains in my life!” said Thomas; and it was strictly true.

Half-past nine to the minute found him outside of the editorial rooms of the “Courier-Journal.”

“Can I see Mr. Fitzgerald?” he asked of a boy who came in response to a knock.

“No, sir; he went out of town yesterday. Be back to-morrow at twelve.”

“Did you get my letter already?” asked Mr. Fitzgerald of Thomas Morley, when he came to his desk next morning and found that young man waiting for him.

“Yes, sir; and here I am.”

“Well, sir, I like your promptness, and I’ll give you the place of a man whom we had to discharge for being too slow. You seem to have what a reporter needs most of all—the ‘get there’ quality.”

“I didn’t allow any trains to pass me,” said Thomas, modestly.

XXXV THE WRECK OF THE “CATAPULT”

BY CL-RK R-SS-LL

If there be those who love not the sea, with its storms, its seaweed, its sharks and shrimps and ships, this is not the story for them, and they would best weigh anchor and steer for some tale written by a landlubber and full of green meadows and trees and such tommy-rot, for this is to be chock-a-block with nautical phrases.

And who am I, you ask? I am Joseph Inland, the tenth of that name. We have always lived and died here in Birmingham, and followed the trade of cutlers; but when I was a babe of one year father told mother ’twas time one member of the family followed the sea, wherever it went, and that he intended to make a sailor of me.

So before I was six I had heard of sloops and ferry-boats and belaying-pins and admirals and salt-junk, and longed to hear the wind whistling through the maintopgallantmast, and could say “boat-swain” as glibly as any sailor afloat. But father was in moderate circumstances; and so, much as he would have liked to, he could not afford to send me to sea when I was a boy, and that is why my one-and-twentieth birthday came and went and I had never been farther from Birmingham than my legs could carry me in a day; but you may be sure that I subscribed to the “Seaman’s Daily,” and through a friend who knew a sailor I had picked up such terms as “amidships,” “deck,” “boom,” “bilge-water,” “forecastle,” and the like, so that I was a seaman in everything save actual experience.

And in the amateur dramatic society of which I was a member I always played sailors’ parts, and did them so well that when we played “Hamlet” they changed the part of the grave-digger to that of a sailor for me, and I made a great hit in it. The one who played Hamlet didn’t like the change, as it interfered with his lines and his business with a skull, and he refused to come on at all in that act; but I sang a sea-song instead, and the newspaper came out and said that my singing was no worse than his acting would have been, which I thought pretty neat.

But enough of that. I was always fond of joking, and had nigh unto a score of comical sayings that I used to repeat to my friends when they would come to our house of an evening; but they didn’t often come. My father said I was as comical a lad as he ever knew, and would slap me on the back and roar that it was the funniest thing he had heard in a twelvemonth when I made one particular joke, the tenor of which I forget now. But all the jokes dealt with the sea.

Well, so much for my life up to my one-and-twentieth birthday. You have learned that if ever a body was fitted for a sea life, that body was mine.

By the time I was six-and-twenty I don’t believe there was a sea term that I did not have at my tongue’s end, and I always wore my trousers wide at the lower end, and kept a chew of tobacco in my mouth day and night, although after a time I failed to notice any taste in it.

It was a gladsome sight to see me go rolling to my work in the cutler’s shop (for I still followed the old trade), with a hearty “Ho, landsman! good mornin’ to ye!” to all I met, in true sailor fashion.

Our fare at home consisted of loblolly, ship’s-biscuit, salt-junk, and plum-duff, with water drawn from casks. My dear old mother used sometimes to wish for home-made bread and fresh meat and vegetables and pump water; and I remember, one winter, brother died of the scurvy; but I was better content than if he had died of some landsman’s complaint, and mother was glad to put up with anything, she was so proud that I was to be a seaman.

I had a carpenter construct my parents’ bedroom so that the whole floor could be rocked; and on stormy nights I would stay up and by a simple mechanism keep it a-rocking until poor old mother would be as sick as if she were in the Channel. But I never heard her murmur. She was fit for a sailor’s wife.

On such nights father never went to bed, but stayed down-stairs. There was little of the seaman’s spirit in the old man.

When I was one-and-thirty I had a rare chance to ship before the mast on a whaler sailing from Liverpool; but as business was pretty brisk at the shop, I decided to wait, and the offer was not renewed when she returned, three years later.

When I was forty dear mother entered her last port. The doctor, a blundering landlubber, fond of landsmen’s phrases, said she died of insufficient nutriment. Be that as it may or what it may, in her I lost one whose heart was always on my going to sea. Douse my top-lights if ever there was a craft that carried a stancher heart from barnacle to binnacle than did the old lady, and I had her buried in shrouds, with a cannon-ball at the foot of the coffin, as befitted the mother of one who was going to be a seaman.

After she died I became even more impatient to be off to sea, for there’s no air so pure as the sea air, no hearts so true as seamen’s hearts, no weed like seaweed, and no water that’s fit to drink save sea water; but business was pretty good, so, for the present, I decided to stay ashore; but I always read the shipping news with as much keenness as any sailor afloat.

And now I’ve come to the end of my yarn. I named it “The Wreck of the ‘Catapult’” because it had a salty savor. It was the name of one of my favorite Sunday-school books when I was a lad. Now I am an old man, threescore and ten, and have been alone in the world a score of years. Heaven denied me the blessing of children, but I have a grandson who is as hot for the sea as I was.

Ah, me! Next week I am going to apply for admission to the Sailors’ Home; for although circumstances have prevented my ever seeing the ocean or scenting its salty breezes, I have always been, and always shall be, at heart a British seaman.

Shiver my timbers!

ESSAYS AT ESSAYS

XXXVI THE BULL, THE GIRL, AND THE RED SHAWL

There is no incident in all the realms of literature, from the “penny dreadful” up to the three-volume novel, that has afforded so much material for the pen of the writer of fiction as the delightful episode of the bull, the young girl with the red shawl, and the young girl’s lover. Sometimes the cast includes the lover’s hated rival, but the story may be told without using him.

It is thirty-odd years since I first came across this thrilling adventure in the pages of a child’s book, very popular at the time. How well I remember how my young blood—to be exact, my seven-year-old blood—thrilled as I mentally watched this frail girl, with a start of just three feet, lead the tremendous and horribly savage bull in a three-hundred-yard sprint, only to trip at last on the only obstruction in the ten-acre field; how, just as the bull reached her, she flung her red shawl a few rods to the right; how the bull, leaving her, plunged after it; how she, weak and trembling, ran to the stone wall and managed to vault it just as her lover, a brawny blacksmith, who had seen the whole affair at too great a distance to be of immediate service, reached the wall and received her in his arms. “Oh, Kenston,” she murmured, “you have saved my life!” And then she fainted, and I believe the bull ate up the shawl; at any rate, its part in that particular story was ended.

I have always felt that, thrilling as this scene was, it had not been worked for all it was worth; but an extensive reading since then has brought me to the conclusion that, first and last, it has been worked for its full value.

The next time that I read the enthralling narrative I was some years older, but the memory of the other telling was still fresh within me; and so, when, in the second chapter, I read about a savage old bull, one Hector, the property of Squire Flint, the meanest man in the county,—not that his meanness had anything to do with the story, but it is one of the conventions that a savage bull shall be owned by a cross, crabbed, and thoroughly stingy man,—I say, when I had read thus far my pulse quickened. Inexperienced as I was, I somehow sensed the coming situation. I seemed to know as by clairvoyance that, however limited the heroine’s wardrobe might be in some respects, there was one article of apparel that she surely possessed, or would possess in time to meet the exigencies. True enough, in the very next chapter her maiden aunt, a saintly old lady of ninety, died and bequeathed to her sorrowing niece a red pongee shawl of great value—as a bull-enrager. The book had seemed prosy at the start, but now that I knew what was coming, and that it was that that was coming, I read on breathlessly.

Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk would lead them! The mad bull—in this case it was mad, although any old bull will do, mad or not—was rampant in a lot a mile south of the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing over a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along, intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,—in the middle of a particularly hot July,—so that the girl could have an excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, turned and saw Hector, his horns gyrating with rage, his eyes bulging out, and his head lowered as he thundered along straight for the pongee bequest. To take her under his strong arm and to rush forward were the only things for the young man to do, and he did them; and then the rest ran as per schedule. I believe that in this case the young man threw the girl into a tree and then plunged down a woodchuck’s hole. At any rate, the girl was unharmed. That is the one unalterable formula in constructing these bull stories: save the girl unharmed. You may break the young man’s leg or arm, and you may do what you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through unscathed.

It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and in that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the red shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to be infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier chapters, and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too, the girl was in deep mourning—for her lover! But the ten-acre lot was all right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he would find a way to run the act with a small cast and no properties. So I read on, and after wondering, together with the girl herself, what could have caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up and head down, the full length of a particularly long pasture, she and I found out when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had picked up her cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant scarlet. She had no lover, for, as I say, he had died—two chapters before the book was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so she inserted the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then opened it, and while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she reached the fence and vaulted it in the usual way.

The possibilities of the incident are by no means exhausted, and so far from “Amos Judd” being the last story in which it was used, I saw it in a tale published this month, and this time with the full paraphernalia of hated rival, lover, red shawl, and all; but for me it had lost its zest. To be sure, if they would make the hero an athlete, and have him bravely stand his ground while the girl climbed to the top of an enormous elm, and then, just as the bull lowered his head to toss him, have the hero jump high in the air and make the bull pass beneath him, and as he reached ground again seize the bull, not by the horns, but by the tail, and, swinging it three times around his head, dash it against a tree and stun it,—that is, if its tail were securely welded to its body,—there would be an original treatment of the subject. And if its tail were but loosely fixed to it, the hero could pull it out, and the bull, filled with chagrin, would walk off, dismayed and humiliated.

But, pending that form of the story, I am studiously avoiding all novels that contain heroines with red shawls, or that make early reference to fierce bulls, or that speak of a certain ten-acre lot peculiarly adapted for lovers’ peregrinations; for, like the successful burglar, I know the combination.

XXXVII CONCERNING DISH-WASHING

Has the reader ever considered how much time is wasted every day by busy women in the work of washing dishes? Of course, if a man has plenty of money and, from philanthropic motives, engages a girl to perform this unpleasant—I had almost said “duty”—this unpleasant task, I suppose we cannot, strictly speaking, regard her time as wasted, for she might else be loafing in an intelligence-office without gaining a scrap of that article. I refer to the lives led by weary housewives who, having no aid from a hired housemaid, day out and day in will make themselves thin by the never-ceasing and perfectly useless grind of dish-washing; for the dishes don’t stay clean for more than a few hours.

For years I ate my meals in selfish content, little recking at what cost the clean service was gained, until I discovered that my sister, who is also my housekeeper, had sold her piano, not having time to play upon it. I was shocked to think what a power this custom of dish-washing had over the minds of the feminine portion of our public.

But this dreadful waste of time that is going on in thousands of homes in this country every day was brought home to me in a still more striking manner not long after. My sister went away to visit a friend, and left me to keep bachelor’s hall. I had always had a good taste for cooking, although hitherto my practice had been confined to boiling eggs and buttering hot toast on a plate at the back of the stove. The first meal that I prepared, a breakfast, consisted of oatmeal, steak, fried potatoes, bread, butter, milk, and water. We will pass over the meal itself, as its discussion is foreign to our purpose. Indeed, the less said about it the better. It was nine when I had finished eating, and dumped my dishes and knives and forks into tepid water. I am a fast worker, but the clock in the neighboring church had ceased striking twelve when my last dish was wiped and put away.

I had hoped to do a little writing that morning, but it was now time to get luncheon. Luckily, that meal called into play very few dishes, and by two, or half-past, I had made an end of my second stint. Feeling elated that I had a whole afternoon on my hands, I prepared a course dinner. I found some cold soup in the refrigerator, and I bought a bluefish, five or six pounds of beef for roasting, some Parker House rolls, and a lemon-pie for dessert. There were lettuce and eggs in the house, and plenty of canned vegetables. I also made some good coffee, with the aid of a French coffee-pot, that indispensable adjunct of a well-ordered household. I found that the courses were very hard to manage so that they would follow in their proper order. They weren’t even satisfied to finish together like evenly matched racers, but the roast was burned five minutes before I thought of warming up the soup, and ten minutes before I had scaled the fish. Then the latter wouldn’t broil readily until most of it was in the fire. The vegetables I forgot entirely, and I decided at the last moment to deny myself the salad, as dinner was waiting and I was hungry. I might add that I inadvertently cut the pie with the fish-knife, and that cast a damper on the dessert. However, as I said, the coffee was good—and, anyhow, I am digressing.

It was seven when I emptied my dishes into the water, and I worked with a will, as I had a very exciting novel that I was desirous of finishing. It was a few minutes past eleven when I emptied my dish-pan for the last time, and then I was ripe for bed.

As time wore on I became more dexterous in the use of the dish-cloth and -towel, and the day before sister returned I devoted but six hours to dish-washing. To be sure, I had given up course dinners, because they took too many plates, and for other reasons that need not to be quoted here.

As I say, I am a fast worker, and yet it took me over six hours a day to clean the crockery. Assuming that a woman can do it in eight hours, she wastes half of her waking moments in drudgery beside which the making of bricks without straw would be a pastime.

There is absolutely nothing in the dish-washing habit to recommend it. It is ruinous to hands and temper, and, indeed, I do not see but that it is immoral. Anything that puts us in the proper mood for swearing is immoral, and there is nothing in the whole housekeeping routine so conducive to highly spiced language as dish-washing.

And to what purpose is this waste of time? I won’t go so far as to advocate a return to the fingers that were used before forks for the purpose of conveying food to the mouth, for that would but relieve us from the washing of cutlery; but I will say that the man who will invent a cheap yet very ornate dinner service that may be destroyed after once using will have earned the undying gratitude of the women of this country and a princely fortune besides.

And when he has invented it, sister may go on another visit.

XXXVIII A PERENNIAL FEVER

The world hears much of the dangers of typhoid and yellow and scarlet fever, and the skill of physicians is ever employed to reduce those dangers to a minimum; but in every country, at all seasons of the year, there is a fever that numbers its victims by the thousand, and yet no doctor has ever prescribed for it, nor is there any drug in the pharmacopœia that will alleviate it.

The malady to which I refer is hen fever.

If a city woman intends marrying a city man, and then moving out a little way into the country, as she values her peace of mind, let her make sure that he is immune. Unless, indeed, both are prepared to come down with it at once. For it is unlike all other fevers in that a man and his wife may have it together and be happy; but if he or she have it alone, then woe be to that house.

The germs of hen fever are carried in a chance conversation, in a picture of gallinaceous activity, in the perusal of a poultry-book. A man hears or looks or reads, and the mischief is done. The subtle poison is in his blood, although he knows it not.

Hen fever takes various forms. With some it is manifested in a desire to keep a few blooded fowls and breed for points; with another, to keep a few birds for the sake of fresh eggs and broilers: but in whatsoever form it come, it will cause the upheaval of its victim’s most cherished plans and habits.

He may have been an ardent admirer of Shakspere, and in the evenings it has been his wont to read aloud to his wife while she knitted; but now, little recking what she does, he reads to himself “Farm Poultry” or “The Care of Hens,” or—and this is the second stage of the disease—he reads aloud to her that hens cannot thrive without plenty of gravel, that cracked wheat is better than whole corn for growing pullets, that the best way to cure a hen of eating her own eggs is to fill one with mustard, etc.

Time was when he had an opinion on politics, on finance, on literature, on the thousand and one things that make for conversation, and his neighbors dropped in to hear him talk engagingly of what he had read or seen; but now, when they come, he tells them that his brown Leghorn hen laid twenty eggs in twenty-five days, while his buff Cochin laid only eight in the same time; that his white Plymouth Rock is crop-bound, and his Wyandotte rooster has the pip.

Lucky indeed is his wife if he stick to the good old way of hatching chickens by hens instead of kerosene-oil; for if he get an incubator she had better get a divorce. How many homes have been wrecked by patent incubators will never be known.

But even if the fevered one stick to the natural method of hatching, there will be many times when his wife will wonder why she left a comfortable and sociable home to spend her evenings alone; for he will be in the hen-house, setting hens, or washing soiled eggs, or divesting nestlings of the reluctant shell, or dusting his whole flock with the snuff-like insecticide, or kerosening their roosts.

With some the fever never abates; with some it is intermittent; some have it hardest in the spring of the year, when hens are laying their prettiest, and profits may be figured in money as well as on paper. But whether it be light or heavy, hen fever will run its course without let or hindrance; and, as I have hinted, happy is the wife who comes down with it simultaneously with her husband; for, though their neighbors will shun them as they would a deadly pestilence, yet they will be company for each other, and will prate ceaselessly, yet cheerily, upon the best foods for laying hens, the best exposure for coops, how many hens can live in one house with best results, when a chicken should be weaned of bread, what breed of hens is least idiotic, and kindred topics.

As for me, I am free to come and go among hens; to look on their markings with unmoved eye; to view their output with normal pulse; to hear “the cock’s shrill clarion” without pricking up my ears; to read of the latest thing in incubators without turning a hair: for I have survived the fever; I am an immune.

XXXIX “AMICUS REDIVIVUS”

Josephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might well be applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of us has not at some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,” a “qualis ab incepto,” as it were, permeating his whole being, and bringing vividly before the retina the transitory state of all things worldly? As Chaucer said:

For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.

It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,” said:

but how pat is the application to-day! We are as clouds. You who boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all remember those lambent lines of his—I cannot translate adequately, so I will quote from the original German:

Fräulein Anna, das Papier in Deutschland ist wie das Papier in Amerika.

Ages ago Sophocles had worded it in almost the same phrase:

The greatest poets, from Le Gallienne down to Shakspere, have been aware of this evanescent property in the cumbrous and exsufflicate prowlers amid these “glimpses of the moon.” Well may we say with Cæsar, “Quamdiu se bene gesserit.”

There is always a touch of ozone in the words of Horace, and we find him saying of this very thing, “Precieuse ridicules pretiosa supellex.” Could it have been said better? How airily he pricks the bubble of man’s self-esteem! “Dressed in a little brief authority,” man plays his part amid mundane happenings tremelloid and sejant, and with a sort of innate connascence, a primitive conglutinate efflorescence, he approaches nearer and nearer, day by day, to that time when, as Shakspere hath it, “the beachy girdle of the ocean” will resolve itself into its component parts, and man as man will cease to exist.

But, to pass to a more inchoate view of these things,—to the “opum furiata cupido” of the ancient Latins,—what is there in all this that tends to lessen a man’s self-glorification, his auto-apotheosis? Victor Hugo can tell us:

The author of “Les Misérables” was himself a man, and he knew. And no less a man was Coplas de Manrique, and in his beautiful lyric, “Caballeros,” he says:

“Noblesse oblige,” and it behooves all of us, however mighty our positions in life, to unbend a little and try to mollify these manducable and irresoluble phases of molecular existence, to the end that we may accomplish a “vis medicatrix naturae” and a “vade mecum” that shall be valuable to us in our journey to the tomb and through nether space.

So, then, may we “with an unfaltering trust approach our grave,” and, as Schiller says so musically:

Ich kann nicht mit der linken Hand schreiben.

XL THE PROPER CARE OF FLIES

It is a fact beyond cavil that ninety-nine flies out of a hundred perish every year for lack of proper care on the part of housewives; that the attention that is lavished upon the house-cat, if expended upon the house-fly, would cause him to stay with us throughout the twelvemonth.

I have devoted years of patient study to the busy buzzers, and I speak as one having authority. Flies need warmth as much as humans do—nay, more than their biped brethren, for we can stand the early autumn frosts without a fire, but it is those few days that kill off the little fellows that have been our winged companions through the summer season, singing in the new day, sampling our butter and meats, and tickling us half to death with their erratic pilgrimages and divagations. A little forethought on our part, a speedier lighting of the furnace fires, and flies in midwinter would no longer be a rarity.

This well-nigh universal carelessness is due to a woeful ignorance as to the habits of the fly, and not to intentional cruelty. Why, we know more about the ways of the wapiti than of the most common occupant of our houses. To give an instance, most people refer to the fly as a scavenger, a lover of tainted meats and vegetables. This is only because he is so often forced to eat tainted meat or go without altogether. There are fresh milk and fish for the cat, dainty tidbits for the dog, millet and rape for the canary; yet how many Christian people think to provide something tempting for the flies? But too often we begrudge them the crumbs that fall from the table.