E-text prepared by John Bickers and Dagny and revised by Joseph E.
Loewenstein, M.D.



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THE GENTLE GRAFTER

by

O. HENRY

Illustrated by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston

1919







[Illustration: "They began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars."
(Frontispiece)]




CONTENTS

   I. The Octopus Marooned
  II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
 III. Modern Rural Sports
  IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics
   V. The Hand That Riles the World
  VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony
 VII. A Midsummer Masquerade
VIII. Shearing the Wolf
  IX. Innocents of Broadway
   X. Conscience in Art
  XI. The Man Higher Up
 XII. A Tempered Wind
XIII. Hostages to Momus
 XIV. The Ethics of Pig





THE OCTOPUS MAROONED


"A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.

"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such
as, 'Why is a policeman?'"

"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a
policeman. My remark was an epitogram--an axis--a kind of mulct'em in
parvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not
like an egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the
outside. The only way to break up a trust is from the inside. Keep
sitting on it until it hatches. Look at the brood of young colleges
and libraries that's chirping and peeping all over the country. Yes,
sir, every trust bears in its own bosom the seeds of its destruction
like a rooster that crows near a Georgia colored Methodist camp
meeting, or a Republican announcing himself a candidate for governor
of Texas."

I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered,
plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise of
the class to which the word "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to my
surprise he acknowledged the corner.

"Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into
a charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimate
octopusing. We had everything in our favor--wind, water, police,
nerve, and a clean monopoly of an article indispensable to the public.
There wasn't a trust buster on the globe that could have found a weak
spot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculation
look like a bucket shop. But we lost out."

"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.

"No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of
auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson
says.

"You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for some
years. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I ever
saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as
a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy was
educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had
acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for
hours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been
in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic
lantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Association
convention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood
alcohol distilled from nutmegs.

"One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip
during which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a half
interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all
right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three
thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.

"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
against a little town in Texas on the bank of the Rio Grande. The
name of it was Bird City; but it wasn't. The town had about 2,000
inhabitants, mostly men. I figured out that their principal means of
existence was in living close to tall chaparral. Some of 'em were
stockmen and some gamblers and some horse peculators and plenty were
in the smuggling line. Me and Andy put up at a hotel that was built
like something between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. It
began to rain the day we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius
was sure turning on the water plugs on Mount Amphibious.

"Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither Andy
nor me drank. But we could see the townspeople making a triangular
procession from one to another all day and half the night. Everybody
seemed to know what to do with as much money as they had.

"The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so
me and Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. Bird
City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that
used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and
its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account
of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time.
That man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a
instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organized
a trust; and we walked back into town and put it on the market.

"First we went to the main saloon in Bird City, called the Blue Snake,
and bought it. It cost us $1,200. And then we dropped in, casual, at
Mexican Joe's place, referred to the rain, and bought him out for
$500. The other one came easy at $400.

"The next morning Bird City woke up and found itself an island. The
river had busted through its old channel, and the town was surrounded
by roaring torrents. The rain was still raining, and there was heavy
clouds in the northwest that presaged about six more mean annual
rainfalls during the next two weeks. But the worst was yet to come.

"Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pin feathers and
strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was
closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So,
naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and
ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?

"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a
sixshooter on each side of him, ready to make change or corpses as the
case may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten foot
sign reading: 'All Drinks One Dollar.' Andy sits on the safe in his
neat blue suit and gold-banded cigar, on the lookout for emergencies.
The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been
promised free drinks by the trust.

"Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it was
in a cage. We expected trouble; but there wasn't any. The citizens saw
that we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it
would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So
they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it
sounded like a selection on the xylophone.

"There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had arrived
at years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from three
to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the
only place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It was
beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

"About ten o'clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed down
to playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out the
window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at
Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more
money to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus.

"At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. We
told the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same.
Then me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. We
calculated that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeks
the trust would be able to endow the Chicago University with a new
dormitory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthy
poor man in Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.

"Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the
rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the
house.


[Illustration: "Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem."]


"'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you
could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading
the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
the sole apoplectic region. No?'

"'Well,' says I, 'it does look as if we would have to take up
gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves.
This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can
stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant any day.'

"Andy pours himself out four fingers of our best rye and does with it
as was so intended. It was the first drink I had ever known him to
take.

"'By way of liberation,' says he, 'to the gods.'

"And then after thus doing umbrage to the heathen diabetes he drinks
another to our success. And then he begins to toast the trade,
beginning with Raisuli and the Northern Pacific, and on down the line
to the little ones like the school book combine and the oleomargarine
outrages and the Lehigh Valley and Great Scott Coal Federation.

"'It's all right, Andy,' says I, 'to drink the health of our brother
monopolists, but don't overdo the wassail. You know our most eminent
and loathed multi-corruptionists live on weak tea and dog biscuits.'

"Andy went in the back room awhile and came out dressed in his best
clothes. There was a kind of murderous and soulful look of gentle
riotousness in his eye that I didn't like. I watched him to see what
turn the whiskey was going to take in him. There are two times when
you never can tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takes
his first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.

"In less than an hour Andy's skate had turned to an ice yacht. He was
outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he
was impromptu and full of unexpectedness.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'do you know that I'm a crater--a living crater?'

"'That's a self-evident hypothesis,' says I. 'But you're not Irish.
Why don't you say 'creature,' according to the rules and syntax of
America?'

"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm all aflame and crammed
inside with an assortment of words and phrases that have got to have
an exodus. I can feel millions of synonyms and parts of speech rising
in me,' says he, 'and I've got to make a speech of some sort. Drink,'
says Andy, 'always drives me to oratory.'

"'It could do no worse,' says I.

"'From my earliest recollections,' says he, 'alcohol seemed to
stimulate my sense of recitation and rhetoric. Why, in Bryan's second
campaign,' says Andy, 'they used to give me three gin rickeys and
I'd speak two hours longer than Billy himself could on the silver
question. Finally, they persuaded me to take the gold cure.'

"'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I, 'why
not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me
there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go and
disincorporate himself of his windy numbers along the seashore.'

"'No,' says Andy, 'I must have an audience. I feel like if I once
turned loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the Grand
Young Sphinx of the Wabash. I've got to get an audience together,
Jeff, and get this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on me
and I'd go about feeling like a deckle-edge edition de luxe of Mrs. E.
D. E. N. Southworth.'

"'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desire
for vocality seem to be connected with?' I asks.

"'I ain't particular,' says Andy. 'I am equally good and varicose on
all subjects. I can take up the matter of Russian immigration, or
the poetry of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature,
or drainage, and make my audience weep, cry, sob and shed tears by
turns.'

"'Well, Andy,' says I, 'if you are bound to get rid of this
accumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work it
on some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the
business. Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork
and beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 more
by midnight.'

"So Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men on
the street and talking to 'em. By and by he has half a dozen in a
bunch listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms and
elocuting at a good-sized crowd on a corner. When he walks away they
string out after him, talking all the time; and he leads 'em down the
main street of Bird City with more men joining the procession as they
go. It reminded me of the old legerdemain that I'd read in books about
the Pied Piper of Heidsieck charming the children away from the town.


[Illustration: "And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City."]


"One o'clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire for
place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets were
deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There
was only a light drizzle falling then.

"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to
scrape the mud off his boots.

"'Pardner,' says I, 'what has happened? This morning there was hectic
gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of
Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main
port-cullis.'

"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool
warehouse listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is some
gravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and
conclusions,' says the man.

"'Well, I hope he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for
trade languishes.'

"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two
Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.
We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his
hands and feet.

"Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. I
met a man who told me all about it. Andy had made the finest two hour
speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in
the world.

"'What was it about?' I asked.

"'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every man in Bird
City signed the pledge for a year.'"




JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET


Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as
there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S.C.

Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold
liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth,
heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune
for his last coin.

"I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw," said he, "in a buckskin suit,
moccasins, long hair and a thirty-carat diamond ring that I got from
an actor in Texarkana. I don't know what he ever did with the pocket
knife I swapped him for it.

"I was Dr. Waugh-hoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried
only one best bet just then, and that was Resurrection Bitters. It
was made of life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by
Ta-qua-la, the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while
gathering truck to garnish a platter of boiled dog for the annual corn
dance.

"Business hadn't been good in the last town, so I only had five
dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for
half a gross of eight-ounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and
ingredients in my valise, left over from the last town. Life began to
look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running
from the tap, and the Resurrection Bitters lining up on the table by
the dozen.


[Illustration: "Life began to look rosy again..."]


"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of
cinchona and a dime's worth of aniline in that half-gross of bitters.
I've gone through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for 'em
again.

"I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on
Main Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a compound
hypothetical pneumocardiac anti-scorbutic tonic was just what
I diagnosed the crowd as needing. The bitters started off like
sweetbreads-on-toast at a vegetarian dinner. I had sold two dozen at
fifty cents apiece when I felt somebody pull my coat tail. I knew what
that meant; so I climbed down and sneaked a five dollar bill into the
hand of a man with a German silver star on his lapel.


[Illustration: "I commenced selling the bitters on Main Street."]


"'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.'

"'Have you got a city license,' he asks, 'to sell this illegitimate
essence of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?'

"'I have not,' says I. 'I didn't know you had a city. If I can find it
to-morrow I'll take one out if it's necessary.'

"'I'll have to close you up till you do,' says the constable.

"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the
landlord about it.

"'Oh, you won't stand no show in Fisher Hill,' says he. 'Dr. Hoskins,
the only doctor here, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they won't
allow no fake doctor to practice in town.'

"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've got a State peddler's
license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.'

"I went to the Mayor's office the next morning and they told me
he hadn't showed up yet. They didn't know when he'd be down. So
Doc Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a
jimpson-weed regalia, and waits.

"By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to
me and asks the time.

"'Half-past ten,' says I, 'and you are Andy Tucker. I've seen you
work. Wasn't it you that put up the Great Cupid Combination package on
the Southern States? Let's see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement
ring, a wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and
Dorothy Vernon--all for fifty cents.'

"Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him. He was a good street
man; and he was more than that--he respected his profession, and he
was satisfied with 300 per cent. profit. He had plenty of offers to go
into the illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never
to be tempted off of the straight path.

"I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out together. I told
him about the situation in Fisher Hill and how finances was low on
account of the local mixture of politics and jalap. Andy had just got
in on the train that morning. He was pretty low himself, and was going
to canvass the whole town for a few dollars to build a new battleship
by popular subscription at Eureka Springs. So we went out and sat on
the porch and talked it over.

"The next morning at eleven o'clock when I was sitting there alone, an
Uncle Tom shuffles into the hotel and asked for the doctor to come and
see Judge Banks, who, it seems, was the mayor and a mighty sick man.

"'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the doctor?'

"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de country
to see some sick persons. He's de only doctor in de town, and Massa
Banks am powerful bad off. He sent me to ax you to please, suh, come.'

"'As man to man,' says I, 'I'll go and look him over.' So I put a
bottle of Resurrection Bitters in my pocket and goes up on the hill
to the mayor's mansion, the finest house in town, with a mansard roof
and two cast iron dogs on the lawn.

"This Mayor Banks was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. He was
making internal noises that would have had everybody in San Francisco
hiking for the parks. A young man was standing by the bed holding a
cup of water.

"'Doc,' says the Mayor, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you
do nothing for me?'

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm not a regular preordained disciple of S. Q.
Lapius. I never took a course in a medical college,' says I. 'I've
just come as a fellow man to see if I could be of assistance.'

"'I'm deeply obliged,' says he. 'Doc Waugh-hoo, this is my nephew, Mr.
Biddle. He has tried to alleviate my distress, but without success.
Oh, Lordy! Ow-ow-ow!!' he sings out.

"I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the mayor's
pulse. 'Let me see your liver--your tongue, I mean,' says I. Then I
turns up the lids of his eyes and looks close at the pupils of 'em.

"'How long have you been sick?' I asked.

"'I was taken down--ow-ouch--last night,' says the Mayor. 'Gimme
something for it, doc, won't you?'

"'Mr. Fiddle,' says I, 'raise the window shade a bit, will you?'

"'Biddle,' says the young man. 'Do you feel like you could eat some
ham and eggs, Uncle James?'

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade
and listening, 'you've got a bad attack of super-inflammation of the
right clavicle of the harpsichord!'

"'Good Lord!' says he, with a groan, 'Can't you rub something on it,
or set it or anything?'

"I picks up my hat and starts for the door.

"'You ain't going, doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You ain't going
away and leave me to die with this--superfluity of the clapboards, are
you?'

"'Common humanity, Dr. Whoa-ha,' says Mr. Biddle, 'ought to prevent
your deserting a fellow-human in distress.'

"'Dr. Waugh-hoo, when you get through plowing,' says I. And then I
walks back to the bed and throws back my long hair.

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'there is only one hope for you. Drugs will do
you no good. But there is another power higher yet, although drugs are
high enough,' says I.

"'And what is that?' says he.

"'Scientific demonstrations,' says I. 'The triumph of mind over
sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except
what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in
arrears. Demonstrate.'

"'What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?' says the Mayor. 'You
ain't a Socialist, are you?'

"'I am speaking,' says I, 'of the great doctrine of psychic
financiering--of the enlightened school of long-distance,
sub-conscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitis--of that
wonderful in-door sport known as personal magnetism.'

"'Can you work it, doc?' asks the Mayor.

"'I'm one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner
Pulpit,' says I. 'The lame talk and the blind rubber whenever I make
a pass at 'em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous
control. It was only through me at the recent seances at Ann Arbor
that the late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit
the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling
medicine on the street,' says I, 'to the poor. I don't practice
personal magnetism on them. I do not drag it in the dust,' says I,
'because they haven't got the dust.'

"'Will you treat my case?' asks the Mayor.

"'Listen,' says I. 'I've had a good deal of trouble with medical
societies everywhere I've been. I don't practice medicine. But, to
save your life, I'll give you the psychic treatment if you'll agree as
mayor not to push the license question.'

"'Of course I will,' says he. 'And now get to work, doc, for them
pains are coming on again.'

"'My fee will be $250.00, cure guaranteed in two treatments,' says I.

"'All right,' says the Mayor. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's worth
that much.'

"I sat down by the bed and looked him straight in the eye.

"'Now,' says I, 'get your mind off the disease. You ain't sick.
You haven't got a heart or a clavicle or a funny bone or brains or
anything. You haven't got any pain. Declare error. Now you feel the
pain that you didn't have leaving, don't you?'

"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I
don't. Now state a few lies about my not having this swelling in my
left side, and I think I could be propped up and have some sausage and
buckwheat cakes.'

"I made a few passes with my hands.

"'Now,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the
perihelion has subsided. You're getting sleepy. You can't hold your
eyes open any longer. For the present the disease is checked. Now, you
are asleep.'

"The Mayor shut his eyes slowly and began to snore.

"'You observe, Mr. Tiddle,' says I, 'the wonders of modern science.'

"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the
treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'

"'Waugh-hoo,' says I. 'I'll come back at eleven to-morrow. When he
wakes up give him eight drops of turpentine and three pounds of steak.
Good morning.'

"The next morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when
he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle this morning?'

"'He seems much better,' says the young man.

"The mayor's color and pulse was fine. I gave him another treatment,
and he said the last of the pain left him.

"'Now,' says I, 'you'd better stay in bed for a day or two, and you'll
be all right. It's a good thing I happened to be in Fisher Hill, Mr.
Mayor,' says I, 'for all the remedies in the cornucopia that the
regular schools of medicine use couldn't have saved you. And now
that error has flew and pain proved a perjurer, let's allude to a
cheerfuller subject--say the fee of $250. No checks, please, I hate
to write my name on the back of a check almost as bad as I do on the
front.'

"'I've got the cash here,' says the mayor, pulling a pocket book from
under his pillow.

"He counts out five fifty-dollar notes and holds 'em in his hand.

"'Bring the receipt,' he says to Biddle.

"I signed the receipt and the mayor handed me the money. I put it in
my inside pocket careful.

"'Now do your duty, officer,' says the mayor, grinning much unlike a
sick man.

"Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm.

"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for
practising medicine without authority under the State law.'

"'Who are you?' I asks.

"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. Mayor, sitting up in bed. 'He's a
detective employed by the State Medical Society. He's been following
you over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this
scheme to catch you. I guess you won't do any more doctoring around
these parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had, doc?' the mayor
laughs, 'compound--well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess,
anyway.'

"'A detective,' says I.

"'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll have to turn you over to the sheriff.'

"'Let's see you do it,' says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat and
half throws him out the window, but he pulls a gun and sticks it under
my chin, and I stand still. Then he puts handcuffs on me, and takes
the money out of my pocket.


[Illustration: "And I grabs Biddle by the throat."]


"'I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bank bills that you and
I marked, Judge Banks. I'll turn them over to the sheriff when we get
to his office, and he'll send you a receipt. They'll have to be used
as evidence in the case.'

"'All right, Mr. Biddle,' says the mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo,' he
goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of
your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?'

"'Come on, officer,' says I, dignified. 'I may as well make the best
of it.' And then I turns to old Banks and rattles my chains.

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'the time will come soon when you'll believe
that personal magnetism is a success. And you'll be sure that it
succeeded in this case, too.'

"And I guess it did.

"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet somebody now,
Andy. I reckon you better take 'em off, and--' Hey? Why, of course
it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that's how we got the
capital to go into business together."




MODERN RURAL SPORTS


Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly,
for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of
incident as the longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will
divulge. Therefore I cast many and divers flies upon the current of
his thoughts before I feel a nibble.

"I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their
prosperity, are running after their old populistic idols again."

"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees
and the Connemaugh river. I know something about farmers. I thought I
struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved to
me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker,' said Andy. 'He's
the man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots and
the ballet. He's the funny-bone and gristle of the country,' said
Andy, 'and I don't know who we would do without him.'

"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents between us
in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the pre-digested hoe-cake belt
of Southern Indiana. How we got off the train there the night before
I can't tell you; for she went through the village so fast that what
looked like a saloon to us through the car window turned out to be a
composite view of a drug store and a water tank two blocks apart. Why
we got off at the first station we could, belongs to a little oroide
gold watch and Alaska diamond deal we failed to pull off the day
before, over the Kentucky line.

"When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something like the
fumes of nitro-muriatic acid, and heard something heavy fall on the
floor below us, and a man swearing.

"'Cheer up, Andy,' says I. 'We're in a rural community. Somebody has
just tested a gold brick downstairs. We'll go out and get what's
coming to us from a farmer; and then yoicks! and away.'

"Farmers was always a kind of reserve fund to me. Whenever I was
in hard luck I'd go to the crossroads, hook a finger in a farmer's
suspender, recite the prospectus of my swindle in a mechanical kind of
a way, look over what he had, give him back his keys, whetstone and
papers that was of no value except to owner, and stroll away without
asking any questions. Farmers are not fair game to me as high up in
our business as me and Andy was; but there was times when we found 'em
useful, just as Wall Street does the Secretary of the Treasury now and
then.

"When we went down stairs we saw we was in the midst of the finest
farming section we ever see. About two miles away on a hill was a
big white house in a grove surrounded by a wide-spread agricultural
agglomeration of fields and barns and pastures and out-houses.

"'Whose house is that?' we asked the landlord.

"'That,' says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial
and horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of our
county's most progressive citizens.'

"After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left, casts the
horoscope of the rural potentate.

"'Let me go alone,' says I. 'Two of us against one farmer would look
as one-sided as Roosevelt using both hands to kill a grizzly.'

"'All right,' says Andy. 'I like to be a true sport even when I'm only
collecting rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going
to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.

"'Oh,' I says, 'the first thing that come to hand in the suit case. I
reckon I'll take along some of the new income tax receipts, and the
recipe for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and
the order blanks for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn out
to be McCormick's reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train;
and a pocket-size goldbrick; and a--'

"'That'll be enough,' says Andy. 'Any one of the lot ought to land on
Ezra. And say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean,
new bills. It's a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, Civil
Service and Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers hand
out to use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles
of microbe cultures captured out of a Red Cross ambulance.'

"So, I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I drove
out to the Plunkett farm and hitched. There was a man sitting on the
front steps of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond
ring, golf cap and a pink ascot tie. 'Summer boarder,' says I to
myself.

"'I'd like to see Farmer Ezra Plunkett,' says I to him.

"'You see him,' says he. 'What seems to be on your mind?'

"I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself the
rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man with the Hoe.' When
I looked at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket for
buncoing the pushed-back brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shake
down the Beef Trust with a mittimus and a parlor rifle.

"'Well,' says he, looking at me close, 'speak up. I see the left pocket
of your coat sags a good deal. Out with the goldbrick first. I'm rather
more interested in the bricks than I am in the trick sixty-day notes
and the lost silver mine story.'

"I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas of
ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my
handkerchief off it.

"'One dollar and eighty cents,' says the farmer hefting it in his
hand. 'Is it a trade?'

"'The lead in it is worth more than that,' says I, dignified. I put it
back in my pocket.

"'All right,' says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection I'm
starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'

"Just then a telephone bell rings in the house.

"'Come in, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'and look at my place. It's kind of
lonesome here sometimes. I think that's New York calling.'

"We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker's--light
oak desks, two 'phones, Spanish leather upholstered chairs and
couches, oil paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hitting
off the news in one corner.

"'Hello, hello!' says this funny farmer. 'Is that the Regent Theatre?
Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve four orchestra
seats for Friday evening--my usual ones. Yes; Friday--good-bye.'

"'I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the
farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at
Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian
Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight
hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling
period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the
Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't you think, Mr. Bunk?'

"'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the agrarian
traditions in which heretofore, I have reposed confidence.'

"'Sure, Bunk,' says he. 'The yellow primrose on the river's brim is
getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the
Language of Flowers with deckle edges and frontispiece.'

"Just then the telephone calls him again.

"'Hello, hello!' says he. 'Oh, that's Perkins, at Milldale. I told you
$800 was too much for that horse. Have you got him there? Good. Let me
see him. Get away from the transmitter. Now make him trot in a circle.
Faster. Yes, I can hear him. Keep on--faster yet. ... That'll do.
Now lead him up to the phone. Closer. Get his nose nearer. There. Now
wait. No; I don't want that horse. What? No; not at any price. He
interferes; and he's windbroken. Goodbye.'

"'Now, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'do you begin to realize that
agriculture has had a hair cut? You belong in a bygone era. Why,
Tom Lawson himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date
agriculturalist napping. It's Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm,
you bet. Now, look here, and see how we keep up with the day's
doings.'

"He shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears like
the penny-in-the-slot affairs. I puts it on and listens. A female
voice starts up reading headlines of murders, accidents and other
political casualities.

"'What you hear,' says the farmer, 'is a synopsis of to-day's news in
the New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco papers. It is wired
in to our Rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On this
table you see the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Also
a special service of advance sheets of the monthly magazines.'

"I picks up one sheet and sees that it's headed: 'Special Advance
Proofs. In July, 1909, the _Century_ will say'--and so forth.

"The farmer rings up somebody--his manager, I reckon--and tells him to
let that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-acre
field in wheat; and to have 200 extra cans ready at the station for
the milk trolley car. Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out a
bottle of green chartreuse, and goes over and looks at the ticker
tape.

"'Consolidated Gas up two points,' says he. 'Oh, very well.'

"'Ever monkey with copper?' I asks.

"'Stand back!' says he, raising his hand, 'or I'll call the dog. I
told you not to waste your time.'

"After a while he says: 'Bunk, if you don't mind my telling you, your
company begins to cloy slightly. I've got to write an article on the
Chimera of Communism for a magazine, and attend a meeting of the Race
Track Association this afternoon. Of course you understand by now that
you can't get my proxy for your Remedy, whatever it may be.'

"Well, sir, all I could think of to do was to go out and get in the
buggy. The horse turned round and took me back to the hotel. I hitched
him and went in to see Andy. In his room I told him about this farmer,
word for word; and I sat picking at the table cover like one bereft of
sagaciousness.

"'I don't understand it,' says I, humming a sad and foolish little
song to cover my humiliation.

"Andy walks up and down the room for a long time, biting the left end
of his mustache as he does when in the act of thinking.

"'Jeff,' says he, finally, 'I believe your story of this expurgated
rustic; but I am not convinced. It looks incredulous to me that he
could have inoculated himself against all the preordained systems
of bucolic bunco. Now, you never regarded me as a man of special
religious proclivities, did you, Jeff?' says Andy.

"'Well,' says I, 'No. But,' says I, not to wound his feelings, 'I have
also observed many church members whose said proclivities were not so
outwardly developed that they would show on a white handkerchief if
you rubbed 'em with it.'

"'I have always been a deep student of nature from creation down,'
says Andy, 'and I believe in an ultimatum design of Providence.
Farmers was made for a purpose; and that was to furnish a livelihood
to men like me and you. Else why was we given brains? It is my belief
that the manna that the Israelites lived on for forty years in the
wilderness was only a figurative word for farmers; and they kept up
the practice to this day. And now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test my
theory "Once a farmer, always a come-on," in spite of the veneering
and the orifices that a spurious civilization has brought to him.'

"'You'll fail, same as I did,' says I. 'This one's shook off the
shackles of the sheep-fold. He's entrenched behind the advantages of
electricity, education, literature and intelligence.'

"'I'll try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that Free
Rural Delivery can't overcome.'

"Andy fumbles around awhile in the closet and comes out dressed in a
suit with brown and yellow checks as big as your hand. His vest is red
with blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat. I noticed he'd soaked
his sandy mustache in a kind of blue ink.

"'Great Barnums?' says I. 'You're a ringer for a circus thimblerig
man.'

"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come
back. I won't be long.'

"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of money
on the table.

"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said he. 'Let me tell you. He
was in. He looked me over and began to guy me. I didn't say a word,
but got out the walnut shells and began to roll the little ball on
the table. I whistled a tune or two, and then I started up the old
formula.

"'Step up lively, gentlemen,' says I, 'and watch the little ball. It
costs you nothing to look. There you see it, and there you don't.
Guess where the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceives
the eye.

"'I steals a look at the farmer man. I see the sweat coming out on his
forehead. He goes over and closes the front door and watches me some
more. Directly he says: "I'll bet you twenty I can pick the shell the
ball's under now."

"'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He only
had $860 cash in the house. When I left he followed me to the gate.
There was tears in his eyes when he shook hands.

"'"Bunk," says he, "thank you for the only real pleasure I've had in
years. It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an
agriculturalist. God bless you."'"

Here Jeff Peters ceased, and I inferred that his story was done.

"Then you think"--I began.

"Yes," said Jeff. "Something like that. You let the farmers go ahead
and amuse themselves with politics. Farming's a lonesome life; and
they've been against the shell game before."




THE CHAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS


"I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of
more than fifty millions of dollars," said I.

I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff
Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut.

"Which same," said Jeff, "calls for a new deck, and a recitation by
the entire class in philanthromathematics."

"Is that an allusion?" I asked.

"It is," said Jeff. "I never told you about the time when me and Andy
Tucker was philanthropists, did I? It was eight years ago in Arizona.
Andy and me was out in the Gila mountains with a two-horse wagon
prospecting for silver. We struck it, and sold out to parties in
Tucson for $25,000. They paid our check at the bank in silver--a
thousand dollars in a sack. We loaded it in our wagon and drove
east a hundred miles before we recovered our presence of intellect.
Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn't sound like so much when you're
reading the annual report of the Pennsylvania Railroad or listening to
an actor talking about his salary; but when you can raise up a wagon
sheet and kick around your bootheel and hear every one of 'em ring
against another it makes you feel like you was a night-and-day bank
with the clock striking twelve.

"The third day out we drove into one of the most specious and tidy
little towns that Nature or Rand and McNally ever turned out. It was
in the foothills, and mitigated with trees and flowers and about 2,000
head of cordial and dilatory inhabitants. The town seemed to be called
Floresville, and Nature had not contaminated it with many railroads,
fleas or Eastern tourists.

"Me and Andy deposited our money to the credit of Peters and Tucker in
the Esperanza Savings Bank, and got rooms at the Skyview Hotel. After
supper we lit up, and sat out on the gallery and smoked. Then was
when the philanthropy idea struck me. I suppose every grafter gets it
sometime.

"When a man swindles the public out of a certain amount he begins to
get scared and wants to return part of it. And if you'll watch close
and notice the way his charity runs you'll see that he tries to
restore it to the same people he got it from. As a hydrostatical case,
take, let's say, A. A made his millions selling oil to poor students
who sit up nights studying political economy and methods for
regulating the trusts. So, back to the universities and colleges goes
his conscience dollars.

"There's B got his from the common laboring man that works with his
hands and tools. How's he to get some of the remorse fund back into
their overalls?

"'Aha!' says B, 'I'll do it in the name of Education. I've skinned the
laboring man,' says he to himself, 'but, according to the old proverb,
"Charity covers a multitude of skins."'

"So he puts up eighty million dollars' worth of libraries; and the
boys with the dinner pail that builds 'em gets the benefit.

"'Where's the books?' asks the reading public.

"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I
suppose if I'd given ye preferred steel trust stock instead ye'd have
wanted the water in it set out in cut glass decanters. Hoot, for ye!'

"But, as I said, the owning of so much money was beginning to give me
philanthropitis. It was the first time me and Andy had ever made a
pile big enough to make us stop and think how we got it.

"'Andy,' says I, 'we're wealthy--not beyond the dreams of average; but
in our humble way we are comparatively as rich as Greasers. I feel as
if I'd like to do something for as well as to humanity.'

"'I was thinking the same thing, Jeff,' says he. 'We've been gouging
the public for a long time with all kinds of little schemes from
selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke
Smith presidential campaign buttons. I'd like, myself, to hedge a bet
or two in the graft game if I could do it without actually banging
the cymbalines in the Salvation Army or teaching a bible class by the
Bertillon system.

"'What'll we do?' says Andy. 'Give free grub to the poor or send a
couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'We've got too much money to be implicated in
plain charity; and we haven't got enough to make restitution. So,
we'll look about for something that's about half way between the two.'

"The next day in walking around Floresville we see on a hill a big red
brick building that appears to be disinhabited. The citizens speak up
and tell us that it was begun for a residence several years before by
a mine owner. After running up the house he finds he only had $2.80
left to furnish it with, so he invests that in whiskey and jumps off
the roof on a spot where he now requiescats in pieces.

"As soon as me and Andy saw that building the same idea struck both of
us. We would fix it up with lights and pen wipers and professors, and
put an iron dog and statues of Hercules and Father John on the lawn,
and start one of the finest free educational institutions in the world
right there.

"So we talks it over to the prominent citizens of Floresville, who
falls in fine with the idea. They give a banquet in the engine house
to us, and we make our bow for the first time as benefactors to the
cause of progress and enlightenment. Andy makes an hour-and-a-half
speech on the subject of irrigation in Lower Egypt, and we have a
moral tune on the phonograph and pineapple sherbet.

"Andy and me didn't lose any time in philanthropping. We put every man
in town that could tell a hammer from a step ladder to work on the
building, dividing it up into class rooms and lecture halls. We wire
to Frisco for a car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders,
dictionaries, chairs for the professors, slates, skeletons, sponges,
twenty-seven cravenetted gowns and caps for the senior class, and an
open order for all the truck that goes with a first-class university.
I took it on myself to put a campus and a curriculum on the list;
but the telegraph operator must have got the words wrong, being an
ignorant man, for when the goods come we found a can of peas and a
curry-comb among 'em.

"While the weekly papers was having chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy
we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us f.o.b., six
professors immediately--one English literature, one up-to-date
dead languages, one chemistry, one political economy--democrat
preferred--one logic, and one wise to painting, Italian and music,
with union card. The Esperanza bank guaranteed salaries, which was to
run between $800 and $800.50.

"Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was carved
the words: 'The World's University; Peters & Tucker, Patrons and
Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the
calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the
tri-weekly express from Tucson. They was mostly young, spectacled, and
red-headed, with sentiments divided between ambition and food. Andy
and me got 'em billeted on the Floresvillians and then laid for the
students.

"They came in bunches. We had advertised the University in all
the state papers, and it did us good to see how quick the country
responded. Two hundred and nineteen husky lads aging along from 18 up
to chin whiskers answered the clarion call of free education. They
ripped open that town, sponged the seams, turned it, lined it with new
mohair; and you couldn't have told it from Harvard or Goldfields at
the March term of court.

"They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the World's
University colors--ultra-marine and blue--and they certainly made a
lively place of Floresville. Andy made them a speech from the balcony
of the Skyview Hotel, and the whole town was out celebrating.

"In about two weeks the professors got the students disarmed and
herded into classes. I don't believe there's any pleasure equal
to being a philanthropist. Me and Andy bought high silk hats and
pretended to dodge the two reporters of the Floresville Gazette.
The paper had a man to kodak us whenever we appeared on the street,
and ran our pictures every week over the column headed 'Educational
Notes.' Andy lectured twice a week at the University; and afterward
I would rise and tell a humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my
pictures with Abe Lincoln on one side and Marshall P. Wilder on the
other.

"Andy was as interested in philanthropy as I was. We used to wake up
of nights and tell each other new ideas for booming the University.

"'Andy,' says I to him one day, 'there's something we overlooked. The
boys ought to have dromedaries.'

"'What's that?' Andy asks.

"'Why, something to sleep in, of course,' says I. 'All colleges have
'em.'

"'Oh, you mean pajamas,' says Andy.

"'I do not,' says I. 'I mean dromedaries.' But I never could make Andy
understand; so we never ordered 'em. Of course, I meant them long
bedrooms in colleges where the scholars sleep in a row.

"Well, sir, the World's University was a success. We had scholars
from five States and territories, and Floresville had a boom. A new
shooting gallery and a pawn shop and two more saloons started; and the
boys got up a college yell that went this way:


   "'Raw, raw, raw,
       Done, done, done,
     Peters, Tucker,
       Lots of fun,
     Bow-wow-wow,
       Haw-hee-haw,
     World University,
       Hip, hurrah!'


"The scholars was a fine lot of young men, and me and Andy was as
proud of 'em as if they belonged to our own family.

"But one day about the last of October Andy comes to me and asks if I
have any idea how much money we had left in the bank. I guesses about
sixteen thousand. 'Our balance,' says Andy, 'is $821.62.'

"'What!' says I, with a kind of a yell. 'Do you mean to tell me that
them infernal clod-hopping, dough-headed, pup-faced, goose-brained,
gate-stealing, rabbit-eared sons of horse thieves have soaked us for
that much?'

"'No less,' says Andy.

"'Then, to Helvetia with philanthropy,' says I.

"'Not necessarily,' says Andy. 'Philanthropy,' says he, 'when run on
a good business basis is one of the best grafts going. I'll look into
the matter and see if it can't be straightened out.'

"The next week I am looking over the payroll of our faculty when I
run across a new name--Professor James Darnley McCorkle, chair of
mathematics; salary $100 per week. I yells so loud that Andy runs in
quick.

"'What's this,' says I. 'A professor of mathematics at more than
$5,000 a year? How did this happen? Did he get in through the window
and appoint himself?'

"'I wired to Frisco for him a week ago,' says Andy. 'In ordering the
faculty we seemed to have overlooked the chair of mathematics.'

"'A good thing we did,' says I. 'We can pay his salary two weeks, and
then our philanthropy will look like the ninth hole on the Skibo golf
links.'

"'Wait a while,' says Andy, 'and see how things turn out. We have
taken up too noble a cause to draw out now. Besides, the further I
gaze into the retail philanthropy business the better it looks to me.
I never thought about investigating it before. Come to think of it
now,' goes on Andy, 'all the philanthropists I ever knew had plenty of
money. I ought to have looked into that matter long ago, and located
which was the cause and which was the effect.'

"I had confidence in Andy's chicanery in financial affairs, so I left
the whole thing in his hands. The University was flourishing fine,
and me and Andy kept our silk hats shined up, and Floresville kept on
heaping honors on us like we was millionaires instead of almost busted
philanthropists.

"The students kept the town lively and prosperous. Some stranger came
to town and started a faro bank over the Red Front livery stable, and
began to amass money in quantities. Me and Andy strolled up one night
and piked a dollar or two for sociability. There were about fifty of
our students there drinking rum punches and shoving high stacks of
blues and reds about the table as the dealer turned the cards up.

"'Why, dang it, Andy,' says I, 'these free-school-hunting,
gander-headed, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got more
money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out
of their pistol pockets?'

"'Yes,' says Andy, 'a good many of them are sons of wealthy miners and
stockmen. It's very sad to see 'em wasting their opportunities this
way.'

"At Christmas all the students went home to spend the holidays. We had
a farewell blowout at the University, and Andy lectured on 'Modern
Music and Prehistoric Literature of the Archipelagos.' Each one of the
faculty answered to toasts, and compared me and Andy to Rockefeller
and the Emperor Marcus Autolycus. I pounded on the table and yelled
for Professor McCorkle; but it seems he wasn't present on the
occasion. I wanted a look at the man that Andy thought could earn $100
a week in philanthropy that was on the point of making an assignment.

"The students all left on the night train; and the town sounded as
quiet as the campus of a correspondence school at midnight. When I
went to the hotel I saw a light in Andy's room, and I opened the door
and walked in.

"There sat Andy and the faro dealer at a table dividing a two-foot
high stack of currency in thousand-dollar packages.

"'Correct,' says Andy. 'Thirty-one thousand apiece. Come in, Jeff,'
says he. 'This is our share of the profits of the first half of
the scholastic term of the World's University, incorporated and
philanthropated. Are you convinced now,' says Andy, 'that philanthropy
when practiced in a business way is an art that blesses him who gives
as well as him who receives?'

"'Great!' says I, feeling fine. 'I'll admit you are the doctor this
time.'

"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get
your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'

"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I could
have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before we went. I had a
curiosity to know that man.'

"'That'll be easy,' says Andy, turning around to the faro dealer.

"'Jim,' says Andy, 'shake hands with Mr. Peters.'"




THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD


"Many of our great men," said I (apropos of many things), "have
declared that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of
some brilliant woman."

"I know," said Jeff Peters. "I've read in history and mythology about
Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale and Mrs. Caudle and Eve and other noted
females of the past. But, in my opinion, the woman of to-day is of
little use in politics or business. What's she best in, anyway?--men
make the best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers,
clerks, hairdressers and launderers. About the only job left that a
woman can beat a man in is female impersonator in vaudeville."

"I would have thought," said I, "that occasionally, anyhow, you would
have found the wit and intuition of woman valuable to you in your
lines of--er--business."

"Now, wouldn't you," said Jeff, with an emphatic nod--"wouldn't you
have imagined that? But a woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in
any straight swindle. She's liable to turn honest on you when you are
depending upon her the most. I tried 'em once.

"Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived
the illusion that he wanted to be appointed United States Marshall.
At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of
selling walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it
up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would go trickling
down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The
deputies was annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me
about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall
might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.


[Illustration: "Selling walking canes."]


"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education,
besides having knowledge and information concerning not only rudiments
but facts and attainments.'

"'I do,' says I, 'and I have never regretted it. I am not one,' says
I, 'who would cheapen education by making it free. Tell me,' says I,
'which is of the most value to mankind, literature or horse racing?'

"'Why--er--, playing the po--I mean, of course, the poets and the
great writers have got the call, of course,' says Bill.

"'Exactly,' says I. 'Then why do the master minds of finance and
philanthropy,' says I, 'charge us $2 to get into a race-track and let
us into a library free? Is that distilling into the masses,' says
I, 'a correct estimate of the relative value of the two means of
self-culture and disorder?'

"'You are arguing outside of my faculties of sense and rhetoric,' says
Bill. 'What I wanted you to do is to go to Washington and dig out this
appointment for me. I haven't no ideas of cultivation and intrigue.
I'm a plain citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men,' says
Bill; 'I've got nine children; I've been a good Republican ever since
the first of May; I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I
ain't illegible for the office. And I think your partner, Mr. Tucker,'
goes on Bill, 'is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and connected
system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment.
I will give you preliminary,' says Bill, '$1,000 for drinks, bribes and
carfare in Washington. If you land the job I will pay you $1,000 more,
cash down, and guarantee you impunity in boot-legging whiskey for
twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put this
thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great Father of the most
eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania Railroad?' says Bill.


[Illustration: "I'm a plain citizen and I need the job."]


"Well, I talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy
was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along,
as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination
steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file,
potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic
temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is
by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and
strikes out for Washington.

"Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota
Avenue, G.S.S.W. 'Now Andy, for the first time in our lives we've got
to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we've never been
used to; but we've got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble's sake.
In a straight and legitimate business,' says I, 'we could afford
to introduce a little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly
and heinous piece of malpractice like this it seems to me that the
straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,' says I,
'that we hand over $500 of this money to the chairman of the national
campaign committee, get a receipt, lay the receipt on the President's
desk and tell him about Bill. The President is a man who would
appreciate a candidate who went about getting office that way instead
of pulling wires.'

"Andy agreed with me, but after we talked the scheme over with the
hotel clerk we give that plan up. He told us that there was only one
way to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady
lobbyist. He gave us the address of one he recommended, a Mrs. Avery,
who he said was high up in sociable and diplomatic rings and circles.

"The next morning at 10 o'clock me and Andy called at her hotel, and
was shown up to her reception room.

"This Mrs. Avery was a solace and a balm to the eyesight. She had hair
the color of the back of a twenty dollar gold certificate, blue eyes
and a system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July
magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.

"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and
diamond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was bare; and she was using a
desk telephone with one hand, and drinking tea with the other.

"'Well, boys,' says she after a bit, 'what is it?'


[Illustration: "'Well boys, what is it?'"]


"I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for Bill, and
the price we could pay.

"'Those western appointments,' says she, 'are easy. Le'me see, now,'
says she, 'who could put that through for us. No use fooling with the
Territorial delegates. I guess,' says she, 'that Senator Sniper would
be about the man. He's from somewheres in the West. Let's see how he
stands on my private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a
pigeon-hole with the letter 'S' over it.

"'Yes,' says she, 'he's marked with a star; that means "ready to
serve." Now, let's see. "Age 55; married twice; Presbyterian, likes
blondes, Tolstoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third
bottle of wine." Yes,' she goes on, 'I am sure I can have your friend,
Mr. Bummer, appointed Minister to Brazil.'

"'Humble,' says I. 'And United States Marshal was the berth.'

"'Oh, yes,' says Mrs. Avery. 'I have so many deals of this sort I
sometimes get them confused. Give me all the memoranda you have of
the case, Mr. Peters, and come back in four days. I think it can be
arranged by then.'

"So me and Andy goes back to our hotel and waits. Andy walks up and
down and chews the left end of his mustache.

"'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is a rare thing, Jeff,'
says he.

"'As rare,' says I, 'as an omelet made from the eggs of the fabulous
bird known as the epidermis,' says I.

"'A woman like that,' says Andy, 'ought to lead a man to the highest
positions of opulence and fame.'

"'I misdoubt,' says I, 'if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job
any more than to have his meals ready promptly and spread a report
that the other candidate's wife had once been a shoplifter. They are
no more adapted for business and politics,' says I, 'than Algernon
Charles Swinburne is to be floor manager at one of Chuck Connor's
annual balls. I know,' says I to Andy, 'that sometimes a woman seems
to step out into the kalsomine light as the charge d'affaires of her
man's political job. But how does it come out? Say, they have a neat
little berth somewhere as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or
lockkeeper on the Delaware and Raritan Canal. One day this man finds
his wife putting on her overshoes and three months supply of bird seed
into the canary's cage. "Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful
light in his eye. "No, Arthur," says she, "Washington. We're wasted
here," says she. "You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of
St. Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of Porto Rico. I'm going to
see about it."

"'Then this lady,' I says to Andy, 'moves against the authorities at
Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen
indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet
when she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the
Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored
spats.

"'Well and then what?' I goes. 'She has the letters printed in the
evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal
tea given in the palm room of the B. & O. Depot and then calls on the
President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the
first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man
are waiting there to grasp her by the hands--and feet. They carry her
out to S.W. B. street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it.
The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese
Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.'

"'Then,' says Andy, 'you don't think Mrs. Avery will land the
Marshalship for Bill?'

"'I do not,' says I. 'I do not wish to be a septic, but I doubt if
she can do as well as you and me could have done.'

"'I don't agree with you,' says Andy. 'I'll bet you she does. I'm
proud of having a higher opinion of the talent and the powers of
negotiation of ladies.'

"We was back at Mrs. Avery's hotel at the time she appointed. She was
looking pretty and fine enough, as far as that went, to make any man
let her name every officer in the country. But I hadn't much faith in
looks, so I was certainly surprised when she pulls out a document with
the great seal of the United States on it, and 'William Henry Humble'
in a fine, big hand on the back.

"'You might have had it the next day, boys,' says Mrs. Avery, smiling.
'I hadn't the slightest trouble in getting it,' says she. 'I just
asked for it, that's all. Now, I'd like to talk to you a while,' she
goes on, 'but I'm awfully busy, and I know you'll excuse me. I've got
an Ambassadorship, two Consulates and a dozen other minor applications
to look after. I can hardly find time to sleep at all. You'll give my
compliments to Mr. Humble when you get home, of course.'

"Well, I handed her the $500, which she pitched into her desk drawer
without counting. I put Bill's appointment in my pocket and me and
Andy made our adieus.

"We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired Bill: 'Job
landed; get the tall glasses ready,' and we felt pretty good.

"Andy joshed me all the way about how little I knew about women.

"'All right,' says I. 'I'll admit that she surprised me. But it's the
first time I ever knew one of 'em to manipulate a piece of business on
time without getting it bungled up in some way,' says I.

"Down about the edge of Arkansas I got out Bill's appointment and
looked it over, and then I handed it to Andy to read. Andy read it,
but didn't add any remarks to my silence.

"The paper was for Bill, all right, and a genuine document, but it
appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.

"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's
appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake
Superior.

"I never saw Bill Humble after that."




THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY


"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much
confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators
in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy."

"They deserve the compliment," said I. "I think they are entitled to
be called the honest sex."

"Why shouldn't they be?" said Jeff. "They've got the other sex either
grafting or working overtime for 'em. They're all right in business
until they get their emotions or their hair touched up too much.
Then you want to have a flat footed, heavy breathing man with sandy
whiskers, five kids and a building and loan mortgage ready as an
understudy to take her desk. Now there was that widow lady that me
and Andy Tucker engaged to help us in that little matrimonial agency
scheme we floated out in Cairo.

"When you've got enough advertising capital--say a roll as big as the
little end of a wagon tongue--there's money in matrimonial agencies.
We had about $6,000 and we expected to double it in two months, which
is about as long as a scheme like ours can be carried on without
taking out a New Jersey charter.

"We fixed up an advertisement that read about like this:


   "Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years, possessing
   $3,000 cash and owning valuable country property, would remarry.
   Would prefer a poor man with affectionate disposition to one with
   means, as she realizes that the solid virtues are oftenest to be
   found in the humble walks of life. No objection to elderly man
   or one of homely appearance if faithful and true and competent
   to manage property and invest money with judgment. Address, with
   particulars.

   Lonely,
   Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.


"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary
concoction. 'And now,' says I, 'where is the lady.'

"Andy gives me one of his looks of calm irritation.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'I thought you had lost them ideas of realism in
your art. Why should there be a lady? When they sell a lot of watered
stock on Wall Street would you expect to find a mermaid in it? What
has a matrimonial ad got to do with a lady?'

"'Now listen,' says I. 'You know my rule, Andy, that in all my
illegitimate inroads against the legal letter of the law the article
sold must be existent, visible, producible. In that way and by a
careful study of city ordinances and train schedules I have kept out
of all trouble with the police that a five dollar bill and a cigar
could not square. Now, to work this scheme we've got to be able to
produce bodily a charming widow or its equivalent with or without the
beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances set forth in the catalogue and
writ of errors, or hereafter be held by a justice of the peace.'

"'Well,' says Andy, reconstructing his mind, 'maybe it would be
safer in case the post office or the peace commission should try to
investigate our agency. But where,' he says, 'could you hope to find
a widow who would waste time on a matrimonial scheme that had no
matrimony in it?'

"I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party. An old friend
of mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw soda water and teeth in a
tent show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some
dyspepsia cure of the old doctor's instead of the liniment that he
always got boozed up on. I used to stop at their house often, and I
thought we could get her to work with us.

"'Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I
jumped out on the I. C. and finds her in the same cottage with the
same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub. Mrs. Trotter
fitted our ad first rate except, maybe for beauty and age and property
valuation. But she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the eye, and it
was a kindness to Zeke's memory to give her the job.

"'Is this an honest deal you are putting on, Mr. Peters,' she asks me
when I tell her what we want.

"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the
calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair country will
endeavor to secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property
through our advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty
hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you,
the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a
swindler and contemptible fortune seeker.

"'Me and Andy,' says I, 'propose to teach these preyers upon society
a lesson. It was with difficulty,' says I, 'that me and Andy could
refrain from forming a corporation under the title of the Great Moral
and Millennial Malevolent Matrimonial Agency. Does that satisfy you?'

"'It does, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I might have known you wouldn't
have gone into anything that wasn't opprobrious. But what will my
duties be? Do I have to reject personally these 3,000 ramscallions you
speak of, or can I throw them out in bunches?'

"'Your job, Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'will be practically a cynosure.
You will live at a quiet hotel and will have no work to do. Andy and I
will attend to all the correspondence and business end of it.

"'Of course,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors
who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to personally press
their suit or whatever fraction of a suit they may be wearing. In that
case you will be probably put to the inconvenience of kicking them out
face to face. We will pay you $25 per week and hotel expenses.'

"'Give me five minutes,' says Mrs. Trotter, 'to get my powder rag and
leave the front door key with a neighbor and you can let my salary
begin.'

"So I conveys Mrs. Trotter to Cairo and establishes her in a family
hotel far enough away from mine and Andy's quarters to be unsuspicious
and available, and I tell Andy.

"'Great,' says Andy. 'And now that your conscience is appeased as to
the tangibility and proximity of the bait, and leaving mutton aside,
suppose we revenoo a noo fish.'

"So, we began to insert our advertisement in newspapers covering
the country far and wide. One ad was all we used. We couldn't have
used more without hiring so many clerks and marcelled paraphernalia
that the sound of the gum chewing would have disturbed the
Postmaster-General.

"We placed $2,000 in a bank to Mrs. Trotter's credit and gave her the
book to show in case anybody might question the honesty and good faith
of the agency. I knew Mrs. Trotter was square and reliable and it was
safe to leave it in her name.

"With that one ad Andy and me put in twelve hours a day answering
letters.

"About one hundred a day was what came in. I never knew there was so
many large hearted but indigent men in the country who were willing to
acquire a charming widow and assume the burden of investing her money.


[Illustration: "About 100 a day was what came in."]


"Most of them admitted that they ran principally to whiskers and lost
jobs and were misunderstood by the world, but all of 'em were sure
that they were so chock full of affection and manly qualities that the
widow would be making the bargain of her life to get 'em.

"Every applicant got a reply from Peters & Tucker informing him
that the widow had been deeply impressed by his straightforward and
interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more
particulars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker
also informed the applicant that their fee for handing over the second
letter to their fair client would be $2, enclosed therewith.

"There you see the simple beauty of the scheme. About 90 per cent. of
them domestic foreign noblemen raised the price somehow and sent it
in. That was all there was to it. Except that me and Andy complained
an amount about being put to the trouble of slicing open them
envelopes, and taking the money out.

"Some few clients called in person. We sent 'em to Mrs. Trotter and
she did the rest; except for three or four who came back to strike
us for carfare. After the letters began to get in from the r.f.d.
districts Andy and me were taking in about $200 a day.

"One afternoon when we were busiest and I was stuffing the two and
ones into cigar boxes and Andy was whistling 'No Wedding Bells for
Her' a small slick man drops in and runs his eye over the walls like
he was on the trail of a lost Gainesborough painting or two. As soon
as I saw him I felt a glow of pride, because we were running our
business on the level.

"'I see you have quite a large mail to-day,' says the man.

"I reached and got my hat.

"'Come on,' says I. 'We've been expecting you. I'll show you the
goods. How was Teddy when you left Washington?'

"I took him down to the Riverview Hotel and had him shake hands with
Mrs. Trotter. Then I showed him her bank book with the $2,000 to her
credit.

"'It seems to be all right,' says the Secret Service.

"'It is,' says I. 'And if you're not a married man I'll leave you to
talk a while with the lady. We won't mention the two dollars.'

"'Thanks,' says he. 'If I wasn't, I might. Good day, Mrs. Peters.'

"Toward the end of three months we had taken in something over $5,000,
and we saw it was time to quit. We had a good many complaints made
to us; and Mrs. Trotter seemed to be tired of the job. A good many
suitors had been calling to see her, and she didn't seem to like that.

"So we decides to pull out, and I goes down to Mrs. Trotter's hotel to
pay her last week's salary and say farewell and get her check for the
$2,000.

"When I got there I found her crying like a kid that don't want to go
to school.

"'Now, now,' says I, 'what's it all about? Somebody sassed you or you
getting homesick?'

"'No, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I'll tell you. You was always a friend
of Zeke's, and I don't mind. Mr. Peters, I'm in love. I just love a
man so hard I can't bear not to get him. He's just the ideal I've
always had in mind.'


[Illustration: "'Mr. Peters, I'm in love.'"]


"'Then take him,' says I. 'That is, if it's a mutual case. Does he
return the sentiment according to the specifications and painfulness
you have described?'

"'He does,' says she. 'But he's one of the gentlemen that's been
coming to see me about the advertisement and he won't marry me unless
I give him the $2,000. His name is William Wilkinson.' And then she
goes off again in the agitations and hysterics of romance.

"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'there's no man more sympathizing with a
woman's affections than I am. Besides, you was once the life partner
of one of my best friends. If it was left to me I'd say take this
$2,000 and the man of your choice and be happy.

"'We could afford to do that, because we have cleaned up over $5,000
from these suckers that wanted to marry you. But,' says I, 'Andy
Tucker is to be consulted.

"'He is a good man, but keen in business. He is my equal partner
financially. I will talk to Andy,' says I, 'and see what can be done.'

"I goes back to our hotel and lays the case before Andy.

"'I was expecting something like this all the time,' says Andy. 'You
can't trust a woman to stick by you in any scheme that involves her
emotions and preferences.'

"'It's a sad thing, Andy,' says I, 'to think that we've been the cause
of the breaking of a woman's heart.'

"'It is,' says Andy, 'and I tell you what I'm willing to do, Jeff.
You've always been a man of a soft and generous heart and disposition.
Perhaps I've been too hard and worldly and suspicious. For once I'll
meet you half way. Go to Mrs. Trotter and tell her to draw the $2,000
from the bank and give it to this man she's infatuated with and be
happy.'

"I jumps up and shakes Andy's hand for five minutes, and then I goes
back to Mrs. Trotter and tells her, and she cries as hard for joy as
she did for sorrow.

"Two days afterward me and Andy packed up to go.

"'Wouldn't you like to go down and meet Mrs. Trotter once before we
leave?' I asks him. 'She'd like mightily to know you and express her
encomiums and gratitude.'

"'Why, I guess not,' says Andy. 'I guess we'd better hurry and catch
that train.'

"I was strapping our capital around me in a memory belt like we always
carried it, when Andy pulls a roll of large bills out of his pocket
and asks me to put 'em with the rest.

"'What's this?' says I.


[Illustration: "'What's this?' says I."]


"'It's Mrs. Trotter's two thousand,' says Andy.

"'How do you come to have it?' I asks.

"'She gave it to me,' says Andy. 'I've been calling on her three
evenings a week for more than a month.'

"'Then are you William Wilkinson?' says I.

"'I was,' says Andy."




A MIDSUMMER MASQUERADE


"Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When other
people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As
old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: 'He always
finds somebody for idle hands to do.'

"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to
take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems
that our work followed us wherever we went.

"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his
responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he wraps
mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick,
breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City
according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by
his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think
about business except to hunt around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and
Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer
penances as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a
Presbyterian widow to swim.

"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation
that wasn't one.

"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified
ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began
to make noises like a tennis cabinet.

"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht
Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my
soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del
Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do
a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and
outside the line of routine and sand-bagging.'

"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession
before you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the
great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would
be a summer sojourn in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny,
labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of
sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take
away the white man's burdens in the fall.'

"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general
passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature,
and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first
passenger agent in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't
much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The Lord made the
earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what
extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from
him later on.

"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United
States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key
West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new
laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open
plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours' ride.

"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our
trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of
a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North
Carolina.


[Illustration: "Dumps the books out of the back window."]


"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and
thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks
and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.

"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down
the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the
best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the
Southwest.

"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by
telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I
introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will
go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like
us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house
in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on
all the chords with his mighty right.

"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out
of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this
dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before
the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from
the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the
summer.

"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery
it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous
from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a
lot of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these
distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it
leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and
Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.

"'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'at
them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival
of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to
cellar with hero worshippers.

"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three
high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old
maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and
a lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn
crib, and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society
editress of the Chattanooga _Opera Glass_. You see how names draw,
gents.'

"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at
good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'

"'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for
the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to
welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train,
both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns
with pushbuttons.

"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters
--and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight.
Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena
explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from
Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of
Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked
'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for the lowlands,
the low.


[Illustration: Instead of the Lieut. and the Duke.]


"'Now you see the fix I'm in, gents,' goes on Smoke-'em-out Smithers.
'I told the ladies that the notorious visitors had been detained on
the road by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an
ice jam and an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When
they find out that they've been deceived,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'every
yard of cross barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will
pack up and leave. It's a hard deal,' says old Smoke-'em-out.

"'Friend,' says Andy, touching the old man on the æsophagus, 'why
this jeremiad when the polar regions and the portals of Blenheim are
conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hall-marked silver salver. We
have arrived.'

"A light breaks out on Smoke-'em-out's face.

"'Can you do it, gents?' he asks. 'Could ye do it? Could ye play the
polar man and the little duke for the nice ladies? Will ye do it?'


[Illustration: "'Can ye do it, gents?' he asks."]


"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral
and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about
10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband
sophistries and parables when they came out.

"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it? You behold
before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for
inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand
or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost,
but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If
you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of
the title rôles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'

"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by
an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long
as we would stay.

"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to
introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous
inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'

"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the
rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina
real mountain dew.

"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on
airships when stimulated.

"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch,
where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special
chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
rockers close around us.

"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out,
sir?'

"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I
was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from
her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial
expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.

"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out--right smart of a freeze
out, ma'am.'

"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that
he was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and
of Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union
of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D.
Howletts admires so much.

"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to
visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas
balloons or snow-shoes in any way a detriment to the beauty and charm
of your American women, skyscrapers or the architecture of your
icebergs. The next time,' says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole
all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the
cold--I mean make it hot for me.'

"'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the
normals.

"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in
the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to
latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says
Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and
liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a
region of semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we
sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a drop to eat. At noon we
threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At
midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake
of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six
times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar,
so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a
lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the
hatchway, into the cabin. And then--'

"'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.

"Andy gives a loud sob.

"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and
weeps on the porch.

"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left
the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but
when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.

"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away
from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out
playing seven up."




SHEARING THE WOLF


Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was
under discussion.

"The only times," said he, "that me and Andy Tucker ever had any
hiatuses in our cordial intents was when we differed on the moral
aspects of grafting. Andy had his standards and I had mine. I didn't
approve of all of Andy's schemes for levying contributions from the
public, and he thought I allowed my conscience to interfere too often
for the financial good of the firm. We had high arguments sometimes.
One word led on to another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.

"'I don't know how you mean that, Andy,' says I, 'but we have been
friends too long for me to take offense at a taunt that you will
regret when you cool off. I have yet,' says I, 'to shake hands with
a subpoena server.'

"One summer me and Andy decided to rest up a spell in a fine little
town in the mountains of Kentucky called Grassdale. We was supposed to
be horse drovers, and good decent citizens besides, taking a summer
vacation. The Grassdale people liked us, and me and Andy declared a
cessation of hostilities, never so much as floating the fly leaf of a
rubber concession prospectus or flashing a Brazilian diamond while we
was there.

"One day the leading hardware merchant of Grassdale drops around to
the hotel where me and Andy stopped, and smokes with us, sociable, on
the side porch. We knew him pretty well from pitching quoits in the
afternoons in the court house yard. He was a loud, red man, breathing
hard, but fat and respectable beyond all reason.


[Illustration: "Pitching quoits in the afternoon in the court house
yard."]


"After we talk on all the notorious themes of the day, this Murkison--
for such was his entitlements--takes a letter out of his coat pocket
in a careful, careless way and hands it to us to read.

"'Now, what do you think of that?' says he, laughing--'a letter like
that to ME!'

"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it
through. It was one of them old time typewritten green goods letters
explaining how for $1,000 you could get $5,000 in bills that an expert
couldn't tell from the genuine; and going on to tell how they were
made from plates stolen by an employee of the Treasury at Washington.

"'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!' says Murkison again.


[Illustration: "'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!'"]


"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' says Andy. 'If you don't answer the
first letter they let you drop. If you answer it they write again
asking you to come on with your money and do business.'

"'But think of 'em writing to ME!' says Murkison.

"A few days later he drops around again.

"'Boys,' says he, 'I know you are all right or I wouldn't confide in
you. I wrote to them rascals again just for fun. They answered and
told me to come on to Chicago. They said telegraph to J. Smith when I
would start. When I get there I'm to wait on a certain street corner
till a man in a gray suit comes along and drops a newspaper in front
of me. Then I am to ask him how the water is, and he knows it's me and
I know it's him.'

"'Ah, yes,' says Andy, gaping, 'it's the same old game. I've often
read about it in the papers. Then he conducts you to the private
abattoir in the hotel, where Mr. Jones is already waiting. They show
you brand new real money and sell you all you want at five for one.
You see 'em put it in a satchel for you and know it's there. Of course
it's brown paper when you come to look at it afterward.'


[Illustration: "'Of course, it's brown paper.'"]


"'Oh, they couldn't switch it on me,' says Murkison. 'I haven't built
up the best paying business in Grassdale without having witticisms
about me. You say it's real money they show you, Mr. Tucker?'

"'I've always--I see by the papers that it always is,' says Andy.

"'Boys,' says Murkison, 'I've got it in my mind that them fellows
can't fool me. I think I'll put a couple of thousand in my jeans and
go up there and put it all over 'em. If Bill Murkison gets his eyes
once on them bills they show him he'll never take 'em off of 'em. They
offer $5 for $1, and they'll have to stick to the bargain if I tackle
'em. That's the kind of trader Bill Murkison is. Yes, I jist believe
I'll drop up Chicago way and take a 5 to 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess
the water'll be fine enough.'

"Me and Andy tries to get this financial misquotation out of
Murkison's head, but we might as well have tried to keep the man who
rolls peanuts with a toothpick from betting on Bryan's election. No,
sir; he was going to perform a public duty by catching these green
goods swindlers at their own game. Maybe it would teach 'em a lesson.

"After Murkison left us me and Andy sat a while prepondering over our
silent meditations and heresies of reason. In our idle hours we always
improved our higher selves by ratiocination and mental thought.

"'Jeff,' says Andy after a long time, 'quite unseldom I have seen fit
to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about
your conscientious way of doing business. I may have been often wrong.
But here is a case where I think we can agree. I feel that it would be
wrong for us to allow Mr. Murkison to go alone to meet those Chicago
green goods men. There is but one way it can end. Don't you think we
would both feel better if we was to intervene in some way and prevent
the doing of this deed?'

"I got up and shook Andy Tucker's hand hard and long.

"'Andy,' says I, 'I may have had one or two hard thoughts about the
heartlessness of your corporation, but I retract 'em now. You have a
kind nucleus at the interior of your exterior after all. It does you
credit. I was just thinking the same thing that you have expressed.
It would not be honorable or praiseworthy,' says I, 'for us to let
Murkison go on with this project he has taken up. If he is determined
to go let us go with him and prevent this swindle from coming off.'

"Andy agreed with me; and I was glad to see that he was in earnest
about breaking up this green goods scheme.

"'I don't call myself a religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in
moral bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man who has built
up his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by
an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace to the public good.'

"'Right, Jeff,' says Andy. 'We'll stick right along with Murkison if
he insists on going and block this funny business. I'd hate to see any
money dropped in it as bad as you would.'

"Well, we went to see Murkison.

"'No, boys,' says he. 'I can't consent to let the song of this Chicago
siren waft by me on the summer breeze. I'll fry some fat out of this
ignis fatuus or burn a hole in the skillet. But I'd be plumb diverted
to death to have you all go along with me. Maybe you could help some
when it comes to cashing in the ticket to that 5 to 1 shot. Yes, I'd
really take it as a pastime and regalement if you boys would go along
too.'

"Murkison gives it out in Grassdale that he is going for a few days
with Mr. Peters and Mr. Tucker to look over some iron ore property in
West Virginia. He wires J. Smith that he will set foot in the spider
web on a given date; and the three of us lights out for Chicago.

"On the way Murkison amuses himself with premonitions and advance
pleasant recollections.

"'In a gray suit,' says he, 'on the southwest corner of Wabash avenue
and Lake street. He drops the paper, and I ask how the water is. Oh,
my, my, my!' And then he laughs all over for five minutes.

"Sometimes Murkison was serious and tried to talk himself out of his
cogitations, whatever they was.

"'Boys,' says he, 'I wouldn't have this to get out in Grassdale for
ten times a thousand dollars. It would ruin me there. But I know you
all are all right. I think it's the duty of every citizen,' says he,
'to try to do up these robbers that prey upon the public. I'll show
'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars for one--that's what J.
Smith offers, and he'll have to keep his contract if he does business
with Bill Murkison.'

"We got into Chicago about 7 P.M. Murkison was to meet the gray man at
half past 9. We had dinner at a hotel and then went up to Murkison's
room to wait for the time to come.

"'Now, boys,' says Murkison, 'let's get our gumption together and
inoculate a plan for defeating the enemy. Suppose while I'm exchanging
airy bandage with the gray capper you gents come along, by accident,
you know, and holler: "Hello, Murk!" and shake hands with symptoms of
surprise and familiarity. Then I take the capper aside and tell him
you all are Jenkins and Brown of Grassdale, groceries and feed, good
men and maybe willing to take a chance while away from home.'

"'"Bring 'em along," he'll say, of course, "if they care to invest."
Now, how does that scheme strike you?'

"'What do you say, Jeff?' says Andy, looking at me.

"'Why, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. 'I say let's settle this
thing right here now. I don't see any use of wasting any more time.' I
took a nickel-plated .38 out of my pocket and clicked the cylinder
around a few times.

"'You undevout, sinful, insidious hog,' says I to Murkison, 'get out
that two thousand and lay it on the table. Obey with velocity,' says
I, 'for otherwise alternatives are impending. I am preferably a man of
mildness, but now and then I find myself in the middle of extremities.
Such men as you,' I went on after he had laid the money out, 'is what
keeps the jails and court houses going. You come up here to rob these
men of their money. Does it excuse you?' I asks, 'that they were
trying to skin you? No, sir; you was going to rob Peter to stand off
Paul. You are ten times worse,' says I, 'than that green goods man.
You go to church at home and pretend to be a decent citizen, but
you'll come to Chicago and commit larceny from men that have built
up a sound and profitable business by dealing with such contemptible
scoundrels as you have tried to be to-day. How do you know,' says I,
'that that green goods man hasn't a large family dependent upon his
extortions? It's you supposedly respectable citizens who are always
on the lookout to get something for nothing,' says I, 'that support
the lotteries and wild-cat mines and stock exchanges and wire tappers
of this country. If it wasn't for you they'd go out of business.
The green goods man you was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe
for years to learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money
and liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all sanctified and
vanoplied with respectability and a pleasing post office address to
swindle him. If he gets the money you can squeal to the police. If
you get it he hocks the gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr.
Tucker and me sized you up,' says I, 'and came along to see that you
got what you deserved. Hand over the money,' says I, 'you grass fed
hypocrite.'

"I put the two thousand, which was all in $20 bills, in my inside
pocket.

"'Now get out your watch,' says I to Murkison. 'No, I don't want
it,' says I. 'Lay it on the table and you sit in that chair till it
ticks off an hour. Then you can go. If you make any noise or leave
any sooner we'll handbill you all over Grassdale. I guess your high
position there is worth more than $2,000 to you.'

"Then me and Andy left.

"On the train Andy was a long time silent. Then he says: 'Jeff, do you
mind my asking you a question?'

"'Two,' says I, 'or forty.'

"'Was that the idea you had,' says he, 'when we started out with
Murkison?'

"'Why, certainly,' says I. 'What else could it have been? Wasn't it
yours, too?'

"In about half an hour Andy spoke again. I think there are times when
Andy don't exactly understand my system of ethics and moral hygiene.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'some time when you have the leisure I wish you'd
draw off a diagram and foot-notes of that conscience of yours. I'd
like to have it to refer to occasionally.'"




INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY


"I hope some day to retire from business," said Jeff Peters; "and when
I do I don't want anybody to be able to say that I ever got a dollar
of any man's money without giving him a quid pro rata for it. I've
always managed to leave a customer some little gewgaw to paste in his
scrapbook or stick between his Seth Thomas clock and the wall after we
are through trading.

"There was one time I came near having to break this rule of mine and
do a profligate and illaudable action, but I was saved from it by the
laws and statutes of our great and profitable country.

"One summer me and Andy Tucker, my partner, went to New York to lay in
our annual assortment of clothes and gents' furnishings. We was always
pompous and regardless dressers, finding that looks went further than
anything else in our business, except maybe our knowledge of railroad
schedules and an autograph photo of the President that Loeb sent us,
probably by mistake. Andy wrote a nature letter once and sent it in
about animals that he had seen caught in a trap lots of times. Loeb
must have read it 'triplets,' instead of 'trap lots,' and sent the
photo. Anyhow, it was useful to us to show people as a guarantee of
good faith.

"Me and Andy never cared much to do business in New York. It was
too much like pothunting. Catching suckers in that town is like
dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between
the North and East rivers is to stand in the street with an open bag
marked, 'Drop packages of money here. No checks or loose bills taken.'
You have a cop handy to club pikers who try to chip in post office
orders and Canadian money, and that's all there is to New York for a
hunter who loves his profession. So me and Andy used to just nature
fake the town. We'd get out our spyglasses and watch the woodcocks
along the Broadway swamps putting plaster casts on their broken legs,
and then we'd sneak away without firing a shot.

"One day in the papier mâché palm room of a chloral hydrate and hops
agency in a side street about eight inches off Broadway me and Andy
had thrust upon us the acquaintance of a New Yorker. We had beer
together until we discovered that each of us knew a man named
Hellsmith, traveling for a stove factory in Duluth. This caused us to
remark that the world was a very small place, and then this New Yorker
busts his string and takes off his tin foil and excelsior packing and
starts in giving us his Ellen Terris, beginning with the time he used
to sell shoelaces to the Indians on the spot where Tammany Hall now
stands.

"This New Yorker had made his money keeping a cigar store in Beekman
street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street in ten years.
Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had gone by when a true sport
will do anything to a man with whiskers. No grafter except a boy who
is soliciting subscribers to an illustrated weekly to win the prize
air rifle, or a widow, would have the heart to tamper with the man
behind with the razor. He was a typical city Reub--I'd bet the man
hadn't been out of sight of a skyscraper in twenty-five years.

"Well, presently this metropolitan backwoodsman pulls out a roll of
bills with an old blue sleeve elastic fitting tight around it and
opens it up.

"'There's $5,000, Mr. Peters,' says he, shoving it over the table
to me, 'saved during my fifteen years of business. Put that in your
pocket and keep it for me, Mr. Peters. I'm glad to meet you gentlemen
from the West, and I may take a drop too much. I want you to take care
of my money for me. Now, let's have another beer.'


[Illustration: "'I want you to take care of my money for me.'"]


"'You'd better keep this yourself,' says I. 'We are strangers to
you, and you can't trust everybody you meet. Put your roll back in
your pocket,' says I. 'And you'd better run along home before some
farm-hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you
a copper mine.'

"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I guess Little Old New York can
take care of herself. I guess I know a man that's on the square when I
see him. I've always found the Western people all right. I ask you as
a favor, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'to keep that roll in your pocket for
me. I know a gentleman when I see him. And now let's have some more
beer.'

"In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and
snores. Andy looks at me and says: 'I reckon I'd better stay with him
for five minutes or so, in case the waiter comes in.'

"I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And
then I came back and sat down at the table.

"'Andy,' says I, 'I can't do it. It's too much like swearing off
taxes. I can't go off with this man's money without doing something to
earn it like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle
of eczema lotion in his pocket to make it look more like a square
deal.'

"'Well,' says Andy, 'it does seem kind of hard on one's professional
pride to lope off with a bearded pard's competency, especially after
he has nominated you custodian of his bundle in the sappy insouciance
of his urban indiscrimination. Suppose we wake him up and see if we
can formulate some commercial sophistry by which he will be enabled to
give us both his money and a good excuse.'

"We wakes up Whiskers. He stretches himself and yawns out the
hypothesis that he must have dropped off for a minute. And then he
says he wouldn't mind sitting in at a little gentleman's game of
poker. He used to play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn;
and as he was out for a good time, why--and so forth.

"Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a
solution to our financial troubles. So we all three go to our hotel
further down Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to
Andy's room. I tried once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural
Gardens take his five thousand. But no.

"'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and oblige.
I'll ask you fer it when I want it. I guess I know when I'm among
friends. A man that's done business on Beekman street for twenty
years, right in the heart of the wisest old village on earth, ought to
know what he's about. I guess I can tell a gentleman from a con man or
a flimflammer when I meet him. I've got some odd change in my clothes
--enough to start the game with, I guess.'

"He goes through his pockets and rains $20 gold certificates on the
table till it looked like a $10,000 'Autumn Day in a Lemon Grove'
picture by Turner in the salons. Andy almost smiled.

"The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down his
hand, claims low and jack and big casino and rakes in the pot.

"Andy always took a pride in his poker playing. He got up from the
table and looked sadly out of the window at the street cars.

"'Well, gentlemen,' says the cigar man, 'I don't blame you for not
wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess,
it's been so long since I indulged. Now, how long are you gentlemen
going to be in the city?'

"I told him about a week longer. He says that'll suit him fine. His
cousin is coming over from Brooklyn that evening and they are going to
see the sights of New York. His cousin, he says, is in the artificial
limb and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight
years. They expect to have the time of their lives, and he winds up by
asking me to keep his roll of money for him till next day. I tried to
make him take it, but it only insulted him to mention it.

"'I'll use what I've got in loose change,' says he. 'You keep the rest
for me. I'll drop in on you and Mr. Tucker to-morrow afternoon about 6
or 7,' says he, 'and we'll have dinner together. Be good.'

"After Whiskers had gone Andy looked at me curious and doubtful.

"'Well, Jeff,' says he, 'it looks like the ravens are trying to feed
us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to
have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside
too often. I know this is something like paternalism, but don't you
think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about enough knocking at
our door?'

"I put my feet up on the table and my hands in my pockets, which is an
attitude unfavorable to frivolous thoughts.

"'Andy,' says I, 'this man with the hirsute whiskers has got us in a
predicament. We can't move hand or foot with his money. You and me
have got a gentleman's agreement with Fortune that we can't break.
We've done business in the West where it's more of a fair game. Out
there the people we skin are trying to skin us, even the farmers and
the remittance men that the magazines send out to write up Goldfields.
But there's little sport in New York city for rod, reel or gun. They
hunt here with either one of two things--a slungshot or a letter of
introduction. The town has been stocked so full of carp that the game
fish are all gone. If you spread a net here, do you catch legitimate
suckers in it, such as the Lord intended to be caught--fresh guys who
know it all, sports with a little coin and the nerve to play another
man's game, street crowds out for the fun of dropping a dollar or
two and village smarties who know just where the little pea is? No,
sir,' says I. 'What the grafters live on here is widows and orphans,
and foreigners who save up a bag of money and hand it out over the
first counter they see with an iron railing to it, and factory girls
and little shopkeepers that never leave the block they do business
on. That's what they call suckers here. They're nothing but canned
sardines, and all the bait you need to catch 'em is a pocketknife and
a soda cracker.

"'Now, this cigar man,' I went on, 'is one of the types. He's lived
twenty years on one street without learning as much as you would
in getting a once-over shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas
crossroads town. But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all
the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of
street cars or paying out money to wire-tappers or standing under a
safe that's being hoisted into a skyscraper. When a New Yorker does
loosen up,' says I, 'it's like the spring decomposition of the ice
jam in the Allegheny River. He'll swamp you with cracked ice and
back-water if you don't get out of the way.

"'It's mighty lucky for us, Andy,' says I, 'that this cigar exponent
with the parsley dressing saw fit to bedeck us with his childlike
trust and altruism. For,' says I, 'this money of his is an eyesore to
my sense of rectitude and ethics. We can't take it, Andy; you know
we can't,' says I, 'for we haven't a shadow of a title to it--not a
shadow. If there was the least bit of a way we could put in a claim
to it I'd be willing to see him start in for another twenty years and
make another $5,000 for himself, but we haven't sold him anything,
we haven't been embroiled in a trade or anything commercial. He
approached us friendly,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy
laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he
wants it.'


[Illustration: "'We can't take it, Andy.'"]


"'Your arguments,' says Andy, 'are past criticism or comprehension.
No, we can't walk off with the money--as things now stand. I admire
your conscious way of doing business, Jeff,' says Andy, 'and I
wouldn't propose anything that wasn't square in line with your
theories of morality and initiative.

"'But I'll be away to-night and most of to-morrow Jeff,' says Andy.
'I've got some business affairs that I want to attend to. When this
free greenbacks party comes in to-morrow afternoon hold him here till
I arrive. We've all got an engagement for dinner, you know.'

"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man, with
his eyes half open.

"'Been having a glorious time, Mr. Peters,' says he. 'Took in all the
sights. I tell you New York is the onliest only. Now if you don't
mind,' says he, 'I'll lie down on that couch and doze off for about
nine minutes before Mr. Tucker comes. I'm not used to being up all
night. And to-morrow, if you don't mind, Mr. Peters, I'll take that
five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at
the racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me for being so impolite as to go to
sleep, Mr. Peters.'

"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
himself and begins to snore, while I sit there musing over things and
wishing I was back in the West, where you could always depend on a
customer fighting to keep his money hard enough to let your conscience
take it from him.

"At half-past 5 Andy comes in and sees the sleeping form.

"'I've been over to Trenton,' says Andy, pulling a document out of his
pocket. 'I think I've got this matter fixed up all right, Jeff. Look
at that.'

"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued
by the State of New Jersey to 'The Peters & Tucker Consolidated and
Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited.'

"'It's to buy up rights of way for airship lines,' explained Andy.
'The Legislature wasn't in session, but I found a man at a postcard
stand in the lobby that kept a stock of charters on hand. There are
100,000 shares,' says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. I
had one blank certificate of stock printed.'

"Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a fountain
pen.

"'The whole bunch,' says he, 'goes to our friend in dreamland for
$5,000. Did you learn his name?'

"'Make it out to bearer,' says I.

"We put the certificate of stock in the cigar man's hand and went out
to pack our suit cases.


[Illustration: "We put the certificate of stock in the cigarman's
hand."]


"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about
taking the money now, Jeff?'

"'Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any other
Holding Corporation?'"




CONSCIENCE IN ART


"I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics
of pure swindling," said Jeff Peters to me one day.

"Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise schemes
of money-getting so fraudulent and high-financial that they wouldn't
have been allowed in the bylaws of a railroad rebate system.

"Myself, I never believed in taking any man's dollars unless I gave
him something for it--something in the way of rolled gold jewelry,
garden seeds, lumbago lotion, stock certificates, stove polish or a
crack on the head to show for his money. I guess I must have had New
England ancestors away back and inherited some of their stanch and
rugged fear of the police.

"But Andy's family tree was in different kind. I don't think he could
have traced his descent any further back than a corporation.

"One summer while we was in the middle West, working down the Ohio
valley with a line of family albums, headache powders and roach
destroyer, Andy takes one of his notions of high and actionable
financiering.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop these
rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to something more nourishing
and prolific. If we keep on snapshooting these hinds for their egg
money we'll be classed as nature fakers. How about plunging into the
fastnesses of the skyscraper country and biting some big bull caribous
in the chest?'

"'Well,' says I, 'you know my idiosyncrasies. I prefer a square,
non-illegal style of business such as we are carrying on now. When I
take money I want to leave some tangible object in the other fellow's
hands for him to gaze at and to distract his attention from my spoor,
even if it's only a Komical Kuss Trick Finger Ring for Squirting
Perfume in a Friend's Eye. But if you've got a fresh idea, Andy,' says
I, 'let's have a look at it. I'm not so wedded to petty graft that I
would refuse something better in the way of a subsidy.'

"'I was thinking,' says Andy, 'of a little hunt without horn, hound or
camera among the great herd of the Midas Americanus, commonly known as
the Pittsburg millionaires.'

"'In New York?' I asks.

"'No, sir,' says Andy, 'in Pittsburg. That's their habitat. They don't
like New York. They go there now and then just because it's expected
of 'em.'

"'A Pittsburg millionaire in New York is like a fly in a cup of hot
coffee--he attracts attention and comment, but he don't enjoy it. New
York ridicules him for "blowing" so much money in that town of sneaks
and snobs, and sneers. The truth is, he don't spend anything while he
is there. I saw a memorandum of expenses for a ten days trip to Bunkum
Town made by a Pittsburg man worth $15,000,000 once. Here's the way he
set it down:


   R. R. fare to and from . . . . . . . . $   21 00
   Cab fare to and from hotel . . . . . .      2 00
   Hotel bill @ $5 per day  . . . . . . .     50 00
   Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5,750 00
                                         ----------
      Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5,823 00


"'That's the voice of New York,' goes on Andy. 'The town's nothing but
a head waiter. If you tip it too much it'll go and stand by the door
and make fun of you to the hat check boy. When a Pittsburger wants to
spend money and have a good time he stays at home. That's where we'll
go to catch him.'

"Well, to make a dense story more condensed, me and Andy cached our
paris green and antipyrine powders and albums in a friend's cellar,
and took the trail to Pittsburg. Andy didn't have any especial
prospectus of chicanery and violence drawn up, but he always had
plenty of confidence that his immoral nature would rise to any
occasion that presented itself.

"As a concession to my ideas of self-preservation and rectitude he
promised that if I should take an active and incriminating part in
any little business venture that we might work up there should be
something actual and cognizant to the senses of touch, sight, taste or
smell to transfer to the victim for the money so my conscience might
rest easy. After that I felt better and entered more cheerfully into
the foul play.

"'Andy,' says I, as we strayed through the smoke along the cinderpath
they call Smithfield street, 'had you figured out how we are going to
get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not that
I would decry my own worth or system of drawing room deportment, and
work with the olive fork and pie knife,' says I, 'but isn't the entree
nous into the salons of the stogie smokers going to be harder than you
imagined?'

"'If there's any handicap at all,' says Andy, 'it's our own refinement
and inherent culture. Pittsburg millionaires are a fine body of plain,
wholehearted, unassuming, democratic men.

"'They are rough but uncivil in their manners, and though their ways
are boisterous and unpolished, under it all they have a great deal
of impoliteness and discourtesy. Nearly every one of 'em rose from
obscurity,' says Andy, 'and they'll live in it till the town gets to
using smoke consumers. If we act simple and unaffected and don't go
too far from the saloons and keep making a noise like an import duty
on steel rails we won't have any trouble in meeting some of 'em
socially.'

"Well Andy and me drifted about town three or four days getting our
bearings. We got to knowing several millionaires by sight.

"One used to stop his automobile in front of our hotel and have a
quart of champagne brought out to him. When the waiter opened it he'd
turn it up to his mouth and drink it out of the bottle. That showed he
used to be a glassblower before he made his money.

"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About 11
o'clock he came into my room.

"'Landed one, Jeff,' says he. 'Twelve millions. Oil, rolling mills,
real estate and natural gas. He's a fine man; no airs about him. Made
all his money in the last five years. He's got professors posting him
up now in education--art and literature and haberdashery and such
things.

"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
Corporation man that there'd be four suicides in the Allegheny rolling
mills to-day. So everybody in sight had to walk up and have drinks on
him. He took a fancy to me and asked me to dinner with him. We went to
a restaurant in Diamond alley and sat on stools and had a sparkling
Moselle and clam chowder and apple fritters.

"'Then he wanted to show me his bachelor apartment on Liberty street.
He's got ten rooms over a fish market with privilege of the bath on
the next floor above. He told me it cost him $18,000 to furnish his
apartment, and I believe it.

"'He's got $40,000 worth of pictures in one room, and $20,000 worth of
curios and antiques in another. His name's Scudder, and he's 45, and
taking lessons on the piano and 15,000 barrels of oil a day out of his
wells.'

"'All right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay
vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?'

"'Now, that man,' says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, 'ain't
what you would call an ordinary scutt. When he was showing me his
cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke
oven. He says that if some of his big deals go through he'll make
J. P. Morgan's collection of sweatshop tapestry and Augusta, Me.,
beadwork look like the contents of an ostrich's craw thrown on a
screen by a magic lantern.

"'And then he showed me a little carving,' went on Andy, 'that anybody
could see was a wonderful thing. It was something like 2,000 years
old, he said. It was a lotus flower with a woman's face in it carved
out of a solid piece of ivory.

"Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian
carver named Khafra made two of 'em for King Rameses II. about the
year B.C. The other one can't be found. The junkshops and antique bugs
have rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock.
Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I
thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of
learning art from 'em?'

"'Be patient,' says Andy, kindly. 'Maybe we will see a rift in the
smoke ere long.'

"All the next morning Andy was out. I didn't see him until about noon.
He came to the hotel and called me into his room across the hall. He
pulled a roundish bundle about as big as a goose egg out of his pocket
and unwrapped it. It was an ivory carving just as he had described the
millionaire's to me.

"'I went in an old second hand store and pawnshop a while ago,' says
Andy, 'and I see this half hidden under a lot of old daggers and
truck. The pawnbroker said he'd had it several years and thinks it was
soaked by some Arabs or Turks or some foreign dubs that used to live
down by the river.

"'I offered him $2 for it, and I must have looked like I wanted it,
for he said it would be taking the pumpernickel out of his children's
mouths to hold any conversation that did not lead up to a price of
$35. I finally got it for $25.

"'Jeff,' goes on Andy, 'this is the exact counterpart of Scudder's
carving. It's absolutely a dead ringer for it. He'll pay $2,000 for it
as quick as he'd tuck a napkin under his chin. And why shouldn't it be
the genuine other one, anyhow, that the old gypsy whittled out?'

"'Why not, indeed?' says I. 'And how shall we go about compelling him
to make a voluntary purchase of it?'

"Andy had his plan all ready, and I'll tell you how we carried it out.

"I got a pair of blue spectacles, put on my black frock coat, rumpled
my hair up and became Prof. Pickleman. I went to another hotel,
registered, and sent a telegram to Scudder to come to see me at once
on important art business. The elevator dumped him on me in less
than an hour. He was a foggy man with a clarion voice, smelling of
Connecticut wrappers and naphtha.

"'Hello, Profess!' he shouts. 'How's your conduct?'

"I rumpled my hair some more and gave him a blue glass stare.

"'Sir,' says I, 'are you Cornelius T. Scudder? Of Pittsburg,
Pennsylvania?'

"'I am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'

"'I've neither the time nor the desire,' says I, 'for such harmful
and deleterious amusements. I have come from New York,' says I, 'on a
matter of busi--on a matter of art.

"'I learned there that you are the owner of an Egyptian ivory carving
of the time of Rameses II., representing the head of Queen Isis in a
lotus flower. There were only two of such carvings made. One has been
lost for many years. I recently discovered and purchased the other in
a pawn--in an obscure museum in Vienna. I wish to purchase yours. Name
your price.'

"'Well, the great ice jams, Profess!' says Scudder. 'Have you found
the other one? Me sell? No. I don't guess Cornelius Scudder needs to
sell anything that he wants to keep. Have you got the carving with
you, Profess?'

"I shows it to Scudder. He examines it careful all over.

"'It's the article,' says he. 'It's a duplicate of mine, every line
and curve of it. Tell you what I'll do,' he says. 'I won't sell, but
I'll buy. Give you $2,500 for yours.'

"'Since you won't sell, I will,' says I. 'Large bills, please. I'm a
man of few words. I must return to New York to-night. I lecture
to-morrow at the aquarium.'

"Scudder sends a check down and the hotel cashes it. He goes off with
his piece of antiquity and I hurry back to Andy's hotel, according to
arrangement.

"Andy is walking up and down the room looking at his watch.

"'Well?' he says.

"'Twenty-five hundred,' says I. 'Cash.'

"'We've got just eleven minutes,' says Andy, 'to catch the B. & O.
westbound. Grab your baggage.'

"'What's the hurry,' says I. 'It was a square deal. And even if it was
only an imitation of the original carving it'll take him some time to
find it out. He seemed to be sure it was the genuine article.'

"'It was,' says Andy. 'It was his own. When I was looking at his
curios yesterday he stepped out of the room for a moment and I
pocketed it. Now, will you pick up your suit case and hurry?'

"'Then,' says I, 'why was that story about finding another one in the
pawn--'

"'Oh,' says Andy, 'out of respect for that conscience of yours. Come
on.'"




THE MAN HIGHER UP


Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano's
restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of graft.

Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch the
shipping in East River from the depths of his chinchilla overcoat,
and to lay in a supply of Chicago-made clothing at one of the Fulton
street stores. During the other three seasons he may be found further
west--his range is from Spokane to Tampa. In his profession he
takes a pride which he supports and defends with a serious and
unique philosophy of ethics. His profession is no new one. He is an
incorporated, uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of
the restless and unwise dollars of his fellow men.

In the wilderness of stone in which Jeff seeks his annual lonely
holiday he is glad to palaver of his many adventures, as a boy will
whistle after sundown in a wood. Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the
time of his coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano's
concerning the little wine-stained table in the corner between the
rakish rubber plant and the framed palazzio della something on the
wall.

"There are two kinds of graft," said Jeff, "that ought to be wiped out
by law. I mean Wall Street speculation, and burglary."

"Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them," said I, with
a laugh.

"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I wondered
whether the laugh had been redundant.

"About three months ago," said Jeff, "it was my privilege to become
familiar with a sample of each of the aforesaid branches of
illegitimate art. I was _sine qua grata_ with a member of the
housebreakers' union and one of the John D. Napoleons of finance at
the same time."

"Interesting combination," said I, with a yawn. "Did I tell you I
bagged a duck and a ground-squirrel at one shot last week over in the
Ramapos?" I knew well how to draw Jeff's stories.

"Let me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of
society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like
eye," said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muck-raker in his own.

"As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two
times in a man's life when he does this--when he's dead broke, and
when he's rich.

"Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was
out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at a cross-road, and drives into
this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and
disfigured Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600
worth of young fruit trees there--plums, cherries, peaches and pears.
The Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping I
might pass that way again. I drove down Main street as far as the
Crystal Palace drugstore before I realized I had committed ambush upon
myself and my white horse Bill.

"The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began
a conversation that wasn't entirely disassociated with the subject
of fruit trees. A committee of 'em ran some trace-chains through
the armholes of my vest, and escorted me through their gardens and
orchards.

"Their fruit trees hadn't lived up to their labels. Most of 'em had
turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of
blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing
anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's
nest and half of an old corset-cover.

"The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town.
They took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the
wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees
put forth an Amsden's June peach I might come back and get my things.
Then they took off the trace chains and jerked their thumbs in the
direction of the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope
for the swollen rivers and impenetrable forests.

"When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an
unidentified town on the A., T. & S. F. railroad. The Peaviners hadn't
left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing--they wasn't
after my life--and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a
pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and
perspicacity.

"And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the
town; and off of it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards
in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and
interjections. I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed
more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in
spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow's job look like a chimney-sweep's.

"'Fall off?' says I.

"'Nunk,' says he. 'Got off. Arrived at my destination. What town is
this?'

"'Haven't looked it up on the map yet,' says I. 'I got in about five
minutes before you did. How does it strike you?'

"'Hard,' says he, twisting one of his arms around. 'I believe that
shoulder--no, it's all right.'

"He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his
pocket drops a fine, nine-inch burglar's steel jimmy. He picks it up
and looks at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

"'Brother,' says he, 'greetings. Didn't I see you in Southern Missouri
last summer selling colored sand at half-a-dollar a teaspoonful to put
into lamps to keep the oil from exploding?'

"'Oil,' says I, 'never explodes. It's the gas that forms that
explodes.' But I shakes hands with him, anyway.

"'My name's Bill Bassett,' says he to me, 'and if you'll call it
professional pride instead of conceit, I'll inform you that you have
the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gum-shoe on
ground drained by the Mississippi River.'

"Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags
as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems he didn't have a cent,
either, and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able
burglar sometimes had to travel on freights by telling me that a
servant girl had played him false in Little Rock, and he was making
a quick get-away.

"'It's part of my business,' says Bill Bassett, 'to play up to the
ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. 'Tis loves that makes
the bit go 'round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty
parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and
sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin
under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just
because the old lady's nephew teaches a Bible class. I first make an
impression on the girl,' says Bill, 'and when she lets me inside I
make an impression on the locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,'
says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when
I came 'round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it
was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She
had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill Bassett.

"It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the
girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a
tally-ho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the
depot. As he had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure,
but he made a train that was just pulling out.

"'Well,' says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memories of our dead
lives, 'I could eat. This town don't look like it was kept under a
Yale lock. Suppose we commit some mild atrocity that will bring in
temporary expense money. I don't suppose you've brought along any hair
tonic or rolled gold watch-chains, or similar law-defying swindles
that you could sell on the plaza to the pikers of the paretic
populace, have you?'

"'No,' says I, 'I left an elegant line of Patagonian diamond earrings
and rainy-day sunbursts in my valise at Peavine. But they're to stay
there until some of those black-gum trees begin to glut the market
with yellow clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can't count on them
unless we take Luther Burbank in for a partner.'

"'Very well,' says Bassett, 'we'll do the best we can. Maybe after
dark I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and
Drovers Marine Bank with it.'

"While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot near
by. A person in a high hat gets off on the wrong side of the train and
comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat man
with a big nose and rat's eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a
hand-satchel careful, as if it had eggs or railroads bonds in it. He
passes by us and keeps on down the track, not appearing to notice the
town.

"'Come on,' says Bill Bassett to me, starting after him.

"'Where?' I asks.

"'Lordy!' says Bill, 'had you forgot you was in the desert? Didn't you
see Colonel Manna drop down right before your eyes? Don't you hear the
rustling of General Raven's wings? I'm surprised at you, Elijah.'

"We overtook the stranger in the edge of some woods, and, as it was
after sun-down and in a quiet place, nobody saw us stop him. Bill
takes the silk hat off the man's head and brushes it with his sleeve
and puts it back.

"'What does this mean, sir?' says the man.

"'When I wore one of these,' says Bill, 'and felt embarrassed, I
always done that. Not having one now I had to use yours. I hardly know
how to begin, sir, in explaining our business with you, but I guess
we'll try your pockets first.'

"Bill Bassett felt in all of them, and looked disgusted.

"'Not even a watch,' he says. 'Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you
whited sculpture? Going about dressed like a head-waiter, and financed
like a Count! You haven't even got carfare. What did you do with your
transfer?'

"The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any
sort. But Bassett takes his hand-satchel and opens it. Out comes some
collars and socks and a half a page of a newspaper clipped out. Bill
reads the clipping careful, and holds out his hand to the held-up
party.

"'Brother,' says he, 'greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I am
Bill Bassett, the burglar. Mr. Peters, you must make the acquaintance
of Mr. Alfred E. Ricks. Shake hands. Mr. Peters,' says Bill, 'stands
about halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line of havoc and
corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. I'm glad
to meet you, Mr. Ricks--you and Mr. Peters. This is the first time
I ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks--
housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please
examine Mr. Rick's credentials, Mr. Peters.'

"The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture
of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies
of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the
intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of
the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold 'em
to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices
in Chicago. After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one
of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (I've had
'em actually try gold watches I've sold 'em with acid) took a cheap
excursion down to the land where it is always just before supper to
look at his lot and see if it didn't need a new paling or two on the
fence, and market a few lemons in time for the Christmas present
trade. He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the line
out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised,
to be about 40 rods and 16 poles S., 27 degrees E. of the middle of
Lake Okeechobee. This man's lot was under thirty-six feet of water,
and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars
that his title looked fishy.

"Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for
Alfred E. Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the
weather bureau. Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldn't deny
the alligators. One morning the papers came out with a column about
it, and Ricks come out by the fire-escape. It seems the alleged
authorities had beat him to the safe-deposit box where he kept his
winnings, and Ricks has to westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen
15-and-a-half English pokes in his shopping bag. He happened to have
some mileage left in his book, and that took him as far as the town
in the wilderness where he was spilled out on me and Bill Bassett as
Elijah III. with not a raven in sight for any of us.

"Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too,
and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the
price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if
we had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and
capital. Now, when trade has no capital there isn't a dicker to be
made. And when capital has no money there's a stagnation in steak and
onions. That put it up to the man with the jimmy.

"'Brother bushrangers,' says Bill Bassett, 'never yet, in trouble,
did I desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I seem to see unfurnished
lodgings. Let us go there and wait till dark.'

"There was an old, deserted cabin in the grove, and we three took
possession of it. After dark Bill Bassett tells us to wait, and goes
out for half an hour. He comes back with a armful of bread and
spareribs and pies.

"'Panhandled 'em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,' says he. 'Eat,
drink and be leary.'

"The full moon was coming up bright, so we sat on the floor of the
cabin and ate in the light of it. And this Bill Bassett begins to
brag.

"'Sometimes,' says he, with his mouth full of country produce, 'I
lose all patience with you people that think you are higher up in
the profession than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in
the present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you do it,
Ricksy?'

"'I must confess, Mr. Bassett,' says Ricks, speaking nearly inaudible
out of a slice of pie, 'that at this immediate juncture I could
not, perhaps, promote an enterprise to relieve the situation. Large
operations, such as I direct, naturally require careful preparation in
advance. I--'

"'I know, Ricksy,' breaks in Bill Bassett. 'You needn't finish. You
need $500 to make the first payment on a blond typewriter, and four
roomsful of quartered oak furniture. And you need $500 more for
advertising contracts. And you need two weeks' time for the fish to
begin to bite. Your line of relief would be about as useful in an
emergency as advocating municipal ownership to cure a man suffocated
by eighty-cent gas. And your graft ain't much swifter, Brother
Peters,' he winds up.

"'Oh,' says I, 'I haven't seen you turn anything into gold with your
wand yet, Mr. Good Fairy. 'Most anybody could rub the magic ring for
a little left-over victuals.'

"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy
and cheerful. 'The coach and six'll drive up to the door before you
know it, Miss Cinderella. Maybe you've got some scheme under your
sleeve-holders that will give us a start.'

"'Son,' says I, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young
enough yet to take out an endowment policy. I've been broke before. We
can see the lights of that town not half a mile away. I learned under
Montague Silver, the greatest street man that ever spoke from a wagon.
There are hundreds of men walking those streets this moment with
grease spots on their clothes. Give me a gasoline lamp, a dry-goods
box, and a two-dollar bar of white castile soap, cut into little--'

"'Where's your two dollars?' snickered Bill Bassett into my discourse.
There was no use arguing with that burglar.

"'No,' he goes on; 'you're both babes-in-the-wood. Finance has closed
the mahogany desk, and trade has put the shutters up. Both of you look
to labor to start the wheels going. All right. You admit it. To-night
I'll show you what Bill Bassett can do.'

"Bassett tells me and Ricks not to leave the cabin till he comes back,
even if it's daylight, and then he starts off toward town, whistling
gay.

"This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a silk
handkerchief over his hat, and lays down on the floor.

"'I think I will endeavor to secure a little slumber,' he squeaks.
'The day has been fatiguing. Good-night, my dear Mr. Peters.'

"'My regards to Morpheus,' says I. 'I think I'll sit up a while.'

"About two o'clock, as near as I could guess by my watch in Peavine,
home comes our laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the
streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads
out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and
begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.

"'I'll tell you a few things about that town,' says he. 'It's named
Rocky Springs, and they're building a Masonic temple, and it looks
like the Democratic candidate for mayor is going to get soaked by a
Pop, and Judge Tucker's wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is
getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian thesises before
I could get a siphon in the fountain of knowledge that I was after.
And there's a bank there called the Lumberman's Fidelity and Plowman's
Savings Institution. It closed for business yesterday with $23,000
cash on hand. It will open this morning with $18,000--all silver--
that's the reason I didn't bring more. There you are, trade and
capital. Now, will you be bad?'

"'My young friend,' says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his hands, 'have
you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!'

"'You couldn't call it that,' says Bassett. 'Robbing" sounds harsh.
All I had to do was to find out what street it was on. That town is so
quiet that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking
in that safe lock--"right to 45; left twice to 80; right once to
60; left to 15"--as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the
football dialect. Now, boys,' says Bassett, 'this is an early rising
town. They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before
daylight. I asked what for, and they said because breakfast was ready
at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and
away with the tinkers' chorus. I'll stake you. How much do you want?
Speak up. Capital.'

"'My dear young friend,' says this ground squirrel of a Ricks,
standing on his hind legs and juggling nuts in his paws, 'I have
friends in Denver who would assist me. If I had a hundred dollars I--'

"Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to
Ricks.

"'Trade, how much?' he says to me.

"'Put your money up, Labor,' says I. 'I never yet drew upon honest
toil for its hard-earned pittance. The dollars I get are surplus ones
that are burning the pockets of damfools and greenhorns. When I stand
on a street corner and sell a solid gold diamond ring to a yap for
$3.00, I make just $2.60. And I know he's going to give it to a girl
in return for all the benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His
profits are $122.00. Which of us is the biggest fakir?'

"'And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty cents to
keep her lamp from exploding,' says Bassett, 'what do you figure her
gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?'

"'Listen,' says I. 'I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and well
filled. If she does that it can't burst. And with the sand in it
she knows it can't, and she don't worry. It's a kind of Industrial
Christian Science. She pays fifty cents, and gets both Rockefeller and
Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain't everybody that can let the gold-dust
twins do their work.'

"Alfred E. Ricks all but licks the dust off of Bill Bassett's shoes.

"'My dear young friend,' says he, 'I will never forget your
generosity. Heaven will reward you. But let me implore you to turn
from your ways of violence and crime.'

"'Mousie,' says Bill, 'the hole in the wainscoting for yours. Your
dogmas and inculcations sound to me like the last words of a bicycle
pump. What has your high moral, elevator-service system of pillage
brought you to? Penuriousness and want. Even Brother Peters, who
insists upon contaminating the art of robbery with theories of
commerce and trade, admitted he was on the lift. Both of you live by
the gilded rule. Brother Peters,' says Bill, 'you'd better choose a
slice of this embalmed currency. You're welcome.'

"I told Bill Bassett once more to put his money in his pocket. I never
had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave
something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle
for a souvenir to remind 'em not to get caught again.

"And then Alfred E. Ricks grovels at Bill's feet again, and bids us
adieu. He says he will have a team at a farmhouse, and drive to the
station below, and take the train for Denver. It salubrified the
atmosphere when that lamentable boll-worm took his departure. He was a
disgrace to every non-industrial profession in the country. With all
his big schemes and fine offices he had wound up unable even to get an
honest meal except by the kindness of a strange and maybe unscrupulous
burglar. I was glad to see him go, though I felt a little sorry for
him, now that he was ruined forever. What could such a man do without
a big capital to work with? Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as we left him, was
as helpless as turtle on its back. He couldn't have worked a scheme to
beat a little girl out of a penny slate-pencil.

"When me and Bill Bassett was left alone I did a little
sleight-of-mind turn in my head with a trade secret at the end of
it. Thinks I, I'll show this Mr. Burglar Man the difference between
business and labor. He had hurt some of my professional self-adulation
by casting his Persians upon commerce and trade.

"'I won't take any of your money as a gift, Mr. Bassett,' says I to
him, 'but if you'll pay my expenses as a travelling companion until we
get out of the danger zone of the immoral deficit you have caused in
this town's finances to-night, I'll be obliged.'

"Bill Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as we
could catch a safe train.

"When we got to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested
that we once more try our luck on terra-cotta. That was the home of
Montague Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew
Monty would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing
'round the locality. Bill Bassett said all towns looked alike to
him as he worked mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los
Perros, a fine little town in the silver region.

"I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial
slungshot that I intended to hit Bassett behind the ear with. I wasn't
going to take his money while he was asleep, but I was going to leave
him with a lottery ticket that would represent in experience to him
$4,755--I think that was the amount he had when we got off the train.
But the first time I hinted to him about an investment, he turns on me
and disencumbers himself of the following terms and expressions.

"'Brother Peters,' says he, 'it ain't a bad idea to go into an
enterprise of some kind, as you suggest. I think I will. But if I do
it will be such a cold proposition that nobody but Robert E. Peary and
Charlie Fairbanks will be able to sit on the board of directors.'

"'I thought you might want to turn your money over,' says I.

"'I do,' says he, 'frequently. I can't sleep on one side all night.
I'll tell you, Brother Peters,' says he, 'I'm going to start a poker
room. I don't seem to care for the humdrum in swindling, such as
peddling egg-beaters and working off breakfast food on Barnum and
Bailey for sawdust to strew in their circus rings. But the gambling
business,' says he, 'from the profitable side of the table is a good
compromise between swiping silver spoons and selling penwipers at a
Waldorf-Astoria charity bazar.'

"'Then,' says I, 'Mr. Bassett, you don't care to talk over my little
business proposition?'

"'Why,' says he, 'do you know, you can't get a Pasteur institute to
start up within fifty miles of where I live. I bite so seldom.'

"So, Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for some
furniture and chromos. The same night I went to Monty Silver's house,
and he let me have $200 on my prospects. Then I went to the only store
in Los Perros that sold playing cards and bought every deck in the
house. The next morning when the store opened I was there bringing all
the cards back with me. I said that my partner that was going to back
me in the game had changed his mind; and I wanted to sell the cards
back again. The storekeeper took 'em at half price.

"Yes, I was seventy-five dollars loser up to that time. But while I
had the cards that night I marked every one in every deck. That was
labor. And then trade and commerce had their innings, and the bread
I had cast upon the waters began to come back in the form of cottage
pudding with wine sauce.

"Of course I was among the first to buy chips at Bill Bassett's game.
He had bought the only cards there was to be had in town; and I knew
the back of every one of them better than I know the back of my head
when the barber shows me my haircut in the two mirrors.

"When the game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars,
and all Bill Bassett had was the wanderlust and a black cat he had
bought for a mascot. Bill shook hands with me when I left.

"'Brother Peters,' says he, 'I have no business being in business. I
was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 burglar tries to make a James
out of his jimmy he perpetrates an improfundity. You have a well-oiled
and efficacious system of luck at cards,' says he. 'Peace go with
you.' And I never afterward sees Bill Bassett again."



"Well, Jeff," said I, when the Autolycan adventurer seemed to have
divulged the gist of his tale, "I hope you took care of the money.
That would be a respecta--that is a considerable working capital if
you should choose some day to settle down to some sort of regular
business."

"Me?" said Jeff, virtuously. "You can bet I've taken care of that five
thousand."

He tapped his coat over the region of his chest exultantly.

"Gold mining stock," he explained, "every cent of it. Shares par value
one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent. within a year. Non-assessable.
The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in
yourself if you've any spare dollars on hand."

"Sometimes," said I, "these mines are not--"

"Oh, this one's solid as an old goose," said Jeff. "Fifty thousand
dollars' worth of ore in sight, and 10 per cent. monthly earnings
guaranteed."

He drew out a long envelope from his pocket and cast it on the table.

"Always carry it with me," said he. "So the burglar can't corrupt or
the capitalist break in and water it."

I looked at the beautifully engraved certificate of stock.

"In Colorado, I see," said I. "And, by the way, Jeff, what was the
name of the little man who went to Denver--the one you and Bill met at
the station?"

"Alfred E. Ricks," said Jeff, "was the toad's designation."

"I see," said I, "the president of this mining company signs himself
A. L. Fredericks. I was wondering--"

"Let me see that stock," said Jeff quickly, almost snatching it from
me.

To mitigate, even though slightly, the embarrassment I summoned the
waiter and ordered another bottle of the Barbera. I thought it was the
least I could do.




A TEMPERED WIND


The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of
Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when
I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of
a business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in
endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.

I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman,
having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to
posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner,
and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at
the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious
team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the
third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is
"The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."

By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet
him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where
he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and
cowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye
straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property man
of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the
best of me.

"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite.
"I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're half
way back to the farm by now."

"Gosh blame them darned mules," says Straw-top, in a voice so good
that I nearly apologized; "they're a'lus bustin' loose." And then he
looks at me close, and then he takes off his hayseed hat, and says, in
a different voice: "I'd like to shake hands with Parleyvoo Pickens,
the greatest street man in the West, barring only Montague Silver,
which you can no more than allow."

I let him shake hands with me.

"I learned under Silver," I said; "I don't begrudge him the lead.
But what's your graft, son? I admit that the phantom flight of the
non-existing animals at which you remarked 'Whoa!' has puzzled me
somewhat. How do you win out on the trick?"

Buckingham Skinner blushed.

"Pocket money," says he; "that's all. I am temporarily unfinanced.
This little coup de rye straw is good for forty dollars in a town of
this size. How do I work it? Why, I involve myself, as you perceive,
in the loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas
Stubblefield--a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily
to the office of some loan company conveniently located in the
third-floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor
and ask to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musical
education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies.
It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will be
leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.

"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I
suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit the
word--or exclamation, which-ever it may be--viz, 'Whoa!' Then I rush
down-stairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang
them mules,' I says; 'they done run away and busted the doubletree and
two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money
along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'

"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for
the manna to drop.

"'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the
specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar
bill until to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten.
We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'

"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I
said, only for temporary loose change."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his
mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small
compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago
University had to be started in a small way."

"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.

"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum
Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,
a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,
consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian
lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty
engraved visiting cards--no two names alike--all for the sum of 38
cents."

"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in
Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed
wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like
to burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And
just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me
out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells
me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before
your old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess
religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C.
This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the
simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,
and I'm ashamed you found me working it."

"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk
on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he
is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's
too much like borrowing money without paying it back."

I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever
stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some
time, and offers to go partners.

"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find
me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your
proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw
in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great
Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."

This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony
there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;
it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.

We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.

"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
portrait canvassers for this."

Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see
Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be
the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,
patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant
ways--the kind of a lady for the place.

"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.

"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
like second-story work."

We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place
as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into
something respectable.

This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind
of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-book
maxims and psalms and proverbs and Esau's fables. They seem to kind of
hit off human nature. Our peaceful little swindle was constructed on
the old saying: "The whole push loves a lover."

One evening Buck and Miss Malloy drives up like blazes in a buggy to
a farmer's door. She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm--
always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and
of the cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married
on account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher.
Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend
Abels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on
her apron and rubbers through her specs.


[Illustration: She is a peach and of the cling variety.]


Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo
Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing
his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter
doxology.

"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"

It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little
Bethel school-house for to preach next Sunday.

The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuing
them with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the Reverend Green,
after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer
grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a
bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the
wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and
farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second
and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an
idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on
the red barns--it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat
to a batter.


[So the Reverend Green, after hesitations, marries 'em in the
farmer's parlor.]


I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at
about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was going
to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in
banks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes
of hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.

On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy
nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one
that is bent on doing right.


[Illustration: On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000.]


"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this
stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives
me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate
business when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on
this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga
propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about
to accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where
they build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a
cream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.

"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer
jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and
clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I
shall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication.
Good-by, boys. Take my advice and go into some decent fake. Get
friendly with the police and newspapers and you'll be all right."

So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and Buck also
rose up and sauntered off a few hundred miles; for we didn't care to
be around when them marriage certificates fell due.

With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off the
New Jersey coast they call New York.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson. Cosmopolitan they call it. You bet. So's a piece
of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull
their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough
for us"--that's what they sing.

There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up a
week's output of the factory in Augusta, Maine, that makes Knaughty
Knovelties and the little Phine Phun oroide gold finger ring that
sticks a needle in your friend's hand.

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get a
chance to learn. Everything's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are
baled hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut
off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the
other?

It's no place for an honest grafter with a small capital. There's too
big a protective tariff on bunco. Even when Giovanni sells a quart
of warm worms and chestnut hulls he has to hand out a pint to an
insectivorous cop. And the hotel man charges double for everything in
the bill that he sends by the patrol wagon to the altar where the duke
is about to marry the heiress.

But old Badville-near-Coney is the ideal burg for a refined piece of
piracy if you can pay the bunco duty. Imported grafts come pretty
high. The custom-house officers that look after it carry clubs, and
it's hard to smuggle in even a bib-and-tucker swindle to work Brooklyn
with unless you can pay the toll. But now, me and Buck, having
capital, descends upon New York to try and trade the metropolitan
backwoodsmen a few glass beads for real estate just as the Vans did a
hundred or two years ago.

At an East Side hotel we gets acquainted with Romulus G. Atterbury, a
man with the finest head for financial operations I ever saw. It was
all bald and glossy except for gray side whiskers. Seeing that head
behind an office railing, and you'd deposit a million with it without
a receipt. This Atterbury was well dressed, though he ate seldom; and
the synopsis of his talk would make the conversation of a siren sound
like a cab driver's kick. He said he used to be a member of the Stock
Exchange, but some of the big capitalists got jealous and formed a
ring that forced him to sell his seat.

Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on the
canvas for us some of the schemes that had caused his hair to
evacuate. He had one scheme for starting a National bank on $45 that
made the Mississippi Bubble look as solid as a glass marble. He talked
this to us for three days, and when his throat was good and sore we
told him about the roll we had. Atterbury borrowed a quarter from us
and went out and got a box of throat lozenges and started all over
again. This time he talked bigger things, and he got us to see 'em
as he did. The scheme he laid out looked like a sure winner, and he
talked me and Buck into putting our capital against his burnished dome
of thought. It looked all right for a kid-gloved graft. It seemed to
be just about an inch and a half outside of the reach of the police,
and as money-making as a mint. It was just what me and Buck wanted--a
regular business at a permanent stand, with an open air spieling with
tonsilitis on the street corners every evening.

So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down
in the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and
Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his
private room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr.
Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with
his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside
of an instantaneous reach for his hat.

And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office
room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a
pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.


[Illustration: Busy in the main office room dictating letters
to a shorthand countess.]


There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of
varnish and culpability.

At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man,
attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating
apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man
is no other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the
vice-president of the company.

"No recherché rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was
organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man,"
says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military hair-brushes.
Cast me for the role of the rhinestone-in-the-rough or I don't go on
exhibition. If you can use me in my natural, though displeasing form,
do so."

"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you are
you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the things
they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but
disheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions.
You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in New
York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer
of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."

I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple
peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .
conservative and careful almost to a fault."


[Illustration: "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens."]


Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all
of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in
the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--we
had to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what the
printer charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten per cent. each
month, payable on the last day thereof.

When any stockholder had paid in as much as $100, the company issued
him a Gold Bond and he became a bondholder. I asked Atterbury one day
what benefits and appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investor
more so than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the common
sucker who only owned stock. Atterbury picked up one of them Gold
Bonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a big red seal
tied with a blue ribbon in a bowknot, and he looked at me like his
feelings was hurt.

"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think
of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful
gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household
where one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the what-not, or
is chewed by the baby, caroling gleefully upon the floor! Ah, I see
your eye growing moist, Colonel--I have touched you, have I not?"

"You have not," says I, "for I've been watching you. The moisture
you see is apple juice. You can't expect one man to act as a human
cider-press and an art connoisseur too."

Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I understand it,
they was simple. The investors in stock paid in their money, and--
well, I guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and
--I don't call to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about
selling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but even we could
see how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money.
You take in money and pay back ten per cent. of it; it's plain enough
that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
expenses, as long as the fish bite.

Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine
die, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned
increment as it incremates."

It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;
$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his
business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day
longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an
alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money
belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the
furniture men can pick the bones."

Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press
dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.

"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a
Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.
The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the
Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the street-car fenders
and the Answers to Correspondents columns and the pickpocket notices
are made for. We want our ads. in the biggest city dailies, top of
column, next to editorials on radium and pictures of the girl doing
health exercises."

Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretend
to be busy; his desk was piled high up with money orders and checks
and greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock every
day.

Most of the shares went in small amounts--$10 and $25 and $50, and
a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of
President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes
so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
garbage chest that he calls his desk.

Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the
money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought
much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the
stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We
had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high
as prize fighters out of training.

One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and
flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a
bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury
looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.

"Know that man?" he asked us.

We said we didn't.

"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet
enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
reporter."

"What did he want?" asks Buck.

"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one
of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper.
You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like
a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and
knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if that
ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
The signs point that way."

Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
nervous all day.

The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way
that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a
rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except
a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad
treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president
of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real
sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.

Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in
the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got
Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged
they'd been reading the papers, too.

We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't
quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They all
looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of
young girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old
men that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good
many was just kids--bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
working-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the
gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut
stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you
please.


[Illustration: But they all had Golconda stock and looked as
sick as you please.]


I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up
the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam,
do you own any of this stock?"

"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all
I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I
haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some.
The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I
will lose it all."

There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy.
"I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk
hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you
guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"

Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb
distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the
time they lost coming to see about it.

There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a corner
like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.

"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all
over, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry
me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J--J--Jakey. She's got $400
in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai--" she sings out.


[Illustration: "Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld."]


Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then
we see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eye
shining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.

"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean to
carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"

"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in
case any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some of
them might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" he
says, listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc.
Whittleford's old cadaver coupé from the Roosevelt. I ought to know
that gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at
times."

"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your
way."

Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant
before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer--I knew what he meant. They
don't make them any better than Buck.

"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of
our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"

"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And
I starts for the safe deposit vaults.

I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and
me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let
ourselves into one of the office rooms.

"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still,
and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from
Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass
jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines,
Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town
from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar
whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went
after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the
corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard
--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from the
street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that
slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,
you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,
which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes.
That ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the
button-holes. While we are waiting for the patrol wagon you might get
out your little stub pencil and take notes for another funny piece in
the paper."

And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterbury
thinks. He only put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's
lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"

"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was
buying the stock."

"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into
the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the
railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short
speech.

"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't
shove so. Get in a line--a _line_--not in a pile. Lady, will you
please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny,
don't climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis;
you ain't out a cent. Get in _line_, I say. Here, Pick, come and
straighten 'em out and let 'em through and out by the other door."

Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head,
and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle
before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders
strung out and marches 'em, single file, through from the main room;
and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door into the hall
again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds,
paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The
shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't
hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.
Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the sex to cry
when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears
whenever they find themselves without either.


[Illustration: The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and
Investment Company can't hardly believe it.]


The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom
of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap
their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the
currency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old Domestic
Lisle-Thread Bank."

Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the
loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave
the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and
skip along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing in
bonds? The tea-pot or the crack in the wall behind the clock for your
hoard of pennies."

When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her an
extra twenty.

"A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda Company.
And say--if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful
distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby
authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."

When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter
and shoves the rest of the money over to him.

"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,
showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except
what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess
you'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best
way we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary
vice-president are going to follow the example of our revered
president, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for to-day, or do
you want to interview us on etiquette and the best way to make over an
old taffeta skirt?"

"News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you think I
could use this? I don't want to lose my job. Suppose I go around to
the office and tell 'em this happened. What'll the managing editor
say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back
when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling
up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like
this. A get-rich-quick scheme--excuse me--gang giving back the boodle!
Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."

"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the
door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We
never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take
nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money
from the people the Lord made to be buncoed--sports and rounders and
smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to
throw away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters
didn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We
never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir.
We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. Good-by
to you, Mr. Receiver."

"Here!" says the journalist reporter; "wait a minute. There's a broker
I know on the next floor. Wait till I put this truck in his safe. I
want you fellows to take a drink on me before you go."

"On you?" says Buck, winking solemn. "Don't you go and try to make 'em
believe at the office you said that. Thanks. We can't spare the time,
I reckon. So long."

And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda
Company went into involuntary liquefaction.

If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a
little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a
little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles
with hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with
cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown
derby in place of his silk hat.

"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we
got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up
the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey.
Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."

Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.

"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."

"Buy some more," says Buck.

We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to
settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the
ferry.

"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after
looking.

"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is
just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, if
you have to shake it off?"

We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:

"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't
it, Pick?"

"You bet," says I.




HOSTAGES TO MOMUS


I

I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one
time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and
undertook a thing that I'd have to apologize for even under the New
Jersey trust laws.

Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the
Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte
game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico,
just like selling forty-eight cents' worth of postage-stamps for
forty-nine cents is over here. So Uncle Porfirio he instructs the
_rurales_ to attend to our case.

_Rurales_? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental
crayon portraits of the worthy constables with a tin star and a gray
goatee. The _rurales_--well, if we'd mount our Supreme Court on
broncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe
_et al_. we'd have about the same thing.

When the _rurales_ started for us we started for the States. They
chased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and that night we
swum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absent-minded,
which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had 'em.

From there we emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans,
where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and other
adjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented
by the Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they are
still served at the side doors. The most I can remember of this town
is that me and Caligula and a Frenchman named McCarty--wait a minute;
Adolph McCarty--was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back
trading-stamps due on the Louisiana Purchase, when somebody hollers
that the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection of
buying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man
swing a lantern and say "All aboard!" I remembered no more, except
that the train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J.
Evans's works and figs.

When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against the
State of Georgia at a spot hitherto unaccounted for in time tables
except by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other
Thursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow
pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir,
for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the
weatherboarding and the chicken coop was right under the window. Me
and Caligula dressed and went down-stairs. The landlord was shelling
peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and
Hongkong in complexion though in other respects he seemed amenable in
the exercise of his sentiments and features.

Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though
red-haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.

"Pardner," says he, "good-morning, and be darned to you. Would you
mind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, but
can't exactly figure out on account of at what place."

"Well, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I reckoned you-all would be
inquiring this morning. You-all dropped off of the nine-thirty train
here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart
in liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain
Valley, in the State of Georgia."

"On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't have
anything to eat."

"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'll
call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town."

That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a
yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and
flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets
out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so
me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that
enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly
four years at a stretch.

"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys
didn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.
It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"

"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."

"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. I
thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee
at the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope
steaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with _chili
con carne_ and pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed
pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of
beer. You won't find a layout like that on the bill of affairs of any
of your Eastern restauraws."

"Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, and I'm unprejudiced. There'll
never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long
enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to
Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of
butter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to a
white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty
close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount
Olympia."

"Too ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbit
stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and
casual in the way of a dinner?"

"I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with fancy
ramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds,
jambolaya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there's nothing
less displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on
a balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcars, with a hand-organ
playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest
suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that's
all, except a _demi-tasse_."

"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a
conniseer; and when you go around with the _demi-tasse_ you are
naturally bound to buy 'em stylish grub."

"It's a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into their
ways if you was there."

"I've heard it was," says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't. I can
polish my fingernails all they need myself."



II

After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two of the
landlord's _flor de upas_ perfectos, and took a look at Georgia.

The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked mighty poor. As
far as we could see was red hills all washed down with gullies and
scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all
that kept the rail fences from falling down. About fifteen miles over
to the north was a little range of well-timbered mountains.

That town of Mountain Valley wasn't going. About a dozen people
permeated along the sidewalks; but what you saw mostly was rain-barrels
and roosters, and boys poking around with sticks in piles of ashes made
by burning the scenery of Uncle Tom shows.

And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high
man in a long black coat and a beaver hat. All the people in sight
bowed, and some crossed the street to shake hands with him; folks came
out of stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of windows
and smiled; and all the kids stopped playing to look at him. Our
landlord stepped out on the porch and bent himself double like a
carpenter's rule, and sung out, "Good-morning, Colonel," when he was a
dozen yards gone by.

"And is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord; "and why
is he called great?"

"That, gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel Jackson
T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad,
mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of
immigration and public improvements."

"Been away a good many years, hasn't he?" I asked.

"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office for his
mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every
morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the
height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns
a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley
delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such worth and public spirit."

For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on the
porch and studied a newspaper, which was unusual in a man who despised
print. When he was through he took me to the end of the porch among
the sunlight and drying dish-towels. I knew that Caligula had invented
a new graft. For he chewed the ends of his mustache and ran the left
catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.

"What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining stocks or
raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it over."

"Pennsylvania pinks? Oh, that refers to a coin-raising scheme of the
Keystoners. They burn the soles of old women's feet to make them tell
where their money's hid."

Caligula's words in business was always few and bitter.

"You see them mountains," said he, pointing. "And you seen that
colonel man that owns railroads and cuts more ice when he goes to the
post-office than Roosevelt does when he cleans 'em out. What we're
going to do is to kidnap the latter into the former, and inflict a
ransom of ten thousand dollars."

"Illegality," says I, shaking my head.

"I knew you'd say that," says Caligula. "At first sight it does seem
to jar peace and dignity. But it don't. I got the idea out of that
newspaper. Would you commit aspersions on a equitable graft that the
United States itself has condoned and indorsed and ratified?"

"Kidnapping," says I, "is an immoral function in the derogatory list
of the statutes. If the United States upholds it, it must be a recent
enactment of ethics, along with race suicide and rural delivery."

"Listen," says Caligula, "and I'll explain the case set down in the
papers. Here was a Greek citizen named Burdick Harris," says he,
"captured for a graft by Africans; and the United States sends two
gunboats to the State of Tangiers and makes the King of Morocco give
up seventy thousand dollars to Raisuli."

"Go slow," says I. "That sounds too international to take in all at
once. It's like 'thimble, thimble, who's got the naturalization
papers?'"

"'Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula. "You'll
see, six months from now. They'll be confirmed by the monthly magazines;
and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside the photos
of the Mount Pelee eruption photos in the while-you-get-your-hair-cut
weeklies. It's all right, Pick. This African man Raisuli hides Burdick
Harris up in the mountains, and advertises his price to the governments
of different nations. Now, you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on
Caligula, "that John Hay would have chipped in and helped this graft
along if it wasn't a square game, would you?"

"Why, no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies,
and I couldn't consciously say a word against the Republican
administration just now. But if Harris was a Greek, on what system of
international protocols did Hay interfere?"

"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I suppose
it's a matter of sentiment. You know he wrote this poem, 'Little
Breeches'; and them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay
sends the Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with
thirty-inch guns. And then Hay cables after the health of the _persona
grata_. 'And how are they this morning?' he wires. 'Is Burdick Harris
alive yet, or Mr. Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the
seventy thousand dollars, and they turn Burdick Harris loose. And
there's not half the hard feelings among the nations about this little
kidnapping matter as there was about the peace congress. And Burdick
Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often
heard about the United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to
Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and most gentlemanly kidnappers
that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick," winds up
Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this
colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them little mountains,
and stick up his heirs and assigns for ten thousand dollars."

"Well, you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers,
"you can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in
this graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this
Burdick Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram
from the Secretary of State asking about the health of the scheme,
I propose to acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in
this section and gallop diplomatically over into the neighboring and
peaceful nation of Alabama."



III

Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered
with bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that
we cut out up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mountain
was to follow up the bend of a branch that wound among the elevations.

Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the
proceedings. I went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a
two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar supply of the most gratifying and
efficient lines of grub that money could buy. I always was an admirer
of viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy
are not only inartistic to my stomach, but they give indigestion to
my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham,
president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would
miss the luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy
Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and Caligula's capital in as
elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as Burdick Harris or
any other professional kidnappee ever saw in a camp.

I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts
of cognac, two hundred Havana regalias with gold bands, and a camp
stove and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be
comfortable; and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars
he would give me and Caligula as good a name for gentlemen and
entertainers as the Greek man did the friend of his that made the
United States his bill collector against Africa.

When the goods came down from Atlanta, we hired a wagon, moved them up
on the little mountain, and established camp. And then we laid for the
colonel.

We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain Valley,
on his way to look after some of his burnt umber farm land. He was an
elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled
shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief
and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the
handle of his forty-five under his coat.

"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia! I
shall see that the board of immigration and public improvements hears
of this!"

"Be so unfoolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by
order of the board of perforation and public depravity. This is a
business meeting, and we're anxious to adjourn _sine qua non_."

We drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of it
as far as the buggy could go. Then we tied the horse, and took our
prisoner on foot up to the camp.

"Now, colonel," I says to him, "we're after the ransom, me and my
partner; and no harm will come to you if the King of Mor--if your
friends send up the dust. In the meantime we are gentlemen the same
as you. And if you give us your word not to try to escape, the freedom
of the camp is yours."

"I give you my word," says the colonel.

"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock, and me and Mr. Polk
will proceed to inculcate the occasion with a few well-timed
trivialities in the way of grub."

"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a slice of
bacon and a plate of hominy."

"But you won't," says I emphatic. "Not in this camp. We soar in higher
regions than them occupied by your celebrated but repulsive dish."

While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our coats
and went in for a little luncheon _de luxe_ just to show him. Caligula
was a fine cook of the Western brand. He could toast a buffalo or
fricassee a couple of steers as easy as a woman could make a cup of
tea. He was gifted in the way of knocking together edibles when haste
and muscle and quantity was to be considered. He held the record west
of the Arkansas River for frying pancakes with his left hand, broiling
venison cutlets with his right, and skinning a rabbit with his teeth
at the same time. But I could do things _en casserole_ and _à la
creole_, and handle the oil and tobasco as gently and nicely as a
French _chef_.

So at twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a
banquet on a Mississippi River steamboat. We spread it on the tops of
two or three big boxes, opened two quarts of the red wine, set the
olives and a canned oyster cocktail and a ready-made Martini by the
colonel's plate, and called him to grub.

Colonel Rockingham drew up his campstool, wiped off his specs, and
looked at the things on the table. Then I thought he was swearing; and
I felt mean because I hadn't taken more pains with the victuals. But
he wasn't; he was asking a blessing; and me and Caligula hung our
heads, and I saw a tear drop from the colonel's eye into his cocktail.

I never saw a man eat with so much earnestness and application--not
hastily, like a grammarian, or one of the canal, but slow and
appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real _vive bonjour_.

In an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I brought him a pony of
brandy and his black coffee, and set the box of Havana regalias on the
table.

"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe
it back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the smiling and
beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
who--"

"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend to
now"; and I brought out paper and pen and ink and laid 'em before him.
"Who do you want to send to for the money?" I asks.

"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vice-president of
our railroad, at the general offices of the Company in Edenville."

"How far is it to Edenville from here?" I asked.

"About ten miles," says he.

Then I dictated these lines, and Colonel Rockingham wrote them out:


   I am kidnapped and held a prisoner by two desperate outlaws
   in a place which is useless to attempt to find. They demand
   ten thousand dollars at once for my release. The amount must
   be raised immediately, and these directions followed. Come
   alone with the money to Stony Creek, which runs out of
   Blacktop Mountains. Follow the bed of the creek till you
   come to a big flat rock on the left bank, on which is marked
   a cross in red chalk. Stand on the rock and wave a white
   flag. A guide will come to you and conduct you to where I am
   held. Lose no time.


After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to take on a
postscript about how he was being treated, so the railroad wouldn't
feel uneasy in its bosom about him. We agreed to that. He wrote down
that he had just had lunch with the two desperate ruffians; and then
he set down the whole bill of fare, from cocktails to coffee. He wound
up with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would
probably be a more licentious and intemperate affair than lunch.

Me and Caligula read it, and decided to let it go; for we, being
cooks, were amenable to praise, though it sounded out of place on a
sight draft for ten thousand dollars.

I took the letter over to the Mountain Valley road and watched for a
messenger. By and by a colored equestrian came along on horseback,
riding toward Edenville. I gave him a dollar to take the letter to the
railroad offices; and then I went back to camp.



IV

About four o'clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as
lookout, calls to me:

"I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow, sir."

I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca
coat and no collar.

"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to introduce my
brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise &
Edenville Tap Railroad."

"Otherwise the King of Morocco," says I. "I reckon you don't mind my
counting the ransom, just as a business formality."

"Well, no, not exactly," says the fat man, "not when it comes. I
turned that matter over to our second vice-president. I was anxious
after Brother Jackson's safetiness. I reckon he'll be along right
soon. What does that lobster salad you mentioned taste like, Brother
Jackson?"

"Mr. Vice-President," says I, "you'll oblige us by remaining here till
the second V. P. arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don't
want any roadside speculators selling tickets."

In half an hour Caligula sings out again:

"Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a broomstick."

I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot
three, with a sandy beard and no other dimension that you could
notice. Thinks I to myself, if he's got ten thousand dollars on his
person it's in one bill and folded lengthwise.

"Mr. Patterson G. Coble, our second vice-president," announces the
colonel.

"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up to
disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general
passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate full of our railroad
bonds with the Perry County Bank for a loan. My dear Colonel
Rockingham, was that chicken gumbo or cracked goobers on the bill of
fare in your note? Me and the conductor of fifty-six was having a
dispute about it."

"Another white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any
more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was torpedo-boats!"

The guide goes down again, and convoys into the lair a person in blue
overalls carrying an amount of inebriety and a lantern. I am so sure
that this is Major Tucker that I don't even ask him until we are
up above; and then I discover that it is Uncle Timothy, the yard
switchman at Edenville, who is sent ahead to flag our understandings
with the gossip that Judge Pendergast, the railroad's attorney, is in
the process of mortgaging Colonel Rockingham's farming lands to make
up the ransom.

While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp,
and Caligula, with no white flag to disinter him from his plain duty,
draws his gun. But again Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces
Mr. Jones and Mr. Batts, engineer and fireman of train number
forty-two.

"Excuse us," says Batts, "but me and Jim have hunted squirrels
all over this mounting, and we don't need no white flag. Was that
straight, colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real
store cigars?"

"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula. "Suppose it's
the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman."

"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S. & E. T.
wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their
president, let 'em. We'll put out our sign. 'The Kidnapper's Cafe and
Trainmen's Home.'"

This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession, and
I felt easier. I asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he
happened to be a track-walker or caboose porter. All the way up the
mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his
intelligence in life had skipped.

Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had
raised the ransom.

"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty
thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our railroad, and--"

"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait till
after dinner, and we'll settle the business. All of you gentlemen,"
I continues to the crowd, "are invited to stay to dinner. We have
mutually trusted one another, and the white flag is supposed to wave
over the proceedings."

"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me. "Two
baggage-masters and a ticket-agent dropped out of a tree while you was
below the last time. Did the major man bring the money?"

"He says," I answered, "that he succeeded in negotiating the loan."

If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours, me
and Caligula did that day. At six o'clock we spread the top of the
mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever
engulfed. We opened all the wine, and we concocted entrées and _pièces
de resistance_, and stirred up little savory _chef de cuisines_ and
organized a mass of grub such as has been seldom instigated out of
canned and bottled goods. The railroad gathered around it, and the
wassail and diversions was intense.

After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes
Major Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The major pulls out an
agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in
the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.

"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad
has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand
dollars' worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven
dollars and fifty cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham,
Judge Pendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth mortgage, the sum of
fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven
fifty, correct."

"A railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, "and
the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet--"

"Gentlemen," says Tucker, "The railroad is ten miles long. There don't
any train run on it except when the crew goes out in the pines and
gathers enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when
times was good, the net earnings used to run as high as eighteen
dollars a week. Colonel Rockingham's land has been sold for taxes
thirteen times. There hasn't been a peach crop in this part of Georgia
for two years. The wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around
here has money enough to buy fertilizer; and land is so poor the corn
crop failed and there wasn't enough grass to support the rabbits. All
the people have had to eat in this section for over a year is hog and
hominy, and--"

"Pick," interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are you
going to do with that chicken-feed?"

I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to
Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.

"Colonel," says I, "I hope you've enjoyed our little joke. We don't
want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well, wouldn't it tickle your
uncle? My name's Rhinegelder, and I'm a nephew of Chauncey Depew. My
friend's a second cousin of the editor of _Puck_. So you can see. We
are down South enjoying ourselves in our humorous way. Now, there's
two quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the joke's over."

What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I remember
Major Tallahassee Tucker playing on a jew's-harp, and Caligula waltzing
with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggage-master. I hesitate
to refer to the cake-walk done by me and Mr. Patterson G. Coble with
Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham between us.

And even on the next morning, when you wouldn't think it possible,
there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that Raisuli
himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with
the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.




THE ETHICS OF PIG


On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson
Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
his cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.

Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by
widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. His favorite
disguise is that of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the
reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential dollars. He is readily
vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and easy-burning
brevas, I got the story of his latest Autolycan adventure.

"In my line of business," said Jeff, "the hardest thing is to find an
upright, trustworthy, strictly honorable partner to work a graft with.
Some of the best men I ever worked with in a swindle would resort to
trickery at times.

"So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of country
where I hear the serpent has not yet entered, and see if I can find a
partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet
contaminated by success.

"I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. The
inhabitants hadn't found that Adam had been dispossessed, and were
going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if
they were in the Garden of Eden. They call this town Mount Nebo, and
it's up near the spot where Kentucky and West Virginia and North
Carolina corner together. Them States don't meet? Well, it was in that
neighborhood, anyway.

"After putting in a week proving I wasn't a revenue officer, I went
over to the store where the rude fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to
see if I could get a line on the kind of man I wanted.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round
the dried-apple barrel. 'I don't suppose there's another community
in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively
permeated than this. Life here, where all the women are brave and
propitious and all the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be
an idol. It reminds me,' says I, 'of Goldstein's beautiful ballad
entitled "The Deserted Village," which says:


   'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
       What art can drive its charms away?
    The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.
       For I'm to be Queen of the May.'


"'Why, yes, Mr. Peters,' says the storekeeper. 'I reckon we air about
as moral and torpid a community as there be on the mounting, according
to censuses of opinion; but I reckon you ain't ever met Rufe Tatum.'

"'Why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have ever. That
air Rufe is shore the monstrousest scalawag that has escaped hangin'
on the galluses. And that puts me in mind that I ought to have turned
Rufe out of the lockup before yesterday. The thirty days he got for
killin' Yance Goodloe was up then. A day or two more won't hurt Rufe
any, though.'

"'Shucks, now,' says I, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me there's
a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.'

"'Worse,' says the storekeeper. 'He steals hogs.'

"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the
constable turned him out I got acquainted with him and invited him out
on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.

"What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural make-up to play a
part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the
Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this R. Tatum
was born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff
that kept _Eliza_ from sinking into the river.

"He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue
eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to
play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the
statue of the dinkus-thrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color
of it reminded you of the 'Sunset in the Grand Canon, by an American
Artist,' that they hang over the stove-pipe holes in the salongs.
He was the Reub, without needing a touch. You'd have known him for
one, even if you'd seen him on the vaudeville stage with one cotton
suspender and a straw over his ear.

"I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.

"'Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of
manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of
indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point
to, with or without pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for
the position?'

"'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated
accents, 'hain't you heard tell? There ain't any man, black or white,
in the Blue Ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as I can without
bein' heard, seen, or cotched. I can lift a shoat,' he goes on, 'out
of a pen, from under a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or
night, anywhere or anyhow, and I guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal.
It's all in the way you grab hold of 'em and carry 'em atterwards.
Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, 'I hope to
become reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'

"'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hog-stealing will do very
well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, Mr. Tatum, it would be
considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
Gas. However, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We'll go into
partnership. I've got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that
homeward-plods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a
few shares of Soon Parted, preferred, in the money market.'

"So I attaches Rufe, and we go away from Mount Nebo down into the
lowlands. And all the way I coach him for his part in the grafts I had
in mind. I had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was
feeling all to the Ponce de Leon, besides having so many new schemes
up my sleeve that I had to wear kimonos to hold 'em.

"I intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide
through the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that
direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley
Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into
town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as
artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I
never pass a circus without pulling the valve-cord and coming down for
a little Key West money; so I engaged a couple of rooms and board for
Rufe and me at a house near the circus grounds run by a widow lady
named Peevy. Then I took Rufe to a clothing store and gent's-outfitted
him. He showed up strong, as I knew he would, after he was rigged up
in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. Me and old Misfitzky stuffed him
into a bright blue suit with a Nile green visible plaid effect, and
riveted on a fancy vest of a light Tuskegee Normal tan color, a red
necktie, and the yellowest pair of shoes in town.

"They were the first clothes Rufe had ever worn except the gingham
layette and the butternut top-dressing of his native kraal, and he
looked as self-conscious as an Igorrote with a new nose-ring.

"That night I went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell
game. Rufe was to be the capper. I gave him a roll of phony currency
to bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his
winnings out of. No; I didn't mistrust him; but I simply can't
manipulate the ball to lose when I see real money bet. My fingers go
on a strike every time I try it.

"I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to
guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds
gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter
one another to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed
up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives
to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times
walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth
full of peanut candy; but he never came nigh.

"The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a
capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only
forty-two dollars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting
on yanking the yeomen for two hundred at least. I went home at eleven
and went to bed. I supposed that the circus had proved too alluring
for Rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I
meant to give him a lecture on general business principles in the
morning.

"Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress
I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster
screeching with green-apple colic. I opens my door and calls out in
the hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says:
'Mrs. Peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so
that honest people can get their rest?'

"'Sir,' says she, 'it's no child of mine. It's the pig squealing that
your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours ago.
And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I'd appreciate
your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.'

"I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society
and went into Rufe's room. He had gotten up and lit his lamp, and
was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white,
half-grown, squealing pig.

"'How is this, Rufe?' says I. 'You flimflammed in your part of the
work to-night and put the game on crutches. And how do you explain the
pig? It looks like back-sliding to me.'

"'Now, don't be too hard on me, Jeff,' says he. 'You know how long
I've been used to stealing shoats. It's got to be a habit with me. And
to-night, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn't help takin' it.'

"'Well,' says I, 'maybe you've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when
we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more
remunerative misconduct. Why you should want to stain your soul with
such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that I
can't understand.'

"'Why, Jeff,' says he, 'you ain't in sympathy with shoats. You don't
understand 'em like I do. This here seems to me to be an animal of
more than common powers of ration and intelligence. He walked half
across the room on his hind legs a while ago.'

"'Well, I'm going back to bed,' says I. 'See if you can impress it
upon your friend's ideas of intelligence that he's not to make so much
noise.'

"'He was hungry,' says Rufe. 'He'll go to sleep and keep quiet now.'

"I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper whenever
I happen to be within the radius of a Hoe cylinder or a Washington
hand-press. The next morning I got up early, and found a Lexington
daily on the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. The first
thing I saw in it was a double-column ad. on the front page that read
like this:


   FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

   The above amount will be paid, and no questions asked,
   for the return, alive and uninjured, of Beppo, the famous
   European educated pig, that strayed or was stolen from
   the side-show tents of Binkley Bros.' circus last night.

   Geo. B. Tapley, Business Manager.
   At the circus grounds.


"I folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to
Rufe's room. He was nearly dressed, and was feeding the pig the rest
of the milk and some apple-peelings.

"'Well, well, well, good morning all,' I says, hearty and amiable. 'So
we are up? And piggy is having his breakfast. What had you intended
doing with that pig, Rufe?'

"'I'm going to crate him up,' says Rufe, 'and express him to ma in
Mount Nebo. He'll be company for her while I am away.'

"'He's a mighty fine pig,' says I, scratching him on the back.

"'You called him a lot of names last night,' says Rufe.

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'he looks better to me this morning. I was raised
on a farm, and I'm very fond of pigs. I used to go to bed at sundown,
so I never saw one by lamplight before. Tell you what I'll do, Rufe,'
I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'

"'I reckon I wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. 'If it was any other
one I might.'

"'Why not this one?' I asked, fearful that he might know something.

"'Why, because,' says he, 'it was the grandest achievement of my life.
There ain't airy other man that could have done it. If I ever have a
fireside and children, I'll sit beside it and tell 'em how their daddy
toted off a shoat from a whole circus full of people. And maybe my
grandchildren, too. They'll certainly be proud a whole passel. Why,'
says he, 'there was two tents, one openin' into the other. This shoat
was on a platform, tied with a little chain. I seen a giant and a
lady with a fine chance of bushy white hair in the other tent. I got
the shoat and crawled out from under the canvas again without him
squeakin' as loud as a mouse. I put him under my coat, and I must have
passed a hundred folks before I got out where the streets was dark. I
reckon I wouldn't sell that shoat, Jeff. I'd want ma to keep it, so
there'd be a witness to what I done.'

"'The pig won't live long enough,' I says, 'to use as an exhibit in
your senile fireside mendacity. Your grandchildren will have to take
your word for it. I'll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.'

"Rufe looked at me astonished.

"'The shoat can't be worth anything like that to you,' he says. 'What
do you want him for?'

"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't
think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a
collector of pigs. I've scoured the world for unusual pigs. Over in
the Wabash Valley I've got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it,
from a Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me,
Rufe,' says I. 'I believe it's a genuine Berkshire. That's why I'd
like to have it.'

"'I'd shore like to accommodate you,' says he, 'but I've got the
artistic tenement, too. I don't see why it ain't art when you can
steal a shoat better than anybody else can. Shoats is a kind of
inspiration and genius with me. Specially this one. I wouldn't take
two hundred and fifty for that animal.'

"'Now, listen,' says I, wiping off my forehead. 'It's not so much a
matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is
philanthropy. Being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, I wouldn't
feel like I'd done my duty to the world unless I added that Berkshire
to my collection. Not intrinsically, but according to the ethics of
pigs as friends and coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred
dollars for the animal.'

"'Jeff,' says this pork esthete, 'it ain't money; it's sentiment with
me.'

"'Seven hundred,' says I.

"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll crush the sentiment out
of my heart.'

"I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him out forty
twenty-dollar gold certificates.

"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till
after breakfast.'

"I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam
calliope at the circus.

"'Let me tote him in for you,' says Rufe; and he picks up the beast
under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him
into my room like a sleeping baby.

"After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever
since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to
Misfitzky's and look over some royal-purple socks. And then I got as
busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper. I
found an old Negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the
pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

"I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He
was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a
four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

"'Are you George B. Tapley?' I asks.

"'I swear it,' says he.

"'Well, I've got it,' says I.

"'Designate,' says he. 'Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python
or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'I've got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in
that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this
morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it's
handy.'

"George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went
into one of the side-shows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink
ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man
was feeding to him.

"'Hey, Mac,' calls G. B. 'Nothing wrong with the world-wide this
morning, is there?'

"'Him? No,' says the man. 'He's got an appetite like a chorus girl at
1 A.M.'

"'How'd you get this pipe?' says Tapley to me. 'Eating too many pork
chops last night?'

"I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.

"'Fake,' says he. 'Don't know anything about it. You've beheld
with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the
four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal
meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good morning.'

"I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to
drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took
out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his
sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the
alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the
advertising man to his window.

"'To decide a bet,' says I, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in
last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?'

"'He was not,' says the man. 'He would measure about six feet by four
and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies
of the conservatory.'

"At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy's.

"'Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?' she
asks.

"'If you do, ma'am,' says I, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood
all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the
outside of it.'

"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how hard
it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."

"But," I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule
should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you
would not have lost--"

Jeff's look of dignified reproach stopped me.

"That don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "Mine was a
legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high--
don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"