I understand, agree to and accept the "Small Print!" statement.

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry

#18 in our series by O. Henry

Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check

the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!

Please take a look at the important information in this header.

We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an

electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.

**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and

further information is included below. We need your donations.

The Gentle Grafter

by O. Henry

July, 1999 [Etext #1805]

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry

*****This file should be named grftr10.txt or grftr10.zip*****

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, grftr11.txt

VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, grftr10a.txt

Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz

and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com

Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,

all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a

copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books

in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.

We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance

of the official release dates, for time for better editing.

Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till

midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.

The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at

Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A

preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment

and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an

up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes

in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has

a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a

look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a

new copy has at least one byte more or less.

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The

fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take

to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright

searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This

projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value

per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2

million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text

files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+

If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the

total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext

Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]

This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,

which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third

of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we

manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly

from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an

assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few

more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we

don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.

We need your donations more than ever!

All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are

tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-

Mellon University).

For these and other matters, please mail to:

Project Gutenberg

P. O. Box 2782

Champaign, IL 61825

When all other email fails try our Executive Director:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

We would prefer to send you this information by email.

---

To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser

to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by

author and by title, and includes information about how

to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also

download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This

is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,

for a more complete list of our various sites.

To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any

Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror

sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed

at http://promo.net/pg).

Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.

Example FTP session:

ftp sunsite.unc.edu

login: anonymous

password: your@login

cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg

cd etext90 through etext99

dir [to see files]

get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]

GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]

GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]

***

**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**

(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***

Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.

They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with

your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from

someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our

fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement

disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how

you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT

By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm

etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept

this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive

a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by

sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person

you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical

medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS

This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-

tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor

Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at

Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other

things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright

on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and

distribute it in the United States without permission and

without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth

below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext

under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable

efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain

works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any

medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other

things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other

intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged

disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer

codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES

But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,

[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this

etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including

legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR

UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,

INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE

OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE

POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of

receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)

you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that

time to the person you received it from. If you received it

on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and

such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement

copy. If you received it electronically, such person may

choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to

receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS

TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT

LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A

PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or

the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the

above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you

may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY

You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,

officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost

and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or

indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:

[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,

or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"

You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by

disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this

"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,

or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this

requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the

etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,

if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable

binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,

including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-

cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as

*EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and

does *not* contain characters other than those

intended by the author of the work, although tilde

(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may

be used to convey punctuation intended by the

author, and additional characters may be used to

indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at

no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent

form by the program that displays the etext (as is

the case, for instance, with most word processors);

OR

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at

no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the

etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC

or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this

"Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the

net profits you derive calculated using the method you

already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you

don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are

payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon

University" within the 60 days following each

date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)

your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,

scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty

free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution

you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg

Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".

*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz

and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com

The Gentle Grafter

by O. Henry

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 GENTLE GRAFTER

I

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.

"'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.

"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.'"

II

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.

"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.

"'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 mannered 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 off 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 that 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.

"'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."

III

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

country'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."

IV

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 sherbert.

"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.'"

V

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.

"'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 racking?'

"'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.

"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?'

"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 sceptic, 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."

VI

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.

"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.'

"'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.

"'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."

VII

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.

"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.

"'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 aesophagus, '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?'

"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 roles 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."

VIII

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.

"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.

"'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.'

"'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.'"

IX

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 mache 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