“I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the
genesis of the action,” he explained. “However, the idea came. What
was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The
Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit
the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high
places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me
into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy,
guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve,
Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year.
“‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum,
to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.’
“He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness.
“‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know nothin’ about the gas.’
“‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’
“‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bullterrier. ‘Dramatic?
Sportin’? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News?
Editorial? Wich?’
“Which, I did not know. ‘THE Editor,’ I proclaimed stoutly. ‘The ONLY
Editor.’
“‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed.
“‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’
“‘Gimme yer card,’ says he.
“‘My what?’
“‘Yer card—Say! Wot’s yer business, anyway?’
“And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I
reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre
chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but
he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the
hand.
“‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in sepulchral tones. ‘Beware
lest I knock too loud.’
“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered.
“Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish.
“‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with returning breath.
“‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo.’
“‘Then leave go, an’ I’ll glide an’ see.’
“‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a tighter grip on his collar.
‘No bouncers in mine, understand! I’ll go along.’”
Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me.
“Do you know, Anak, you can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon,
playing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. Your pitiful little
conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to
turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of
any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder
and law-respecting citizen.
“However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy,
red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his
desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into
a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and
the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me
expectantly.
“‘You are a very busy man,’ I said.
“He jerked a nod with his head, and waited.
“‘And after all, is it worth it?’ I went on. ‘What does life mean that
it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now
look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin—’
“‘Who are you? What are you?’ he bellowed with a suddenness that was,
well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone.
“‘A very pertinent question, sir,’ I acknowledged. ‘First, I am a
man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither
profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless.
My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the
dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology
addressed to your understanding, a tramp.’
“‘What the hell—?’
“‘Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements
and multifarious—’
“‘Quit it!’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’
“‘I want money.’
“He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed
a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, ‘This is no bank.’
“‘Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your
leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how
does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you
open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can
they be happy without it?’
“I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the
unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I
liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he’d do
business with me.
“‘But mind you,’ he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into
my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, ‘mind you, I won’t
stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have
a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of
sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social
strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go
and life, crisp and crackling and interesting—tumble?’
“And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar.
“‘Don’t forget the local color!’ he shouted after me through the door.
“And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me.
“The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. ‘Got the bounce,
eh?’
“‘Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,’ I chortled, waving the copy paper;
‘not the bounce, but a detail. I’ll be City Editor in three months, and
then I’ll make you jump.’
“And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair
of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage
consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck
and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him
close.”
“But how could you, Leith,” I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad
strong before me, “how could you treat him so barbarously?”
Leith laughed dryly. “My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you
your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master
you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational
judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle,
a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of
breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem.
There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never
arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem—”
“But the local color?” I prodded him.
“That’s right,” he replied. “Keep me in the running. Well, I took my
handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color),
dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a
box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant
and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my
social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the
average citizen.
“From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was
particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good
people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs
the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail,
than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best
hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable
fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was
convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion
which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the
system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The
good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to
riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures
so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke
two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day,
and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay
for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events
proved, it made the taxpayers wince.
“One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain
Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the
seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious
in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying
reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name
or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of
way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local
color.
“Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest
against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits
of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the
sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done,
and the rhetoric—say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration:
“‘So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John
Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our
ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are
different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a
crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And
well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: “Our pride it is
to know no spur of pride.” Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us;
only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our
distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.’
“Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good.
A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like
this: ‘This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy’; ‘this civic sinner, this
judicial highwayman’; ‘possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an
honor which thieves’ honor puts to shame’; ‘who compounds criminality
with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and
impecunious to rotting cells,’—and so forth and so forth, style
sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a
dissertation on ‘Surplus Value,’ or ‘The Fallacies of Marxism,’ but just
the stuff the dear public likes.
“‘Humph!’ grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. ‘Swift gait
you strike, my man.’
“I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his
superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or
thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said
nothing till he had finished.
“‘Where’d you work, you pencil-pusher?’ he asked.
“‘My maiden effort,’ I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly
simulating embarrassment.
“‘Maiden hell! What salary do you want?’
“‘Nay, nay,’ I answered. ‘No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I
am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is
his.’
“‘Save John Law,’ he chuckled.
“‘Save John Law,’ said I.
“‘How did you know I was bucking the police department?’ he demanded
abruptly.
“‘I didn’t know, but I knew you were in training,’ I answered.
‘Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three
biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all
wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because
the Cowbell’s candidate for chief of police had been turned down.
Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two
and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police
commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new
chief of police means Cowbell’s candidate; ergo, your turn to play.’
“He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I
put them away and puffed on the old one.
“‘You’ll do,’ he jubilated. ‘This stuff’ (patting my copy) ‘is the first
gun of the campaign. You’ll touch off many another before we’re done.
I’ve been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.’
“But I shook my head.
“‘Come, now!’ he admonished sharply. ‘No shenanagan! The Cowbell must
have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won’t be happy till it
gets you. What say?’
“In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half
an hour the only Spargo gave it up.
“‘Remember,’ he said, ‘any time you reconsider, I’m open. No matter
where you are, wire me and I’ll send the ducats to come on at once.’
“I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy—dope, he called it.
“‘Oh, regular routine,’ he said. ‘Get it the first Thursday after
publication.’
“‘Then I’ll have to trouble you for a few scad until—’
“He looked at me and smiled. ‘Better cough up, eh?’
“‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.’
“And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear
Anak), and I pulled my freight ... eh?—oh, departed.
“‘Pale youth,’ I said to Cerberus, ‘I am bounced.’ (He grinned with
pallid joy.) ‘And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive
this little—’ (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to
guard his head from the expected blow)—‘this little memento.’
“I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise,
he was too quick for me.
“‘Aw, keep yer dirt,’ he snarled.
“‘I like you still better,’ I said, adding a second fiver. ‘You grow
perfect. But you must take it.’
“He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what
little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two
fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two
coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft.
As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and
caught them. The elevator boy’s eyes bulged.
“‘It’s a way I have,’ I said, pocketing them.
“‘Some bloke’s dropped ‘em down the shaft,’ he whispered, awed by the
circumstance.
“‘It stands to reason,’ said I.
“‘I’ll take charge of ‘em,’ he volunteered.
“‘Nonsense!’
“‘You’d better turn ‘em over,’ he threatened, ‘or I stop the works.’
“‘Pshaw!’
“And stop he did, between floors.
“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘have you a mother?’ (He looked serious, as though
regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right
sleeve with greatest care.) ‘Are you prepared to die?’ (I got a stealthy
crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) ‘But a minute, a brief minute,
stands between you and eternity.’ (Here I crooked my right hand into a
claw and slid the other foot up.) ‘Young man, young man,’ I trumpeted,
‘in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and
stoop to hear you shriek in hell.’
“It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the
drag. You see, Anak, it’s a habit I can’t shake off of leaving vivid
memories behind. No one ever forgets me.
“I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my
shoulder:
“‘Hello, Cinders! Which way?’
“It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a
freight in Jacksonville. ‘Couldn’t see ‘em fer cinders,’ he described
it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp
nickname.
“‘Bound south,’ I answered. ‘And how’s Slim?’
“‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’
“‘Where’s the push?’
“‘At the hang-out. I’ll put you wise.’
“‘Who’s the main guy?’
“‘Me, and don’t yer ferget it.’”
The lingo was rippling from Leith’s lips, but perforce I stopped him.
“Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner.”
“Certainly,” he answered cheerfully. “Slim is in poor luck. Bull means
policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is,
the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where
the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that
distinction.
“Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was
the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a
little purling stream.
“‘Come on, you mugs!’ Slim addressed them. ‘Throw yer feet! Here’s
Cinders, an’ we must do ‘em proud.’
“All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some
lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to
the fold after a year’s separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent
several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it,
Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It’s amazing
the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing
the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer
and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the
blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great—an orgy under the sky, a
contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is
something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president
I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It
would beat the books and compete with the laboratory.
“All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it,
early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming
array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten
o’clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the
twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a
Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart.
“‘John Ambrose!’ the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of
long practice, stood up.
“‘Vagrant, your Honor,’ the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not
deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, ‘Ten days,’ and Chi Slim sat
down.
“And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the
man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like
marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the
judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh?
Superb!
“Chi Slim nudged me. ‘Give’m a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.’
“I shook my head.
“‘G’wan,’ he urged. ‘Give ‘m a ghost story The mugs’ll take it all
right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.’
“‘L. C. Randolph!’ the clerk called.
“I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to
the judge, and the bailiff smiled.
“‘You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?’ his Honor
remarked sweetly.
“It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the
excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the
pit I had digged.
“‘That’s yer graft. Work it,’ Slim prompted.
“‘It’s all over but the shouting,’ I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of
the article, was puzzled.
“‘Your Honor,’ I answered, ‘when I can get work, that is my occupation.’
“‘You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.’ (Here his Honor
took up the morning’s Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I
knew was mine.) ‘Color is good,’ he commented, an appreciative twinkle
in his eyes; ‘pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like
effects. Now this ... this judge you have depicted ... you, ah, draw from
life, I presume?’
“‘Rarely, your I Honor,’ I answered. ‘Composites, ideals, rather ... er,
types, I may say.’
“‘But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,’ he continued.
“‘That is splashed on afterward,’ I explained.
“‘This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to
believe?’
“‘No, your Honor.’
“‘Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?’
“‘Nay, more, your Honor,’ I said boldly, ‘an ideal.’
“‘Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to
ask how much you received for this bit of work?’
“‘Thirty dollars, your Honor.’
“‘Hum, good!’ And his tone abruptly changed. ‘Young man, local color is
a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days’
imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.’
“‘Alas!’ said I, ‘I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.’
“‘And thirty days more for wasting your substance.’
“‘Next case!’ said his Honor to the clerk.
“Slim was stunned. ‘Gee!’ he whispered. ‘Gee the push gets ten days and
you get sixty. Gee!’”
Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his
knees. “Returning to the original conversation, don’t you find,
Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with
scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely—”
“Yes,” I said absently; “yes.”