[Illustration: BEAUTY SHOW]
He found the fellow a bit of a wag, as an intolerably homely man is apt
to be, and, after the promise of a nip, nothing loath to exhibit
himself.
As they appeared on deck, my friend, with an air of conscious triumph,
turned to direct my attention to his companion, who was making sure of
his success by concocting faces.
"St-st-st-stop!" ordered Tom. "No-no-none of that! You st-st-stay just
as you were made. You ca-ca-ca-ca-can't be beat!"
And he wasn't.
It takes an Irishman to be a Job's comforter.
Patrick Brannagan, whose face was so plain that his friends used to tell
him it was an offense to the landscape, happened to be as poor as he was
homely.
One day a neighbor met him, and asked:
"How are you, Pat?"
"Mighty bad! Sure, 'tis starvation that's starin' me in the face."
"Begorra!" exclaimed his neighbor, sympathetically, "it can't be very
pleasant for either of yez!"
Say, have you ever tried the Christian Science cure? It's simply great.
And the cost is so little, too.
Apparently there are some people though who can't see things in the
right way.
[Illustration]
They simply lack faith.
I remember when out in the country, I dropped in to see friend Wilkins,
the editor of the local sheet.
He was endeavoring to give some medicine to his little chap, who writhed
and twisted in contortions.
Of course it was a case of too many green apples, and I could sympathize
with Teddy.
We've all been there.
Now, it happened that a good woman next door had been called in.
She was a devout Christian Scientist, and the way she assured the boy he
must be deceiving himself, and there could not be anything the matter
with him, would have convinced you or me right away.
But Teddy stubbornly refused to take comfort.
"I think I ought to know," he groaned. "I guess I've got inside
information."
[Illustration]
Speaking of these fads puts me in mind of the widow McCree, whose
husband when alive was noted as a tough case, but he left her well
provided for, and she tries to make people believe she mourns for him.
Once she even went to a medium, hoping to hear some message of
consolation from the dear departed.
But I rather guess that same medium had been acquainted with Billy
during his lifetime.
"Is there any message from my dear husband?" asked the widow, anxiously.
"Yes, there is," snapped the medium, "and it's hot stuff, too."
By the way, on that Old Dominion steamer there was a newly-married
couple--there always is.
[Illustration]
I soon discovered that the lady had been something of a yachtswoman, and
seemed perfectly at home on the heaving ocean.
Not so the newly-made Benedict.
As soon as the swell off the capes set us to dancing he rushed to the
side and started lightening the ship.
This he repeated many times, but was too game to seek his berth.
So, as night came on, they sat there, she chipper as a lark, and he
about as dejected a bridegroom as could be found in seven counties.
Perhaps she thought a touch of the romantic might get him out of his
mood, so she tried this:
[Illustration]
"The moon is up, isn't it, darling?"
"Yes," I heard him reply, languidly; "that is, if I swallowed it."
It isn't often that a shrewd lawyer gets two set-backs on the same day.
Yet I once witnessed such a thing.
It was in a Western city--never mind the name.
This lawyer was cross-examining a woman who it seemed was the spouse of
a burglar of considerable notoriety.
[Illustration]
It was his intention to shatter her testimony, and he went about it in
the usual browbeating way.
"Madam, you are the wife of this man?"
"Yes."
"You knew he was a burglar when you married him?"
"Yes."
"How did you come to contract a matrimonial alliance with such a man?"
"Well," the witness said, sarcastically, "I was getting old, and I had
to choose between a lawyer and a burglar."
The cross-examination ended there.
In the other case, the gentleman of the green bag received even a worse
dose, and he was such a bulldozing character that no one felt sorry.
"Now, sir," began the attorney, knitting his brows and preparing to
annihilate the witness whom he was about to cross-examine, "you say your
name is Williams? Can you prove that to be your real name? Is there
anybody in the courtroom who can swear that you haven't assumed it for
purposes of fraud and deceit?"
"I think you can identify me yourself," answered the witness, quietly.
"I? Where did I ever see you before, sir?" demanded the astonished
lawyer.
[Illustration]
"I put that scar over your right eye twenty-five years ago, when you
were stealing peaches out of father's orchard. Yes, I'm the same
Williams."
Which must have shattered some of the nerve of that same legal
gentleman.
But that's nothing to the nerve of a Western landlord! One of them roped
me in for fair. You see the blamed hotel burned down while I was there,
and--would you believe it?--the next day I got a bill from the
proprietor for a fire in my room.
I've been abroad more than once during my checkered career, the last
time with a company that played the "Children of the Ghetto." When it
was staged in New York, in order to get the best effect of the mob scene
the manager went into the New York Ghetto and engaged the real article,
employing at the same time an interpreter to explain to them in Yiddish
the stage directions. The plan was successful.
But when the production was taken to London we abandoned this scheme.
The English manager had employed the usual group of cockney supers, and
spent a good deal of English gold in buying make-ups for them. When our
manager saw the lot he was furious.
"Why," he screamed, "that band of mutts looks like a gang of sneak
thieves trying to dodge the police! They'll ruin the play!--ruin
it!--do you hear me? They'll ruin it! Look at those whiskers!"
And he yanked off the beard of one of the supers, threw it on the floor
and stamped on it.
"And look at that wig!" and a bit of false head-dressing followed the
whiskers to the floor, and was shredded under the American's angry heel.
"And that one, too!" Another wig went to destruction. "And that
nose!--that nose!"
[Illustration]
Here he made a grab at the very prominent and highly Roman nasal organ
of a very short super, and tweaked it as through he would throw it, too,
to the floor and stamp on it.
The super's eyes filled with tears, he uttered a cry of pain,
indignantly grabbed and pulled away the manager's wrenchlike fingers,
and then backing away, bowed and explained very humbly:
"Hi begs your pardon, sir, but that's me hown."
But, after all, it takes a young woman of the present day, to rub it in
with a free hand.
There's Miss Gutting, for instance, whose father roped me in on many a
deal on Wall Street. He made his little pile, and of course the daughter
is considered a great catch, and among those who hover about the bright
flame are several young society swells whose brains have never come out
of their swaddling clothes.
[Illustration: Daughter of millionaire--Great catch--Counts and upward]
She gave Softleigh an awful jolt the other day when he thought to get
off a poem, which somehow seemed to lose all its point in his hands.
"I think, Mr. Softleigh, you will become quite a distinguished man if
you live long enough," she said.
"Ah, thanks, awfully, doncher know. It's very good of you to say that.
By the way, what do you--aw--think I will be distinguished for?"
"Longevity," said the minx.
It was cruel, perhaps, but I've no doubt she enjoyed it.
But Miss Gutting sometimes finds her match in the grim old Wall Street
operator whom she calls papa.
[Illustration]
She has a passion for hats, and of course her Easter creation was a
dandy.
"Isn't it a duck of a hat?" she asked the old gentleman, parading it
before him.
"Certainly; only I'd call it a pelican," he said, grimly glancing at the
account on his desk, "judging from the size of the bill."
I suppose you've noticed that I've done a good deal of chin-scratching
to-night. Some people do that when they're thinking hard, but not so
with me. Oh, no, the simple fact is I got shaved by a new barber and I
guess I'll grow a beard in future. Some people say there's lots of
comedy in a barber shop. They mean tragedy. Again some people think
there's poetry in the prattlings of the knight of the brush. I know one
man who thinks different. Little Archie Rickets has a horror of the
tribe and has a scheme to head 'em off.
Whenever he has to patronize a strange barber during the course of his
travels, it is his invariable custom to immediately hand out a piece of
money before sitting down in the chair, and whisper:
"Here, put this in your pocket for yourself."
The barber, delighted of course, always declares that he has never
before received a tip before commencing operations.
[Illustration]
Whereupon Rickets will frown and cut him short with:
"That is not a tip--it's hush money."
And in every case the barber tumbles to the racket, and puts a lock on
his lips.
Rickets was telling me the other day about a wonderful bookkeeper his
father used to have in his office.
"An all-around athlete," he declared, with a grin.
"Indeed," I replied, knowing he had a card up his sleeve, for Rickets is
quite prone to have his little joke.
[Illustration]
"Yes, indeed," he continued, "you ought to have seen him balancing the
books. Why, he could keep the day-book in the air while he juggled the
ledger on his nose and totaled up the journal with either right or left
hand. Oh, he was fine, but pop had to let him go."
"How was that?" I asked.
"He was too much of an adept at the horizontal bar."
"Yes," I remarked, "that same bar has doubtless been the cause of many a
fine fellow's downfall. But it is becoming the fashion now among men who
lead a strenuous life to give up their tippling. I was just reading that
Santos Dumont, the celebrated Brazilian air-ship navigator, does not
indulge at all."
"Quite right," remarked Rickets, soberly; "probably he is afraid of
taking a drop too much."
There's poor old Juggins, who used to be a great friend of mine till he
took to drink.
I knew he would get his desserts if he continued his habit of a
periodical spree, and the other day sure enough he turned up in the pen
when the cases of drunk and disorderly were called.
"Officer," said the police-court judge, "what made you think the
prisoner was drunk?"
[Illustration]
"Well, your honor, as he was going along the sidewalk he ran plump into
a street lamppost. He backed away, replaced his hat on his head, and
firmly started forward again, but once more ran into the post.
"Four times he tried to get by the post, but each time his uncertain
steps took him right into the iron pole.
"After the fourth attempt and failure to pass the post he backed off,
fell to the pavement, and clutching his head in his hands, murmured, as
one lost to all hope:
"'Lost! Lost in an impenetrable forest.'"
"Ten days;" said the court.
Juggins has been given to this sort of thing ever since he lost his
chance of marrying a belle in Washington, and the daughter of a rich
senator.
As a newspaper man Juggins was rather free with his criticism of public
men and measures, and one of his letters, written before he became
infatuated with the young lady in question, had rubbed it in so hard
that the senator had gone to the trouble of finding out just who the
writer was.
His hour of revenge arrived when Juggins summoned up courage to ask for
his daughter's hand.
Then he arose in all his awful majesty.
"Only a year ago, Mr. Juggins, you referred to me emphatically as an old
pirate," he said.
Juggins was naturally overwhelmed.
His sins had found him out.
[Illustration]
Of course he tried to stammer out excuses, and how he had regretted his
indiscreet act ever since.
"No, I'm not a pirate, Mr. Juggins, I wish you to distinctly understand
that--I'm only a sort of freebooter. This (biff-bing) won't cost you a
cent."
And Juggins went out of that senatorial mansion a sadder and a wiser
man.
That was why he took to drink.
I've known the poor fellow to have the delirium tremens, and see all
manner of goblins.
Did you ever run across a ghost, any of you?
Not the nicest experience in the world.
Perhaps you'd like to hear of an exciting adventure in that line that
once befell me.
I was out West at the time, traveling on horseback, and pulled up at a
tavern when night came on.
There I learned to my chagrin that as a crowd was attending the
races--it was in Kentucky, of course--the landlord did not have a
single place to stow me.
When I pressed the old chap, he admitted that there was one unoccupied
room.
"But," he said, "no one can sleep in that room, for it's haunted. You
must go on to the next village."
[Illustration]
"I'll sleep in the room, ghost or no ghost," I declared, determined to
go no further, as it promised to be a stormy night.
The landlord tried to persuade me; but I had established myself over the
fire and called for supper.
Reluctantly the landlord gave orders to prepare the haunted chamber.
Meantime I was enlightened by the other guests as to the nature of the
ghostly visitant.
Every night at a certain hour a sepulchral voice was heard outside the
casement, saying:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
"And then, what happens?" I demanded.
No one could certainly say.
The last gentleman who slept in the room had fled, shrieking, on hearing
the voice, and had spent the rest of his days in an asylum.
Some said that if you allowed the ghostly barber to approach and
commence operations on your chin, your throat would infallibly be cut.
Fortified by this information, I retired early to rest, leaving the
company engaged in an exciting game at cards, each with his pile of cash
on the table before him.
Waking up from my first sleep, a hoarse, croaking sound seemed to come
from the casement.
To my half-awakened senses the sound seemed to take form in the words:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
I jumped up and went to the window. The creaking branch of an old pear
tree was swaying in the wind and scraping against the sash. This was the
origin of the ghostly voice.
"What about those fellows downstairs?" I immediately asked myself, not
thinking it fair that I should enjoy all of the fun.