[Illustration]
So I dressed myself up in a sheet, took my razor in one hand, and a
well-lathered brush in the other, and went downstairs.
Opening the door of the room where the card-players were still eagerly
engaged in their game, I looked around. Every eye was fixed on me in
terror. Advancing a step into the room, I waved my razor, and said, in a
hoarse voice:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
[Illustration]
There was a general stampede for the opposite door, and the ghost was
left in possession. I walked around the table, and swept the various
piles of money into my pocket. Retiring to bed, I slept soundly till the
next morning. When I came down to breakfast, eager inquiries were made
by the others as to what had happened.
"Well," I answered, "there was some one came, and asked, 'Do you want to
be shaved?' So I said, 'No, I don't; but there are some chaps downstairs
who do.'"
That's as near as I ever got to meeting a spectre.
But I have seen a dead man galvanized into life.
This is the way it happened.
It was on the stage.
We were playing Juliet at the time. I used to affect Shakespeare when I
was young and foolish.
Paris had been duly slain, and Juliet lay stretched upon her bier.
[Illustration]
Just then a portion of the scenery caught fire somehow, but some of us
behind managed to extinguish it before much damage was done.
Juliet, with commendable presence of mind, did not move an eyelid, but
the corpse of Paris was plainly nervous.
He raised himself to a sitting posture, gazing up at the fire in alarm,
then scrambled to his feet and scuttled off the stage, the liveliest
dead man you ever saw.
The danger being removed, his courage returned, and the audience
shrieked with laughter at the spectacle of a corpse crawling along from
the wings bent upon taking up his proper position for the final curtain.
[Illustration]
I was around with the editor of the New York "Flapdoodle" yesterday,
working up a sensational item about myself, when I heard a crash in the
composing room. The editor and I dashed upstairs and found that a
nervous printer had dropped the form of the first page and pied the
whole business. The editor looked grimly at the wretch, and then
remarked, mournfully:
"I wish you had broken the news more gently."
Now, we've got our quick-change artists on the stage, but to tell you
the honest truth, I believe they can't hold a candle to some in private
life.
There's Mrs. Stubb, for instance. You know her husband likes an
occasional quiet game with the boys--the trouble is he is too confiding.
That sort of people always run up against a buzz saw for their pains.
"Maria," he said, penitently, one morning at breakfast, "last night I
played poker and"----
"Played poker!" interrupted Mrs. Stubb. "How dare you spend your money
gambling, sir!"
[Illustration]
"As I was saying, I played poker and won enough to buy you a set of
furs"----
"You did? Oh, John, you are so good! I knew those sharps could not get
the best of you."
"And just as I was about to quit I dropped it all and fifty more."
"You brute! To think I should have married a gambler!"
I'm really sorry for Stubb.
He's a good fellow in the main, too, though somewhat henpecked at home.
You see he's at the head of a big syndicate, and lately the rumor went
around that they might sell out if the right customer turned up.
I chanced to know this, and believed I could bring in a man who would
pay their price.
It turned out that he also represented a company.
"Well," said Stubb, finally, "our price is just $150,000, not one cent
less."
[Illustration: GREAT OPPORTUNITY! BARGAIN! $149,999.99 MARKED DOWN FROM
$150,000!!!]
"Make it just that much less," suggested the promotor, "and I think we
can cinch the deal."
"How do you mean?"
"Make it $149,999.99. The head of our syndicate is a woman."
Stubb always prided himself on what he was pleased to call his wonderful
gift of reading character.
I've often wondered how such a genius ever came to make such a mistake
before he married.
But then love, they say, is blind.
And like Rip Van Winkle's drink, that one didn't count.
To tell you the truth he was a pretty good hand at guessing character,
and I've known him to tell five out of six men's occupation or trade
just by keen analysis of their appearances and actions.
[Illustration]
Of course Stubb went in for reading all such books as Sherlock Holmes.
"After all," he said to me one day as we rode in a Broadway car, "it is
really a very simple thing; requires nothing but close observation.
"For instance, it is easy to tell a man's occupation.
"His facial expression, his actions, even his dress, are stamped by his
daily work.
[Illustration: NO TALKING ALLOWED]
"You see that man sitting opposite us? Well, I am just as sure as though
he had told me that he is a barber."
"You are mistaken," I replied, quickly. "That man is a butcher."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Stubb. "You never saw a butcher with slim, white
hands, like his?"
"Perhaps not," I admitted, shaking my head, "but he is a butcher just
the same."
"How do you know he is?"
"How do I know? Faith, I have very good reasons for persisting in my
assertions, since the scoundrel shaved me once."
Our last servant girl is a daisy.
Only yesterday morning I heard my wife ask her why she left the
alarm-clock on the kitchen table all night alongside the buckwheat
batter.
[Illustration]
"Sure, mum, so it would know what time to rise."
Her brother Mike has a saloon down on the Bowery.
The other day I went in to give him a message from Nora, and found him
examining some sort of patent contraption guaranteed, if fastened in the
furnace smokepipe, to effect a wonderful saving in the consumption of
coal.
And just then such a thing was an object in New York, with hard coal
soaring out of reach.
[Illustration]
"And you say that wid wan av these patent dampers in me sthovepipe I'd
save half me coal?" Mike was saying as I went in.
"That's it. It will do the work every time and save half your coal
bill," declared the agent, eagerly.
"All right," says Mike, "thin, be jabers, phwat's the matter wid me
takin' two and savin' the whole av it?"
[Illustration]
Riding uptown on the elevated the other night, I noticed a parson
sitting on one of the cross-seats, and he was evidently trying to extend
sympathy to the cadaverous-looking young man who sat opposite him.
"Pardon me, sir," said the churchman; "but you look worn out. You know
he who dissipates----"
"No, parson, it ain't dissipation. The truth is I'm most dead. I had
about forty letters to write this afternoon."
"Why didn't you dictate them?" asked the parson.
"No typewriter."
"What's become of her?"
"I married her."
"Get another."
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"Costs too much to live now."