PASSING OF AN EARTHQUAKE.
“Hello, Bing!” cried Jack Ready, as Ralph Bingham, the big
sophomore, drifted into Merriwell’s room, a few days after his
victory over Defarge.
“Nice old gal you had out to sup last night after the opera.
Theatrical dame, wasn’t she? Belonged to the chorus, I should
judge.”
“What the dickens makes you think so?” demanded Ralph, hardly
pleased. “Did she look like a chorus girl?”
“Well, she looked something like a chorus lady,” chirped Jack.
“Somebody told me she lowered the curtain the night Lincoln was
shot.”
Bingham glared, while the others chuckled, with the exception of
Ready himself, who looked very grave and innocent.
“You’ll get salted some time!” growled the big sophomore. “You need
it, too, for you’re awfully fresh.”
“Sorry I can’t say the same about the ancient maid you were blowing
to birds and fizz last eve, Bing, old mark,” purred Ready.
“She was simply an old flame of mine,” asserted Ralph, finding a
seat.
“I thought so when I saw her hair,” nodded Jack. “I cried: ‘Fire,
fire!’ Gamp was with me, and he says: ‘Wh-wh-wh-where is the
fuf-fuf-fuf-fire?’ Then I pointed out your old flame.”
“That reminds me that she said something when she looked up and saw
you and Gamp approaching,” observed Bingham carelessly.
“What did she say?” eagerly asked Jack, hastening to put his foot
into the trap.
“She said: ‘Hello! things are coming my way,’” answered the
satisfied sophomore, crossing his legs.
Then the entire party shouted with laughter, for it was not often
that Ready, the practical joker, was caught in such an easy manner.
“Language fails me!” declared Ready, as the laughter lulled. “I’m
like the old tramp I saw to-day. Fellows, he was a finely educated
man, and he could speak five different languages, yet he confessed
to me that his downfall was brought upon him because he did not
know how to say one common little English word of two letters.”
“What rot!” grunted Browning, from the couch.
“It’s true,” asserted Jack, with great earnestness. “Drunkenness
made him a vagabond, and he became a drunkard just because he could
not say that one little word of two letters.”
“And he could speak five different languages?” incredulously asked
Carson, from his corner.
“He could.”
“And the word of two letters was a simple English word?” broke in
Greg Carker.
“So I stated.”
“Dud-dud-dud-did he have an impup-pup-pup-pediment in his
sus-sus-sus-speech?” inquired Joe Gamp seriously.
“Not the least.”
“Well, what word was it that caused his downfall because he didn’t
know how to say it?” asked Bingham impatiently.
“It was the word ‘No,’” explained Ready.
“There are lots of men right here at Yale who do not know how to
say that word,” asserted Frank, who had been listening to the
chatter of the others.
“Alas! too true,” sighed Ready. “Now, there’s Carker, who bunks
with me in Durfee. I’ve seen the time when he found great
difficulty in correctly pronouncing numerous words in the English
language.”
“You’re another!” exclaimed Greg warmly.
“The earthquake rumbles,” grunted Browning.
“It’s true,” asserted Ready, with assumed earnestness. “Why, I
remember the night he came in at two o’clock, walking cross-legged
and stumbling over his own feet. He knew my virtuous abhorrence of
such conduct, and he was naturally a trifle timid. I sat up and
sternly said: ‘Carker, what is the meaning of this? You have been
drinking’. Then he steadied himself with considerable trouble,
and answered: ‘’Tain’t sho! I’m all ri’, thash whas I am. Nozzen
massher wish me.’ ‘If you haven’t been drinking,’ said I, ‘why do
you talk as if you had your mouth full of mush?’ ‘Caush,’ said
he, ‘a shoft anshwer turnsh away wrath, ol’ boy.’ Then he lost
his balance, fell down, and drove his head under the bookcase so
hard that I had to take all the books off the shelves and lift the
bookcase before I could get him out.”
“Gentlemen,” said Greg stiffly, in the face of their grins, “the
man who will believe him on oath is an idiot, and so his lies do
not worry me in the least.”
But Carker could not take a joke pleasantly, and the laughter of
the others caused him to flush and look disturbed.
“Frivolous--all frivolous!” he exclaimed. “That’s the way
with Americans to-day. They laugh and joke, regardless of
the fact that the country is making gigantic strides toward
imperialism--regardless of the fact that every sign points to the
setting up of an empire----”
“Which shall be overthrown by your own pet earthquake, Carker,”
said Frank.
“Even you, Merriwell,” cried Greg--“you do not seem willing to take
life earnestly.”
“I am not willing to take life at all, my dear boy. I wouldn’t even
kill a cat--unless she disturbed my slumbers.”
“That’s it!” Carker ejaculated, with a despairing gesture. “You
pervert my meaning! You are not willing to look a thing squarely
in the face. That same frivolous disposition possesses all the
young men of our land who find themselves in fairly comfortable
circumstances. They take no thought of the burdens of the poor
and oppressed. They give no heed to the groans of the great mass
of downtrodden slaves who are laboring for day pay at starvation
wages.”
“He’s off!” cried Ready. “Cluk! cluk! git ap!”
Carker had risen to his feet. Having found an opportunity to launch
forth on his pet hobby, he gave no heed to any interruption.
Without noticing Ready in the least, he went on, his pale face
flushing and his eyes glowing as his earnestness increased:
“But it is not altogether the young who are thus heedless of the
storm-clouds gathering over our fair land. It is not altogether the
rich. The great middle class seem just as careless. The moaning and
the groaning of the shackled slaves of toil and oppression disturb
them not. The muttering thunder behind the rising storm-cloud falls
on deaf ears.”
“Get your umbrellas, fellows!” whispered Ready hoarsely. “We’re
going to have a shower this time. The earthquake has a day off.”
“False prophets tell of growing prosperity and better times coming.
They are liars, and sons of liars!” cried Carker, becoming more and
more impassioned as he proceeded. “Already the common people are
writhing in the grasp of the gigantic monopolies, which threaten to
crush the life out of our nation. Already the tide of discontent
is beating with threatening throbs against the sea-wall of money
power.”
“Great Scott! it’s a tidal wave!” gasped Jack. “And I do not own a
pair of rubber boots!”
“There’s rubber enough in your neck to make several pairs,” said
Bingham.
“Look at the great trusts that are forming to squeeze the people!”
the oratorical youth pursued, pointing tragically with one
quivering finger. “Behold them in all their brutal insolence and
contempt for the poor wretches they are bleeding! Tell me of one
man connected with a trust who ever did a truly great, unselfish,
and generous thing.”
“Carnegie,” said Frank.
“Bah!” exploded Greg. “Who knows the hidden meaning behind his
seeming acts of munificence? Perhaps it is a blind to deceive the
restless common people and lull their suspicions so that the great
trust may continue to squeeze them still more. Besides, it is bread
the masses are crying for, and he gives them a stone in the shape
of a book.”
“Men do not live by bread alone,” reminded Frank.
“But it is bread the great masses must have,” asserted Carker.
“What time has the slave of day toil for reading? When he is not
working, he must be sleeping.”
“Or drinking beer,” murmured Ready. “If he had sense enough to keep
away from the saloons and save his money, he might not be such a
downtrodden wretch.”
At this Frank nodded. He knew there was more or less truth in what
Carker was saying in such a theatrical manner; and, at the same
time, he was aware that Ready had struck the key of the cause for
more than half the poverty and wretchedness of the poor.
“What we need----” Carker tried to go on.
“----is more saloons,” chuckled Ready. “Give the poor, downtrodden
laborer a chance to blow in every dollar he earns.”
“The saloon is the poor man’s club,” asserted Greg.
“It’s the club with which he is beating out his own brains,” said
Merriwell seriously.
Carker gasped a little, but he quickly recovered and swung off
again:
“Because the poor man seeks to find a vent for his feelings by
drinking occasionally in a saloon, the man of the upper class
points the finger of scorn at him, crying out that the poor wretch
has brought about his own misfortune. What would the poor man do if
he didn’t have a chance to drink in saloons?”
“Save his money and make his family comfortable,” answered Frank
promptly.
“Comfortable! comfortable!” sneered Greg. “And he would see the
rich man who employed him rolling in luxury, living like a prince
by the money the poor man had toiled to earn. It’s true! You all
know it’s true. The laborer might be able to hold soul and body
together, but none of the real pleasures of life could be his. No
wonder the great masses are murmuring and groaning! Their hearts
are eaten by a consuming fire that shall burst forth with all the
fury of Vesuvius----”
“My goodness! it’s a volcano!” whispered Ready. “That’s hot stuff!”
“I’m not a drinker,” Carker asserted, “but I claim the right to
take a drink when I like. In hot weather I do like beer, and I take
it sometimes. Shall I say to the poor man: ‘This is not for you; I
alone may have beer?’ The folly of it! I have sympathy with a poor
man. My father was poor when he started out in life, and I am proud
of it. He was a cooper.”
“Well, he put a mighty poor head into one beer-barrel,” said Ready,
jerking his thumb significantly toward Greg.
This caused a burst of laughter, but Carker pretended that he had
not heard it.
“The poor man of America is ambitious when he starts out in life,”
the young socialist continued. “It is only after he has labored
for years, and seen how fruitless is the result of his toil, that
ambition is crushed from his soul. But the place of ambition is
taken by a terrible thing--a feeling of hatred toward the rich.
This feeling is growing day by day all over our land, and it causes
the murmur that we hear growing louder and louder. If we pause to
listen, we may hear it distinctly; we may even feel the ground
shake a little beneath our feet.”
“By heavens! the earthquake is coming, after all!” sobbed Ready,
dropping limply on a chair.
“The rich man in his carriage does not feel the slight tremor,”
Greg spouted; “or, if he does, he smiles and says it means nothing.
He may have noticed something of the kind before. If so, it lulled,
and the threatened shock did not come, which leads him to think it
will never come. Poor fool! Often in earthquake countries, before
the coming of the mighty shock, there are slight warning tremors of
the earth. These little quivers may do no harm, or they may simply
crack a few buildings, just to show what they can do when they get
into action. At last comes the great shock, and the earth opens to
swallow up whole cities, the sea rolls in upon the land, buildings
topple and fall, flames burst forth, and the scene is the most
awful mortal man can behold.”
All were silent now, their eyes closed, their positions seeming to
indicate resignation.
“Thus it will be in the terrible hour when the earthquake shall
shake our mighty land. The downtrodden masses shall upheave
like the rising waves of the tidal sea! The temples of the rich
shall come toppling down with crashing thunder! Havoc and ruin
shall spread from ocean to ocean! The sky shall be darkened by an
ascending cloud of black smoke rising from the palacelike homes of
millionaires! That day shall be even more terrible than those of
the Commune. The cries of the victims shall be drowned by----”
At this point Browning snored loudly from the couch, Ready
followed suit from his chair, and the sound seemed to echo all
round the room. Carker paused and looked about, seeing that every
one but himself seemed to be sound asleep. His face became still
more flushed than before, and he sat down suddenly on his chair,
muttering to himself.
Jack Ready stirred a little, opened his eyes, yawned, sat up, and
called:
“Wake up, fellows! The earthquake is over.”