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Sit down! Sit down! Stop right where you are! The game isn't over by a
long way.
I've got a few aces up my sleeve yet, and don't you forget it!
No wonder I'm feeling tiptop! Fact is, I fancy I am feeling to-night a
little like the colored brother who got religion, and filled with
enthusiasm, or something more of a liquid character, expressed to the
doubting parson his desire to imitate Elijah, and go to glory in a
chariot of fire.
"Yes," said the parson, "I reckon, my friend, you'se just want to get
acclimated-like before reachin' de end ob your journey."
Now how did that reverend gentleman know?
Why, only through circumstantial evidence, for you see he had
unfortunately once been the proud owner of a flock of fowls that did
not have sense enough to roost high.
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However, I'm not sighing just yet to go to glory.
This gay metropolis pleases me some.
But, talking of circumstantial evidence, I know one man who would never
consent to hang a suspected murderer on the strength of it.
You won't blame him, either, when you hear what his experience in that
line has I been.
He's a doctor by profession.
His learning has always been in the direction of mind troubles, and
consequently I wasn't surprised when I met him the other day to learn
that he is now in full charge of one of the biggest institutions in the
State, for the care of the insane.
Now, it happened that recently in making a tour of inspection the doctor
had occasion to enter an unoccupied cell in the ward reserved for
incurables.
As he did so the iron door clicked shut, making him a prisoner in his
own asylum.
While he was standing there, rattling the grating and calling for an
attendant, a party of visitors came strolling his way.
"I beg your pardon," said the doctor suavely to the first man, "but I'm
locked in."
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"Poor fellow," replied the visitor, "so I perceive."
"I wish you would be good enough to have some one let me out," the
doctor continued.
By this time a second visitor appeared.
"See," said the first, "this fellow looks quite intelligent, and asks to
be released, as though he really expected it."
"Gentlemen, I see your error. I am not crazy, I assure you. I locked
myself in here by accident. Really--I--why----" and the doctor felt
himself smiling in the most blankly imbecile manner.
"Look at him now!" cried the second visitor. "Did you ever see a more
hopelessly idiotic expression on the face of man?"
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This was really too much for human nature to endure.
"See here, you scoundrels," cried the doctor, excitedly, "call an
attendant or I'll have you both in here for life. I'm the
superintendent."
"Come away," said one of the strangers, quickly, "we musn't get the poor
devil worked up. He may do himself harm," and they passed on down the
corridor.
The doctor spent a morning in that cell, and now he says he has more
sympathy for his patients.
He assured me that if I ever took a notion to drop in and see him, he
would do all he could to make my stay comfortable.
I wonder what he meant, and if that was a mere formula used to calm each
new guest at his hotel.
Long experience has made the doctor quite an artist in that line.
Speaking of artists, there's Craigie, who has a studio on Fifth Avenue.
Craigie is a friend of mine.
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He paints atrocious pictures, but somehow seems to make a living out of
the business.
Sometimes I go to see him, when business is bad, and I'm wondering
where the money's coming from to pay the month's bill.
Between you and myself, the sight of all those daubs on the walls of his
studio, which he considers masterpieces, always makes me feel better.
Misery likes company, and they certainly do look tough.
Recently, while I was lounging there in his Oriental corner, old Dr.
Gregg dropped in.
I expected some fun, because the doctor has quite a caustic tongue, you
know, and don't mind giving a fellow a rap.
Craigie understood why I winked at him, and I saw blood in his eye while
he continued to paint.
The doctor walked around, grunting and making an occasional slurring
remark that in another man might have been looked on as an insult.
But we all knew Gregg.
Finally he turned to the artist.
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"I say, Craigie, these things which you exhibit on your walls, seeking a
purchaser in vain, I suppose may be called failures?"
"Well," remarked the artist, "perhaps you hit the nail on the head in a
commercial sense, doctor. You see, men in your profession have the
advantage over us poor devils of painters, for while we are compelled to
exhibit our failures on the wall, yours are safely planted underground
out of sight."
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When I met Craigie, after he had spent a summer abroad, he delighted me
with his sketches of the many interesting things he had seen.
Among other subjects he had a picture of Monte Carlo.
It is certainly a lovely heaven on earth and I said as much. Craigie
grinned at me.
"All the same," said he, "it has appeared to be a regular hades for many
a poor devil."
"That's so--when a fellow has lost all his money," I admitted.
"Why," said he, "I myself experienced the tortures of the Inquisition in
that room you see yonder."
"What are those affairs in sight?" I asked.
"I played roulette there, and was broken at the wheel."
Although I never went through a similar experience I could sympathize
with Craigie.
Leaving out the wheel part of it, his condition has usually been a
constitutional failing of mine, and was that morning when I called at
the office of the Sunday paper.
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Now, if there is anything I dislike it's to see an editor show his
temper.
Some of them are really too provoking.
So when I happened in and found the man who runs the comic supplement
frothing at the mouth I tried to soothe him.
"Christopher Columbus!" I remarked, pleasantly, after my usual way, "you
seem to be out of humor this morning."
"That's all right," he snarled; "you can't sell me any."
What a husband that bear must be; not domestic, after my own fashion,
for I dearly love to do errands for my wife.
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Of course I sometimes make blunders in shopping, but then experience
teaches one, and in time I hope to be able to hold my own with the
tricky tradesmen who look upon me as a soft mark.
When the mistake is really atrocious I get a good calling down, and
sometimes have to resort to strategy in order to save the day.
The lady of the house was indignant this evening when I came home from
my weary round of the newspaper offices.
"The joke is on you, George," she said.
I wondered which one, for the day had not been productive of much long
green.
"What's it all about?" I asked.
"Why, that mattress I told you to buy."
"Well, I bought it all right," I protested, feebly.
"Yes, and instead of sending home a mattress of live goose feathers, you
purchased one of excelsior."
"How can you blame me, my dear," I said, "when I assure you it had a
placard fastened to it which read 'Marked Down'? That furniture man is a
prevaricator, that's all."
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Those sharks who sell furniture must have some connection with
fishermen, to judge from the thundering big lies they tell.
Now, I am fond of going fishing myself.
Perhaps I take a deeper interest in the whooping big yarns spun around
the blazing camp fire by a set of jolly sportsmen than in the taking of
mighty strings of fish.
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Still, I delight to lure the festive trout out of the wet.
I've met some fellows who like old-fashioned methods, and succeed where
the rest with their expensive tackle fail.
One day I had a remarkable run of luck, and that night as we sat around
the camp fire, I took occasion to say that my success was due to the
superior kind of flies I had used.
"You may flatter yourself on the string you've brought in to-day," said
an old fisherman who had joined our party, "but let me tell you, mister,
that I saw a Digger Indian catch more fish in one hour in this stream
than you've landed all day with your fine flies."
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"What bait did he use?" I asked.
"Live grasshoppers," replied the old man; "but he didn't impale them.
From his head he would stoically pluck a hair, and with it bind the
struggling insect to the hook. Almost upon the instant that this bait
struck the water a fish would leap for it. After landing him the Indian
would calmly repeat the performance of snatching a hair from his head
and affixing a fresh grasshopper to the hook.
"After the Indian had landed in quick succession a mighty string of
salmon trout he suddenly stopped. I called to him to go on with the
exciting sport, but he merely smiled grimly and pointed significantly
to his head."
"What was the matter with his head?" I asked.
"He had plucked it bald," replied the old man.
There have been some occasions when I've felt myself as though I would
like to pluck my hair out, though it is generally on account of some
stupidity on my part.
And if you don't mind I will tell you right here, how.