At any rate I heard her eagerly saying to the gentleman with the long
hair and the occult eye:
[Illustration]
"I have always believed in dreams, professor."
"Ah!" said he, delighted, "then perhaps you too have had some
psychological experience?"
"Indeed, I did--a most remarkable one in particular," she gushed.
"Prophetic?"
"Yes."
"I should greatly like to hear it."
"One night I dreamed that the sky suddenly blazed with light; the
heavens were filled with a thronging host, a trumpet sounded, the dead
arose from their graves, and then a voice shouted: 'Something terrible
is going to happen!'"
"Well?" he asked, "and it came to pass?"
"Why, the very next day our cook left."
[Illustration]
I felt very sorry for the professor--he laughed, of course, but during
the rest of the evening I noticed he fought shy of Mrs. Harper's
company.
And the best of it was that lady actually believed in the realization of
her prophecy.
I know Harper thought it a dire calamity when he had to subsist for a
whole week on provender fashioned after the methods in vogue among
cooking-school graduates.
When he was a little younger Harper used to be quite a clubman.
Habits of his bachelor days were hard to shake off.
I had often wondered how he came to suddenly reform, and when my wife
told me recently, as a great secret, I have come to feel a new respect
for the fertility of resource as shown in the gentler sex.
Mrs. Harper used strategy, where another little woman, less wise, might
have tried expostulation and entreaty without effect, for most men
dislike the tyranny of tears.
I'll tell you what she did.
Before going to bed she drew two easy chairs close together by the
parlor fire.
Then she took one of Dick's cigars and held a match to it, until the
room got a faint odor of smoke.
[Illustration]
Harper casually asked the next morning who had dropped in and looked at
her in a funny way when she said no one.
But he never went out another evening without Mrs. Harper.
Now, I call that as smart a bit of diplomacy as Napoleon ever exhibited
in his campaigns, don't you?
Harper lives in Brooklyn.
This gives him the privileges of a landed proprietor.
Why, think of it, the nabob even owns a reel of garden hose, and when he
comes home weary, in the evening of a hot, dusty day, he can find
relaxation to body and mind by sprinkling the streets in front of his
house.
The first time I was over there, I found him taking a turn at this
thing.
There is a fascination about it, you know.
[Illustration]
At first I joked him unmercifully about it, but wound up by offering to
show him a few stunts in that line which proved how I had graduated as a
past master in the art.
While we were chatting his little boy came along.
He seemed to be in tears about something.
"What's wrong, my son? I thought you had gone with your mother on an
errand," said Harper.
"She sent me home to change my stockings," he blubbered.
"Why, what's the matter with them?"
"They's put on wrong side out."
"Hold on," I exclaimed, "that's easily remedied, if you will permit me,"
and I turned the hose on him.
[Illustration]
That little event brought to my mind the narrow escape I had recently.
Through the carelessness on the part of a gentleman who was
demonstrating the wonderful abilities of his patent liquid fire
extinguisher, my clothes caught fire.
Well, that, you know, is no joke.
Many a poor chap has burned up before he could collect his wits and roll
himself up in a rug.
But I must confess, the fellow who was to blame kept his head, and knew
just what to do.
He slapped a little stream of his magic mixture on me, and before you
could say Jack Robinson, I was saved.
Of course he apologized.
I felt like thrashing him, but, as he was a brother of my best friend,
the pawnbroker, I forbore.
"I'm awful sorry, old boy," he said, "but no great damage is done, and I
hope you're not angry with me."
"No, but to tell you the truth, I feel awfully put out," I replied.
Harper has another boy, about the age of my youngest, and like all
Brooklyn lads he is precocious.
He came in while I was there, crying for keeps.
[Illustration]
"Hello, what's happened?" asked his father.
"Been fightin' again."
"With that Irish boy, I suppose."
"Yep, I'm bound to lick him yet."
"Well, you seem to have come out second best this time. But what's the
use crying--tears do no good," said Harper, thinking to make him more
manly.
"All right," spluttered the boy as well as his cut lip would allow him,
"but I guess if you'd gone and got whaled you'd blubber, too."
Harper was telling me about Jerry's experience at school. Jerry is the
little chap who put his stockings wrong side out that afternoon.
I thought it was rather a joke on Harper, though he refuses to look at
it that way.
Well, the teacher gave each of the little kids a good, big healthy word
to write down.
Then they were expected to look up the definition in the dictionary, and
write out a complete sentence containing it.
[Illustration]
Jerry, he was given the word "anonymous," without a name, and when the
teacher read what he had written on his strip of paper, she thought it
was worth the while to send it to Mr. Harper for denial.
This was Jerry's sentence:
"The new baby at our house is anonymous."
Still that was unintentional humor.
Nothing delights me more than to accompany a friend on some afternoon
excursion to the country.
This is especially true if he chances to be thinking of finding a house
in the suburbs.
Recently I performed this sad rite with Hollingsworth, a legal friend of
mine.
Among other places where he took me was a town in Jersey which I dare
not name for fear of being lynched.
At any rate it was a dead herring.
Once a boom had set in, and streets were laid off in the most
extravagant fashion, but for years the place had been going to the bad.
The real estate man had exhausted his resources, and as a last card he
said, desperately:
"But you certainly must admit that the town is well laid out."
"Oh! we agree you've done the proper thing," I remarked. "When a town is
dead it's only right to have it well laid out."
That real estate man was offended.
But then levity at a funeral is, I suppose, out of place.
There was a dentist in the town who seemed to have a little ambition,
for he planted a sign in front of his office bearing the legend:
"Teeth inserted for five dollars."
"I call that dear," I remarked.
"How so?" asked Hollingsworth.
"Why, I've got a brindle dog out in the country that I'll guarantee to
do the job every time for nothing."
[Illustration]
While that real estate man was showing us the beauties of the broad
fields we made an unfortunate acquaintance with a gentleman cow.
Run--well, we did that everlastingly.
But the bull caught up with poor Hollingsworth.