You can laugh too much. You can be too cheerful. You can look too much
on the sunny side of life. You wont believe this and neither did Bobby
McTabb. But McTabb proved it out. It took the girl to help him—Kitty
Duchene was her name—tall and sweet to look upon, with those pure blue
eyes, dark with the beauty of violets, that go so well with hair which
is brown in the shadow and gold in the sun. They proved it out
together, all of a sudden. It is their story. And it will never be
believed. But it’s the truth.
Bobby McTabb was born fat. He weighed fourteen pounds at the start—and
kept going. He doubled up his avoirdupois at the end of the tenth
month, was a fraternity joke at college in his twentieth year, and
made the scales groan under two hundred and eighty pounds at the end
of his thirtieth—when he came to Fawcettville. But don’t let these
facts prejudice you against Bobby McTabb. At least don’t let them give
you a wrong steer. For Bobby McTabb, in spite of his fat, was a live
one. Fawcettville woke up the day he arrived and began to scrape off
the age-old moss from round the hubs of its village institutions. For
rumor had preceded Bobby McTabb. It endowed him with immense wealth.
He was going to boom Fawcettville. The oldest inhabitants gathered in
groups and discussed possibilities, while their sons and younger
relations worked in the hay and wheat fields. Some believed a railroad
was coming that way. Others that a big factory, like those in the
cities, was to be built. A few smelled oil, and Bobby McTabb’s first
appearance gave weight to every dream that had been dreamed. The
villagers had never seen anything like him, from his patent leather
shoes and his gaudily striped waistcoat to his round, rosy, laughing
face. He was so fat that he appeared to be short, though he was above
medium height, and everyone agreed at first glance that no soul less
than that of a millionaire could possibly abide within this earthly
tabernacle that disclosed itself to their eyes. But Bobby McTabb
quickly set all rumors at rest. He had come to found a bank—the first
bank in Fawcettville. At that minute he had just one hundred and
twenty-seven dollars in his pocket. But he said nothing of that.
How Bobby McTabb started his bank has nothing to do with this story.
But he did it—inside of a week, and prospered. The first part of the
story is how he won Confidence—and met the girl. It was his fat, and
his round, rosy, laughing face that counted. Within a month all the
men liked him, the children loved him, and mothers and daughters were
ready to trust him with anything. And never for an instant did Bobby
betray one of their trusts. He was lovable from the boots up, and grew
fatter in his prosperity as the months rolled by. He discarded his
gaudy attire, and did as the other Romans did—wore a broad-brimmed
“haying” hat in summer, “wash shirts,” and seamless trousers. He
joined the village church, was elected Sunday-school superintendent
without a dissenting vote, and was soon the heart and soul of every
country rollicking-bee for miles around. Bobby woke up every morning
with a laugh in his soul and a smile on his boyish face, and he
carried that smile and laugh about with him through every hour of the
day. He was happy. Everywhere he preached the gospel of happiness and
optimism. If your heart was sick with a heavy burden it would lighten
the moment you heard his laugh. And it was a glum face that wouldn’t
break into a smile when it met Bobby McTabb’s coming round the corner.
It was at the end of his second year that Bobby met Kitty Duchene.
What sweet-eyed, blue-eyed Kitty might not have done with him
Fawcettville will never know. She liked him. She would have loved him,
and married him, if he hadn’t been so fat. Anyway, grief didn’t settle
very heavily upon those ponderous shoulders of B. McTabb. He never
laughed a laugh less, and he didn’t stop for a minute in making other
people laugh. It was his hobby, and all the women in the world
couldn’t have broken it. “Make your neighbors laugh and you shall
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven,” he used to say. “Drive out worry and
care and you are clubbing the devil.” And so it came to pass that by
the time he had spent three years in Fawcettville, Bobby McTabb was
greater in his community than the governor of the state or the
president of the nation. And this was the condition of affairs toward
which Bobby had been planning.
And then, one morning, he was missing.
When the odds and ends of things had been counted out, and various
columns checked up, it was found that just a hundred and forty
thousand dollars had gone with Bobby McTabb.