The band was playing when we got there, and the crowds were packed about
the grand-stand, and Kinderhook was sitting up there with his silk hat
on and the red, white, and blue churn on a table draped with bunting.
“Looks just like he used to sellin’ patent medicine,” says Mr. Atkins.
Well, the band played quite a lot and then Kinderhook got up and made a
speech about how much he liked our town and all of us, and how he aimed
to live there always and wanted to see everybody comfortable and
prosperous. He mentioned how he had intended to keep all the stock in
his company, but how he had got to like us so well he was going to let
go of a lot of it, and then the company would really be a town affair,
owned by the citizens. He told us how prosperous it was going to make
the town, and how the town was going to grow and all that sort of thing,
and you could fairly see folks’ mouths water. Why, Kinderhook was that
kind and convincing that I was almost ready to go home and bust open my
iron savings-bank and go into the thing myself.
Then he stopped and says: “Fellow townsmen, it has been suggested that I
give a demonstration of my churn, not to convince you of its merits,
because you believe in them, but to show you how your own churn will
make butter. Mr. Wade and Captain Winton will occupy the platform as a
committee. They will put the cream in the churn, and one of them will
operate it. Then he will describe to you the ease of the operation. A
child can churn with my device. It will almost churn by itself.” Here he
laughed a little, and everybody else laughed, too.
Captain Winton and Mr. Wade got on to the band-stand then and Mr. Wade
poured cream into the churn—cream they brought with them. Captain Winton
turned the handle, and Kinderhook stood by, talking all the while and
being mighty good-natured and enjoying himself like sixty. In almost no
time at all the butter was done and they ladled it out on the table
where everybody could see it. You should have heard that crowd cheer. It
was like they were at a ball game and the home team had knocked a home
run with the bases full.
Kinderhook held up his hand and they got quiet. “There,” says he, “your
churn works, doesn’t it? _Your_ churn; not mine.”
Captain Winton shook hands with him and the folks hollered some more,
and then Kinderhook says: “Is there anybody here that would like to come
up and examine this model? Now that it is yours there can be no harm in
it.”
Catty nudged his father, and Mr. Atkins pushed up to the stand, carrying
the Criterion churn, all wrapped up, in his arms. He went up the steps
and stood there waiting.
Kinderhook looked at him and didn’t recognize him, and nobody else
recognized him, either. I guess folks was kind of surprised to see a man
that looked like a stranger, and such a fine-looking stranger, too, so
nobody else went up. They waited to see what was going to happen.
Mr. Kinderhook says: “Do you live here, sir? I don’t recall your face.”
“I live here,” says Mr. Atkins, “and I aim to live here always.”
“Your name.”
“Atkins,” says he. “I calc’late to know consid’able about churns, so I
come up to look this one over.”
“Go ahead, and welcome,” says Kinderhook. Mr. Atkins went over to the
table, and then he unwrapped our churn and stood it up beside the red,
white, and blue one.
“What’s that?” says Kinderhook.
“This,” says Mr. Atkins, “is about as good a churn as I know about, and
I sort of wanted to compare it with yours before I done any investin’.”
“You’re wasting our time,” says Kinderhook, sharplike.
“Don’t calc’late to waste any time,” says Mr. Atkins, “so if Captain
Winton and Mr. Wade will step over here we’ll sort of set these churns
side by side and compare ’em.”
“I don’t care to have my churn compared—”
“Thought you let on jest now it was _our_ churn,” says Mr. Atkins, “and
that bein’ the case, why, we’ll do some comparin’, anyhow.... Will you
come over here, Captain, and Mr. Wade?”
They came over, not getting next to what was happening at all, and then
Wade says all of a sudden: “Why, it’s Atkins! What you been doing to
yourself?”
Mr. Atkins sort of grinned, and then he turned toward Kinderhook.
“You say you never patented your churn, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“On account of the trust?”
“Yes.”
“When did you invent it? When did you git this model done so it would
work?”
“Five months ago,” says Kinderhook. “Don’t call to mind the date, do
you?”
“Some day the middle of April.”
“It wasn’t done two years ago?”
“Certainly _not_.”
“Um!... Now, gentlemen, let’s kind of compare these churns. This here
one of mine is a Criterion, and she’s a good one. If Kinderhook’s is
better ’n this it ’ll pay us mighty well to invest. His’s got more color
to it, anyhow.”
Then the three of them began looking the churns over. As soon as Mr.
Wade recognized Mr. Atkins he knew something was going to happen, so he
wasn’t so surprised as Captain Winton, but he was surprised some when he
came to do the comparing, and Captain Winton kept getting exciteder and
exciteder. At last he bust right out and says, “Why, Mr. Kinderhook,
these churns are identical—identical!”
“Nonsense!” says Kinderhook. “I know that churn well. They are wholly
dissimilar.”
“Then my eyesight is gone,” says Captain Winton, sort of short and
stern.
“Supposin’ we take out the dasher of Kinderhook’s churn,” says Mr.
Atkins, and, while Kinderhook kicked about it and began to look pretty
worried, they took it out, and then Mr. Atkins pointed to a place on the
metal shaft and handed it to Captain Winton. The captain took one look
and then he turned to Kinderhook.
“How do you account for this,” says he, “on a churn you invented,
yourself, last April?”
“What?” says Kinderhook.
“It says—and on your own churn-dasher, too—‘Patented June 23, 1916. The
Criterion Churn Company, Albany, New York.’”
“I kin tell you how he accounts for it,” says Mr. Atkins. “It’s
carelessness on his part, that’s what it is. When he bought this
Criterion churn he’s claimin’ for his invention—over in Litchfield a few
days ago—he painted it up red, white, and blue, so as to cover up the
printing on the churn, but he didn’t figger far enough to see if there
was anythin’ stamped on the metal parts inside. Jest carelessness, I’d
say, and very reprehensible sich carelessness is, especial in a feller
that calc’lates to swindle a whole town!”
“Swindle!” yelled Mr. Kinderhook.
“That there is the i-dentical word,” says Mr. Atkins.
Then Kinderhook rushed at Mr. Atkins, but Mr. Atkins just give a shove
that near upset him, and the crowd, who hadn’t heard what was going on,
began to growl and make noises, and Kinderhook rushed again to the front
of the platform and began to talk; but Mr. Atkins went and reached for
his collar and jerked him back till he sat down kerplunk on the seat of
his pants.
“Kind of hang on to him so’s he don’t git away,” says he, and Mr. Wade
and Captain Winton stood over Kinderhook, and Kinderhook jest got pale
and shaky and didn’t dast to move.
Then Mr. Atkins went to the railing and commenced to talk to the folks.
At first they was mad, but he kept at it till they got quiet and then
told them the whole story from beginning to end, and explained to them,
simple and careful, how Kinderhook was a man that had always made a
living by swindling folks, and how this was about the biggest swindle he
had ever aimed to bring off.
Well, it was funny to watch the folks. First off they was mad at Mr.
Atkins—that they hadn’t recognized yet—for interfering with Kinderhook,
and then they were mad at him because he was keeping them from getting
rich, and then they got mad at Kinderhook not because he tried to cheat
them out of what they had, but because his scheme was a swindle and they
were cheated out of all the money they expected to get. It was mostly
disappointment they showed. Then they got right down mad and were all
for doing something mighty severe to Kinderhook, but Mr. Atkins and the
captain prevented that. It was a regular uproar and I wouldn’t have
missed it for a dollar.
In the middle of it Captain Winton shook hands with Mr. Atkins and says,
“You have performed a great service to this town to-day,” says he, “and
our people will appreciate it—when they get over their disappointment.”
“Maybe,” says Mr. Atkins.
Then, while Mr. Wade kept watch of Kinderhook, Captain Winton made a
speech, and he told those folks plenty. He told them how the town had
treated the Atkinses and boycotted them and called them names, and he
told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and he asked them if
Mr. Atkins looked like a tramp, and he said they ought to be grateful to
him all the rest of their lives for saving all their hard-earned money
from a swindler. And he said a lot about Mr. Atkins and how smart he had
been and what a good business man he was, but it didn’t seem to have a
lot of effect, though there was a little kind of mild cheering. They
were too disappointed about finding out they weren’t going to be rich
quick and easy.
“I should like to have you and your son take dinner with Mrs. Winton and
myself to-night,” says the captain. “I want to hear all about this thing
quietly.”
Catty heard that, and he ’most jumped out of his skin, because it wasn’t
everybody that got invited to dinner at the Wintons’, and in our town if
the Wintons had you to dinner, why, everybody else in town was more than
willing to do the same. What the Wintons said about who was real select
people was like a law.
“There,” says Catty, in a whisper, “we’re respectable at last!”
“Don’t see it changed your looks much.” says I.
“It’s changed my _feelin’s_ a heap,” says he.
Mr. Wade started to take Kinderhook down off of the band-stand, but just
as he got to the bottom Kinderhook busted away and started to scoot. He
was big and fat and dignified, but he run that time if he never run
before, and about a thousand boys and folks chasing him. He didn’t know
which way he was running—all he had in his mind was to get away from
there quick.
Well, he made toward the railroad station and there was a freight going
through pretty fast. Kinderhook made for it regardless, with the whole
dog-gone town right on his heels, and he got there just in time to make
a whale of a jump for the tail-end of the last car. He caught the handle
and hung on, and it was as funny a sight as I ever saw. The train jerked
him off his feet and he waved out behind like a flag. It looked like
he’d have to keep on waving or drop, but somehow he managed to get his
legs down and slipped and floundered around, but after a while he got a
holt on the ladder and climbed up and sprawled on the roof. Then the
freight went around a curve and that was the last we ever saw of _him_.
He didn’t look half so rich and dignified a-fluttering off of the end of
that train as he did when he was sitting on the porch of the hotel.
That was about the most exciting thing that ever happened in our time
and it was enjoyed by all.
Catty and I walked back, and we felt pretty pleased with everything. The
only worry Catty had was about his father forgetting what fork to use
when he got to Captain Winton’s, and he wanted to find his Dad to give
him a kind of final examination before they sat down at the table, but
by that time there was about a hundred folks gathered around him,
shaking hands with him and making a lot of fuss. They had begun to
realize what he had done for them, and he’d got to be a regular hero.
But he just grinned at them and didn’t say anything special, only once
in a while he’d drop a remark about his being just the same feller he
was the day before, and that he guessed he wouldn’t ever do such a thing
as save folks’ money again, because it made such a lot of trouble and
got him invited to a place where they had forks and spoons that maybe he
hadn’t read about in the decorum book. He said he didn’t know what would
happen if they set a newfangled fork down in front of him that he didn’t
know how to manage, and that, anyhow, he would rather have a ham
sandwich, because you could eat that without any forks at all.
There was a time when folks wouldn’t have thought he was funny at
all—only ignorant and shiftless, but now he was funny. He was awful
funny, and every time he opened his mouth folks would get ready to
laugh. That’s the way folks are, I guess. Just let somebody get to be a
great man all in a minute, or become prominent or rich or something, and
the very things they’ve been objecting to in him before are the things
they make a fuss over now. Folks is funny.
Catty and his father went up to Captain Winton’s to dinner, and I wished
I was invited, too, but I wasn’t, so I just hung around town, waiting
for Catty to come out. And it was then that I saw a man get off the
evening train, and the man was Mr. Sommers, of the big furniture-store
in the city. The one that had been all het up over Mr. Atkins’s
folding-table. I went right up to him and told him what had happened,
and he said he would go to the hotel and wait till morning to see Catty
and Mr. Atkins.
“I’ve got a proposition to make them,” says he, “and I bet they accept
it.”
“Will it make ’em respectable?” says I. “It ’ll make them so
respectable,” says he, “that they won’t know themselves.”
“That,” says I, “is what Catty wants more ’n anything else.”