Pittsburg, PA., August, 189-.
Dear Jim:
You remember I wrote you about a sack suit I ordered last week.
Well, it came yesterday, and you know the finish. Why can't a
fellow put on a new suit, make a few calls, and go home like a
gentleman? The minute I got into that suit, I fell off the water
wagon with an awful bump, although I hadn't touched a drink for
thirty-seven days. Oh! But I got a lovely bun on. That's the last.
No more for me. There's nothing in it. If anybody says, "Have
something, Billy," you'll see your Uncle Bill take to the trees.
Yesterday at 2:30 I had a hundred and ten dollars; this morning
I'm there with a dollar eighty, and that's the draw out of a
two-dollar touch. If there is any truth in the old saying that
money talks, I am certainly deaf and dumb to-day. Besides I have
a card in my pocket which says I've opened up a running account
of thirty-two forty at George's place. I wonder if this George
is on the level, because I'll swear I don't think I was in there
at all. I'll bet he stuck the forty on anyway. You know me, Jim;
I am one of those bright people who tries to keep up with a lot
of guys who have nothing to do but blow their coin. I stood around
yesterday and looked wise, and licked up about four high-balls;
then I kind of stretched. Whenever I give one of those little
stretches and swell up a bit that's a sign I am commencing to
get wealthy. I switched over and took a couple of gin fizzes,
and then it hit me I was richer than Jay Gould ever was; I had
the Rothschilds backed clear off the board; and I made William
H. Vanderbilt look like a hundred-to-one shot. You understand,
Jim, this was yesterday. I got a little red spot in each cheek,
and then I leaned over the bar and whispered, "Mr. Bartender,
break a bottle of that Pommery." Ordinarily I call the booze
clerk by his first name, but when you are cutting into the grape
at four dollars per, you always want to say Mr. Bartender, and
you should always whisper, or just nod your head each time you
open a new bottle, as it makes it appear as though you were
accustomed to ordering wine. You see, Jim, that's where I go off
my dip. That wine affair is an awful stunt for a fellow who makes
not over two thousand a year, carries ten thousand life, and rooms
in a flat that's fifteen a month stronger than he can stand. But
to continue, I lost the push I started out with, and got mixed
up with a fellow named Thorne, or Thorpe, or something like that,
and we got along great for a while. He knew a lot of fellows in
Boston that I did, and every time we struck a new mutual friend
we opened another bottle. I don't know just what the total
population of Boston is, but we must have known everybody there.
Finally Thorne got to crying because his mother had died. You
know I am a good fellow, so I cried, too. I always cry some time
during a bat, and there was an opening for your life. I cried so
hard that the bartender had to ask me to stop three different
times. I made Niobe look like a two spot. Between sobs I asked
him about the sad affair, and found that his mother had died
when he was born. I guess it had just struck him. Then there
were doings.
I had wasted a wad of cries that would float the Maine, and I was
sore for fair. A fat fellow cut into the argument, and some one
soaked him in the eye, and then, as they say in Texas, "there was
three minutes rough house." In the general bustle a seedy looking
man pinched the Fresh Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much
for the bat cave, and to avoid such after-complications as patrol
wagons and things, I blew the bunch and started up street. I guess
the wind must have been against me, as I was tacking.
I met Johnny Black, and he was going to keep a date with a couple
of swell heiresses at one of the hotel dining-rooms. I saw them
on the street to-day, and they won't do. One of them wore an
amethyst ring that weighed about sixty carats, and the other
had on white slippers covered with little beads.
I don't know anything about them, but I'll gamble that they are
the kind of people that have pictures of the family and wreaths
in the parlor. They looked fine and daisy last night, though.
Probably the grape. My girl's name was Estelle. Wouldn't that
scald you? Estelle handed me a lot of talk about having seen
me on the street for the last two years, and how she had always
been dying to meet me, and I got swelled up and bought wine like
a horse owner. Johnny was shaking his head and motioning for me
to chop, but what cared I? Estelle was saying, "He done it,"
"I seen it," and "Usen't you?" right along, but the grape stood
for everything.
Estelle's friend was talking about her piano, and how hard it
was to get good servants nowadays, and say, Jim, I've heard
knockers in my time, but Estelle is the original leader of the
anvil chorus. She just put everybody in town on the pan and
roasted them to a whisper. She could build the best battleship
Dewey ever saw with her little hammer. Estelle's friend, after
much urging, then sang a pathetic ballad entitled, "She Should
Be Scolded, but Not Turned Adrift," and I sat there with one
eye shut, so that I could see single, and kept saying, "Per'fly
beauf'ful."
About this time I commenced to forget. I remember getting an
awful rise out of Estelle by remarking that her switch didn't
match her hair. She came up like a human yeast cake. Johnny
sided with the dame, and said I might at least try to act like
a gentleman, even if I weren't one. Perhaps the grape wasn't
getting to Johnny by this time. He was nobby and boss. He was
dropping his r's like a Southerner, and you know how much of a
Southerner Johnny is--Johnstown, Pa.; and he was hollering around
about his little three-year-old, standard-bred, and registered
bay mare out of Highland Belle, by Homer Wilkes, with a mark of
twenty-one, that could out-trot any thing of her age that ever
champed a bit. Did you get that, Jim? That ever champed a bit;
and still he said at noon to-day that he had had two, possibly
three, glasses of wine, but no more. The only way that mare of
Johnny's can go a mile in twenty-one is "In the Baggage Coach
Ahead."
Say, Jim, I've never said much about it, but you let any of these
fellows who own horses get a soak on, and they get to be a kind
of a village pest, with their talk about blowing up in the stretch,
shoe blisters on the left forearm, etc. Now, since when did a horse
get an arm? They have got me winging. I can't follow them at all.
But to return to last night. When Johnny threw that thing at me
about champing the bit, it was all off to Buffalo with little
Will. I went out of business right there.
When I got up this morning I had to ask the bellboy what hotel
I was in. I'll see the fellows to-night, and they'll all tell me
how dirty my face was, and what I called so and so, and make me
feel as bad as they possibly can. It's a wonder a fellow doesn't
get used to that, but I never do; I feel meaner each time. Guess
I'll take the veil.
Don't fail to come down Saturday. Several of us are going yachting
on the Ohio River. It will be lovely billiards.
Yours as ever,
Billy.
P. S.--Do you know anything about that George's place?