obeyed orders. Grand Central Pete took the envelope back in his hands
and examined it carefully.
“Does that say nine thousand dollars?” he demanded.
“Yep,” said his partner.
“Well, it don’t look big enough to me,” said Pete. “You’d better add on
some more of them naughts.”
The younger man protested, but Pete would have his way and kept after
him until the educated one had tacked on three more naughts, making the
grand total $9,000,000.
Then Pete marched grandly over to the hotel, registered for himself and
his friend, passed the stuffed envelope across the desk to the clerk and
called for the bridal suite.
The clerk took one look at the envelope, another look at the soiled
faces and shabby apparel of the newcomers—and rang the bell for the
bouncer. A minute later the discomfited pair were sitting on the
sidewalk.
Grand Central Pete raised himself painfully and eyed his companion with
a scornful, angry glance.
“There now,—dad-gum you!” he shouted; “I told you you hadn’t wrote in
enough of them naughts!”
§ 111 Provision for the Future
Nobody could tell a yarn of his own race better than the late Bert
Williams could. I remember one story he used to tell. Hearing him tell
it you felt, despite its gorgeous impossibility, that somehow it might
have happened and that anyhow it should have happened. To the best of my
recollection his version, delivered in his wonderful Afric drawl ran
something like this:
“W’en I was a little boy I lived on the banks of a creek and I supported
my whole family ketchin’ feesh and peddlin’ ’em off amongst the w’ite
folks. Ever’ mawnin’ I’d ketch me a string of feesh and off I’d go wid
’em. I forgot to say that this yere creek run at the foot of a mountain
seven thousand feet high and most of the w’ite folks lived up on the
mountain-side.
“One hot mawnin’ I ketches me a string of feesh and I teks ’em in my
hand and I starts up the mountain. I comes to the fust house but they
didn’t want no feesh there; and I comes to the second house and it seems
lak they don’t crave no feesh neither, and so I continues till I reaches
the plum top of that mountain seven thousand feet high.
“Now, right on the plum top, in a little house, live a little white man
and he’s standin’ at his do’ like he’s waitin’ fur me. I walks up to him
and I bows low to him, ver’ polite, and I sez to him I sez: ‘Mister,
does you want some fresh feesh?’ And he sez to me, he sez: ‘No, we don’t
want no feesh to-day.’
“So I starts back down that mountain, seven thousand feet high. And w’en
I’m about a third of the way down I’m overtook by one of those yere
landslides and under tons of rocks and dirt and soil and _daybris_ and
stuff and truck and things I’m carried plum to the foot of that
mountain. So I digs my way out frum under all that there mess, still
holdin’ to my little string of feesh, and I wipes the dust out of my
eyes and I looks back up the mountain to see what the landslide has
done. And, lo and behole! The little man that lives in the little house
on the plum top is standin’ at his do’ beck’nin’ to me. So I sez to
myself: ‘Praise God, that w’ite man is done changed his mind.’
“So I climbs back ag’in up the mountain, seven thousand feet high, till
I comes to the plum top and w’en I gits there the little w’ite man is
still standin’ there waitin’ fur me. He waits till I’m right close to
him befo’ he speaks. Then he clears his throat and he sez to me, he sez:
“‘And we don’t want none to-morrow, neither!’”
§ 112 The Life of the Party, as It Were
Three aged Scots were in the habit of meeting on Saturday evening at the
home of first one and then another of the group for social purposes.
Their social demands were simple, just as their tastes were similar. All
they craved was an opportunity to sit by a fire with their pipes lit and
their whiskey glasses handy, in silence.
One evening there had been an especially enjoyable session. Two quarts
of liquor had been consumed and hardly a word had been spoken. At the
approach of midnight the two guests stood up to go. One of them, with
difficulty focusing his vision upon his host, who sat in the inglenook,
remarked to the third member of the party in an undertone:
“What an awfu’ look Sandy has on his face.”
“Aye,” said his crony, “he’s dead.”
“How long has he been dead?” inquired the first speaker in shocked
tones.
“The better part of twa hours.”
“Why did ye nae tell me before?”
“Hoots, mon,” said his crony, “I’m nae the one to brek up a pleasant
evenin’.”
§ 113 Something to Look Forward To
A hustling free-lance in the white goods business thought he saw a
magnificent opening to buy up a stock of underwear and by a quick
turnover among the jobbers to realize a handsome profit. He succeeded in
inducing a Bowery bank to let him have a hundred thousand dollars in
order to swing the deal. The deal was swung but for some reason or other
the enterprising speculator was not able to move his newly acquired
stocks as rapidly as he figured on.
One morning the president of the bank sent word to the borrower that he
desired to see him immediately and the latter promptly answered the
summons.
“Look here, Mr. Jacobson,” said the banker, “I’ll have to call your loan
and I’ll have to call it immediately.”
“But Mr. Slocum,” protested Jacobson, “you couldn’t do that. Still I am
all tied up with them goods und I must have more time.”
“I’m sorry for you if you’re going to be embarrassed,” said Mr. Slocum,
“but I can’t help myself. The state bank examiner was in here yesterday
going over our books and he tells me we must clean up a lot of our
accounts. Now, your note for a hundred thousand dollars is a demand
note, as you will recall, and not a time note, so I must ask you to be
able to take up that note not later than Wednesday, the fifteenth of
next month.”
“Vell,” said Mr. Jacobson resignedly, “that’s the vay things go. Vot has
to be has to be, I guess.” He thought for a moment.
“Mr. Slocum,” he said, “maybe you have yourself looked into the ins and
out of underwear, eh?”
“Mr. Jacobson,” said the banker, “I’m not interested in the underwear
business.”
“Vell,” said Mr. Jacobson softly, “you should be. Because Venesday, the
fifteenth, you’re going to be in it.”
§ 114 Me Lady’s One Weak Point
Martin Green, one of the best-known newspaper men in New York, has
remarkable memory for faces. Twenty odd years ago he was a reporter in
St. Louis. At a summer park he became acquainted with a vaudeville team
consisting of a brawny Irishman and the Irishman’s equally brawny
Swedish wife. The team had an act which was simple, and yet thrilling.
Their stage props consisted of a sledge-hammer and a collection of
paving-stones. The pair would come forth from the wings, and the lady
would station herself in the centre of the stage and upon her head the
gentleman would balance a large, jagged lump of limestone. Then,
stepping back, he would swing his sledge-hammer aloft and bring it down
with all the force of his mighty arms upon the stone, dashing it into
scores of fragments. The lady would blink slightly, take her bow and the
couple would back from sight to reappear an hour or so later and repeat
the performance.
Two decades passed. In 1920 Green was reporting the National Republican
Convention at Chicago. One evening he boarded a trolley car. The car was
crowded and Green found standing room on the rear platform. Something
about the face of the conductor stirred a memory long buried in his
brain. He studied the countenance of the other for a minute and then the
answer came to him.
“Say, look here,” he asked. “Aren’t you Brennan of the old team of
Brennan and Swenson that used to do a turn at the summer park in St.
Louis way back about 1900?”
“That’s right,” said the conductor. Then with a sigh he added, “Sure,
but thim was the happy days.”
“What made you quit the stage?” asked Green.
“It was on me wife’s account,” said the ex-Thespian. “She got so she
couldn’t stand it no longer, me bustin’ thim cobblestones on her head.”
“Gave her headaches, I suppose,” said Green.
“No, not that,” said Brennan. “It bruk her arches down.”
§ 115 At the Crossing of the Ways
Beyond question his Honor on the bench was cross-eyed. Some persons went
so far as to say that he was the crossest-eyed person or the
cross-eyedest person, as the grammar may be, in the known world.
On a morning when for some reason or other his angles of vision seemed
particularly out of alignment there were arraigned before him for
preliminary examination three youths charged with hypothecating a
stranger’s automobile to their own use. The oldest of the trio, and the
supposed ringleader, stood between his two alleged confederates.
Addressing the middle one the judge said:
“Young man, you are accused here of grand larceny. How do you plead,
guilty or not guilty?”
Instantly the one on the left said:
“Not guilty, Your Honor.”
“I wasn’t addressing you,” sniped His Honor. “I was addressing this
other accused. Wait until you’re spoken to.”
“Why, judge,” protested the one on the right. “I ain’t said a word.”
§ 116 The Mysterious Stranger
The Scotch minister and his beadle, or sexton as we would call him, had
attended a Masonic banquet and had done themselves, as the saying goes,
exceedingly well. The dominie was a bachelor. His housekeeper was a very
strict lady and he was a bit doubtful as to what his reception would be
on his return to the manse. He considered the situation for a bit and
then to his beadle he said:
“John, I think I’ll slip in at the back door the nicht.”
The beadle, who believed in upholding the dignity of the kirk, replied
emphatically:
“You’ll do naething o’ the kind. Y’re meenister o’ this parish an’ ye’ll
go in by your own front door.”
“Weel, then,” said the clergyman, “I’ll walk in front o’ you for a bit
an’ you watch how I get alang.”
The minister proceeded ahead, striving to walk straight in the
moonlight, and the beadle propping himself on his own unsteady pins,
squinted his eyes in earnest observation.
Presently the dominie called back over his shoulder:
“How am I getting alang, John?”
“Ye’re doing brawly,” answered John, “but meenister, who is that ye have
with ye?”
§ 117 A Chronic Loser
At Lynchburg, Va., a traveling-man climbed off the train in a hurry. He
had but a few minutes in which to travel across town and make
connections with a train for Roanoke. But the only rig in sight was an
ancient carriage drawn by a scrawny, old crow-bait with an old negro man
for a driver.
“Right this way, boss,” shouted the old man as he ran forward to relieve
the traveler of his hand-baggage. “Tek you anywhars in the city fur
fifty cents. Hop right abode, suh!”
“I’ve got to rush over to the other depot,” said the white man, “That
mare of yours doesn’t look very fast. Do you think she can make it?”
“Huh, dat mare?” proclaimed the old man. “She sholy kin. She’s mouty
deceivin’ in her looks. They calls dis hoss Lightnin’.”
Thus reassured, the stranger climbed in. The black Jehu mounted to his
seat, snapped the lines and gave the word of command. Tottering on her
shaky pins the venerable pack of bones ambled off.
“Say, look here, uncle,” said the fare, “that nag of yours may be speedy
when she’s feeling right but it strikes me that she’s lost her health or
something. Why, she’s almost weak enough to fall down in her tracks.”
“Boss,” said the old man, sinking his voice to a confidential undertone,
“I’m gwine tell you a secret. Dat mare ain’t sick, but yere lately, as
you mout say, she’s been kind of out o’ luck.”
“What do you mean—out of luck?” asked the passenger.
“Well, suh, ever’ mawnin’ I shakes the dice to see whether dat mare has
a bait of oats or I has me a slug of gin. An’ she ain’t won fur goin’ on
mouty nigh a week.”
§ 118 The Call of the Far East
Walter Kelly, famous in vaudeville, has an old friend at Buffalo who
formerly was a Feinian and now is the most confirmed of Sinn Feiners. If
there is anything on earth Kelly’s friend doesn’t like it’s something
English. His version of the British national anthem probably would run:
“God Save the King Till We Can Get At Um!”
In 1921 Kelly was playing in vaudeville at Buffalo. As he sat in his
dressing-room, awaiting his turn, his ancient acquaintance came to see
him. When greetings had been exchanged Kelly said:
“Well, Dennis, it’s a great day for all of us who are of Irish blood.
Now that England has granted Ireland self-government, there’s no reason,
as I see it, why the Irish and the English should not try to forget
their old feud and live hereafter at peace. The Irish have no further
cause for a quarrel with the British!”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Walter,” said the unreconciled Dennis.
“Don’t ye think now we ought to be doin’ somethin’ fur thim poor
Hindus?”
§ 119 He Wouldn’t Commit Himself Yet
The conservation of the Down-East farmer is proverbial. Possibly this
trait is a heritage of his Puritan ancestry.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that he is extremely careful to
refrain from overstatement or exaggeration. A point in illustration is
found in the story of the elderly Vermonter who was bringing in hay from
his ancestral meadow. Seated upon a fragrant two-ton load he had guided
his double team almost to the doors of his barn when one of the front
wheels twisted on an outcrop of granite and the cargo capsized,
precipitating the husbandman to the stony earth with great violence and
entirely burying him under the mound of timothy.
The two hired hands leaped to the rescue. They forked away the hay and
after several minutes of strenuous endeavor dug out their employer. He
was speechless for the time being and half-suffocated. There was a bump
on his forehead and one arm dangled to prove that his shoulder-blade had
been snapped. As they propped the victim against the softer side of a
handy boulder his son, who had been at work in the hayfield and who had
been summoned by the cries of the rescuers, came running up. Filled with
alarm and solicitude the younger man put a question which seemed
somewhat superfluous but which, in view of his fright, was perfectly
natural.
“Paw,” he cried as he bent over his parent, “did it hurt you?”
“Wall, son,” said the old man slowly, and measuring his words, “I
wouldn’t go so fur as to say it’s done me any real good.”
§ 120 A Seasonable and Timely Suggestion
It was in the old days up in the Klondyke. On a winter’s night—a night
destined to be remembered even in that land for its severity—the
inhabitants of a mining-camp were gathered in the local dance hall for
companionship and for warmth. It was too cold to play cards. Those
present had huddled themselves about a huge, red-hot stove which stood
in the center of the big room, when from without there came the sound of
feeble cries.
The proprietor threw open the door and peered forth into the blizzard.
The light from the coal-oil lamps behind him revealed a string of
exhausted husky dogs and a sled upon which was huddled a human shape.
Hardy spirits dashed forth into the storm and separated the form of the
traveler from his sled to which he was frozen fast. They bore him
inside, chafed his hands and thawed him before the fire, and by these
means succeeded in restoring him his powers of motion and coherent
speech. It developed that the rescued one was a green prospector who in
his ignorance had undertaken to make the trip from a settlement ten
miles below to a point considerably up country from the place where he
now was. When he was almost spent from cold and exhaustion he had seen
the lighted windows of the dance hall and had guided his staggering
dog-team there in the nick of time.
Now that he was able to walk, two sympathetic Samaritans guided his
footsteps to the bar where the barkeeper awaited them.
“Stranger,” said the hospitable barkeep, “you’ve had a blamed close call
and we’re goin’ to celebrate. This round is on the house. What are you
goin’ to have? I’d suggest a hot whiskey punch—or maybe you’d rather
have a hot Tom-and-Jerry?”
The stranger considered for a moment.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I’ll take a seltzer lemonade.”
“What’s that?” cried the stupefied barkeeper.
“I think I’d like to have a seltzer lemonade.”
“Pardner,” stated the barkeeper, “we’re out of lemons and likewise we’re
shy on seltzer. But I want you to feel at home; I tell you what I’ll do;
I’ll just run upstairs to my trunk and get you a nice pair of white duck
pants to wear.”
§ 121 Not Vouched For as Absolutely Authentic
This story probably isn’t true. The more I think it over, the more am I
convinced that somewhere it lacks plausibility. But in spite of this
defect I deem it worthy to be included in this collection, because, if
it serves no other good purpose, it may give the visiting foreigner and
notably the visiting Briton an idea of the size of this country and the
variations of weather to be found within our boundaries at one time.
As the story runs, a Galveston negro, born and reared on the Gulf coast,
was offered a job one winter in St. Paul. Knowing nothing of the
climatic changes he might, and undoubtedly would, encounter as he moved
north, the colored man, attired in a cotton shirt and a pair of
threadbare jeans overalls, boarded a through train for his future
theatre of activities. By snuggling close up to the steam pipes he
managed to remain fairly comfortable during the journey; but when he
stepped off the cars at St. Paul things were different. For he stepped
off into the swirling midst of the worst blizzard that had descended
upon Minnesota in twenty years.
Bewildered by the screeching wind, blinded by stinging particles of
snow, the stranger staggered a few yards from the station, growing more
congealed every second. Within half a block, becoming absolutely rigid,
he fell stiffly over in a snow bank. He was found by a policeman who
called the patrol wagon and removed the unfortunate to the nearest
police station. There a surgeon, after making a cursory examination of
the stiffened frame, diagnosed the case as one of death by freezing.
Since there was nothing by which the victim might be identified the desk
sergeant entered him on the docket as an unknown person and the
physician gave his sanction for the immediate disposal of the ill-fated
one’s mortal remains. As interment underground was out of question the
police conveyed their burden to an improvised crematory, arriving about
midnight.
Here an attendant lost no time in consigning the body to the flames and
having closed the iron door of the furnace he called it a night and
retired.
Next morning the authorities sent two more bodies to be consumed. As the
functionary, wearing heavily padded gloves, unscrewed the caplike door
of his little private inferno and involuntarily shrunk back from the
blast of incredible heat which gushed out into his face, he was
astounded to hear a querulous, plaintive, Afro-American voice uplifted
from the very heart of the furnace, saying:
“Who is dat openin’ dat do’ an’ lettin’ all dat cold draft of air in
yere on me?”
§ 122 One Time When the Colonel Balked
In his old age, after he quit the war-path, Quanah Parker, the famous
chief of the Comanches, adopted many of the white man’s ways; but in one
important respect he clung to the custom of his fathers. He continued to
be a polygamist.
He was a friend and admirer of ex-President Roosevelt. On one occasion,
when Colonel Roosevelt was touring Oklahoma he drove out to Parker’s
home camp twelve miles from Fort Sill to see the old warrior. With pride
Parker pointed out that he lived in a house like a white man, that he
was sending his children to the white man’s schools and that he,
himself, wore the garb of the white man. Whereupon, Colonel Roosevelt
was moved to preach him a sermon on the subject of the moralities.
“See here, Chief,” he said, “why don’t you set your people a still
better example of obedience to the laws of the land and the customs of
the whites? A white man has only one wife; he’s allowed only one at a
time. Here you are living with five squaws. Why don’t you give up four
of them and remain faithful to the fifth? You could continue to support
the four you put aside but they need no longer be members of your
household. Then, in all respects, you would be living as the white man
lives.”
Parker, who spoke excellent English when he chose to do so, considered
the proposition for a space in silence. Then, with a twinkle in his
beady old eyes he made answer:
“You are my great white father,” he said, “and I will do as you wish—on
one condition.”
“What’s the condition?” asked the Colonel.
“You pick out the one I am to live with and then you go tell the other
four.”
§ 123 And No Steam Calliope, Either
There is a theatrical manager in New York who began his professional
career as press-agent for a circus. A year or two ago he had occasion to
believe that a bill-posting crew sent out by him to paper the territory
for a big production in which he was interested had failed to live up to
its contract. He decided to make a quiet trip over the itinerary and
check up on the suspected shirkers. In a city just across the Canadian
line in Quebec he hired a livery-stable rig with a driver for the
purpose of riding through the adjacent country.
The driver of the rig he immediately recognized as a former
boss-canvasman answering to the name of Saginaw Red. In the old days
this Saginaw had been employed by one of the circuses for which the New
Yorker also had worked. The recognition was mutual. Naturally the two of
them renewed their ancient acquaintance and a flow of reminiscence
started. As their buggy reached the edge of the town the driver halted
it while a funeral procession bound for the cemetery passed through an
intersecting street.
It wasn’t much of a funeral procession. Behind the rusty, closed
carriage containing the pall-bearers followed a dingy, glass-walled
hearse and behind that, in turn, came four more closed carriages
presumably containing mourners and friends of the deceased, and that was
all.
Pointing to the cavalcade and employing the vernacular of their former
calling, the manager addressed his companion:
“Well, Saginaw,” he said, “what do you think of the grand free street
parade?”
“It’s a frost,” said Saginaw; “only one open den.”
§ 124 Absolutely Nothing to Debate
The official peacemaker, there is one in every community, and sometimes
unthinking people call him a butter-in, was progressing on his homeward
way. Of a sudden the loose prehensile ears of the pedestrian were
assailed by sounds which to his eager perception betokened a bitter
quarrel between a man and woman who stood on the porch of a vine-clad
cottage. Without a moment’s hesitation he opened the yard gate and
hurried toward the seemingly belligerent pair.
“Tut, tut!” he cried. “Tut, tut, my friends, this will never do. Pray
cease this unseemly argument.”
The couple turned toward him. It was the man who spoke:
“What business of yours is it, comin’ bustin’ in here a-tut-tutting like
a gas engine? Besides this here ain’t no argument.”
“Yes, but I heard——” began the peacemaker.
“Never mind what you heard,” broke in the husband. “To be an argument
there’s got to be a difference of opinion, ain’t they?”
“Yes, there has,” conceded the peacemaker.
“Well, they ain’t no difference of opinion here,” said the man. “My wife
thinks I ain’t going to give her none of my week’s wages and I know
durned well I ain’t!”
§ 125 Keeping It in the Family
The proprietor of a small general store in a remote New England district
sat at the doorway of his establishment industriously whittling. A
middle-aged native drove up in an antiquated car and halted.
“Hello, Eth,” he said.
“Hello, Wes,” answered back the storekeeper.
“Wall, Eth,” said the newcomer, “you said I couldn’t dew it, but, by
Judas Priest, I done it!”
“You done whut?” asked the storekeeper.
“Sold that there old crow-bait mare of mine—that’s whut I done,” said
Wes exultingly.
“Wall, you air the smart one!” cried the astonished Eth admiringly. “She
wuzn’t wuth nothin’. Whut did ye sell her fur?”
“She wuzn’t wuth nothin’, jest ez you say. But all the same I sold her
fur a hunderd dollars—and I got the money right here in my pocket,
too.”
“I got to say it again,” declared Eth. “You certainly air the smart one!
A hundred dollars! Why that there old mare wuzn’t wuth ten dollars. She
wuz eighteen year old if she wuz a day and blind of one eye and spavined
and wind-broke and all stove up. Who, in the name of Goshen, did you
sell her to?”
“I sold her,” said Wes, “to mother.”