Since an actor of distinction told me this story I take it that it may
be repeated here without serious offence to the profession which he
adorns and dignifies.
The proprietor of a small hotel of a small New England town was hunched
behind the clerk’s desk of his establishment when the door opened and
there strode in a typical heavy man of a traveling repertoire company.
The newcomer wore a mangy fur overcoat and a soiled white waistcoat and,
as if to make up for his lack of baggage, bore himself with an air of
jaunty assurance. He advanced to the clerk’s desk and waited there as
though expecting the innkeeper to rise and in accordance with the
ritual, swing the register about for him and hand him a pen newly dipped
in ink. If that was what the Thespian expected he was disappointed.
The prospective guest was not to be daunted by the lack of the customary
evidences of hospitality and welcome. In his deepest and most impressive
stage voice he said:
“I take it, my good man, that you are the Boniface of this hostelry.”
“Wall, I’m runnin’ this here tavern, ef so be that’s whut you mean.”
“Exactly so. It is even as I suspected. And what are your lowest terms
for members of my profession?”
“Which?”
“I say, what are your lowest terms for actors?”
“Liars, loafers and dead-beats!”
§ 127 Glass of Fashion and Mould of Form!
In the last year of the Civil War a company of Federal soldiers were
encamped in the Tennessee foothills. They had pitched their tents in a
meadow belonging to a farmer whose log house stood in a grove at the
edge of the field. Through the meadow ran a good-sized creek. The
soldiers lost no time in pulling off their dusty garments and bathing in
the stream.
That same evening the owner of the farm, a whiskered gentleman, called
upon the young lieutenant in command of the detachment. He began by
saying that his sympathies were with the Union and he felt upon this
account if upon no other he was entitled to consideration. He had a
complaint to make. He had no objection to the use of his meadow as a
camp ground but he did wish to protest again the action of the men in
swimming within sight of his domicile because, as he explained, he had
two half-grown daughters.
The officer saw the point of the farmer’s position and promised him that
he would take steps. Immediately he issued an order that thereafter men
wishing to bathe or swim should repair to a point at the far side of the
meadow.
The next afternoon the farmer reappeared with a fresh protest. The
lieutenant listened to him and then said rather impatiently:
“Say, look here, my friend, it strikes me you’re somewhat fussy. The
place where these men are now going into the creek is fully a quarter of
a mile from your house if not farther.”
“Yes, I know,” said the farmer, “but you see, Mister, both of my gals
has got spyglasses.”
§ 128 Down to the Solid Portions
It seems the mother was determined her six year old daughter should
learn table manners and especially that she should eat what was put
before her without question or complaint. On a morning at breakfast the
lady sat behind the coffee urn reading her mail. Little Mildred was
perched upon a high-chair at the other end of the table. In front of the
latter the maid put down a cup holding a soft-boiled egg.
“Please, mama,” said Mildred. “I don’t want an egg this morning. I had
an egg yesterday morning.”
“Never mind what you had yesterday morning,” said the mother without
looking up from her reading. “Eggs are good for you. Now you open that
egg and eat every bite of it.”
Mildred sniffled but obeyed. Presently her voice was again uplifted in
protest:
“Mama, I don’t like this egg. I don’t think it’s a very nice egg.”
“It is a nice egg,” contradicted the mother, still immersed in her
correspondence. “Go right ahead.”
Another pause ensued, punctuated only by muffled sobs and gulps from
Mildred. Then:
“Mama, I’ve eaten nearly all of it. Can’t I stop now?”
“Mildred, I don’t want to have to speak to you again. I’ve told you what
you had to do.”
“But, Mama——” and now Mildred’s voice rose to a wail——“do I have to
eat the bill and the legs, too?”
§ 129 An Anti-Expectoration Advocate
The young couple had recently moved to New York from the South and were
living in an attractive but somewhat small apartment on Riverside Drive.
One afternoon quite unexpectedly callers were announced from downstairs.
“Olga,” the mistress said, turning away from the telephone after telling
the telephone operator to send the party up, “guests are coming. I know
they’ll want to see Mabel. Please take her into the bathroom and slip a
clean frock on her and tidy her up a bit and then send her back to the
front room. Hurry now, they can only stay a little while.”
So Mabel, the six-year-old daughter of the household, was gathered up by
Olga and hurried out of sight. But Olga in her haste must have left the
bathroom door ajar, for just as the visitors had been welcomed there
came floating through the hall to them a protesting childish voice
uttering the following ultimatum.
“Olga, company or no company, I ain’t goin’ to have my face washed with
spit!”
§ 130 Putting Depew in His Place
There was a big dinner one night in London and Senator Depew, then at
the head of the New York Central system, delivered the principal speech.
Joseph Choate, our ambassador to the court of St. James, sat at the
guest table flanked on either side by a serious-minded member of the
British nobility, neither of whom had ever been to America.
As Senator Depew got into his swing one of Choate’s neighbors said to
him:
“Your fellow-American is a most captivating speaker, eh, what? Curious I
never heard of him before. To what station in your American life would
you assign him?”
Choate’s gift of humor was brightest on the spur of the occasion.
“The Grand Central Station,” he replied promptly.
“Ah, yes, I see,” spoke up his neighbor on the other side, “what we call
in England the great middle-class.”
§ 131 How Larry Boosted the Game
“Larry,” said the young man with the slicked-back hair. “I want you to
do me a big favor. I’ve just met a girl who’s visiting here and I’ve
fallen for her strong. Now, I want to let her get the impression that
I’m well-to-do. In fact, I don’t care if she goes so far as to think I’m
wealthy, but I don’t want to do too much bragging in front of her. So
that’s where you fit in.”
“How do I fit in?” inquired Larry, who was by way of being rather a
rugged and untutored person.
“Easy enough,” said the conspirator. “Tomorrow I’ve got a date to buy
her a lunch at the Claridge. You drop in there as if by accident. I’ll
hail you and call you over to our table and introduce you to Miss
Ferguson—that’s her name, Gertrude Ferguson—and insist on you sitting
down with us. Then I’ll start in to talking about myself. I’ll be sort
of backward and diffident in referring to my own possessions but every
time I mention anything that belongs to me that’ll be your cue to
interrupt and go the limit, swelling me. That’s it, you boost and boost
and keep on boosting until you make her believe that I’m a millionaire
and all the time I’ll be getting credit in her mind for modesty.”
“I get you,” said Larry. “Leave it to me.”
The scene shifts to the following afternoon at Claridge’s. The
well-meaning Larry appeared. The chief plotter called him across the
restaurant and he was duly presented to Miss Ferguson and by invitation
took a seat. His friend took up the thread of his narrative.
“I was just saying to Miss Ferguson,” he explained, “that last Sunday I
was out at my little place in the country. . . .”
“Place in the country,—huh!” broke in Larry. “Listen to that, will you,
lady, he calls it a place in the country. It’s an estate, that’s what it
is—a regular estate, that’s all.”
The suitor smiled tolerantly and went on.
“Well, anyhow,” he resumed, “I was out there at my shack. . . .”
“Ain’t that just like you?” proclaimed Larry. “Shack, huh? It’s a
palace, that’s all—a palace, I’ll tell the world.”
“No matter, old man,” continued his friend. “What I was going to say was
that I called the maid, and I told her. . . .”
“You called _the_ maid?” clarioned the co-conspirator. “Why don’t you
say you called one of the maids. Near as I remember, you’ve got five or
six maids hanging ’round that palace, not to mention a couple of
butlers.”
“Have it your own way, old chap,” resumed the slick-haired one. “I
called one of the maids, if you prefer to put it that way, and I told
her to bring me some burnt sugar and some hot water and a little
whiskey. You see, I’ve got a cold——”
“Cold?” whooped Larry. “Listen, lady, do you hear this guy sayin’ he’s
got a cold? What he’s really got is the gallopin’ consumption!”
§ 132 When Goldstein Really Cut Loose
A jobber in the cloak and suit line suffered a bereavement. His wife up
and died on him. Possibly because it was neighborhood gossip that the
couple had not lived together very happily the bereft one felt it
incumbent upon him to manifest an unusual degree of distress.
Two days after the interment the husband, dressed all in black and
wearing a broad mourning-band on his left arm, was on his way to his
place of business. A fellow-jobber halted him and without preamble spoke
as follows:
“Honest, Goldstein, I got to say it—for you I am ashamed that you
should carry on so the way what you did at your wife’s funeral. As a
mark of respect for you I went by your house day before yesterday and
the way you acted—well, I could only say again: As one business man to
another I am ashamed for you that you should act so.
“A wife, yes? They come, they go; you get ’em, you lose ’em. That’s
life, ain’t it? So why, then, when you lose one should you carry on so I
positively absolutely could not understand.”
“Did you maybe also come by the cemetery?” inquired the widower.
“Soitin’ly not,” said his friend. “I’m a business man and it ain’t that
I could spare a whole day running way over on Long Island to a cemetery.
I came by your house like I said before and when I seen how you carried
on that for me was sufficient. Right off I came away disgusted.”
“You think I carried on at the house, huh?” stated Mr. Goldstein. “You
should a-come by the cemetery. That’s where I raised hell!”
§ 133 Tired of Dealing with Crooks
A rugged person, who had acquired a considerable fortune in the
wet-goods business in the old wideopen days in Denver, decided to invest
some of his savings in oil and mining stocks. The venture, so far as he
was concerned, did not prove a success. Between two suns both of his
partners vanished and he was left to face a large deficit. While the
wreckage was being cleared away by legal methods, the disillusioned
ex-saloonist bared his inner feelings to his lawyer.
“Hal,” said the old fellow, “I’m through with this game. I’m goin’ to
take what’s left—ef so be there is anything left—and go back out west
where I belong. This here stock-brokin’ ain’t for me. The trouble with
it is that it’s so full of crooks you don’t know who to trust. You can’t
put no dependence in what these fellows tell you. They’ll hand you what
seems to be a straight line of goods and then turn right around and
double cross you.
“Now, I ain’t been used to doin’ business that way. Before I came here I
never traded with none but square guys. For instance, now, you take it
when I was runnin’ that bar in Denver. A fellow that I knowed would drop
in to see me and show me some jewelry or silverware or somethin’ and ask
me what I’d give him for it. I’d ask him where he got it and he’d say to
me: ‘I lifted it to-night at Jones, the Banker’s house.’ ‘All right,’
I’d say, ‘I’ll give you so much for it.’ He’d say that suited him and
I’d hand him the money and he’d beat it out of town. Then, next mornin’,
sure enough there’d be a piece in the paper sayin’ the residence of Mr.
Jones the banker had been robbed the night before, and I’d know I’d been
doin’ business with a square guy.”
§ 134 By Way of Compromise
Up in Minnesota a railroad train killed a cow belonging to a
Scandinavian homesteader. The tragedy having been reported at
headquarters a claim-agent was sent to the spot to make a settlement of
damages.
Now, the claim-agent was a plausible and persuasive person, else he
would not have been a claim-agent. Having found the Scandinavian and
introduced himself by his official title, he proceeded to make out as
strong a case in rebuttal as was possible under the circumstances, with
the hope of course, of inducing the injured party to accept a moderate
sum.
“Mr. Swanson,” he said with a winning smile, “the company wants to be
absolutely fair with you in this matter. We deeply regret that your cow
should have met her death on our tracks. But, on the other hand, Mr.
Swanson, from our side there are certain things to be considered: In the
first place, that cow had no business straying on our right-of-way and
you, as her owner, should not have permitted her to do so. Moreover, it
is possible that her presence there might have caused a derailment of
the locomotive which struck her and a serious wreck, perhaps involving
loss of human life. Now, such being the case, and it being conceded that
the cow was, in effect, a trespasser on our property, what do you think,
as man to man, would be a fair basis of settlement as between you and
the railroad company?”
For a space Mr. Swanson pondered on the argument. Then, speaking slowly
and weighing his words, he delivered himself of an ultimatum:
“I bane poor Swede farmer,” he said. “I shall give you two dollars.”
§ 135 The Lady Made Good at Last
There was a Down-East housewife who, for years, was troubled with heart
seizures. At the most inopportune times she would drop unconscious and
after appearing for awhile to be at her last gasp would rally, and after
an hour or so, seemingly would be as well as she ever had been.
The frequency of these attacks naturally interfered with her husband’s
labors and also was highly disturbing to his peace of mind. As he worked
in his woodlot, or his hay meadow or about his barn he never knew when
the hired girl would be coming at full speed breathlessly to tell him
his wife had suffered another stroke and surely now was on the point of
death. If his patience frayed under repeated alarms of this sort the
worthy man gave no outward sign. Whenever the summons came—and it came
very often—he would drop whatever he was doing and hasten to the house,
invariably to find the sufferer on the way back to consciousness.
One hot day he was hoeing his potato patch when word arrived by
messenger that the invalid had just had an especially violent attack. He
lumbered to the cottage.
The form of his wife was stretched upon the kitchen floor where she had
fallen. A glance told him that this time she had made a go of it. Beyond
question, life was extinct.
“Wall,” he said, “_this_ is more like it!”
§ 136 The Low-Down on the Saw-Milling Business
An office-man for a Chicago lumber concern decided to get into the
business on his own account. Sight unseen, he purchased a milling
property in the White River bottoms of Arkansas at a figure which seemed
to him highly attractive. He settled up his affairs in the city and
caught a train for the South to take over the bargain.
At a way-station on the edge of a swamp he left the cars. The man from
whom he had purchased, a lean, whiskered individual, met him with a team
and a buckboard, and together they started on the long drive back in the
country. As they bumped along over the corduroy road the Northern man
turned to his companion and said:
“I’m hoping to make a good deal of money out of this new line and I’m
trusting to you to put me onto the ropes. I know something about the
selling end of the game but this is going to be my first experience in
the actual getting out of the raw stock.”
“Well, suh,” said the late proprietor, “I’ll give you my own experiences
in the saw-mill business and then you kin draw yore own conclusions.
This yere mill I sold you didn’t cost me nary cent to begin with. When
my father-in-law died he left it to me all complete and clear of debt.
“Labor ain’t cost me nothin’ because my two boys and me do all the work
and we ain’t never had to hire no outside help. And the timber we’ve cut
ain’t cost nothin’ neither ’cause, just between you and me, we been sort
o’ stealin’ it off the land of a rich Yankee who owns a big stretch of
the bottoms and ain’t got nobody watchin’ it.
“I’ve also been kind of favored in the matter of shipments, seein’ that
my cousin is district freight-agent for the railroad and he fixes up
things so our freightin’ don’t amount to nothin’ at all.
“That’s the way she stands—no wages for outside hands, no cost for
timber, and practically nothin’ for freight bills.
“And last year I lost twenty-five hundred dollars.”
§ 137 There Spoke a Sympathizing Soul
In the latter years of his picturesque career Colonel Eph Lillard was
warden of the state prison at Frankfort. It was no more than natural
that the Colonel should be a sincere lover of good horseflesh. To him, a
thoroughbred was almost the noblest work of God.
In his conduct of the prison he applied some of the kindly principles
which actuated him in his private life. It was his boast that no
penitentiary in the South was run on more humane lines. One morning,
though, word spread through the town that during the night a convict up
at the Colonel’s big, stone-walled establishment had hanged himself to
the bars of his cell. In a body, the correspondents of the Louisville
and Cincinnati papers waited upon the warden to learn the details of the
suicide. They found Colonel Lillard in his private office wearing upon
his genial face a look of genuine concern.
“Colonel,” said the spokesman for the group, “it begins to look to us as
though some of your pets were not so well satisfied as you’ve been
letting on. How about that fellow who killed himself last night?”
“Boys,” said the Colonel, “I’ve just been conductin’ an examination into
the circumstances of that most deplorable affair. The situation with
regards to the late deceased prove to be mighty affectin’. It seems he
was sent up the first time to serve two years for stealin’ a horse. When
he got out he went back home and stole another horse. They caught him
before he’d gone more than half a mile and the jury gave him five years
and back he came again. After he’d served his second term he went into
an adjoinin’ county to the one where he’d formerly lived and slipped
into a stranger’s stable and stole a mighty likely blooded mare, but was
overtaken at daylight next morning and inside of three months was back
here again doin’ an eight-year term. The way I look at it, the poor
fellow took to broodin’ and just naturally despaired of ever gettin’
hisself a horse.”
§ 138 The Inevitable Consequences
Martin Littleton was born in East Tennessee. When he was a boy he moved
to a community in Texas, largely settled by people from his own part of
the country who had carried with them to their new home the customs and
traditions of their native mountains. There he studied law and presently
he opened a modest law-office.
Almost the first person who called upon him in a professional way was a
gaunt Tennesseean whom he had known as a child. The visitor stated that
he wished to bring a lawsuit against a neighbor, also a transplanted
Tennesseean, to decide a dispute which had arisen over a line fence.
“Now see here, Uncle Zach,” young Littleton said, “it’s too bad that two
old friends from the same part of the world should be lawing each other.
Isn’t there some way you men can settle this thing out of court?”
The old fellow shook his grizzled head.
“Martin, I’m afeard not,” he said. “When this yere row first got serious
betwixt us I made him a proposition. I suggested to him that we should
decide it the same way we used to decide sich arguments back home. I
told him if he’d meet me at sun-up in my pecan grove, bringin’ his
squirrel rifle with him, we’d stand up back to back and each one would
step off twenty steps and swing around and start shootin’. But Martin,
the low-flung craven, he couldn’t stand the gaff when the shootin’ time
came. He didn’t have the sand. When I’d stepped off twenty steps and
whirled around you kin believe it or not, but the cowardly dog had done
jumped behind a tree.”
“What happened then?” asked Littleton.
“Well, natchelly, Martin, that th’owed me behind a tree.”
§ 139 Not Listed among the Leading Ones Anyhow
A youth from the slums attained fame as a prize-fighter. With prosperity
and prominence, he turned arrogant.
One day he openly snubbed a companion of his earlier days. The snubbed
one presently sent an emissary to reproach him for his snobbishness.
“Jim says you ought to be ashamed of yourself for throwing him down now
when you two used to be such good friends,” stated the intermediary. “He
says he’s done you a whole lot of favors in the past.”
“Aw, tell him to forgit it!” growled the pug. “Dat guy never done
nothin’ for nobody. Whut did he ever do for me?”
“Well, all I know is he told me to ask you if you’d forgot that hotel
episode in Toledo when you were there together the time of the
Willard-Dempsey fight?”
“He’s a liar,” said the pugilist. “To begin with, they ain’t no Hotel
Episode in Toledo.”
§ 140 A Warning to the Yanks
When Sherman, after his march from Atlanta to the sea, turned his
columns northward he was temporarily halted just below Fayetteville,
North Carolina, while his engineers threw a temporary bridge across a
swollen creek, the Confederates in falling back having destroyed the
only bridge which spanned the stream. The retreating Southern army had
left behind in Fayetteville a population made up almost altogether of
women, children, boys too young to fight and men too old for service.
In response to a call, practically all of these older men gathered at
the courthouse to discuss such measures as might be taken for the
protection of the town in view of the approach of the invaders. Various
expedients for saving the place from the fate which already had
overtaken Atlanta and Columbia were discussed. But none of them seemed
feasible, inasmuch as the community could muster no adequate defending
force.
Finally an aged veteran of the Mexican War rose from his seat and caught
the eye of the presiding officer.
“Mister Chairman,” he quavered, “I make a motion that we collect a fund
and have a lot of dodgers struck off at the printin’ shop and circulated
amongst the Yankee Army, warnin’ them that they enter Fayetteville at
the peril of their lives.”
§ 141 In the Nature of a Shock
Riley Wilson is one of the best story-tellers who ever came out of the
South. He loves to go to horseraces when he is not playing politics in
his own state of West Virginia. Indeed he owns a string of race horses.
At the Latonia track once Riley ran into a rural friend of his from
Tennessee and in the goodness of his heart gave him a tip on a horse
which he had entered for one of the events. The friend excused himself
and went away for a few minutes, and when he returned to where Wilson
sat in the grand stand he confessed that he had wagered practically
every cent he had on Wilson’s entry; which admission might be taken as
evidence of sporting blood, inasmuch as it developed that he had never
before seen a running race and never before had wagered money on one.
The gee-gees were off. At once Wilson’s horse and another contender took
the lead. Together the pair of them fought it out all the way. Neck and
neck they swung into the home stretch, and neck and neck they thundered
toward the goal. A scant ten feet from the wire the rival horse gave a
convulsive leap and won by half a nose from Wilson’s colt.
As this dreadful thing happened, the Tennesseean fell back in his seat,
pawing at himself with both hands.
“Was it much of a shock to you?” asked Wilson.
“Much of a shock?” echoed the loser. “I ain’t been all over myself yet,
but as fur as I’ve gone here’s what’s happened to me: My watch is
stopped, both my suspenders is busted, and my glass eye is cracked right
through the center.”
§ 142 His Worst Fears Confirmed
An elderly English actor came over to take his first American
engagement. He had never visited the country before but he had
strong—not to say fixed—prejudices touching on the United States, as
compared with the British Isles.