The God of Coincidence is fortunate in possessing innumerable press
agents. They have made the length of his arm a proverb. How at
exactly the right moment he extends it across continents and drags two
and two together, thus causing four to result where but for him sixes
and sevens would have obtained, they have made known to the readers of
all of our best magazines. For instance, Holworthy is leaving for the
Congo to find a cure for the sleeping sickness, and for himself any
sickness from which one is warranted never to wake up. This is his
condition because the beautiful million-heiress who is wintering at the
Alexander Young Hotel in Honolulu has refused to answer his letters,
cables, and appeals.
He is leaning upon the rail taking his last neck-breaking look at the
Woolworth Building. The going-ashore bugle has sounded,
pocket-handkerchiefs are waving; and Joe Hutton, the last visitor to
leave the ship, is at the gangway.
"Good-by, Holworthy!" he calls. "Where do you keep yourself? Haven't
seen you at the club in a year!"
"Haven't been there in a year--nor mean to!" is the ungracious reply of
our hero.
"Then, for Heaven's sake," exclaims Hutton, "send some one to take your
mail out of the H box! Every time I look for letters I wade through
yours."
"Tear them up!" calls Holworthy. "They're bills."
Hutton now is half-way down the gangplank.
"Then your creditors," he shouts back, "must all live at the Alexander
Young Hotel in Honolulu!"
That night an express train shrieking through the darkness carried with
it toward San Francisco--
In this how evident is the fine Italian hand of the God of Coincidence!
Had Hutton's name begun with an M; had the H in Hutton been silent; had
he not carried to the Mauretania a steamer basket for his rich aunt;
had he not resented the fact that since Holworthy's election to the Van
Sturtevant Club he had ceased to visit the Grill Club--a cure for
sleeping sickness might have been discovered; but two loving hearts
never would have been reunited and that story would not have been
written.
Or, Mrs. Montclair, with a suit-case, is leaving her home forever to
join handsome Harry Bellairs, who is at the corner with a racing-car
and all the money of the bank of which he has been cashier. As the
guilty woman places the farewell letter against the pin-cushion where
her husband will be sure to find it, her infant son turns in his sleep
and jabs himself with a pin. His howl of anguish resembles that of a
puppy on a moonlight night. The mother recognizes her master's voice.
She believes her child dying, flies to the bedside, tears up the
letter, unpacks the suit-case. The next morning at breakfast her
husband, reading the newspaper, exclaims aloud:
"Harry Bellairs," he cries, "has skipped with the bank's money! I
always told you he was not a man you ought to know."
"His manner to me," she says severely, "always was that of a perfect
gentleman."
Again coincidence gets the credit. Had not the child tossed--had not
at the critical moment the safety pin proved untrue to the man who
invented it--that happy family reunion would have been impossible.
Or, it might be told this way:
Old Man McCurdy, the Pig-Iron King, forbids his daughter Gwendolyn even
to think of marrying poor but honest Beef Walters, the baseball
pitcher, and denies him his house. The lovers plan an elopement. At
midnight Beef is to stand at the tradesman's entrance and whistle
"Waiting at the Church"; and down the silent stairs Gwendolyn is to
steal into his arms. At the very same hour the butler has planned with
the policeman on fixed post to steal Mother McCurdy's diamonds and pass
them to a brother of the policeman, who is to wait at the tradesman's
entrance and whistle "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."
This sounds improbable--especially that the policeman would allow even
his brother to get the diamonds before he did; but, with the God of
Coincidence on the job, you shall see that it will all come out right.
Beef is first at the door. He whistles. The butler--an English
butler--with no ear for music, shoves into his hands tiaras and
sunbursts. Honest Beef hands over the butler to the policeman and the
tiaras to Mother McCurdy.
"How can I reward you?" exclaims the grateful woman.
"Your daughter's hand!"
Again the God of Coincidence scores and Beef Walters is credited with
an assist. And for preventing the robbery McCurdy has the peg-post cop
made a captain; thus enabling him to wear diamonds of his own and
raising him above the need of taking them from others.
These examples of what the god can do are mere fiction; the story that
comes now really happened. It also is a story of coincidence. It shows
how this time the long arm was stretched out to make two young people
happy; it again illustrates that, in the instruments he chooses, the
God of Coincidence works in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.
This time the tool he used was a hat of green felt.