The walls of the big living-room in the Arrowhead ranch house are
tastefully enlivened here and there with artistic spoils of the owner,
Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill. There are family portraits in crayon,
photo-engravings of noble beasts clipped from the _Breeder's Gazette_,
an etched cathedral or two, a stuffed and varnished trout of such size
that no one would otherwise have believed in it, a print in three
colours of a St. Bernard dog with a marked facial resemblance to the
late William E. Gladstone, and a triumph of architectural perspective
revealing two sides of the Pettengill block, corner of Fourth and Main
streets, Red Gap, made vivacious by a bearded fop on horseback who doffs
his silk hat to a couple of overdressed ladies with parasols in a
passing victoria.
And there is the photograph of the fat man. He is very large--both high
and wide. He has filled the lens and now compels the eye. His broad face
beams a friendly interest. His moustache is a flourishing, uncurbed,
riotous growth above his billowy chin.
The checked coat, held recklessly aside by a hand on each hip, reveals
an incredible expanse of waistcoat, the pattern of which raves
horribly. From pocket to pocket of this gaudy shield curves a watch
chain of massive links--nearly a yard of it, one guesses.
Often I have glanced at this noisy thing tacked to the wall, entranced
by the simple width of the man. Now on a late afternoon I loitered
before it while my hostess changed from riding breeches to the gown of
lavender and lace in which she elects to drink tea after a day's hard
work along the valleys of the Arrowhead. And for the first time I
observed a line of writing beneath the portrait, the writing of my
hostess, a rough, downright, plain fashion of script: "Reading from left
to right--Mr. Ben Sutton, Popular Society Favourite of Nome, Alaska."
"Reading from left to right!" Here was the intent facetious. And Ma
Pettengill is never idly facetious. Always, as the advertisements say,
"There's a reason!" And now, also for the first time, I noticed some
printed verses on a sheet of thickish yellow paper tacked to the wall
close beside the photograph--so close that I somehow divined an intimate
relationship between the two. With difficulty removing my gaze from the
gentleman who should be read from left to right, I scanned these verses: