Eliph' Hewlitt was resolved that into this interview no words regarding
Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science
and Art should enter. With two such favored rivals in the field, and
with such difficulty in getting into the house as he had experienced, he
meant to get well acquainted in a hurry. Miss Sally sat stiffly in her
chair, steeling herself to refuse the request to buy a copy of the book.
Her usually attractive face was stern, as she looked at Eliph' Hewlitt,
and she watched him suspiciously as he slowly combed his whiskers with
his fingers, as if she feared this was some part of the operation by
which he was charming her into a hypnotic state in which she would sign
for a book without knowing why. She nerved herself to ward off whatever
insinuating words he should first say, and Eliph', as he studied her
face, sought words that would advance him at one bound deep into the
state of being well acquainted. It was a trying moment for both.
Then, so suddenly that Miss Sally almost jumped from her chair, Eliph'
coughed behind his hand, and spoke.
“It seems like it would be as hot to-day as it was yesterday, if it
don't shower before night,” he said, and smiled pleasantly as he said
it.
Miss Sally was taken off her guard, and before she was aware she had
answered, quite as politely as she would have answered the minister
himself.
“It's awful hot,” she said. “I guess Kilo's the hottest place on earth
in summer.”
“Not the hottest,” answered Eliph', leaning forward eagerly. “You
wouldn't say that if you had a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge
and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, and studied it up the way
I do. Page 442 gives all the hottest places on earth, with the record
highest temperature of each, together with all the coldest places, where
there is the greatest rainfall, and a chronological table of all the
great famines, floods, storms, hot and cold spells the earth has ever
known, from the time of Adam to the present day, with pictures of the
Johnstown flood, and diagrams of Noah's Ark. This, with the chapter
on the Physical Geography of Land and Sea, telling of tides, typhoons,
trade winds, tornadoes, et cetery, explains why and how weather happens.
All this and ten thousand other subjects, all indexed from A to Z in one
book----”
He paused suddenly, appalled to think that he was already far from his
resolve not to mention Jarby's Encyclopedia, and, as his voice still
hung on the last word he had spoken, the doorbell rang, and Miss Sally
jumped up, happy for any interruption. She merely turned her head to
say:
“I guess I don't want one to-day,” and then Eliph' heard her open the
door, and greet the newcomers as she welcomed them into the hall. They
were Mrs. Tarbro-Smith and Susan, and, as Miss Sally hurried them up the
stairs to remove their dusty hats, she leaned back and called to Eliph':
“You can get right out the door,” she said, “it ain't shut. I guess I
won't have no more time to spend listenin' to you to-day.”
For half an hour Eliph' waited, listening to the chatter of voices, and
then he quietly stole from the house and stepped gently out of the yard.
There was no sense in waiting longer, and he knew it.
Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, receiving a letter from the editor of MURRAY'S
MAGAZINE, had learned at length that Clarence was not typical Iowa, and
she had transferred her field of study to Kilo on his recommendation.
She meant to spend the rest of the season there, and hoped Miss Sally
would take her to board. She found that Miss Sally would be glad,
indeed, to have her company, and Mrs. Smith did not think it necessary
to mention that she was looking for local color and types. She was
pleased when she heard that Eliph' Hewlitt, who had so interested her,
was “working” Kilo.
As Eliph' Hewlitt walked toward the hotel he felt that another
opportunity had been lost--thrown away--by his inability to avoid
Jarby's Encyclopedia as a topic, and for one moment he came as near
giving up Miss Sally as he ever came to giving up anything. In that
moment he saw the simplicity of his courtship, as he had imagined
it would be, resolve itself into a tangled affair, as all these new
individualities entered into it. Instead of being a mere matter between
himself and Miss Sally, it was involving men and women, one after the
other. It seemed to become a fight between himself, a singer stranger in
Kilo, and an endless chain of interested citizens. Already there was Pap
Briggs, who hated book agents; the Colonel and Skinner, who hoped to
win Miss Sally; Mrs. Smith, who would serve as a defense against Eliph's
attacks; and, as he walked down the street, he seemed to see in every
man, woman, and child, a possible ally of either the Colonel or Skinner.
But he tucked his sample copy of Jarby's under his arm more securely,
and braced up his courage. He even whistled as he approached the hotel,
but, when he glanced up at the attorney's office and saw Toole and the
Colonel with their head together, he stopped whistling. If Toole was
going to take either side, Eliph' would have liked to claim him. Toole
was a smart man.
Toole and the Colonel left Miss Sally's with the attorney well pleased,
and his enigmatic smile rested on his face as he led the Colonel to
his office. He handed him a chair, and made him take a cigar, and then
turned and faced him.
“Now,” he said, “what are you going to do with those
what-do-you-call-'ems?”
“Them fire-extinguishers?” said the Colonel, licking the cigar around
and around before lighting it. “Well, I ain't had much time to think
that over yet. A feller can't decide on a thing like that all at once.
It ain't likely no one in Kilo would buy a fire-extinguisher like them,
all nickel-plated, if they had their senses about 'em. 'Twouldn't be
natural. I might raffle 'em off, only nobody'd be likely to buy chances
on a fire-extinguisher. I might take 'em down to Jefferson, but I
don't see as that would do much good, nobody'd be likely to buy
fire-extinguishers off of me down there.”
“No,” said the attorney, turning to his table and looking over some
papers, with an appearance of interest, “No, I guess not. I don't see
that you can do much of anything with them, unless you use them for
ornaments. It seems a pity that Miss Briggs didn't go to Skinner for
advice about that box, instead of you, doesn't it?”
The Colonel stopped with a lighted match half way to his cigar.
“What do you mean?” he asked, red in the face. “Do you mean that puffy
old beef-cutter's got more sense than what I have, young man?”
“Oh, no,” said the attorney, carelessly. “Not at all. I was
just thinking that if Skinner HAD opened that box, and HAD found
fire-extinguishers in it, it would have been a fine chance for him to
say to Miss Briggs, 'Madam, I am building in this town an opera house,
known as Skinner's Opera House. The safety of the people of Kilo demands
fire-extinguishers in Skinner's Opera House. I will take those four
nickel-plated appliances and install them in my opera house, and
allow you ten dollars apiece for them, cash or meat.' But, of course,”
continued the attorney innocently, “you can't do that; you haven't built
an opera house.”
The Colonel's little eyes peered at the attorney, and they were filled
with cunning. Across his hard mouth a smile crept and broadened until he
had to lay his hand across it, it was so indecently wide and exultant.
“Skinner is no fool,” continued the attorney. “As soon as he hears that
Miss Briggs has those four things he will probably rush right up to her
house and offer to buy them. It would be a great feather in his cap with
her, if he could get the credit of having thought of it. I shouldn't
wonder if he had heard of what was in that box by this time. It seems a
pity, doesn't it, that he should get all the credit after you have done
all the work?”
The Colonel looked at the noncommittal face of the attorney, and smiled
again. This was a sort of cunning he could appreciate, and he leaned
over and gave Toole a sly poke in the ribs, to show him that he
understood. Toole looked at him with a blank face, and at this the
Colonel slapped his knee, and uttered a mirthful noise that was like the
sound of a man choking. He clapped his greasy hat on his mat of hair and
went out, pausing at the door to look back and grin at the attorney once
more.
Mr. Skinner was trimming a roast. He had just cut off a piece of suet,
which he held in his plump red hand as he listened to the Colonel's
proposition to sell him four nickel-plated fire-extinguishers at
ten dollars each. Perhaps the Colonel spoke too impetuously; too
commandingly. Skinner held the lump of suet offensively near the
Colonel's nose as he answered.
“Fire-extinguishers!” he laughed. “Me buy fire-extinguishers? I wouldn't
give THAT for them.”
He shook the suet before the Colonel's eyes.
“No, sir!” he sneered. “I wouldn't give THAT for them. And I throw that
away!”
“Skinner,” said the Colonel, growing dangerously red in the face, “don't
you shake no meat in MY face like that! Don't you dare do it! I won't
have no butcher shake meat in MY face. You low-down beef-killer. That's
all you are, a beef-killer.”
“Mebby,” admitted the butcher indifferently. “Mebby I am, but I don't
buy no fire-extinguishers. And I don't take much stock in agents for
them, neither. No. Nor in gold bricks. Nor green good. No.”
The Colonel raised his fist and brought it down on the butcher's counter
so hard that the meat scales danced, and the indicator jerked nervously
across the face of the dial, weighing a half pound of anger. The butcher
leaned back against the shopping block, and gently caressed the handle
of his cleaver. He pointed to the door with his other hand.
“Git out!” he said, and the Colonel scowled but went.
On his way home the Colonel bethought himself of a good excuse to stop
at Miss Sally's. He had left his ax there, and he went to the back
door, this not being a formal call. Miss Sally came to the door when he
knocked, and brought him the ax, and he took the opportunity to say a
bad word for Skinner, and he was astounded to find that she sympathized
with Skinner on his refusal to buy the fire-extinguishers.
“I don't wonder at it,” she said, “seeing he has put so much money on
that opery house already. He's done a lot for this town that nobody else
would ever have thought of doin'. Mr Skinner's a very public-spirited
citizen, and to think he made it all out of sellin' meat! It must be a
good business. I guess you'll have to excuse me now, Colonel Guthrie,
I've got visitors down from Clarence.”
The Colonel's steps dragged as he walked home. Never had Miss Sally
said so many good words for his rival. She had almost rebuffed his good
offices in the attempt to sell the fire-extinguishers, and had praised
Skinner to his face.
Early the next morning he “dropped up” into the office of Attorney
Toole, and as that young man lay back in his chair, with his feet on
his desk, he told him the whole story. The attorney smiled. This was the
kind of split in the ranks of the Citizens' Party that he had hoped to
promote.
“After that, Colonel,” he said, when the Colonel had told him that
Skinner had ordered him out of the shop, “you ought to MAKE him buy
them.”
“I wisht I could, dog take him!” cried the Colonel. “I'd like to make
him eat 'em.”
“Colonel,” said Toole, “I see you are, as always, guided by a spirit of
conservative kindness. You hesitate to force that butcher to do what he
does not want to do. The feeling does you honor, but is it business? You
hesitate even when you see how easily you could force him to do what he
is in duty bound to do to protect the lives of our trustful citizens.
I admire your gentleness, but I deplore your unbusinesslike moderation.
You lack public spirit.”
The Colonel grinned savagely. He felt that the attorney was teasing him,
but he could not quite tell how.
“You,” said Toole easily, “knowing that our town council can, and
should, pass an ordinance compelling all owners of opera houses to
install nickel-plated fire-extinguishers--to install four of them in
each opera house in Kilo--for the protection of our people, hesitate to
ask them to pass such an ordinance. You hesitate because you do not wish
to appear malevolent toward a rival. Now, don't you?”
“Me be kind to that fat, pig-stealing, sausage-grinding----” snorted the
Colonel, but the attorney stopped him with a lifted hand.
“Just what I said,” exclaimed the attorney. “You are too kind; too
considerate; too regardful of his feelings. But would he be so kind and
considerate and regardful of your feelings, if he was in your place?”
He lowered his feet and his voice, and placed his hand on the Colonel's
knee.
“No!” he whispered hoarsely. “No!” he cried loudly and defiantly. “No!
He would not! He would use the influence you have with the city
council and the mayor to have an ordinance passed making YOU put
fire-extinguishers in YOUR opera house, and compel YOU to buy them of
HIM. But you will not use your huge influence with Mayor Stitz and the
city council. You hesitate.”
Toole shook his head sadly; he almost wept out the last word, he seemed
so heartbroken to see the Colonel hesitate.
“Why hesitate?” he asked. “If I were not a stranger in town, as I may
say, I should beg you not to hesitate. I should beg you to act. I should
beg you to think of the lives of poor, helpless women and children. I
should beg you, for humanity's sake, to go to the honorable mayor and
city council, and appeal to them to pass an ordinance compelling this
Skinner to buy nickel-plated fire-extinguishers. To compel him, Colonel!
But I have nothing to say.”
He shuffled the legal-looking papers that littered his desk. The
Colonel's eyes had narrowed to fine points of hate-instilled cunning as
the attorney proceeded.
“What have we come to,” asked the attorney sadly, “when the leading
citizens of a town like Kilo neglect their duty? Are there no true
citizens left to show the mayor and city council their plain duty?”
When the Colonel had the thing put to him in this light he did not
hesitate. He knew Stitz, the mayor, and he knew that Stitz had full
control of the city council. What Stitz told it to do the city council
did, and the Colonel believed he had a right to dictate what Stitz
should tell it, for he had suggested the name of Stitz as candidate for
mayor, and, with Skinner, had helped elect him. He went at once to the
mayor, and laid the case before him.
Mayor Johann Stitz was an honest, upright shoemaker, and owned his own
building. It had once been a street car in Franklin, and when the horse
cars were superseded by electric cars, Stitz had bought this car at
auction, and had paid ten dollars to have it hauled to Kilo. It had not
been a very good car when it left the shops before it made its first
trip, and the ten years of running off the track and being boosted on
again had not improved it much. It was in pretty bad shape when Stitz
picked it up for eighteen dollars, and it had deteriorated greatly since
it had been doing duty as a cobbler's shop, but Stitz liked it. The tiny
car stove that stood midway of one of the seats was all he needed in
cold weather, and the seats along the sides were a continuous spread of
cobblers' seats. He could cobble all the way up one side of the car and
all the way back the other, and when he had customers waiting he always
had a seat to give them. He and the whole city council could hold a
caucus in the car, and all have seats, and in the evenings he could take
a stool out on his front or back porch and smoke a pipe in peace. His
car stood side by side with the round topped wagon of the traveling
photographer, who had not traveled since his felloes gave out on that
very lot six years before.
The city officers of the Citizens' Party, being of an independent
part, were so independent that they were worried and chafed by their
independence. No one but a man in office knows the real blessedness of
having the set beliefs and an traditions of a regular party to fall
back upon. The independence of the independents made their work more
difficult; it compelled them to decide things for themselves, and then
everybody complained of what they did. No independent is ever satisfied
with what another independent does, and they lost even the satisfaction
of knowing that they were pleasing their own part, which a properly
service Democrat or Republican is rather apt to be sure of. In this
state of things the six councilmen had thrown their burdens of decision
to Stitz. They cast the whole burden on him, saying, “Ask Stitz. He's
mayor. What he says, we'll do.” And Stitz never would say.
As the Colonel entered the mayor's shoe shop Stitz was reading a
magazine, which he laid beside him on the car seat while he listened
to the Colonel. A pile of similar magazines lay beside him on the seat.
They were the missionary offerings of Doc Weaver, who was interested
in whatever was latest in religion, government or popular science. They
were magazines telling of the municipal corruption of “New York, The
Vile,” “Philadelphia, Defiled but Happy,” “Chicago, the Base,” and “St.
Louis, the Decayed.” Doc Weaver had given them to Mayor Stitz to show
him the evil of graft, and to keep his administration clean and pure.
When the Colonel had laid before the mayor his request for an ordinance
compelling all opera house owners in Kilo to install and maintain four
nickel-plated fire-extinguishers in each opera house, the mayor beamed
on him through his iron-rimmed spectacles.
“Ho! Ho-o!” he exclaimed, “it is to make Mister Skinner buy some
fire-extinguishers, yes? So shall my city council pass an ordinance,
yes? Um!”
He smiled broadly at the Colonel, and then nodded.
“For how much you graft me?” he asked blandly.
“What?” asked the Colonel.
“Graft me,” repeated Mayor Stitz. “I say for how much you will graft me
when I shall pass one such ordinance my council through?”
“What's that?” asked the Colonel, puzzled.
“For how much you will make me one graft?” Mayor Stitz repeated slowly.
“Graft! Graft! Understand him not?”
The Colonel shook his head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Graft! Graft! Graft!” exclaimed the mayor with annoyance. “Don't you
know him? When I make you one ordinance to pass, so, then you make me
one graft, so! Like I read me in this book. Me to you, one ordinance;
you to me one graft. So!”
A look of dismay came over the face of the Colonel, as he frowned at
the smooth, honest face of the mayor, from which beamed eyes of childish
honesty and frankness.
“Here in this book,” said the mayor slowly and distinctly, like one
explaining some simple thing to a child, “I read me of this graft
business. It is to me this graft comes. So it is by all big cities. Man
would have one ordinance. Goot! In every town is such one boss grafter.
To the boss grafter gives the ordinance-wanting man a graft. So! Then
for the ordinance-wanting man does the boss grafter get one ordinance
made like is wanted. Yes! So, it is; no graft, no ordinance! Some graft,
some ordinance! I read him in this book Doc Weaver gives me as a lesson
to go by. It is a goot way. I like me that graft business.”
A glimmer of the meaning entered the Colonel's mind, but he could hardly
connect the idea of graft with the honest Johann Stitz. As a fact, to
Mayor Stitz the idea of unlawful gain did not come. Graft was a way out
of the difficulty of having to decide things. It was a system authorized
by the lawmakers of great cities, and a system that could operate
in Kilo. Whenever Stitz and his council passed an ordinance someone
complained, and upbraided him; he saw now why this was; they had not
used the approved system. But the Colonel still frowned.
“Well, what--how much do you want?” he asked.
Mayor Stitz turned up his innocent face and smiled blandly again.
“That makes not!” he exclaimed. “In the books it says much money, but
is not yet Kilo so gross as New York. We go easy yet a while. It is what
you want to graft me. One bushel apples--one bushel potatoes--that YOU
must say.”
The Colonel moved closer to the mayor. He thought of Miss Sally, and of
Skinner.
“I will make you a present of a bushel of apples,” he said.
The mayor laid down his magazine and arose. As the Colonel watched him
with surprise, he removed his leathern apron. The Colonel folded his
hand into a fist, but on the pleasant face of Mayor Stitz there was no
sign of anger; no sign of righteous indignation; only a bland look of
satisfaction.
“Well,” inquired the Colonel impatiently, “will ye put the ordinance
through, or won't ye?”
The mayor looked at him with surprise in every feature. Clearly this
Colonel did not understand the first rudiments of graft.
“First I must go by Mr. Skinner,” said Stitz simply. “Mebby he grafts me
more NOT to pass such an ordinance.”
“Look here, Stitz,” said the Colonel in alarm. “You ain't goin' to do
that, are ye?”
“Vell,” said the mayor, “still must I do it! So always does the boss
grafter. Which side grafts him the most, so he does. It is always so,
never different. To the most grafter, so goes he. I read it in this
books. When the boss grafter does not so, what use is the grafts? How
then does he know which he shall do for, the ordinance-wanting man, or
the ordinance-not-wanting man?”
The Colonel tried to argue with him, but the mayor was obdurate. He
would not budge from the highest principles of graft, and, as the
Colonel had gone too far now to recede with honor, he secured the best
terms he could. The most he could obtain was a promise that the mayor
would not mention any names, nor so much as hint that graft had been
promised. He uneasily awaited the mayor's return.
Stitz returned radiant. He was rubbing his hands and beaming.
“Fine!” he exclaimed. “Fine! I make me one boss grafter yet! Mister
Skinner grafts me one roast beef and six pigs' feet. He ain't much
liking those fire-extinguishers to have. How much more will you graft me
now?”
The Colonel looked the mayor squarely in the eye.
“Stitz,” he said, “I ain't goin' to run no auction with that there
Skinner. I come to you first, an' I was the first to say I'd make you
a present, an' you ought to pass that ordinance anyhow. But to shut up
this thing right here an' now, I'll do this: if you'll say you'll
pass that ordinance like I want, so Skinner'll have to buy them four
nickel-plated fire-extinguishers that Miss Briggs owns, at twenty-five
dollars each, I'll give you four bushels of Benoni apples, two bushels
of Early Rose potatoes, four bunches of celery, a peck of peas, and
one spring chicken. And if you won't” he added, raising his hand
threateningly, “I'll go to them six councilmen, an' I'll graft 'em
one at a time, an' THEN where 'll your boss grafter be? You can't help
yourself.”
“Say!” he exclaimed, “ain't I a boss grafter? Apples, potatoes, celery,
peas, and chickens! Five grafts for one ordinance! I do it!”
“An' don't you say nothing about it,” warned the Colonel.
The Colonel thought there would be no harm in making a little commission
for himself on the deal. It was not as if he had done nothing to earn
it. He would have to furnish the produce for the mayor's “graft,” and
he had secured the services of Toole free of fees, and he was doing Miss
Sally a good turn into the bargain. If Skinner was compelled to buy the
four fire-extinguishers at twenty-five dollars each Miss Sally could
afford a commission of ten dollars each, and forty dollars were always
forty dollars to the Colonel.
The mayor kept his promise. At the next meeting of the council the
ordinance was proposed, and hurried to a third reading by suspension of
the by-laws, and the next day Stitz signed it. There was some opposition
at the council meeting, for Skinner was present, and wanted to talk,
but the marshal was present, too, and at a word from Stitz, he helped
Skinner down the stairs, but gently, as a marshal owing a considerable
butcher's bill should.