Mr. Algernon Jarvis, of San Francisco, got up cross. The world of Mr.
Jarvis had gone wrong with him overnight, as one's world is likely to do
when one sits up till morning with jovial friends, to watch it, and he
was prone to resentment. No sooner, therefore, had he got himself into a
neat, fashionable suit of clothing than he selected his morning
walking-stick and sallied out upon the town with a vague general
determination to attack something. His first victim would naturally have
been his breakfast; but singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
feeble an energy that he was himself beaten--to the grieved astonishment
of the worthy _rôtisseur_, who had to record his hitherto puissant
patron's maiden defeat. Three or four cups of _café noir_ were the only
captives that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric chariot-wheels that morning.
He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily down the street, so occupied
with schemes of universal retaliation that his feet had it all their own
way; in consequence of which, their owner soon found himself in the
billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel. Nobody was there, but Mr. Jarvis
was a privileged person; so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
little box of ivory balls, spilled them carelessly over a table and
languidly assailed them with a long stick.
Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a marvelous stroke. Waiting
till the astonished balls had resumed their composure, he gathered them
up, replacing them in their former position. He tried the stroke again,
and, naturally, did not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again he
badly failed. With a vexed and humilated air he once more put the
indocile globes into position, leaned over the table and was upon the
point of striking, when there sounded a solemn voice from behind:
"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"
Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned about and looked at the speaker,
whom he found to be a stranger--one that most persons would prefer
should remain a stranger. Mr. Jarvis made no reply. In the first place,
he was a man of aristocratic taste, to whom a wager of "two bits" was
simply vulgar. Secondly, the man who had proffered it evidently had not
the money. Still it is annoying to have one's skill questioned by one's
social inferiors, particularly when one has doubts of it oneself, and is
otherwise ill-tempered. So Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against the table,
laid off his fashionable morning-coat, resumed his stick, spread his
fine figure upon the table with his back to the ceiling and took
deliberate aim.
At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this history, and is seen no more
forever. Persons of the class to which he adds lustre are sacred from
the pen of the humorist; they are ridiculous but not amusing. So now we
will dismiss this uninteresting young aristocrat, retaining merely his
outer shell, the fashionable morning-coat, which Mr. Stenner, the
gentleman, who had offered the wager, has quietly thrown across his arm
and is conveying away for his own advantage.
An hour later Mr. Stenner sat in his humble lodgings at North Beach,
with the pilfered garment upon his knees. He had already taken the
opinion of an eminent pawnbroker on its value, and it only remained to
search the pockets. Mr. Stenner's notions concerning gentlemen's coats
were not so clear as they might have been. Broadly stated, they were
that these garments abounded in secret pockets crowded with a wealth of
bank notes interspersed with gold coins. He was therefore disappointed
when his careful quest was rewarded with only a delicately perfumed
handkerchief, upon which he could not hope to obtain a loan of more than
ten cents; a pair of gloves too small for use and a bit of paper that
was not a cheque. A second look at this, however, inspired hope. It was
about the size of a flounder, ruled in wide lines, and bore in
conspicuous characters the words, "Western Union Telegraph Company."
Immediately below this interesting legend was much other printed matter,
the purport of which was that the company did not hold itself
responsible for the verbal accuracy of "the following message," and did
not consider itself either morally or legally bound to forward or
deliver it, nor, in short, to render any kind of service for the money
paid by the sender.
Unfamiliar with telegraphy, Mr. Stenner naturally supposed that a
message subject to these hard conditions must be one of not only grave
importance, but questionable character. So he determined to decipher it
at that time and place. In the course of the day he succeeded in so
doing. It ran as follows, omitting the date and the names of persons and
places, which were, of course, quite illegible:
"Buy Sally Meeker!"
Had the full force of this remarkable adjuration burst upon Mr. Stenner
all at once it might have carried him away, which would not have been so
bad a thing for San Francisco; but as the meaning had to percolate
slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance, it produced no other immediate
effect than the exclamation, "Well, I'll be bust!"
In the mouths of some persons this form of expression means a great
deal. On the Stenner tongue it signified the hopeless nature of the
Stenner mental confusion.
It must be confessed--by persons outside a certain limited and sordid
circle--that the message lacks amplification and elaboration; in its
terse, bald diction there is a ghastly suggestion of traffic in human
flesh, for which in California there is no market since the abolition of
slavery and the importation of thoroughbred beeves. If woman suffrage
had been established all would have been clear; Mr. Stenner would at
once have understood the kind of purchase advised; for in political
transactions he had very often changed hands himself. But it was all a
muddle, and resolving to dismiss the matter from his thoughts, he went
to bed thinking of nothing else; for many hours his excited imagination
would do nothing but purchase slightly damaged Sally Meekers by the
bale, and retail them to itself at an enormous profit.
Next day, it flashed upon his memory who Sally Meeker was--a racing
mare! At this entirely obvious solution of the problem he was overcome
with amazement at his own sagacity. Rushing into the street he
purchased, not Sally Meeker, but a sporting paper--and in it found the
notice of a race which was to come off the following week; and, sure
enough, there it was:
"Budd Doble enters g.g. Clipper; Bob Scotty enters b.g. Lightnin';
Staley Tupper enters s.s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.m. Sally
Meeker."
It was clear now; the sender of the dispatch was "in the know." Sally
Meeker was to win, and her owner, who did not know it, had offered her
for sale. At that supreme moment Mr. Stenner would willingly have been a
rich man! In fact he resolved to be. He at once betook him to Vallejo,
where he had lived until invited away by some influential citizens of
the place. There he immediately sought out an industrious friend who had
an amiable weakness for draw poker, and in whom Mr. Stenner regularly
encouraged that passion by going up against him every payday and
despoiling him of his hard earnings. He did so this time, to the sum of
one hundred dollars.
No sooner had he raked in his last pool and refused his friend's appeal
for a trifling loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he bought a
check on the Bank of California, enclosed it in a letter containing
merely the words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched it by mail to the only
clergyman in San Francisco whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a vague
notion that all kinds of business requiring strict honesty and fidelity
might be profitably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was the use
of religion? I hope I shall not be accused of disrespect to the cloth in
thus bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate of the parsons,
inasmuch as I do not share it.
This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent in a week's revelry; at
the end of which he worked his passage down to San Francisco to secure
his winnings on the race, and take charge of his peerless mare. It will
be observed that his notions concerning races were somewhat confused;
his experience of them had hitherto been confined to that branch of the
business requiring, not technical knowledge but manual dexterity. In
short, he had done no more than pick the pockets of the spectators.
Arrived at San Francisco he was hastening to the dwelling of his
clerical agent, when he met an acquaintance, to whom he put the
triumphant question, "How about Sally Meeker?"
"Sally Meeker? Sally Meeker?" was the reply. "Oh, you mean the hoss? Why
she's gone up the flume. Broke her neck the first heat. But ole Sim
Salper is never a-goin' to fret hisself to a shadder about it. He struck
it pizen in the mine she was named a'ter and the stock's gone up from
nothin' out o' sight. You couldn't tech that stock with a ten-foot
pole!"
Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner. He saw his error; the message in the
coat had evidently been sent to a broker, and referred to the stock of
the "Sally Meeker" mine. And he, Stenner, was a ruined man!
Suddenly a great, monstrous, misbegotten and unmentionable oath rolled
from Mr. Stenner's tongue like a cannon shot hurled along an uneven
floor! Might it not be that the Rev. Mr. Boltright had also
misunderstood the message, and had bought, not the mare, but the stock?
The thought was electrical: Mr. Stenner ran--he flew! He tarried not at
walls and the smaller sort of houses, but went through or over them! In
five minutes he stood before the good clergyman--and in one more had
asked, in a hoarse whisper, if he had bought any "Sally Meeker."
"My good friend," was the bland reply--"my fellow traveler to the bar of
God, it would better comport with your spiritual needs to inquire what
you should do to be saved. But since you ask me, I will confess that
having received what I am compelled to regard as a Providential
intimation, accompanied with the secular means of obedience, I did put
up a small margin and purchase largely of the stock you mention. The
venture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly unprofitable."
Unprofitable? The good man had made a square twenty-five thousand
dollars on that small margin! To conclude--he has it yet.