1 
 
 
 
 mmmmm 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 BY OJ-TAYLo;
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UW! 1TY OF 
 
 CA.U RNIA 
 
 S*N DIGO j 
 

 
 MORE "SHORT SIXES."
 
 
 A\PRE SHORT 
 BYH'CBUNNER- 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY CJ TAYLOR- 
 
 KEPPLER B SCHWARZMANNI- PUBLISHERS, 
 PUCK BUILDING-NEW YORK- MDCCCXCIV--
 
 Copyright, 1894, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN.
 
 TO 
 A. L. B.
 
 Contents. 
 
 Page. 
 
 The Cumbersome Horse I 
 
 Mr. Vincent Egg and the Wage of Sin 22 
 
 The Ghoollah 46 
 
 Cutwater of Seneca 68 
 
 Mr. Wick's Aunt 84 
 
 What Mrs. Fortescue Did no 
 
 "The Man with the Pink Pants" 134 
 
 The Third Figure in the Cotillion 156 
 
 " Samantha Boom-de-ay" 180 
 
 My Dear Mrs. Billington 214
 
 THE CUMBERSOME HORSE.
 
 THE CUMBERSOME HORSE. 
 
 T is not to be denied that a 
 sense of disappointment per 
 vaded Mr. Britnmington's be 
 ing in the hour of his first 
 acquaintance with the isolated 
 farm-house which he had just 
 purchased, sight unseen, after long 
 epistolary negotiations with Mr. Hiram Skinner, 
 postmaster, carpenter, teamster and real estate 
 agent of Bethel Corners, who was now driving 
 him to his new domain. 
 
 Perhaps the feeling was of a mixed origin. 
 Indian Summer was much colder up in the Penn 
 sylvania hills than he had expected to find it ; and 
 the hills themselves were much larger and bleaker 
 and barer, and far more indifferent in their de 
 meanor toward him, than he had expected to find 
 them. Then Mr. Skinner had been something of 
 a disappointment, himself. He was too familiar 
 with his big, knobby, red hands; too furtive with 
 his small, close-set eyes; too profuse of tobacco- 
 juice, and too raspingly loquacious. And certainly 
 the house itself did not meet his expectations 
 when he first saw it, standing lonely and desolate 
 in its ragged meadows of stubble and wild-grass 
 on the unpleasantly steep mountain-side.
 
 flfoore "Sbort Sijes." 
 
 And yet Mr. Skinner had accomplished for 
 him the desire of his heart. He had always said 
 that when he should come into his money forty 
 thousand dollars from a maiden aunt he would 
 quit forever his toilsome job of preparing Young 
 Gentlemen for admission to the 
 Larger Colleges and Universities, 
 and would devote the next 
 few years to writing his 
 i long-projected " His 
 tory of Prehistoric 
 Man." And to go 
 about this task he 
 had always said that 
 he would go and live 
 in perfect solitude 
 that is, all by himself 
 and a chorewoman 
 in a secluded farm 
 house, situated upon 
 the southerly slope of 
 some high hill an old 
 farm-house a Revolution 
 ary farm-house, if possible 
 a delightful, long, low, rambling farm-house a 
 farm-house with floors of various levels a farm 
 house with crooked Stairs, and with nooks and 
 corners and quaint cupboards this this had 
 been the desire of Mr. Bfimmington's heart. 
 
 Mr. Brimmington, when he came into his 
 money at the age of forty-five, fixed on Pike 
 County, Pennsylvania, as a mountainous country 
 of good report. A postal-guide informed him that 
 Mr. Skinner was the postmaster of Bethel Corners ; 
 so, Mr. Brimmington wrote to Mr. Skinner.
 
 ^ tTbe Cumbersome 1bor$e. -^ 
 
 The correspondence between Mr. Brimming- 
 ton and Mr. Skinner was long enough and full 
 enough to have settled a treaty between two na 
 tions. It ended by a discovery of a house lonely 
 enough and aged enough to fill the bill. Several 
 hundred dollars' worth of repairs were needed to 
 inake it habitable, and Mr. Skinner was employed 
 to make thenv Toward the close of a cold No* 
 veinber day, Mr. Brimmington saw his purchase 
 for the first time. 
 
 In spite of his disappointment, he had to 
 admit, as he walked around the place in the early 
 twilight, that it was just what he had bargained 
 for. The situation, the dimensions, the exposure, 
 were all exactly what had been stipulated. About 
 its age there could be no question. Internally, its 
 irregularity indeed, its utter failure to conform 
 to any known rules of domestic architecture 
 surpassed Mr. Brimmington's wildest expectations. 
 It had stairs eighteen inches wide; it had rooms 
 of strange shapes and sizes ; it had strange, shal 
 low cupboards in strange places; it had no hall 
 ways; its windows were of odd design, and whoso 
 wanted variety in floors could find it there. And 
 along the main wall of Mr. Brimmington's study 
 there ran a structure some three feet and a half 
 high and nearly as deep, which Mr. Skinner con 
 fidently assured him was used in old times as a 
 wall-bench or a dresser, indifferently. "You might 
 think," said Mr. Skinner, "that all that space in 
 side there was jest wasted; but it ain't so. Them 
 seats is jest filled up inside with braces so 's that 
 you can set on them good and solid." And then 
 Mr. Skinner proudly called attention to the two 
 coats of gray paint spread over the entire side of
 
 the house, walls, ceilings and woodwork, blending 
 the original portions and the Skinner restorations 
 in one harmonious, homogenous whole. 
 
 Mr. Skinner might have told him that this' 
 variety of gray paint is highly popular in some 
 rural districts, and is made by mixing lamp-black 
 and ball-blue with a low grade of white lead. But 
 he did not say it ; and he drove away as soon as 
 he conveniently could, after formally introducing 
 him to Mrs. Sparhawk, a gaunt, stern-faced, silent, 
 elderly woman. Mrs. Sparhawk was to take 
 charge of his bachelor establishment during the 
 day time. Mrs. Sparhawk cooked him a meal for 
 which she very properly apologized. Then she
 
 *p tlbe Cumbersome Iborse. ^ 
 
 returned to her kitchen to "clean up." Mr. Brim- 
 mington went to the front door, partly to look out 
 upon his property, and partly to turn his back on 
 the gray paint. There were no steps before the 
 front door, but a newly-graded mound or earth 
 work about the size of a half- hogshead. He 
 looked out upon his apple -orchard, which was 
 further away than he had expected to find it. It 
 had been out of bearing for ten years, but this 
 Mr. Brimmington did not know. He did know, 
 however, that the whole outlook was distinctly 
 dreary. 
 
 As he stood there and gazed out into the 
 twilight, two forms suddenly approached him. 
 Around one corner of the house came Mrs. Spar- 
 hawk on her way home. Around the other came 
 an immensely tall, whitish shape, lumbering for 
 ward with a heavy tread. Before he knew it, it 
 had" scrambled up the side of his mound with a 
 clumsy, ponderous rush, and was thrusting itself 
 directly upon him when he uttered so lusty a cry 
 of dismay that it fell back startled ; and, wheeling 
 about a great long body that swayed on four 
 misshapen legs, it pounded off in the direction it 
 had come from, and disappeared around the 
 corner. Mr. Brimmington turned to Mrs. Spar- 
 hawk in disquiet and indignation. 
 
 "Mrs. Sparhawk," he demanded; "what is 
 that ? " 
 
 "It 's a horse," said Mrs. Sparhawk, not at 
 all surprised, for she knew that Mr. Brimmington 
 was from the city. "They hitch 'em to wagons 
 here." 
 
 "I know it is a horse, Mrs. Sparhawk," 
 Mr. Brimmington rejoined with some asperity;
 
 "Sbort Sixes." 
 
 "but whose horse is it, and what is it doing on 
 my premises ? " 
 
 "I don't rightly know whose horse it is," 
 replied Mrs. Sparhawk; "the man that used to 
 own it, he 's dead now." 
 
 "But what," inquired Mr. Brimmington 
 sternly, "is the animal doing here?" 
 
 "I guess he b'longs here," Mrs. Sparhawk 
 said. She had a cold, even, impersonal way of 
 speaking, as though she felt that her safest course 
 in life was to confine herself strictly to such state 
 ments of fact as might be absolutely required 
 of her. 
 
 "But, my good woman," replied Mr. Brim- 
 
 6
 
 y- Gbe Cumbersome Iborge. ^ 
 
 mington, in bewilderment, "how can that be? 
 The animal can't certainly belong on my property 
 unless he belongs to me, and that animal certainly 
 is not mine." 
 
 Seeing him so much at a loss and so greatly 
 disturbed in mind, Mrs. Sparhawk relented a little 
 from her strict rule of life, and made an attempt 
 at explanation. 
 
 " He b'longed to the man who owned this 
 place first off; and I don' know for sure, but I 've 
 heard tell that he fixed it some way so 's that the 
 horse would sort of go with the place." 
 
 Mr. Brimmington felt irritation rising within 
 him. 
 
 " But," he said, " it 's preposterous ! There 
 was no such consideration in the deed. No such 
 thing can be done, Mrs. Sparhawk, without my 
 acquiescence ! " 
 
 " I don't know nothin' about that," said 
 Mrs. Sparhawk ; " what I do know is, the place 
 has changed hands often enough since, and the 
 horse has always went with the place." 
 
 There was an unsettled suggestion in the 
 first part of this statement of Mrs. Sparhawk that 
 gave a shock to Mr. Brimmington's nerves. He 
 laughed uneasily. 
 
 " Oh, er, yes ! I see. Very probably there 
 's been some understanding. I suppose I am to 
 regard the horse as a sort of lien upon the place 
 a a what do they call it ? an incum- 
 brance ! Yes," he repeated, more to himself than 
 to Mrs. Sparhawk ; " an incumbrance. I 've got 
 a gentleman's country place with a horse in- 
 cumbrant." 
 
 Mrs. Sparhawk heard him, .however, 
 
 r
 
 -y d&ore "Sbort Sixes." ^ 
 
 "It is a sorter cumbersome horse," she said. 
 And without another word she gathered her 
 shawl about her shoulders, and strode off into 
 the darkness. 
 
 Mr. Brimmington turned back into the 
 house, and busied himself with a vain attempt 
 to make his long -cherished furniture look at 
 home in his new leaden -hued rooms. The un 
 grateful task gave him the blues; and, after an 
 hour of it, he went to bed. 
 
 He was dreaming leaden-hued dreams, op 
 pressed, uncomfortable dreams, when a peculiarly 
 weird and uncanny series of thumps on the front 
 of the house awoke him with a start. The 
 thumps might have been made by a giant with 
 a weaver's beam, but he must have been a very 
 drunken giant to group his thumps in such a 
 disorderly parody of time and sequence. 
 
 Mr. Brimmington had too guileless and clean 
 a heart to be the prey of undefined terrors. He 
 rose, ran to the window and opened it. The 
 moonlight lit up the raw, frosty landscape with 
 a cold, pale, diffused radiance, and Mr. Brim 
 mington could plainly see right below him the 
 cumbersome horse, cumbersomely trying to main 
 tain a footing on the top of the little mound 
 before the front door. When, for a fleeting in 
 stant, he seemed to think that he had succeeded 
 in this feat, he tried to bolt through the door. 
 As soon, however, as one of his huge knees 
 smote the panel, his hind feet lost their grip on 
 the soft earth, and he wabbled back down the 
 incline, where he stood shaking and quivering, 
 until he could muster wind enough for another 
 attempt to make a catapult of himself. The veil-
 
 like illumination of the night, which turned all 
 things else to a dirh, silvery gray, could not hide 
 the scars and bruises and worn places that spot 
 ted the animal's great, gaunt, distorted frame. 
 His knees were as big as a man's head. His 
 feet were enormous. His joints stood out from 
 his shriveled carcass like so many pine knots. 
 Mr. Brimmington gazed at him, fascinated, hor 
 rified, until a rush more desperate and uncertain 
 than the rest threatened to break his front 
 door in. 
 
 "Hi!" shrieked Mr. Brimmington; "go 
 away ! " 
 
 It was the horse's turn to get frightened. 
 Q
 
 V /Ibore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 He lifted his long, coffin-shaped head toward 
 Mr. Brimmington's window, cast a sort of blind, 
 cross-eyed, ineffectual glance at him, and with a 
 long-drawn, wheezing, cough-choked whinny he 
 backed down the mound, got himself about, 
 end for end, with such extreme awkwardness 
 that he hurt one poor knee on a hitching-post 
 that looked to be ten feet out of his way, and 
 limped off to the rear of the house. 
 
 The sound of that awful, rusty, wind-broken 
 whinny haunted Mr. Brirnmington all the rest of 
 that night. It was like the sound of an orches 
 trion run down, or of a man who is utterly tired 
 of the whooping - cough and does n't care who 
 knows it. 
 
 The next morning was bright and sunshiny, 
 and Mr. Brimmington awoke in a more cheerful 
 frame of mind than he would naturally have ex 
 pected to find himself in after his perturbed 
 night. He found himself inclined to make the 
 best of his purchase and to view it in as favor 
 able a light as possible. He went outside and 
 looked at it from various points of view, trying 
 to fino) and if possible to dispose of the reason 
 for the vague sense of disappointment which he 
 felt, having come into possession of the rambling 
 pld farm T house, which he had so much desired. 
 
 He decide'd, after a long and careful in 
 spection, that it was the proportions of the house 
 that were wrong. They were certainly peculiar. 
 Jt was singularly high between joints jn the first 
 story, and singularly low in the second. In spite 
 of its irregularity within, it was uncompromis 
 ingly square on the outside. There was some 
 thing queer about the pitch of its roof, and \\
 
 Cumbersome Iborse. ^ 
 
 seemed strange that so modest a structure with 
 no hallway whatever should have vestibule win 
 dows on each side of its doors, both front and 
 rear. 
 
 But here an idea flashed into Mr. Brim- 
 mington's mind that in an instant changed him 
 from a carping critic to a delighted discoverer. 
 He was living in a Block House! Yes; that 
 explained that accounted for all the strange 
 ness of its architecture. In in instant he found 
 his purchase invested with a beautiful glamour 
 of adventurous association. Here was the stout 
 and well - planned refuge to which the grave 
 settlers of an earlier day ha'd fled to guard 
 themselves against the attack of the vindictive 
 red-skins. He saw it all. A moat, crossed no 
 doubt by draw -bridges, had surrounded the 
 building. In the main room below, the women 
 and children had huddled while their courage 
 ous defenders had poured a leaden hail upon 
 the foe through loop-holes in the upper story. 
 He walked around the house for some time, 
 looking for loop-holes. 
 
 So pleased was Mr. Brimrnington at his 
 theory that the morning passed rapidly away, 
 and when he looked at his watch he was sur 
 prised to find that it was nearly noon. Then 
 he remembered that Mr. Skinner had promised 
 to call on him at eleven, to make anything right 
 that was not right. Glancing over the land 
 scape he saw Mr. Skinner approaching by a 
 circuitous track. He was apparently following 
 the course of a snake fence which he could 
 readily have climbed. This seemed strange, as 
 ftis way across the pasture land was seemingly 
 ff
 
 unimpeded. Thinking of the pasture land made 
 Mr. Brimmington think of the white horse, and 
 casting his eyes a little further down the hill 
 he saw that animal slowly and painfully steer 
 ing a parallel course to Mr. Skinner, on the 
 other side of the fence. Mr. Skinner went out 
 of sight behind a clump of trees, and when he 
 arrived it was not upon the side of- the house 
 where Mr. Brimmington had expected to see 
 him appear. 
 
 As they were about to enter the house Mr. 
 Brimmington noticed the marks of last night's 
 attack upon his front door, and he spoke to 
 Mr. Skinner about the horse. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mr. Skinner, with much 
 ingenuousness; "that horse. I was meaning to 
 speak to you about that horse. Fact is, I 've 
 kinder got that horse on my hands, and if it 's 
 no inconvenience to you, I 'd like to leave him 
 where he is for a little while."
 
 Cumbersome Ibcrse. 
 
 " But it would be very inconvenient, indeed, 
 Mr. Skinner," said the new owner of the house. 
 "The animal is a very unpleasant object; and, 
 moreover, it attempted to break into my front 
 door last night." 
 
 Mr. Skinner's face darkened. "Sho!" he 
 said ; " you don't mean to tell me that ? " 
 
 But Mr. Brimmington did mean to tell him 
 that, and Mr. Skinner listened with a scowl of 
 unconcealed perplexity and annoyance. He bit 
 his lip reflectively for a minute or two before 
 he spoke. 
 
 " Too bad you was disturbed," he said at 
 length. " You '11 have to keep 
 the bars up to that meadow 
 and then it won't hap 
 pen again." 
 
 " But, indeed, 
 it must not happen 
 again," said Mr. 
 Brimmington; "the 
 horse must be 
 taken away." 
 
 " Well, you 
 see it 's this 
 way, friend," re 
 turned Mr. Skin 
 ner, with a 
 rather ugly air 
 of decision; "I 
 really ain't got 
 no choice in the 
 matter. I 'd like to oblige you, and if I 'd known 
 as far back that you would have objected to the 
 animal I 'd have had him took somewheres. But, 
 
 T3
 
 "Sbort SijC8." ^ 
 
 as it is, there ain't no such a thing as getting that 
 there horse off this here place till the frost 's out 
 of the ground. You can see for yourself that that 
 horse, the condition he 's in now, could n't no 
 more go up nor down this hill than he could fly. 
 Why, I came over here a-foot this morning on 
 purpose not to take them horses of mine over 
 this road again. It can't be done, sir." 
 
 "Very well," suggested Mr. Brimmington; 
 " kill the horse." 
 
 " I ain't killin' no horses," said Mr. Skinner. 
 "You may if you like; but I 'd advise you not 
 to. There 's them as might n't like it." 
 
 " Well, let them come and take their horse 
 away, then," said Mr. Brimmington. 
 
 "Just so," assented Mr. Skinner. "It 's 
 they who are concerned in the horse, and they 
 have a right to take him away. I would if I 
 was any ways concerned, but I ain't." Here he 
 turned suddenly upon Mr. Brimmington. " Why, 
 look here," he said, " you ain't got the heart to 
 turn that there horse out of that there pasture 
 where he 's been for fifteen years! It won't do 
 you no sorter hurt to have him stay there till 
 Spring. Put the bars up, and he won't trouble 
 you no more." 
 
 " But," objected Mr. Brimmington, weakly, 
 " even if the poor creature were not so unsightly, 
 he could not be left alone all Winter in that 
 pasture without shelter." 
 
 " That 's just where you 're mistaken," Mr. 
 Skinner replied, tapping his interlocutor heavily 
 upon the shoulder; "he don't mind it not one 
 mite. See that shed there ? " And he pointed to 
 a few wind-racked boards in the corner of the 
 
 r*
 
 ^ ftbe Cumbersome 1bor0e\ ^ 
 
 lot. " There 's boss-shelter ; and as for feed, 
 why there 's feed enough in that meadow for 
 two such as him." 
 
 In the end, Mr. Brirnmington, being utterly 
 ignorant of the nature and needs of horse-flesh, 
 was over-persuaded, and he consented to let the 
 unfortunate white horse remain in his pasture lot 
 to be the' sport of the Winter's chill and bitter 
 cruelty. Then he and Mr. Skinner talked about 
 some new paint. 
 
 It was the dead waist and middle of Mr. 
 Brimmington's third night in his new house, 
 when he was absolutely knocked out of a calm 
 and peaceful slumber by a crash so appalling that 
 he at first thought that the side of the mountain 
 had slid down upon his dwelling. This was fol 
 lowed by other crashes, thumps, the tearing of 
 woodwork and various strange and grewsome 
 noises. Whatever it might be, Mr. Brirnmington 
 felt certain that it was no secret midnight 
 marauder, and he hastened to the eighteen-inch 
 stairway without even waiting to put on a dress 
 ing-gown. A rush of cold air came up from 
 below, and he had no choice but to scuttle back 
 for a bath-robe and a candle while the noises con 
 tinued, and the cold air floated all over the house. 
 
 There was no difficulty in locating the 
 sounds. Mr. Brimmington presented himself at 
 the door of the little kitchen, pulled it open, 
 and, raising the light above his head, looked 
 in. The rush of wind blew out his light, but 
 not before he had had time to see that it was 
 rj
 
 the white horse that was in the kitchen, and that 
 he had gone through the floor. 
 
 Subsequent investigation proved that the 
 horse had come in through the back door, 
 carrying that and its two vestibule windows 
 with him, and that he had first trampled and 
 then churned the thin floor into match-wood. 
 He was now reposing on his stomach, with his 
 legs hanging down between the joists into the 
 hollow under the house for there was no cellar. 
 He looked over his shoulder at his host and 
 emitted his blood-curdling wail.
 
 ^ ttbe Cumbersome Iboree. ^ 
 
 "My Gracious!" said Mr. Brimmington. 
 
 That night Mr. Brimmington sat up with 
 the horse, both of them wrapped, as well as 
 Mr. Brimmington could do it, in bed-clothes. 
 There is not much you can do with a horse 
 when you have to sit up with him under such 
 circumstances. The thought crossed Mr. Brim- 
 mington's mind of reading to him, but he dis 
 missed it. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 In the interview the next day, between 
 Mr. Brimmington and Mr. Skinner, the aggres 
 siveness was all on Mr. Brimmington'B side, and 
 Mr. Skinner was meek and wore an anxious 
 expression. Mr. Brimmington had, however, 
 changed his point of view. He now realized 
 that sleeping out of Winter nights might be un 
 pleasant, even painful to an aged and rheumatic 
 horse. And, although he had cause of legiti 
 mate complaint against the creature, he could 
 no longer bear to think of killing the animal 
 with whom he had shared that cold and silent 
 vigil. He commissioned Mr. Skinner to build 
 for the brute a small but commodious lodging, 
 and to provide a proper stock of provender 
 commissions which Mr. Skinner gladly and hum 
 bly accepted. As to the undertaking to get the 
 horse out of his immediate predicament, how 
 ever, Mr. Skinner absolutely refused to touch 
 the job. " That horse don't like me," said Mr. 
 Skinner; "I know he don't; I seen it in his 
 eyes long ago. If you like, I '11 send you two 
 or three men and a block-and-tackle, and they 
 can get him out ; but not me ; no, sir ! "
 
 "Sbort 
 
 Mr. Skinner devoted that day to repairing 
 damages, and promised oh the morrow to begin 
 the building of the little barn. Mr. Brimmington 
 was glad there was going to be no greater delay, 
 when, early in the evening, the sociable white 
 horse tried to put his front feet through the study 
 window. 
 
 But of all the noises that startled Mr. Brim 
 mington, in the first week of his sojourn in the 
 farm-house, the most alarming, awakened him 
 about eight o'clock of the following morning. 
 Hurrying to his study, he gazed in wonder upon 
 a scene unparalleled even in the History of 
 Prehistoric Man. The boards had been ripped 
 off the curious structure which was supposed to 
 have served the hardy settlers for a wall-bench 
 and a dresser, indifferently.- This revealed another 
 structure in the form of a long crib or bin, within 
 which, apparently trying to back out through the 
 wall, stood Mr. Skinner, holding his tool-box in 
 front of him as if to shield himself, and fairly 
 yelping with terror. The front door was off its 
 hinges, and there stood Mrs. Sparhawk wielding 
 a broom to keep out the white horse, who was 
 viciously trying to force an entrance. Mr. Brim 
 mington asked what it all meant; and Mrs. Spar- 
 hawk, turning a desperate face upon him, spoke 
 with the vigor of a woman who has kept silence 
 too long. 
 
 "It means," she said, "that this here house 
 of yours is this here horse's stable ; and the horse 
 knows it ; and that there was the horse's manger. 
 This here horse was old Colonel Josh Pincus's 
 regimental horse, and so provided for in his will ; 
 and this here man Skinner was to have the caring 
 
 18
 
 ^ tlbe Cumbersome Iborse. ^ 
 
 of him until he should die a natural death, and 
 then he was to have this stable ; and till then the 
 stable was left to the horse. And now he 's 
 taken the stable away from the horse, and patched 
 it up into a dwelling-house for a fool from New 
 York City; and the horse don't like it; and the 
 horse don't like Skinner. And when he come 
 back to git that manger for your barn, the horse 
 
 sot onto him. And that 's what 's the matter, 
 
 Mr. Skimmerton." 
 
 " Mrs. Sparhawk," began Mr. Brimmington 
 " I ain't no Sparhawk ! " fairly shouted the 
 
 enraged woman, as with a furious shove she sent 
 
 the Cumbersome Horse staggering down the door- 
 
 3 /9
 
 y d&ore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 way mound; "this here 's Hiram Skinner, the 
 meanest man in Pike County, and I 'm his wife, 
 let. out to do day's work ! You 've had one 
 week of him how would you have liked twenty 
 
 years ? "
 
 MR. VINCENT EGG AND THE 
 WAGE OF SIN.
 
 MR. VINCENT EGG AND THE 
 WAGE OF SIN. 
 
 ! R. VINCENT EGG and the -daughter 
 of his washerwoman walked out of 
 the front doorway of Mr. Egg's 
 lodging-house into the morning sun 
 light, with very different expressions 
 upon their two faces. 
 Mr. Vincent Egg, although he was 
 old and stout and red-r.osed and shabby in his 
 attire, wore a look that was at once timorous, 
 fatuous, and weakly menuacious; a look that 
 tried to tell the possible passer-by that his red 
 nose and watery eyes bloomed and blinked in 
 the smiles of Virginie. Virginie, although she 
 was young and pretty and also thin of face and 
 poverty - stricken of garb, wore a look which 
 told you plainly and most honestly beyond a 
 question, that she had no smiles for Mr. Egg 
 or for any one else. They walked down the 
 middle of the street side by side, but that they 
 could not very well help doing, ifor the street 
 was both narrow and dirty, and the edges of 
 the stone gutter down its midway offered the 
 only clean foothold in its entire breadth. As 
 they walked on together, Mr. Egg made a
 
 few poor-spirited attempts to start up a gallant 
 conversation with the girl; but she made no 
 response whatever to his remarks, and strode on 
 in dark-faced silence, her empty wash - basket 
 poised between her lank right hip and her thin 
 right elbow. Mr. Egg hemmed and cleared a 
 husky throat, and employed both his unsteady 
 hands in setting his tall, shabby silk hat upon 
 his head in such a manner that its broad brim 
 might keep the sunlight out of his eyes. 
 
 Mr. Vincent Egg was in the little city of 
 Drignan on business. His lodgings were in the 
 rue des Qtiatres Mulcts, because they were the 
 cheapest lodgings he could find. There are pret 
 tier towns than Drignan, and even in Drignan 
 there are many better streets than the rue des 
 23
 
 "Sbort Sixes." ^ 
 
 Quatres Mulcts. But it was much the same to 
 Mr. Egg. He took his shabby lodgings, the 
 rebuffs of the fair, the sunlight of other men's 
 fortunes dazzling his weak eyes all these things 
 he took with an easy indifference of mind so long 
 as life gave him the little he asked of it, namely : 
 a periodic indulgence in alcoholic unconscious 
 ness. A simple drunk, once a month, of at least 
 a week's duration, was what Mr. Egg's soul most 
 craved and desired ; but if his fluctuating means 
 made the period of intoxication briefer or the 
 period of sobriety longer, he bore either event 
 with a certain simple heroism. He wanted no 
 " spree," no " toot," no " tear ; " a modest spell 
 of sodden, dreamy, tearfully happy soaking in 
 the back-room of some cheap wine-shop where 
 he and his ways were known this was all that 
 remained of ambition and aspiration in Mr. Egg's 
 life ; which had been, for the rest, a long life, a 
 harmless life (except in the stern moralist's sense), 
 and a life that was decidedly a round, complete 
 and total failure in spite of an exceptional allot 
 ment of abilities and opportunities. Mr. Egg 
 had been many things in the course of that long 
 and varied life lawyer, doctor, newspaper-man, 
 speculator, actor, manager, horse-dealer and race 
 track gamester, croupier (and courier, even, after 
 a fashion) and heaven knows what else beside, 
 of things avowable and unavowable. Just at 
 present, he was supplying an English firm of 
 Tourist -Excursion Managers with a guide-book 
 of their various routes, at the rate of eighteen- 
 pence per page of small type, and his traveling 
 expenses third - class. He had just finished 
 " doing up " the district last allotted to him ; and, 
 24
 
 flbr. Vincent J&QQ ano tbe 
 
 of Sin. 
 
 after two weeks' of traveling about, he had spent 
 another fortnight in writing up his notes in a 
 dingy little lodging-house room in the rue des 
 Quatres Mulets. He knew his ground thor 
 oughly, and that was the cheapest place. 
 
 Such was Mr. Vincent Egg, after a half- 
 century of struggle with the world ; and some 
 thing of an imposing figure he made, too, in his 
 defeat and degradation. 
 His nose was red, his 
 
 i t lY 1 i '' ''''-' 
 
 cheeks were purled 
 and veined, there 
 were bags under 
 his bloodshot eyes, 
 his close-cropped 
 hair was thin, his 
 stubby little gray 
 moustache, des 
 perately waxed at 
 the ends, gave 
 an incongruously 
 foreign touch to 
 his decidedly An 
 glo-Saxon face 
 and his clothes 
 were shockingly 
 shabby. But then 
 
 he wore his clothes, as few men in our day 
 can wear clothes ; and they were his clothes ; 
 his very own, and not another's. People often 
 spoke of him, after seeing him once, as "that 
 big, soldierly-looking old man in the white hat." 
 But he did not wear a white hat. His hat, 
 which was one of the largest, one of the jauntiest 
 and one of the oldest ever seen, had also been,
 
 <y More "Sbort Sixes." -y 
 
 in its time, one of the blackest. It was his coat 
 that gave people an idea of his having some 
 thing about him that suggested white. It was 
 a tightly-buttoned frock-coat of an indescribable 
 light-dirty color. Most hopelessly shabby men 
 cling to some standard of taste in dress that 
 was the standard in their last-remembered days 
 of prosperity. That coat if it were one coat 
 and not only one of a long - lived family 
 marked the fact that the last season of pros 
 perity Mr. Egg had enjoyed was a season, now 
 some twenty years gone, when the London 
 "swells" or "nobs," or whatever they called 
 them then, wore frock-coats of certain fashion 
 able light shades of fawn and mouse-color, then 
 known, I believe, as " London Smoke" and 
 " French Gray." While it can not be said that 
 Mr. Egg's coat was familiar in every quarter 
 of Europe (for it rarely staid long enough in 
 any one place), it had certainly been seen in 
 all. And more than one Austrian officer, after 
 passing Mr. Egg in that garment of pallid, 
 dubious and puzzling hue, had turned sharply 
 around to satisfy himself that it was not a uni 
 form-coat in a condition of profanation. A cer 
 tain state and dignity that still clung to this coat, 
 and the startling cleanness of his well-scissored 
 cuffs and collars were all that remained to give 
 Mr. Egg a hold upon exterior respectability. 
 
 With such a history, Mr. Egg was naturally 
 well versed in the freemasonry of poverty and 
 need. As his eyes became accustomed to the 
 sun, he looked at the girl's pinched face, and 
 his tones suddenly changed. Vincent Egg spoke 
 several languages, and he knew all their social 
 26
 
 dialects and variations. It was in friendly and 
 familiar speech that he addressed the girl, and 
 asked her What was the matter? and, Was 
 the business going ill ? 
 
 If Virginie had been the poor girl you meet 
 with in the stories written by English ladies of 
 a mildly religious turn of mind, she would have 
 dropped a little curtsey and said with a single 
 tear, " Indeed, sir, I had not meant to speak, 
 but you have hit upon the truth. The business 
 goes very ill, indeed, and without help I do not 
 see how my poor mother can survive the Win 
 ter." But Virginie, obeying the instincts of her 
 nature and her education, responded to Mr. Egg 
 with a single coarse French adjective which is 
 only to be rendered in English, I am afraid, by 
 the word "stinking." 
 
 Mr. Egg was not in the least shocked. He 
 cast his blinking eyes about him at the filthy 
 27
 
 y dfcore "Sbort Sixes." V 
 
 roadway, at the narrow old stone houses that 
 crowded both sides of the street with the peaked 
 roofs of their over-hanging upper-stories, almost 
 shutting out the sky above his head, at the count 
 less century - old stains of damp and rust and 
 shameful soilure upon their dull faces, and he 
 said simply : 
 
 " Fichu locale ! " 
 
 Thereby he amply expressed to his hearer 
 his opinion that if the business deserved the 
 adjective she had accorded it, the explanation 
 was to be found in its unfortunate location. 
 This opened the flood gates of Virginie's speech. 
 She told Mr. Egg that he was entirely right 
 about the location, and gave him a few casual 
 corroborative details which showed him that 
 she knew what she was talking about. She also 
 confided to him enough of her family affairs 
 to account for the bitterness of her spirit and 
 her contempt for mirthful dalliance. It was no 
 thing but the old endless story of poverty in 
 one of its innumerable variants. This time the 
 father, a jobbing stone - mason, had not only 
 broken his leg in Marseilles, but on coming out 
 of the hospital had got drunk, assaulted a gen- 
 d'arme, made a compound fracture of it, and laid 
 himself up for several months. This time the 
 mother had a rheumatic swelling of one arm, 
 which hindered her in her washing. This time 
 the eldest boy had got himself into some trouble 
 in trying to evade the performance of his term 
 of military duty. This time the youngest child 
 had some torturing disease of the spine that 
 necessitated or rather needed an operation. 
 And, of course, as at all times, there were five 
 
 sS
 
 /for. Vincent JQQ an& tbe 
 
 of Sin. 
 
 or. six hungry mouths, associated with as many 
 pairs of comparatively helpless hands, between 
 Virginie and that youngest. And as to busi 
 ness, that was certainly bad. It was particu 
 larly bad of late although it was always bad 
 
 in Drignan. Virginie told Mr. Egg that he was 
 " rudement propre," or " blazing clean " clean 
 as they were not in Drignan, she assured him. 
 In fact, it appeared, this strange English gentle 
 man, who had paid as high as a franc-and-a-half 
 a week for his washing, had been accepted by 
 Yirginie's family as designed in the mercy of 
 Divine Providence to tide them over their period 
 of distress. His departure at the end of two 
 weeks was a sore disappointment in a financial 
 point of view. 
 
 Vincent Egg was a very kind-hearted man, 
 and he listened to this recital, and uttered sympa 
 thetic ejaculations in the right places. He was
 
 ^ flftore "Sbort Sijee." v 
 
 sorry about the youngest child, very sorry; he 
 had known a case like it. Perhaps, he sug 
 gested, business might pick up. Messrs. Sculry 
 & Co., the great English managers of Tourists' 
 Excursions, were going to make Urignan a stop 
 ping-place for their excursions on the way to 
 Avignon. It was going to be a stopping-place 
 of only a few hours, but, perhaps, it might bring 
 some business. Who knew ? Virginie bright 
 ened up when she heard this, and said that was 
 so. Those English, she remarked, were always 
 washing no disrespect intended to the gen 
 tleman. 
 
 "And here," 'she said, as they came abreast 
 of a narrow gateway on the other side of the 
 street from Mr. Egg's lodging-house, "is where 
 I live. It is on the ground floor. Will Mon 
 sieur come in and see the baby?" And her 
 eyes lit up for the first time with a real interest 
 the interest, half-proud, and half-morbid, of 
 a poor, simple creature who longs to exhibit 
 to the world the affliction of monstrosity which 
 sets her poor household apart from others of 
 its kind. 
 
 Now, Mr. Egg had not the slightest desire 
 to see the baby, and he had no intention what 
 ever of going in ; but, glancing through the nar 
 row doorway, he saw a succession of arches in 
 the courtyard beyond, and some old bits of 
 mediaeval masonry, which excited his curiosity. 
 If this were the remains of some old monastery 
 that had escaped his notice, it might mean a 
 half -page more nine -pence in his guide 
 book. He strolled in by Virginie's side, heed 
 less of her chatter. No; it was not the ruin
 
 of an ecclesiastical structure. The courtyard 
 was only a part of an old stable and black 
 smith-shop; old, but no older probably than the 
 rest of that old street, which might have been 
 standing at the time of Louis XIV though 
 it probably was n't. From its proximity to a 
 canal that marked the line of an old moat, 
 Mr. Egg made a safe guess that it was a small 
 remnant of the stables and farriery attached to
 
 "Sbort Sties." -y 
 
 the barracks of the original fortifications of the 
 town. 
 
 At any rate, it was no fish for the net of 
 Messrs. Sciilry & Co.'s guide-book compiler; and 
 he was turning to go, when Virginie, who had 
 supposed that he was merely following in her 
 lead, to feast his eyes upon the sick baby, said 
 simply, as she pushed open a door, " This way, 
 Monsieur," and, before he knew it, he had en 
 tered his washerwoman's room. 
 
 Although it was a ground-floor room, damp, 
 dark and old, it was clean witli a curious sort of 
 cleanness that seems to belong to the Latin races 
 a cleanness that gives one the impression of 
 having been achieved without the use of soap 
 and water : as if everything had been scraped 
 clean instead of being washed clean. Virginie's 
 mother was clean, too, in spite of her swollen and 
 helpless arm, and the three or four children who 
 were playing on the stone floor were no dirtier 
 than healthy children ought to be between 
 washes. But Mr. Egg had hardly had time 
 to take more than cursory note of these facts 
 before his attention was riveted by the sick 
 child in the French woman's arms so pitiful 
 a little piece of suffering childhood that a much 
 harder-hearted man than Mr. Vincent Egg might 
 readily have been shocked at the sight of it. As 
 for Mr. Egg, he simply dropped into a seated 
 posture upon a convenient bench, and stared 
 in the fascination of pity and horror. 
 
 Mr. Egg knew little of children and less of 
 their diseases. In the ordinary course of things, 
 such matters were not often brought to his atten 
 tion ; and, to tell the truth, had he known what 
 
 3*
 
 he was to see there, no persuasion would have 
 induced him to enter that poor little room. Now 
 that he did see it, however, he could not move 
 his eyes : the spectacle had for him a hideous 
 attraction of novelty. Virginie and her mother 
 exhibited the poor little misshapen thing, and 
 rattled over the history of the case with a volu 
 bility which showed that it was no new tale. 
 For fifteen minutes their visitor sat and stared 
 in horrified silence; and, when at last he made 
 his way back to the street, he found that his 
 mind was in a more disturbed state than he had 
 known it to be in many years. 
 
 It is the people who most avoid the sight 
 of human suffering who very often are the most 
 sharply shocked by it when that sight is ob 
 truded upon them. Your professional nurse soon 
 
 33
 
 ^ /nSorc "bort Sties." ^ 
 
 learns to succor without lamentation : it is the 
 person who " really has no faculty for nursing " 
 who goes into spasms of sensibility over the sight 
 of a finger caught in a cog-wheel, and runs about 
 clamoring for new laws for the suppression of all 
 machinery not constructed of India-rubber. Up 
 to half an hour before, Mr. Egg had never wasted 
 many thoughts upon the millions of suffering 
 babies in this world ; and now he could not 
 turn his thoughts to anything except the par 
 ticular baby that he had just seen. 
 
 And yet, as he had told Virginie, he had 
 known of a similar case before, though it be 
 longed to a time so long ago that it had 
 practically faded from his mind. It was the case 
 of his own- brother, who had died in infancy of 
 some such trouble, one of the earliest victims of 
 an operation at that time in its earliest experi 
 mental stages. That was more than half a 
 century ago, and Vincent Egg had no remem 
 brance whatever of the little brother. But he 
 did remember his first childish impression of a 
 visit to the hospital where the little one lay 
 of the smell of the disinfectants and the chill 
 of the whitewashed walls. 
 
 The heart of Mr. Egg was touched, and 
 he felt himself moved with a strong desire to 
 extend some help to these people who were so 
 much worse off than he was. Yet Mr. Egg's 
 intellectual parts told him that there was no 
 possibility of his doing anything of the sort. He 
 knew, beyond any chance of fond delusion, his 
 present position and his future prospects. He 
 had his ticket back to Lyons, where the local 
 branch of Messrs. Sculry & Co. had its office: 
 
 34
 
 /fcr. Wincent &QQ anfc tbe Mage of Silt. 
 
 he had in his valise at his lodgings just enough 
 money for his necessary sustenance upon his 
 journey. And not one other penny, not one 
 soumarkee would he have until, at Messrs. Sculry 
 & Co.'s office, his work had been measured down 
 to the last syllable, and he had received therefor as 
 many times eighteen-pence as he had produced 
 pages. That would be, it was true, quite a neat 
 little sum, but and here came in the big BUT 
 of Mr. Egg's existence. 
 
 For Mr. Egg knew exactly what was going 
 to become of that money. To draw 
 it at all, he would have to pre 
 sent himself at the office in a 
 condition of sobriety, which 
 would be the last effort of a 
 period of abstinence that he 
 was beginning to find very 
 trying. Then, so much of it 
 must go to buying himself back 
 into the three or four attenuated credits by grace 
 of which he lived his poor life at Lyons ; and 
 just enough would be left to give him that fort 
 night of drunken stupor for which he had worked 
 so long and so hard. 
 
 Mr. Egg needed an effort rather of the 
 memory than of the imagination to forecast the 
 recurrence of that familiar stupor. He could 
 see himself leaving the spick-and-span, highly 
 respectable office of the Lyons agency of Messrs. 
 Sculry & Co., and hurrying off upon the few 
 bits of business that must be attended to before 
 he could present himself at " his " wine-shop, 
 which was a very dirty one, indeed, kept by a 
 certain M. and Mme. Louis Morel, in an appro- 
 
 4 35
 
 V d&re "Sbort Sires." V 
 
 priately unclean back street. There he knew 
 just what to expect in the way of noisy, ready- 
 handed, false-faced welcome. Then would come 
 the tantalizingly-prolonged bargaining over the 
 score to be settled and the score to be begun, 
 and at last he would be free to take possession 
 of that dark, ill-ventilated little back room which 
 was always reserved for the periodical retire 
 ments of this regular patron of the house. It 
 was a little room like a ship's stateroom, hardly 
 large enough to contain its dirty red velvet 
 divan, its round table and its two chairs ; yet 
 for a week or a fortnight it would be his, and 
 behind it, in the hallway, was a bed on which 
 he could stretch himself in the hours when he 
 felt the need of deeper slumber than the hard 
 cushions of the divan permitted. There his few 
 friends, outcasts and adventurers like himself, 
 would drop in to see him, one or two at a time, 
 to help him on his murky way with challenges 
 to bouts of brandy-drinking, in which he would 
 always pay for two glasses to the other man's 
 one. Then, as the procession of callers went on, 
 it would grow dim and dimmer and vague and 
 yet more vague, until it was lost in a hazy, 
 wavering dream, wherein familiar faces of men 
 and women stared at him from out of days so 
 long gone by that in his dream he could fancy 
 them happy. 
 
 That was what lay before him. Mr. Vin 
 cent Egg knew it as well as he knew that the 
 calendar months would go on in their regular 
 order, and the tides in the sea would continue 
 to rise and fall. Under these circumstances, 
 nothin was more certain than that the unfortu-
 
 nate family of Mr. Egg's washerwoman need 
 look for no help whatever from Mr. Egg's pros 
 pective earnings. " It 's a damned shame ! " said 
 Mr. Egg to himself, slapping his thigh. And it 
 was a shame. But there it was. 
 
 Suddenly a great thought struck Mr. Egg 
 a thought so great and so forcible in the 
 blow that it dealt his mental apprehension that 
 for three minutes he stood stock-still in the gut 
 ter in the middle of the rue des Quatre Mulcts. 
 Then somebody poured a pail of water out of a 
 door-way and drowned him out, but he went on 
 his way, quite indifferent to wet feet. 
 
 Mr. Vincent Egg went to his lodgings, and 
 there extracted from his valise the very small 
 sum of money which he had laid aside for his 
 necessary sustenance on his trip to Lyons. This 
 he took to a sign-painter on the outskirts of 
 Drignan, to whom he paid the whole of it for 
 
 37
 
 ^ dfcore "Sbort Sijee." *y+ 
 
 the execution of a small but conspicuous sign 
 board, which he carried away with him under 
 his arm. 
 
 The usual afternoon wind was blowing in 
 Drignan, chill and raw, with a depressing flavor 
 of a spoilt ocean about it. The sky was over 
 cast, and everything was dismal in the dismal 
 little town. Dismalest of all, perhaps, was a 
 wretched little corner of waste land, between the 
 old barrack-wall and the dirty canal behind it. 
 A few sick, stunted, faded olive and orange trees 
 in the lee of a mean stone wall showed that the 
 place had at one time been a garden or court 
 yard. Heaps of rubbish here and there showed 
 also that it had long outlived its usefulness. 
 Here sat, one on each side of a tiny fire of 
 twigs, a shabby, soldierly-looking old gentleman 
 and a sallow, lanky young girl with a sullenly 
 pretty face. Right in the sluggish smoke of the 
 fire, the old man held a small sign-board still 
 fresh from the painter's hand, and the more the 
 smoke took the brightness out of the new colors, 
 the more he gazed at it with thoughtful ap 
 proval. The girl said nothing; but sat and 
 stared at the fire and listened with an air of 
 weary and indifferent toleration while the old 
 man repeated over and over what sounded like 
 a monotonous narrative recitation. From time 
 to time she nodded her head; and, at last, she 
 began to repeat after the old man in a listless, 
 mechanical way. It was late in the afternoon 
 before they rose and scrambled over the heaps 
 of rubbish to the street, where the old gentle- 
 38
 
 man bade the girl good-by with what were 
 evidently words of earnest admonition. His 
 iteration seemed to annoy her, for finally she 
 let slip, in a tone of anger, a specimen of the 
 speech of the people which was n't exactly this ; 
 though at this we will let it go: 
 
 " Vous savez, mons vieux, je m'en fiche 
 bien de votre Pe Pe Petrarque et de 
 votre Laure aussi " 
 
 Then she as quickly dropped back into 
 her natural tone of hopeless submission to all 
 who were less wretched than herself, and said, 
 with something like gratitude in her voice : 
 
 "All the same, it is very kind of you, sir. 
 I will try to do as you have told me." 
 
 39
 
 Sbort Sfjes." ^ 
 
 And they parted, she entering a near-by 
 passage-way, and he going to the railroad station. 
 
 Mr. Vincent Egg stood in the private office 
 of the Lyons branch of Messrs. Sculry & Co., 
 the great Excursion Managers. He was, for 
 him, unusually smart as to his clothes to 
 those who knew him, a sign that he had 
 reached the end of his period of abstinence. 
 The Manager of the Branch, a thin, raw, red- 
 faced little Englishman with sandy whiskers, was 
 looking over the proofs of the guide-book pages 
 set up from Mr. Egg's copy. 
 
 "Oh, ah, yes, Egg!" he said; "I knew there 
 was something particular I wanted to speak to 
 you about. Here it is." And he slowly read 
 aloud : 
 
 "Another and perhaps the principal attrac 
 tion of Drignan is the ruin, pathetic in its dignity, 
 of the mansion of the Conte dei Canale, the 
 exiled Venetian, where the immortal poet Petrarch 
 and the no less immortal lady of his love, whom 
 he has celebrated in undying verse, met secretly, 
 in the year 1337, to bid each other a long and 
 chaste farewell. News of the lovers' design hav 
 ing reached the ears of de Sade, the husband of 
 the beauteous Laura, his base mind suspected an 
 elopement, and he dispatched his liveried minions 
 to separate the pair, and, if possible, to immolate 
 on the altar of his vengeance the gentle and 
 talented poet. It is supposed to be in conse 
 quence of injuries received in the resultant 
 40
 
 struggle that Petrarch went into retirement for 
 three years at Vaucluse (a spot which no holder 
 of Messrs. Sculry & Co.'s 7-9 extra- trip coupon 
 should fail to see). This exquisite chapter in the 
 lives of the lovers over whom so many tears of 
 sentiment have been shed, has been strangely 
 neglected by the historians; but survives un- 
 dimmed in local tradition. A full account will 
 be found on page 329. The house is now 47 bis 
 rue des Quatres Mulcts. Behind it may still be 
 seen what remains of the magnificent orangery 
 and olive-garden of the Conte dei Canale. Access 
 to this is gained from the second gateway from 
 the corner of the Passage des Pores, and should 
 not be confounded with the entrance to the 
 Jardin de Perse, a resort of somewhat frivolous
 
 V flbore "Sbort Sties." y 
 
 character, situated on the second crossing below, 
 rue Clement V." 
 
 Here the Manager raised his head. "I 
 suppose that 's for the men ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Egg; "that 's for the men." 
 
 "Well," said the Manager, "what about this 
 other attraction, this Petrarch and Laura place ? " 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Egg, blinking at him, for 
 it was still early in the morning; "there it is, 
 as large as life, with a sign on the door that 
 looks as if it had been there fifty years; and 
 I '11 give it to you as my opinion that if you 
 don't work that attraction, the Novelty Excursion 
 Company will jump in and work it for you." 
 
 "Ay, ay!" said the Manager, irritably; 
 "that 's all very well; but how about the fees? 
 That excursion goes by way of Drignan to save 
 money. The London office won't thank me if 
 I give them any extra fees to pay." 
 
 "Oh!" said Mr. Egg, pleasantly; "is that 
 all ? Here, give me that proof." And, taking 
 the sheets from the manager, he wrote as follows, 
 cm the margin : 
 
 ''The mansion is at present owned by a 
 respectable family who also do trustworthy 
 washing. A polite, well-informed attendant is 
 always ready to show the premises on payment 
 of a moderate fee of 35 centimes, (3^ d.) Al 
 though no part of the regular excursion, the 
 liberal time allowed by Messrs. Sculry & Co., 
 for rest and refreshment in Drignan, will enable 
 excursionists to visit this shrine of deathless, 
 romance."
 
 ^f /for. Wincent Egg an& tbe IHlage of Sin. ^ 
 
 The Manager took the amended proof back, 
 and read it admiringly. 
 
 "By Jove, Egg!" he said; "that does it 
 to the Queen's taste! An attraction like that, 
 and not a penny's expense to the concern! I 
 
 suppose, of course, 
 
 /"^*sr> really and truly, 
 
 it 'sail Tom 
 
 my-rot ? " 
 
 " I suppose 
 so," said Mr. 
 Egg, pleasant- 
 
 iy- 
 
 " Never was 
 any such busi 
 ness, I suppose," 
 went on the Manager. 
 "I don't believe it, my 
 self," said Mr. Egg, shaking his head sagely. 
 
 "Well," said the Manager, "it 's all right 
 for business, so far as the Avignon tour is con 
 cerned. And, oh ! I say, Egg, I don't suppose 
 you could keep permanently straight, could you?" 
 "At my time of life," said Mr. Egg, blandly, 
 "a gentleman's habits are apt to be fixed." 
 
 "I suppose so," sighed the Manager. "Well, 
 all the same, the London office was very much 
 pleased with the last job you did, Egg, and they 
 have authorized me, at my discretion, to increase 
 your honorarium. We '11 make it a shilling a 
 page, beginning with the present." 
 
 When Mr. Vincent Egg reached the street, 
 he looked at the unexpected pile of wealth irj 
 his hand. 
 
 ('This i a three weeks' go at
 
 ^ flbore "Sbort Sljes." V 
 
 said he to himself; "such as I have n't had in 
 many a year. And, so far as I am concerned, 
 it is the Fruit of Falsification, and the Wage 
 of Sin." 
 
 But when Mr. Egg next awoke from his 
 period of slumber in M. Morel's back-room, 
 and stretched himself upon the hard cushion of 
 the red velvet divan, throngs of gawking tourists 
 were trying to steep themselves in sentiment as 
 they gazed about the old room off the rue des 
 Quatres Mulcts, and looked over the wall at 
 the faded orange and olive trees, and listened 
 to the story which Virginie told, like a talking- 
 doll, and dropped into her hand a welcome 
 stream of copper or silver, according as they 
 were English or Americans. 
 
 44
 
 THE GHOOLLAH.
 
 THE GHOOLLAH. 
 
 TOOK a long drive one day last Summer 
 to see an old friend of mine who was in 
 singularly hard luck; and I found him in 
 even harder luck and more singular than 
 I had expected. My drive took me to 
 a spot a few miles back of a Southern 
 sea-coast, where, in a cup-like hollow of the low, 
 rocky hills, treeless save for stunted and distorted 
 firs and pines, six or eight score of perspiring 
 laborers, attired in low-necked costumes consist 
 ing exclusively of a pair of linen trousers a-piece, 
 toil all day in the blazing sun to dig out some 
 kind of clay of which I know nothing, except 
 that it looks mean, smells worse, has a name 
 ending in ite, and is of great value in the arts 
 and sciences. They may make fertilizer out of 
 it, or they may make water-colors : Billings told 
 me, but I don't know. There are some things 
 that one forgets almost as readily as a blow to 
 one's pride. Moreover, this stuff was associated 
 in my mind with Big Mitch. 
 
 Of course Billings was making a fortune out 
 of it. But as it would take six or eight years 
 to touch the figure he had set for himself, and 
 as he had no special guarantee of an immortal 
 youth on this earth, and as, until the fortune
 
 <y Gbe (Bboollab. ^ 
 
 was made, he had to live all the year around 
 in that god-forsaken spot, and to live with Big 
 Mitch, moreover, I looked upon him as a man 
 in uncommonly hard luck. And he was. 
 
 I had been visiting friends in a town some 
 miles inland, and it had occurred to me that it 
 would be an act of Christian charity to drive 
 over the hills to Billings's place of servitude, 
 and to condole with my old friend. I had 
 nothing else to do a circumstance always 
 favorable to the perpetration of acts of Chris 
 tian charity and I went. He was enthusi 
 astically glad to see me I was the first visitor 
 
 he had ever had and he left his office at 
 once, and led me up the burning hot sand-hill 
 to his house, which was a very comfortable sort 
 of place when you got there. It was an old- 
 fashioned Southern house, small but stately, with 
 a Grecian portico in front, supported by two- 
 
 47
 
 ^ /foore "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 story wooden pillars. Here he was established 
 in lonely luxury, with no one to love, none to 
 caress, swarms of darkeys, and a cellar full of 
 wines that would have tempted the Dying An 
 chorite to swill. Casually dispatching half a 
 dozen niggers after as many bottles of cham 
 pagne as they thought we might need to whet 
 our appetites for luncheon, Billings bade me 
 welcome again, and we fell to friendly talk. 
 
 He began with that kind of apology for 
 his condition that speaks its own futility, and 
 its despair of any credence. Of course, he said, 
 it was not a very cheerful sort of life, but it 
 had its compensations quiet, good for the 
 nerves, opportunity for study and all that sort 
 of thing, self-improvement. And then, of course, 
 there was society, such as it was mainly, he 
 had to admit, the superannuated bachelors and 
 worn-out old maids who clung to those decaying 
 Southern plantations for, it is hardly necessary 
 to say, not an acre of property in that forlorn 
 region, save only Billings's mud-bank, had yielded 
 a cent of revenue since the war. And, of 
 course, the unpleasant part of it was that none 
 of them lived less than ten or fifteen miles away, 
 and were only to be reached by a long ride, 
 and as he Billings was never at ease in 
 the saddle, on account of his liver, this practically 
 shut him out. But then, of course, Mitch went 
 everywhere, and enjoyed it very much. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said I, reminded of the most 
 unpleasant part of my duty ; " and how is 
 Mitch? " 
 
 " He 's dirty well, and it 's devilish little 
 you care ! " brayed out an incredibly brazen
 
 ^f- Gbe (Bboollab. ^ 
 
 voice just behind my ear, and a big red hand 
 snatched the bottle of champagne from my grasp, 
 while a laugh, that sounded like a hyena try 
 ing to bellow, rang in my ears. A great, big, 
 raw-boned youngster, dressed in clothes of an 
 ingenious vulgarity, dropped heavily into a chair 
 by my side and laid a knobby broad red hand 
 on my knee, where it closed with a brutal grip. 
 That was Big Mitch, whose real name was 
 Randolph Mitchel, and who being by birth a 
 
 distant connection of dear old Billings, might 
 reasonably have been expected to be some sort 
 or variety of gentleman. Yet, if you wanted to 
 sum up Big Mitch, his ways, manners, tastes, 
 ideas and spiritual make-up generally, if he 
 could be said to have any spiritual make-up 
 you had only to say that he was all that a 
 
 49
 
 V ASote "b<m Sijes." ^ 
 
 gentleman is not, and you had a better descrip 
 tive characterization of the man than you could 
 have got in a volume telling just what he was. 
 This was not by any means my first acquaint 
 ance with Mr. Randolph Mitchel. When I was 
 a young man his father had stood my friend, 
 and though he had dropped out of my sight 
 when he went, a hopeless consumptive, to vege 
 tate in some Western sanitarium, it was natural 
 enough that he should send to me to use my 
 good offices in behalf of his son, who had been 
 expelled from a well-known fresh-water college 
 of the Atlantic slope, very shortly after he had 
 entered it. 
 
 Now I am not a hard-hearted man, and 
 a boy with a reasonable, rational, normal amount 
 of devil in him can do pretty nearly anything 
 he wants to with me ; therefore it signifies 
 something when I say that after giving up a 
 week to the business, I had to write to poor 
 old Mr. Mitchel, at the Consumptives' Home, 
 Bilhi, Colorado, not only that was it impossible 
 to get his son Randolph reinstated at that par 
 ticular college, but that I did not believe that 
 there was any college ever made where the boy 
 had a prospect of staying even one term out. 
 It was not that he was vicious ; he was no 
 worse on the purely moral side than scores of 
 wild boys. But he was the most hopelessly, 
 irreclaimably turbulent, riotous, unruly, insolent, 
 brutal, irreverent, unmannerly and generally 
 blackguardly young devil that I had ever en 
 countered; and the entire faculty of the college 
 said, in their own scholastic way, that he beat 
 the'ir time. He had not even the saving graces 
 so 
 
 '
 
 ^ ttbc teboollab. V 
 
 of good - nature, thoughtlessness and mirthful 
 good-fellowship, which may serve as excuse for 
 much youthful waywardness. The students dis 
 liked him as thoroughly as their professors did, 
 and although he was smart as a steel trap and 
 capable of any amount of work when he wanted 
 to do it, nobody in that college wanted him, 
 not even the captain of the foot-ball team. 
 
 Was I right ? Had I wronged the boy ? 
 I asked that captain, and he said No. 
 
 Big Mitch was only twenty-three or so, but 
 he had been many things in his young life. He 
 had run away and traveled with a circus. He 
 had been a helper in a racing stable. I don't 
 know what he was when his father made a last 
 desperate appeal to poor Billings, and Billings, 
 who did not know what he was letting himself 
 in for, sent him down to start up work on the 
 recently purchased mud-pit. There Mitch found 
 his billet, and he led a life of absolute happi 
 ness, domineering over a horde of helpless, igno 
 rant negros, and white men of an even lower 
 grade who sought work in that wretched place. 
 And what a life he led the dear, gentle, kindly 
 old fellow who had sold himself to fortune-get 
 ting in that little Inferno ! I knew how Billings 
 must loathe him; I knew, indeed, how he did 
 loathe him, though he was too gentle to say it, 
 but I knew that the burden my poor old friend 
 had put upon himself would not soon be shifted. 
 For Big Mitch was useful, nay, indispensable, for 
 the first time in his life. He was as honest as he 
 was tough, and he could handle that low grade 
 of human material as few others could have 
 done. The speculation would have been a failure 
 
 5 Si
 
 without him. " In fact," Billings told me after 
 ward with a sad smile, " it is not only that he 
 raises the efficient of the works; he is the effi 
 cient of the works." 
 
 Big Mitch never bore me the slightest ill- 
 will for the report I had made to his father. 
 He was too indurated an Ishmael for that. 
 He knew everybody disliked him, but he did 
 not care a cent for that. When he wanted 
 other people's company, he took it. The ques 
 tion of their enjoyment was one that never en 
 tered his mind. It was in pure delight in seeing 
 me that he grabbed my knee, pinched my knee- 
 53
 
 (Sboollab. V 
 
 cap until it sent a qualm to my stomach, and 
 told me that he had ordered my driver to go 
 home, and that I had got to stay and see the 
 country. Things came pretty near to a lively 
 squall when I got the impudence of this through 
 my head; but when Billings joined his fright 
 ened, anxious pleadings to the youth's brutalities, 
 and I saw his humbled, troubled, mortified face, 
 I yielded. 
 
 We were free from Mitch after luncheon, 
 and poor Billings began to make a pitiful little 
 apology ; but I stopped him. 
 
 " I don't mind," I said ; " I was only think 
 ing of you" 
 
 " Oh, I Ve got accustomed to it," he said, 
 trying to smile; "and it 's really more tolerable 
 than you would think, when you get to know 
 him. And when he is too too trying why, 
 there is one place that he understands he must 
 respect. Come to my library. You are the first 
 person who has ever entered it except myself." 
 
 He led me to the door of a room at the 
 end of a dark passage-way. As he put the key 
 in the lock I noticed a curious smell. 
 
 " I want you to see," said he, " the sort 
 of thing I "m interested in." 
 
 I had not been five seconds in the room 
 before I knew what it was the sort of thing 
 he was interested in. Loneliness breeds strange 
 maggots in the brain of a New Yorker tem 
 porarily engaged in the mud -mining business. 
 My old friend Billings was now a full-blown 
 Theosophist, and he had that little room stuffed 
 full of more Mahatma-literature and faquir trum 
 pery than you could shake a stick at. There 
 
 S3
 
 were skulls and fans and grass-cloth things and 
 heathen gods till literally your eyes could 
 n't rest. There were four-legged gods and eight- 
 legged gods, and gods with their legs where their 
 arms ought to be, and gods who were of the 
 gentleman-god and lady-god sex at one and the 
 same time, and gods with horns and miscella 
 neous gods, and a few other gods. In odd places 
 here and there, where he had not had time to 
 arrange them properly, there were a few more 
 gods. 
 
 And then my poor old friend sat down and 
 tried to put me through the whole business, and 
 tell me what a great and mysterious thing it was, 
 and what a splendid scheme it would be to get 
 into the two -hundred and ninety -seventh state 
 
 54
 
 ^ Cbe boollab. V 
 
 or the thirtieth dilution or the thirty-third degree, 
 or something, for when you got there you were 
 nothing, don't you know? 
 
 I was short on Vishnu and I did n't know 
 beans about Buddha, and for a long time, I am 
 afraid, I gave dear old Billings a great deal of 
 grief. But finally I began to get a new light, 
 and Billings convinced me that there was some 
 thing in it, and we had some more champagne. 
 
 That evening Mitch came for us with a 
 carryall, and said he was going to drive us 
 twenty miles inland to a " dancing-in-the-barn" 
 function on somebody's plantation. I proved to 
 him then and there that he was not. Billings 
 nearly melted into a puddle while the opera 
 tion was going on. He could scarcely believe 
 his eyes when he saw Big Mitch drive off alone, 
 and I think he had a slight chill. At any rate, 
 he had the champagne brought to the library, 
 and there he told me that he had not believed 
 such a thing to be possible; that he looked upon 
 me in a new light, and that he thought my 
 Ghoollah must be stronger than Mitch's Ghoollah. 
 I told him that I should be ashamed of myself 
 if it was n't; and then I asked him what a 
 Ghoollah was. Please do not ask me if I have 
 spelled that word right. I am spelling it by ear, 
 and if my ear for Hindoo is as bad as my ear 
 for music, I have probably got it wrong. It 
 sounded something like the noise that pigeons 
 make, and that is as near as I can get to it. 
 According to Billings, it was Hindoo for my 
 vital essence and my will power and my con 
 science and my immortal soul and pretty nearly 
 every other spiritual property that I carried 
 ss
 
 "Sbort Sijes." 
 
 around in my clothes. Everyone, it appeared, 
 had a Ghoollah. If your Ghoollah was stronger 
 than the other man's Ghoollah, you bossed the 
 other man. If you had a good and happy 
 Ghoollah, you were good and happy. If you 
 had a bad Ghoollah, you were bilious. If my 
 Theosophy is wrong, please do not correct it. 
 
 I prefer it wrong. I told him that I did not 
 see that having a Ghoollah was anything more 
 than being yourself, but he said it was; that 
 folks could swap Ghoollahs, or lend them out 
 on call loans. 
 
 Then it all came out. That was the reason 
 that he was driving deeper and deeper into 
 Theosophy. He had got so sick of Mitch that,
 
 -y Gbe <Sboollab. ff 
 
 feeling it impossible to shake off his burden, he 
 had seized upon this Ghoollah idea as offering 
 a ray of hope. He was now trying to learn 
 how to get into spiritual communication with 
 somebody anybody else, who would swap 
 Ghoollahs with him after business hours, so that 
 they could ride-and-tie, as it were, and give his 
 own weary Ghoollah a rest. 
 
 " Look here, Billings," I said, " this is all 
 rubbish. Now, I 'in not dealing in Ghoollahs, 
 but I '11 tell you what I '11 do. You can find 
 some sort of a job here for a decent young 
 fellow, and I '11 send one down who '11 be grate 
 ful for the place and who will be a companion 
 to you. It 's Arthur Penrhyn, Dr. Penrhyn's 
 boy; a nice, pleasant young fellow just what 
 his father used to be, you remember ? He was 
 to have graduated at Union this year, but he 
 broke down from over-study. That 's the kind 
 of Ghoollah you want, and he '11 do you no 
 end of good." 
 
 This happened in June. I had never ex 
 pected to see Billings's mud-heap again, but I 
 saw it before the end of July. I went there 
 because Billings had written me that if I cared 
 for him and our life-long friendship, and for 
 poor Penrhyn's boy I must come at once. He 
 could not explain by letter what the matter was. 
 
 It added to my natural concern when, on 
 my arrival, Billings hurried me into the library 
 and I found it as theosophic as ever. I had 
 hoped that that nonsense was ended. But worse 
 was to come. 
 
 57
 
 /Bbore "Sbort Sijes." 
 
 " When you were here before," said Bil 
 lings, impressively, without having once men 
 tioned champagne, " you scoffed at a light 
 which you could n't see. Now, my friend, I 
 am going to let you see it with your own eyes, 
 and you shall tell me whether or no you are 
 convinced that it is possible for one human 
 being to exchange his entity with another. If 
 I have brought you here on a wild goose chase, 
 I am willing to have you procure a judicial ex 
 amination into my sanity, and 
 I will abide the issue." 
 He spoke with so much 
 quiet gravity that he 
 made me feel creepy. 
 "See here, old 
 man," I said; "do 
 you mean to tell me 
 that you have suc 
 ceeded in pairing 
 off with any other 
 fellow's Ghoollah, or 
 Woollah, or whatever i't is ? " 
 
 "No," he said, coloring a little; "it 's not 
 I. It 's it 's it 's in fact, it 's that boy 
 Penrhyn." 
 
 "What the deuce do you mean?" I de 
 manded. 
 
 " I mean that Arthur Penrhyn has changed, 
 or, rather, is changing his spiritual essence with 
 another man." 
 
 "Indeed," said I; "and who 's the other 
 man?" 
 
 " Randolph Mitchel," said Billings. 
 "Mitch?"
 
 ^ Cbe (Bboollab. v 
 
 "Mitch!" 
 
 There is no need of describing the rest of 
 that interview. You have probably met the man 
 who believes that the spirit of his grandmother 
 came out of the cabinet and shook hands with 
 him. You can probably imagine how you would 
 talk to that man if he had brought you eight 
 hundred miles to tell you about it. That is what 
 happened in Billings's library that afternoon, and 
 it ended, of course, in our calling each other 
 "old man" a great many times over, and in my 
 agreeing to stay to the end of the week, and in 
 Billings giving me his word of honor not to 
 open his mouth on the subject unless at the end 
 of that time I asked him to and admitted that he 
 was right in sending for me. And then Billings 
 did something that knocked my consciousness of 
 superiority clean out of me, and gave a severe 
 shock to my confidence. He offered to bet me 
 five hundred dollars to anything that would make 
 it interesting on that contingency, and he called 
 me down and down till I had to compromise on 
 a bet of fifty dollars even. I have met many 
 men in the course of my life who believed in 
 various spook-religions, but that was the first and 
 only time that I ever met a man who would back 
 his faith with a cold money bet. 
 
 By way of changing the subject, we strolled 
 down to the quarry. It was even hotter than 
 before, and it smelt worse, and I did not wonder 
 that it had driven poor old Billings to Theosophy. 
 It was a scene of interesting activity, but it could
 
 y dfcore "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 not be called pleasant. I have a great respect 
 for the dignity of labor, but I think labor looks 
 more dignified with its shirt on than when re 
 duced to a lone pair of breeches. 
 
 I was about to make a motion to return to 
 the house, when suddenly a string of peculiarly 
 offensive oaths, uttered in a shrill angry voice, 
 drew my attention to a heavy wire rope which a 
 gang of men were hauling across my path. 
 Looking up I saw, as well as I could see any 
 thing, against the dazzling background of the 
 hill, a short, insignificant-looking figure perched 
 on a rock, from whence it directed, with many 
 gesticulations and an abounding stream of pro 
 fanity, the operations of the toiling, grunting, 
 straining creatures who dragged at the ponderous 
 cable. Its operations seemed to be conducted 
 with more vehemence than judgement, and two 
 or three times the rope was on the edge of slip 
 ping back into the pit behind, when it was saved 
 by the men's quick response to some directions 
 given in a low, strong voice by a man who stood 
 in my rear. Some little hitch occurred after a 
 minute or two, and the small figure, in an access 
 of rage, rushed down from the rock, and, shower 
 ing imprecations all around, leaped in among the 
 workmen, pushing, shoving and cuffing, and after 
 considerable trouble finally got them to doing 
 what he wanted. I heard the heavier voice 
 behind me utter half-aloud an expression of an 
 noyance and disgust. Then the little figure 
 passed me, running back to its rock, and hailed 
 me as it passed. 
 
 "Hello, Governor!" it said; "you here? 
 See you when I get this job done ! "
 
 "Billings," said I, "who on earth is that?" 
 
 "Arthur Penrhyn," said Billings. I looked 
 again and saw that it was. Then I turned round 
 and saw behind me the gigantic form of Mitch. 
 He, too, spoke to me as I passed, and with a 
 look of simple pleasure in his face that made it 
 seem absolutely strange to me. 
 
 "Glad to see you, Sir," he said. 
 
 Sir! 
 
 " It 's a most remarkable case altogether," 
 said Billings, who had got back to his normal 
 self, and had brought out the champagne. 
 "When that boy came here he was just as 
 you described him just like his poor father 
 in the days when we first knew each other. 
 He brooded a little too much, and seemed dis- 
 
 6f
 
 "Short Sijcs." ^ 
 
 contented ; but, considering his disappointment 
 at college, that was natural enough. Well, do 
 you know, I believe it 's he that 's doing the 
 whole thing, and that he is effecting the substi 
 tution for his own ends, though I don't know 
 what they are." 
 
 " Perhaps," I suggested, " he wants his 
 Ghoollah to get the job away from Mitch's 
 Ghoollah." 
 
 "Ahem!" said Billings, looking a little em 
 barrassed ; " I in fact, I Ve discovered that 
 the best Pundits do not use that word. It 
 ought to be " 
 
 Here Billings gave me the correct word ; 
 but I draw the line at Ghoollah, and Ghoollah 
 it stays while 1 arn telling this story. \ 
 
 " He had n't been here a week before I 
 noticed that he kept his eyes fixed on Mitch 
 all the time they were together. He looked at 
 him as though he were actually trying to absorb 
 him. Before long, I saw that Mitch began to 
 be troubled under that steady gaze. He seemed 
 at first angry, then distressed, and he had long 
 fits of silence. His boisterousness has been van 
 ishing steadily; but it is not sullenness that he 
 displays on the contrary, I have never known 
 him so gentle. He is just as efficient in his 
 duties, without being so extremely demonstra 
 tive as he used to be. And as for that other 
 boy, who probably had never uttered a profane 
 word in his life, or spoken rudely to any human 
 being well, you heard him to-day ! " 
 
 I made up my mind to try to drink fifty 
 dollars' worth of Billings's champagne before the 
 end of the week to even up on my bef; and,
 
 (fcbooitab. ^f 
 
 as the days went on, each new development 
 only served to urge me to greater assiduity in 
 the task. The spirit of Big Mitch looked out of 
 little Arthur Penrhyn's insolent eyes, spoke out 
 of his foul mouth, and showed itself even in 
 tricks of gesture and carriage, and in lines of 
 facial expression. And Big Mitch, though his 
 huge, uncouth frame and coarse lineaments lent 
 themselves but ill to the showing of it, carried 
 within him a new spirit of gentleness and hu 
 mility. We saw little of him, for after work 
 hours he kept persistently to his room. But 
 once, late at night, seeing him, through his open 
 door, asleep over a book, I stepped softly in 
 and looked over his big shoulders at the half- 
 dozen volumes that littered his table. They 
 were college text-books, and on the fly-leaf of 
 each one was the name of Arthur Penryhn. 
 
 I had packed my valise, and was looking 
 for Billings to pay him his fifty dollars, when 
 Big Mitch came out of his room it was the 
 noon hour and he asked me for the favor of 
 a few words. 
 
 " I am ashamed to trouble you, sir," he 
 said, "but if you could help me to get any sort 
 of a job in New York, or anywhere else, I 'd 
 be more thankful than I could tell you. I can 
 afford to take almost any sort of a place where 
 there 's a future, for I am pretty well ahead of 
 the game financially, and I 've earned my in 
 terest in this concern. And it 's in such shape 
 now that Mr. Billings can get along without me." 
 6s
 
 " But, my dear boy," I said, " why do you 
 want to go ? " 
 
 Big Mitch frowned and fidgeted nervously ; 
 then he exploded. 
 
 " I '11 give it to you straight," he said. "It 's 
 that Penrhyn pup. When he first came here I 
 thought I was just about the nicest little man 
 on God's footstool. I was as contented with 
 myself as a basket of eggs. I knew it all. I 
 was so sharp you could cut glass with me. 
 I was the only real sport in the outfit. See? 
 And I 'd got a roving commission to jump on 
 people's necks. Well, you know what I was. 
 And I liked myself. See?" 
 
 "But?" I began. "Arthur Penrhyn " 
 
 " So did he ! I don't believe any one in 
 the world was ever stuck on me before, but he
 
 ftbe (Bboollab. 
 
 was. That little ape had n't been here a week 
 before he began to do everything he saw me 
 do, and pretty soon he had me down so fine 
 that he might have been my twin-brother, if 
 we ever had such runts in our family. Well, 
 I began to sour on the show. Understand ? I 
 could see for myself it was n't pretty. Well, 
 one day I came around a corner, and there 
 was that baboon sassing back to old man Bil 
 lings. I was just going to pick him up and 
 break his neck, when I felt kind of sick at my 
 stomach, and I says to myself, < You swine ! 
 that 's the way you Ve been treat 
 ing that white man ! How do 
 you like yourself now ? ' ' : 
 
 Big Mitch clutched 
 desperately at his rum 
 pled hair. 
 
 " I 'm going to be 
 a gentleman," he grunt 
 ed, " if I have to chew 
 gravel to do it. I '11 do 
 it, though, and I '11 
 show up some day and 
 surprise the old man 
 before he cashes in his 
 last lung. But if I 
 don't get a fresh start 
 pretty soon, I '11 do 
 something to that Pen- 
 rhyn monkey that won't 
 be any young lady's danc 
 ing-class, you bet your boots ! " 
 
 6J>
 
 "Short Sixes." 
 
 I told Billings. First he paid me fifty dol 
 lars. Then he made a bonfire of all his theo- 
 sophic outfit. Then he went down to the quarry 
 and announced that he was his own boss from 
 that time on ; and by way of a sample demonstra 
 tion he called up Arthur Penrhyn and knocked 
 the everlasting Ghoollah out of him. Then he 
 came back to the house and looked at the 
 thermometer. 
 
 To this day, I never see champagne without 
 thinking of drinking some. 
 
 Of-
 
 CUTWATER OF SENECA.
 
 CUTWATER OF SENECA. 
 
 ^\HE story I am about to tell is hardly 
 Bt_/ a story at all. Perhaps I had bet 
 ter call it a report, and let it go 
 at that, with a word of explana- 
 Q tion as to how I came to report it. 
 In 1884 a new state survey and 
 a new re-districting act between them 
 cut off about one-quarter of a north 
 ern timber county close to the Canada 
 border, and delivered over the severed 
 portion to its neighbor on the southerly side, a 
 thickly settled county with several large towns 
 and with important manufacturing interests. This 
 division left the backwoods county temporarily 
 without a judiciary or a place of holding court. 
 But the act provided for the transfer of all pend 
 ing cases to the courts of the more fortunate 
 county down below, and gave the backwoods 
 District Attorney the privilege of trying in the 
 said courts such cases as might arise in his own 
 bailiwick during his term of office then current. 
 
 No such cases occurred, however, until the 
 period stated by the act was nearly at an end, 
 when the District Attorney of the mutilated 
 county came down to Metropole, our County 
 Seat, to try a murder case. As our backwoods
 
 ^ Cutwater of Seneca. ^ 
 
 neighbors were a somewhat untrammelled, un 
 couth and free-and-easy folk at their quietest, his 
 coming naturally attracted some curious interest, 
 especially after it became known that he had 
 come into town sitting side by side with the 
 prisoner in the smoking-car, and discussing poli 
 tics with him. His name was Judge Cutwater, 
 and he was generally spoken of as Cutwater of 
 Seneca perhaps because he had at some time 
 been a Judge in Seneca, New York; perhaps 
 
 because there was no comprehensible reason for 
 so calling him, any more than there was compre 
 hensible reason for various and sundry other 
 things about him. 
 
 He was a man who might have been sixty
 
 "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 or seventy or eighty. Indeed, he might have 
 been a hundred, and he may be now, for all I 
 know. But he was lean, wiry, agile, supple and 
 full of eternal youth. He might have been 
 good-looking if he had cared to be, for he had a 
 fine old-fashioned eagle face, and a handsome, 
 flowing gray moustache, the grace of which was 
 spoiled by a straggling thin wisp of chin whiskers, 
 and a patch of gray stubble on each cheek. 
 And, of course, he chewed tobacco profusely and 
 diffusely, and in his long, grease-stained, shiny 
 broadcloth coat, his knee-bagged breeches, his 
 big slouch hat, and his eye-glasses with heavy 
 black horn rims, suspended from his neck by a 
 combination of black ribbon and pink string, he 
 looked what he was, as clearly as though he had 
 been labelled the representative of the Majesty 
 of the Law among a backwoods people out of 
 odds with fortune, desperate, disheartened, down 
 on their luck, and lost to self-respect. 
 
 He said he was a good Democrat, and I 
 think he was. He saw the prisoner locked up, 
 bade him a kindly " Good night, Jim," and 
 ordered the jailer to let him have all the whiskey 
 he wanted. Then Judge Cutwater called on his 
 brother of the local bench, greeting him with a 
 ceremonious and stately dignity that absolutely 
 awed the excellent old gentleman, and dropping 
 an enormous Latin quotation on him as he de 
 parted, just by way of utterly flattening him out. 
 After that he strolled over to the hotel, grasped 
 the landlord warmly by the hand, and in the space 
 of half an hour told him a string of stories of 
 such startling novelty, humor and unfitness for 
 publication that, as the landlord enthusiastically 
 70
 
 *y Cutwater of Seneca. ^ 
 
 declared, the recent Drummers' Convention could 
 not be said to be "in it" with the old man. 
 
 The next day the case of Jim Adsum for the 
 murder of his mate in a logging camp was called 
 in court; and District Attorney Cutwater's trying 
 of it was a circus that nearly drove old Judge 
 
 Potter into an apoplectic fit, and kept the whole 
 court room in what both those eminent jurists 
 united it was the only thing they did unite in 
 in characterizing as a disgraceful uproar. 
 
 And yet, somehow, by four o'clock he had 
 evidence enough in to convict the prisoner; the 
 defence had not a single exception worth the 
 noting, and was rattled as to its state of mind; 
 and that weird old prosecutor, who repeatedly 
 spoke of the prisoner at the bar as "Jim," and 
 made no secret of the fact that they had been 
 bosom friends and companions in the forest, had 
 it
 
 *V dfcore "Sbort Sixes." V 
 
 worked up a case that made the best lawyers in 
 the room stare at him with looks of puzzled sur 
 prise and amazed respect. 
 
 When he rose to sum up, he slowly and 
 thoughtfully drew a tin tobacco-box from his 
 trousers' pocket, opened it and deposited there 
 in his quid, after passing his right hand, with 
 a rapid and skillful motion, across his gray 
 moustache. This feat he performed with a dig 
 nity that at once fascinated and awed the be 
 holder. Then he began : 
 
 " Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury : 
 It is a rare and a seldom occurrence that a 
 prosecuting official, sworn to exert his utmost 
 energies to further the execution of the law, is 
 called upon to invoke the awful vengeance of 
 that law, and the retribution demanded by out 
 raged humanity, upon the head of one under 
 whose blanket he has lain within the cold 
 hollows of the snow -clad woods ; with whom 
 he has shared the meagre food of the pioneer; 
 side by side with whom he has struggled for 
 his rights and his liberties, at the daily and 
 hourly risk of his life, with half-breed Injuns 
 and with half -breeder Kanucks. Sech, gentle 
 men, is the duty that lies before this servant of 
 the Law to- day ; and sech, gentlemen, is the 
 duty that will be done, without fear or favor, 
 without consideration of friendship or hallowed 
 association ; and this man, Jim Adsum, knows 
 it, knowing me, as well as he ever knew any 
 thing in the fool life that is now drawing to 
 a close. 
 
 " You have heard, Gentlemen of the Jury, 
 the evidence that has been laid before you on
 
 ^ Cutwater ot Seneca. ^ 
 
 the part of the prosecution, and you have heard 
 the attempt made by the learned counsel for 
 the defence to discredit that evidence in his 
 eloquent but frivolous opening on behalf of his 
 unfortunate client. I trust that you have given 
 to the one the appreciative attention which it 
 deserves, and that you have let the other slip, 
 naked and shivering, into the boundless oblivion 
 of your utter contempt. 
 
 " What, Gentlemen of the Jury, are the 
 circumstances of this case? We learn by the 
 testimony for the people that on the twenty- 
 seventh of November a party of seven men 
 started off for the upper waters of the Sagus 
 River, some to join a lumber camp, and others, 
 among them this defendant, James Adsum, and 
 his victim, Peter Biaux, a Frenchman, in the 
 pursuit of their usual vocation which may be 
 said to be hunting for fur-skins, on general prin 
 ciples. This party of seven men is snowed up, 
 and goes into camp at the junction of Sagus 
 and First Rivers, and for eleven days remains 
 thus snow-bound in that icy solitude, the only 
 human beings within hundreds of miles. 
 
 " There has been, Gentlemen of the Jury, 
 as has been shown to you, an old grudge be 
 tween the prisoner at the bar and the deceased ; 
 a grudge of many years standing. There is no 
 use of going into the origin of that grudge. 
 Some says it was cards; some, business; some, 
 drink ; and I personally know that it was a 
 woman ; but that makes no difference before 
 this present tribunal. Let it be enough that 
 there was bad blood between the men; that it 
 broke forth, as two witnesses have told you, day 
 73
 
 wnte'p: tv-^la 
 
 S7//1.I-* 1 . :'l-~- 'wirii..., ;ft* ^-^- 
 
 after day, within the confines of that little 
 camp crowded within its snow-bound arena in 
 the heart of the immeasurable solitudes of the 
 wintry forest. Again and again the other mem 
 bers of the party intervened to make peace be 
 tween them. At last, upon the eighth day of 
 December, matters come to a crisis, and a per 
 sonal encounter ensued between the two men, 
 in the course of which the deceased, being a 
 Frenchman, is badly mauled, and Jim, here, 
 being without his knife, through carelessness, is 
 correspondingly cut. The two are separated ; 
 and, for fear of further mischief, the Frenchman, 
 is sent down the river to fish through the ice, 
 and the prisoner is kept in the camp. That 
 night, by order of the head of the party, he 
 sleeps between two men. These two men have 
 told you their story how one of them woke 
 in the night at the sound, as he thought, of 
 a distant shot, and became aware that Adsum
 
 ^ Cutwater of Seneca, ^r 
 
 was no longer at his side how, reaching out 
 his hand, he grasped another hand, and taking 
 it for the prisoner's, was reassured and fell asleep 
 again and how, weeks afterward, he first found 
 out that that hand was the hand of the man who 
 had been detailed to sleep on the other side of 
 the prisoner. You have heard, gentlemen, how 
 these two men awoke in the morning to find 
 Adsum lying between them, shaking and shiver 
 ing with a chill under his heavy blanket. You 
 have heard of the long and unsuccessful search 
 for Peter Biaux, and of the accidental discovery 
 of his mangled body three months later, under 
 the ice of the Sagus River, at a point ten miles 
 below the camp. You have heard how each of 
 these witnesses was haunted by a suspicion that 
 he had unwittingly betrayed the trust reposed in 
 him, and how, at last, when they spoke together 
 of their watch on that fatal night, their suspicion 
 flashed, illumined with the fire of heaven's truth, 
 into a hijjus certainty. 
 
 " You have been told, gentlemen, that the 
 case of the people rests upon circumstantial evi 
 dence. It does, gentlemen; it does; and the 
 circumstances are all there. You have heard 
 how when these two witnesses exchanged notes, 
 they came to one conclusion, and that is the 
 conclusion to which I shall bring your minds. 
 The witness Duncan said to the witness Atwood : 
 1 Jim done it ! ' The witness Atwood replied to 
 him: 'Jim done it!' And I say to you, Gen 
 tlemen of the Jury: 'Jim done it!' And you 
 done it, Jim; you know you did! 
 
 " And now, gentlemen, what sort of a man 
 is this prisoner at the bar? We must consider
 
 him for the purposes of this trial as two men 
 on the one hand, as the brave, upright and 
 courageous trapper which he has on numberless 
 occasions, to my personal knowledge, shown 
 himself to be and I may say to you, Gentle 
 men of the Jury, that I woald not be here 
 talking to you now if he had not a-been on 
 one or two occasions. And on the other hand, 
 Gentlemen of the Jury, I am going to show 
 him to you as the red-handed murderer I al 
 ways told him he would be if he gave the rein 
 to his violent passions. Besides, the darn fool 's 
 drunk half the time. 
 
 " You have been told, gentlemen, by the 
 learned counsel for the defence, that this crime 
 was committed in a rough country, where deeds 
 of violence are so common that it is possible 
 that this man may have died by another hand, 
 murdered by a totally different person, for totally 
 different causes and reasons, and under circum 
 stances totally unconnected with the circum 
 stances set forth in this case. Gentlemen, it is 
 a rough country rough as the speech of its 
 70
 
 Cutwater or Seneca. 
 
 children, rough as their food and fare, rough as 
 the storms they face, and nigh as rough as the 
 whiskey they drink. But it is a country, gen 
 tlemen, where every man knows his neighbor's 
 face and his neighbor's heart, where the dangers 
 and privations of life draw men closer together 
 than they are drawn in great cities like this 
 beautiful town of yours, which is honored by 
 the citizens I see sot before me in this jury 
 box. In that great snow- 
 clad wilderness, on that 
 bitter eighth of De 
 cember, with the 
 thermometer thirty 
 degrees below zero, 
 I can assure you, 
 gentlemen, that there 
 was no casual, acci 
 dental, extempora 
 neous murderer lil- 
 ly-twiddling around 
 that chilly solitude, 
 sauntering among 
 twenty - foot snow 
 drifts for the pur 
 pose of striking 
 down a total stranger 
 with nineteen distinct 
 and separate cuts, and 
 
 then fading away into nothingness like the airy 
 fabric of a vision. And Jim doing nothing all 
 that time? Gentlemen, the contention of the 
 counsel ain't sense/ 
 
 " Gentlemen, I wish I could tell you that 
 it was so. I wish I could tell you so for Jim's 
 
 77
 
 ^ flbore "Sbort Stjes." ^ 
 
 sake. I wish I could tell you so for your own 
 sakes, for on you is soon to rest the awful yet 
 proud responsibility of deciding that a fellow 
 human being's life is forfeit to his blood-guilti 
 ness. I wish I could tell you so for my own 
 sake, regarding myself as a friend of Jim's.' 
 But it is the District Attorney, the Prosecutor 
 for the People, that you must listen to while he 
 tells you the story of what happened that night. 
 " It was half-past eleven of that night 
 when this man Adsum arose. How do I know? 
 Look in the almanac and see where the moon 
 stood at half-past eleven ! It was then that he 
 slipped from between his two guards and drew 
 back to where the flickering camp-fire cast the 
 shadow of a pine tree on the wall of snow that 
 shut in their little resting-place. There he stood 
 in that shadow a shadow that laid on his 
 soul and on his face and waited to see if 
 one of his comrades stirred. At his feet lay 
 the two men that had been set to guard him, 
 Jared Duncan and Bill Atwood. Eb Spence 
 laid over the way with his feet to the fire. By 
 him laid Sol Geary and Kentucky Wilson. Why, 
 Jim, I can see it all just as if I was there! 
 And then you he then, Gentlemen of the 
 Jury, this prisoner at the bar, slipped from that 
 camp where his companions lay, bound to him 
 as he was bound to them, in the faith of com 
 radeship; and, as he left that little circle, that 
 spot trodden out of the virgin snow, he left 
 behind him his fidelity, his self-respect and his 
 manhood; his mind and soul and heart full of 
 the black and devilish thought of taking by 
 treacherous surprise the life of a comrade. Up 
 78
 
 ^ Cutwater of Seneca. +f 
 
 to that hour, his spirit had harbored no sech 
 evil thought. The men he had theretofore killed 
 and I am not saying, gentlemen, that he had 
 not killed enough had been killed in fair and 
 open fight, and there is not a one of them all 
 but will be glad and proud to meet him as 
 gentleman to gentleman at the Judgement Day. 
 But now it was with murder in his heart base, 
 cowardly, faithless murder that he left that 
 camp; it was with murder in his heart that he 
 
 sneaked, crouching low, down where the heavy 
 shadows hid the margin of the ice-bound stream. 
 It was with murder in his heart that he laid 
 himself flat upon his belly on the ice when he 
 came within two rod of the Beaver Dam, and 
 
 79
 
 V jflfcore "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 worked along, keeping ever in the shadow till 
 he come down to where that Frenchman, who, 
 six hours before, had et out of the same pan 
 with him, stood with his light by his side, gazing 
 down into the black hole in the ice that was to 
 be the mouth of his grave and the portal of 
 his entrance into eternity. Murder, gentlemen, 
 murder nerved his arm when he struck out that 
 light with the fur cap you see now in his hand; 
 and murder's self filled him with a maniac's rage 
 as he rose to his feet and shot and stabbed the 
 defenceless back of his unsuspecting comrade. 
 This, gentlemen, this and no tale of a prowling 
 stranger this, gentlemen, is the truth; and I 
 will appeal to the prisoner, himself, gentlemen, 
 to bear me out. Jim Adsum, you can lie to this 
 Judge and you can lie to this Jury; you can lie 
 to your neighbors and you can lie to your own 
 conscience; but you can't lie to old man Cut 
 water, and you know it. Now, Jim, was not 
 that just about the way you done it?" 
 
 And Jim nodded his head, turned the fur 
 cap over in his hands, and assented quietly : ' 
 
 "Just about." 
 
 Twenty -five minutes later the Jury went 
 out, and Judge Cutwater stalked slowly and 
 thoughtfully over to the prisoner, and touched 
 him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Jim," he said, meditatively, " if I know 
 anything about juries, and I think I do, I 've 
 hanged you on that talk as sure as guns. Your 
 man's summing-up did n't amount to pea-soup. 
 I 'm sorry, of course; but there was n't no way 
 out of it for either you or me. However, I '11 
 tell you what I '11 do. My term as District 
 80
 
 Attorney expires to - morrow at twelve ; and, if 
 you '11 send that fool counsel of yours round to 
 me at the tahvern, I '11 show him how to drive 
 a horse and cart through the law in this case 
 and get you a new trial, like rolling off a log." 
 And as Mr. Adsum got not only one but 
 three new trials during the time that I kept track 
 of him, I have every reason to believe that Judge 
 Cutwater of Seneca kept his promise as a man, as 
 faithfully as he performed his duty as a prose 
 cutor for the people. 
 
 81
 
 MR. WICK'S AUNT.
 
 MR. WICK'S AUNT. 
 
 HE Wick family had run the usual 
 course of families for many, many 
 years, and was quite old and re 
 spectable when causes, natural and 
 extraordinary, none of them being 
 pertinent to this statement, reduced 
 said family to three members, viz : 
 Miss ANGELICA SUDBURY WICK, 
 of the Boston branch of the family, 
 who lived in the house of her guard 
 ian, old Jonas Thatcher, with whom we 
 have no further concern, and who is therefore 
 to be considered as turned down, although in 
 his day he was a highly respected leather mer 
 chant. Miss ANGELICA WICK was fair and sweet 
 and good up to the last requirement of young 
 womanhood. 
 
 MR. WlNKELMAN HEMPSTEAD WlCK, of the 
 
 Long Island branch of the family, a distant 
 cousin of the young lady, and a young man of 
 conscientious mind, an accountant by profession, 
 and very nearly ready to buy out his employer. 
 
 MR. AARON BUSHWICK WICK, also of the 
 Long Island branch of the family, the grand- 
 uncle of young Winkelman, who had brought up 
 the young man in his own house, and who loved 
 84
 
 's Bunt. ^ 
 
 him more than anything else in the world, until, 
 in the sixty-ninth year of his age, he fell in love 
 with, and married a lady named Louisa Nasmyth 
 Pine, whom we will dismiss from consideration as 
 we dismissed the old leather merchant, although 
 she was a most estimable and attractive lady, and 
 did fancy embroidery extremely well. Her only 
 concern with this story is that she bore the elder 
 Mr. Wick a baby, and died three or four months 
 subsequently. But that was enough ; plenty ; as 
 much as was necessary. 
 
 The way that marriage came about was this : 
 old Mr. Wick wanted to see the Wick family per 
 petuated, but young Mr. Wick was one of those 
 cautious, careful, particular men who get to be 
 old bachelors before they know it. No girl whom 
 he knew was quite exactly what he wanted. If 
 she had been, she would have been too good for 
 any man on earth. In fact, it took young Mr. 
 Wick a number of years to realize that any way 
 he could marry, he could only marry a human 
 being like himself. In the meanwhile his grand- 
 uncle grew impatient; and finally he said that if 
 Winkelman did n't fix on a girl and get her to 
 agree to marry him by the first of next January, 
 he, Aaron Bushwick Wick, would marry some 
 body himself. Miss Louisa Nasmyth Pine, being 
 then close on to forty, helped him to get under 
 the line just in time to save his grand-nephew 
 from engaging himself to an ill-tempered widow 
 with five children which is the kind of woman 
 that those particular men generally pick up in the 
 end. And it serves them right. 
 
 And so this marriage brought into existence 
 the baby BEATRICE BRIGHTON WICK.
 
 V dfcore "Sbort sties." -y 
 
 Old Mr. Wick's endeavors to hand the name 
 of Wick down to posterity were crowned, as you 
 see, with only partial success. He had a Wick, 
 it was true, but it was a Wick that would be put 
 out by marriage. He found himself 
 obliged to fall back on young 
 Winkelman, and he be 
 thought himself of the 
 distant cousin in 
 Boston. He knew 
 nothing of her, 
 but he reasoned 
 that if she were 
 a Wick, she must 
 be everything that 
 
 was lovely and desirable; and so he said to his 
 grand-nephew : 
 
 " Wink, you know that I am a man of my 
 word. If you will go and marry that girl, and if 
 the two of you will take care of that confounded 
 baby, who is crying again, while I put in three or 
 four years in Europe till it gets to some sort of a 
 rational age, I will buy your employer out, guar 
 antee you what is necessary for you to live on in 
 some healthy country place no city air for that 
 child, do you understand ! and when I die you 
 '11 be her guardian and have the usufruct of her 
 estate. and be residuary legatee and all that sort 
 of thing." 
 
 Winkelman Wick knew that his grand-uncle 
 was a man of his word, and that " all that sort of 
 thing " meant a very, very comfortable sort of 
 thing, for the old gentleman was rich and had 
 liberal ideas, and drank more port than was good 
 for him. He had no fancy for marrying a strange 
 
 86
 
 girl, but he thought there could be no harm in 
 going out to Boston and taking a look at his, so 
 far, distant cousin. Under pretense of wanting to 
 write up the Wick genealogy, he went to Boston, 
 and passed some time under Mr. Thatcher's hos 
 pitable roof. He found Angelica Wick all that 
 his fancy might have painted her but had n't; 
 and, as Mr. Thatcher had six daughters of his 
 own, all of them older than Angelica, and none 
 so good-looking, he did not find any difficulty in 
 inducing his pretty cousin to marry him and 
 she did not back out even when he sprung the 
 baby contract on her. She said that she was a 
 true woman and that she would stand by him, 
 but that she thought it might be a little awkward. 
 Feminine intuition is a wonderful thing. When it 
 is right, it is apt to be right. 
 
 The elder Mr. Wick was as good as his 
 word, only, as is often the case with people 
 who pride themselves upon being as good as their 
 word, he took his own word too seriously. He 
 died of apoplexy shortly after landing at Liver- 
 s?
 
 y /Bborc "Sbort Stjes." -y 
 
 pool. His will, however, was probated in New 
 York, and thus escaped a legacy tax. The will 
 fully carried out every promise he had made to 
 his young kinsman, but he had drawn it to follow 
 absolutely the terms of his proposition. He had 
 never for an instant contemplated the possibility 
 of his dying before he wanted to people who 
 make their wills very rarely do and he had so 
 drawn the document that Mr. and Mrs. Winkel- 
 man Wick could come into their inheritance only 
 after carrying out their part of the contract, which 
 was to take care of their aunt, baby Beatrice 
 Brighton Wick, for the space of four years, during 
 which Mr. Aaron Bushwick Wick had intended, 
 without consideration of the designs of Divine 
 Providence, to sojourn in Europe. 
 
 This brings the situation exactly down to 
 bed-rock. On the tenth of April, eighteen hun 
 dred and tumty-tum, Mr. Winkelman Wick and 
 Miss Angelica Wick were married in the old 
 Wick house on Montague Street, Brooklyn. On 
 the twenty-fifth of April Mr. Aaron Bushwick 
 Wick ended his journey across the Atlantic at 
 the Port of Liverpool, England. On the twenty- 
 seventh of April he started on that other jour 
 ney for which your heirs pay your passage money 
 and he certainly was not happy in his start 
 ing place. On the twenty-eighth of the same 
 month young Mr. and Mrs. Wick knew the terms 
 of their grand-uncle's will; and on the thirtieth 
 the old Wick mansion was in the hands of the 
 trustees, and the young Wicks were in a hotel in 
 charge of their baby-aunt, Beatrice, who was her 
 self in charge of an aged Irishwoman, whose feet 
 were decidedly more intelligent than her brain. 
 
 88
 
 That is one of the beauties of Ireland. You 
 can get every variety of human being there 
 from a cherub to a chimpanzee. 
 
 They were very comfortable in the hotel/ 
 and would have liked to stay there, but that 
 awful contract had as many ways of making it 
 self disagreeable as an octopus has. They had 
 pledged themselves, with and for the benefit of 
 the baby, to provide a suitable place in the 
 country without unreasonable delay. Their law 
 yer informed them that reasonable delay meant 
 three weeks and not one day more. As their 
 contract began on the tenth of April, they had, 
 therefore, one day left to them to carry out th's 
 provision. Moreover, the contract, after denning 
 the phrase "a suitable country place" in terms 
 that would have fitted a selling advertisement of 
 the Garden of Eden, went on to specify that no 
 place should be considered suitable that was not 
 at least forty miles from any city of twenty thou-
 
 *y* flbore "Sbort Sijee." ^ 
 
 sand inhabitants, or upward. When Mr. Aaron 
 Bushwick Wick wanted pure country air for a 
 baby, he wanted it pure. If he could, he would 
 probably have had it brought in sealed bottles. 
 
 Picking a place of residence for four long 
 years is not an agreeable task under conditions 
 such as these, especially to a young couple 
 prematurely saddled with parental cares, and 
 equipped with only twenty days of experience 
 in the matrimonial state. They discussed the 
 situation for hours on end. Mrs. Wick wept, 
 and Mr. Wick contributed more profanity than 
 is generally used by a green husband. They 
 even asked the Irish nurse if she could not sug 
 gest some suitable place, and they stated the 
 whole situation to her very clearly and care 
 fully. She thought a while, and then suggested 
 Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland. How- 
 *ever, indirectly, she assisted them to solve the 
 problem. Mr. Wick told her to go to Jericho ; 
 and Mrs. Wick suddenly brightened up and said: 
 
 " Why, that 's so, Winkelman ! " 
 
 Mr. Wick stared in horror at his wife. Was 
 the sweet young thing going crazy under the 
 strain ? But no ; Mrs. Wick was looking as 
 bright as a rose after an April shower, and she 
 grew brighter and brighter as she stood think 
 ing in silence, nodding her pretty head affirma 
 tively, pursing her lips, and checking off the 
 various stages of her thought with her finger 
 tip on her cheek. Finally she said : 
 
 "And you could use the little room for a 
 dressing room. Yes, dear, I 'm quite certain it 
 will do beautifully." 
 
 After a while Mr. Wick convinced his wife 
 
 go
 
 ^ d&r. TlGltcfc'0 Bunt. <y 
 
 that he was not a mind-reader, and then he 
 got some information. Of course she did not 
 stay convinced no woman ever did. All 
 women think that the mechanism of their 
 thought is visible like a model in a glass case. 
 
 Mrs. Wick had forgotten that she herself 
 owned a country house. This was more ex 
 cusable than it seems on the face of it, for she 
 had never seen the house, nor had she ever 
 expected to see it. In fact, it was hardly to 
 be called a house; it was only a sort of bunga 
 low or pavilion which had once belonged to a 
 club of sportsmen, and which her father had 
 taken for a bad debt. It was situated in the 
 village of Jericho, of which she knew nothing 
 more than that 'her father had said that it was 
 a good place for trout, and was accessible by 
 several different railroads. Concerning the house 
 itself she was better informed. She had had to 
 copy the plans of its interior on many occasions 
 when her guardian had made futile efforts to 
 sell or to rent it. She also knew that the place 
 was fully furnished, and that an old woman lived 
 in it as care-taker, rent free, and liable to be 
 dispossessed at any moment. 
 
 The nurse was told that they would go to 
 Jericho with her. She only asked would the 
 baby take her bottle now or wait till she got 
 there ? 
 
 Jericho Junction is one of those lonely and 
 
 forsaken little stopping-places on the outskirts 
 
 of the great woods that are the sportsman's 
 
 paradise, with a dreary, brown-painted, pine box, 
 
 91
 
 just big enough for the ticket agent, the bag 
 gage master, the telegraph operator, the flagman, 
 the local postmaster, and the casual or possible 
 intending passenger. As this makes two persons 
 in all, the structure is not large. 
 
 The casual passenger and the full corps of 
 local railway officials were both present at Jericho 
 Junction when the 6:30 P. M. train loomed out 
 of the dreary, raw May twilight, and drew up 
 in front of the little box. Now, these two oc 
 cupants of the tiny station were neighbors but 
 not friends. Farmer Byam Beebe lived "a piece 
 back in the country, over t'wards Ellenville South 
 Farms." Mr. John D. Wilkins, station agent, 
 telegraph operator, and all the rest of the func 
 tionaries of Jericho Junction, dwelt in his little 
 box, midway between Ellenville South Farms 
 and the nearest important town, Bunker's Mills, 
 a considerable manufacturing settlement. A 
 houseless stretch of ten miles separated the 
 neighbors; but not even ten miles had stood 
 
 Q2
 
 -y- flfcr. ICUcfc's Bunt. ^T 
 
 between them and a grudge of many years' dura 
 tion. Beebe hated Wilkins, and Wilkins hated 
 Beebe. Never mind why. They were close 
 neighbors for that region; and that more close 
 neighbors do not kill each other testifies every 
 day to the broad spread of Christian charity. 
 
 Mr. Beebe so hated Mr. Wilkins that he 
 made it a regular practice to stop at the sta 
 tion after his day's work was done, to wait for 
 this particular train. Silent and unfriendly, he 
 would loaf in the station for an hour and a half, 
 and the station master dared not put him out, 
 for he was possibly an intending passenger on 
 the train as far as the next flag-station, which 
 was a railroad crossing a mile and a quarter 
 further on. Mr. Beebe never bought a ticket 
 from Mr. Wilkins, on the occasions when he did 
 ride. He paid his way on the cars, five cents, 
 plus ten cents rebate-check, and this rebate-check 
 he redeemed at Mr. Wilkins's office the next day. 
 Furthermore, he made a point of going out just 
 before the train arrived, and waiting on the 
 other side of it to get in, so that Mr. Wilkins 
 could not tell whether he boarded the train or 
 walked off through the thick woods that crowded 
 down to the very edge of the line.
 
 y flfcore "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 Thus it happened that as the train arrived on 
 the evening of the first of May, Mr. Beehe, being 
 on the farther side of the track from the railroad 
 station, saw an Irish nurse blunder helplessly off 
 the platform in front of him, holding a six months' 
 old baby in her arms, and stand staring straight 
 before her in evident bewilderment. Mr. Beebe 
 accosted her in all kindness : 
 
 " Your folks got off the other side, I guess. 
 This here ain't the right side for nobody, only 
 me." Then he prodded the baby with a large 
 and horny finger. " How old will that young 'un 
 be?" he inquired. 
 
 " Six months, sorr," replied the nurse ; " gahn 
 on seven." 
 
 "Is that so?" said Mr. Beebe, with polite 
 affectation of interest. " Folks been long mar 
 ried ? " 
 
 " Wan month, sorr," replied the nurse. 
 
 " Which ? " inquired Mr. Beebe. 
 
 " Wan month, sorr," replied the nurse. 
 
 On the other side of the train of cars, station 
 agent John D. Wilkins saw an old-fashioned 
 carryall drive up, conducted by an elderly woman 
 of austere demeanor. She was dressed in black 
 alpaca, and her look was stern and severe, and, 
 necessarily, highly respectable. He saw a young 
 man and a young woman descend from the train, 
 and saw the young man hand the young woman 
 into the carryall behind the elderly lady. Then, 
 as the young man turned as though to look 
 for some one following him, he heard the young 
 woman say : 
 
 94
 
 "Winkelman, dear, I don't care what her 
 age is, you must spank your aunt ! " 
 
 When Mr. John D. Wilkins heard what he 
 heard, he forgot the rules of the railroad com 
 pany, according to which he should have re 
 mained on the platform until the train had left. 
 He knew that just at 6:30 his particular crony, 
 Mr. Hiram Stalls, telegraph operator at Bunker's 
 Mills, and news-gatherer for the Bunker's Mills 
 Daily Eagle, went off duty in his telegraphic 
 capacity, and became an unalloyed journalist. 
 He caught Mr. Stalls in the act of saying good 
 night, and he talked to him over the wire in dot 
 and dash thus : 
 
 " That you, Hi ? Meet me at the station
 
 "Sbort Stjes." 
 
 cry 
 
 when the 7:21 gets in. I 've got a news item 
 for you that will make the Eagle scream this 
 trip, sure." 
 
 If Mr. Wilkins had not been so zealous in 
 breaking his employer's rules in the interest of 
 personal journalism, he would have heard the 
 young man thus enjoined to inflict humiliating 
 punishment upon a parent's sister, respond to this 
 cruel counsel in these words: 
 It will only make her 
 more ; why, where 
 the deuce is the brat, 
 anyway ? " 
 
 Moreover, he 
 would have seen 
 Mr. Beebe pilot an 
 Irish nurse and a 
 bundled - up baby 
 around the rear of 
 the train, and then 
 jump on the platform 
 as the cars started, 
 with all the vigor and 
 
 energy which the possession of a real mean story 
 about a fellow human being can impart to the 
 most aged and stiffened limbs. But he did n't. 
 What would become of the gossip business if 
 those engaged in it stopped to find things out? 
 
 When Caesar expressed a preference for be 
 ing the first man in a village, over a second- 
 fiddle job in Rome, he probably never reflected 
 how much it would rile him if he should hap- 
 06
 
 V Ar. Iflicfc's aunt, -y 
 
 pen to find out that there was just as big a 
 man in the next village who did n't know 
 Caesar from a cheese-cake; yet that is the poor 
 limitation of local bigness. Great is Mr. Way 
 in Wayback, and great is Mr. Hay in Hayville ; 
 but what is Mr. Way in Hayville, and what is 
 Mr. Hay in Wayback ? Two nothings, two 
 casual strangers, with no credit, with no say-no, 
 two mere chunks of humanity whose value to 
 the community is strictly proportionate to the 
 size of their greenback wads, and the laxity or 
 tenacity of their several grips thereon. 
 
 At nine o'clock that night two local Caesars, 
 in two towns but a score of miles from each 
 other, donned the ermine of power, waved the 
 sceptre of authority, and told their pale - faced 
 but devoted followers that "SOMETHING had 
 got to be done about IT." 
 
 The "IT," of course, was an "OUTRAGE " 
 it always is when something has got to be 
 done about it, and the something generally means 
 just about nothing. 
 
 In the front parlor of his large mansard- 
 roof residence, Mr. Bodger Mr. Theophilus 
 Scranton Bodger, prominent manufacturer, pillar 
 of the Church, candidate for the mayoralty, and 
 general all around magnate and muldoon of 
 Bunker's Mills, sat amid surroundings of much 
 elegance, black walnut, gilt, plush and hand- 
 painted tidies, and slapping a broad palm with 
 a burly fist, told Mr. Stalls, Mr. Wilkins and 
 Mrs. Bodger that something had got to be done 
 about it. 
 
 At the same moment, in the Sunday School 
 room of the Baptist Church in Ellenville South 
 
 97
 
 Farms, Mr. Manfred Lusk Hackfeather, theo 
 logical student, Sunday School superintendent, 
 social leader and idol of the ladies in Ellenville 
 South Farms, told six fluttering feminine things, 
 who gazed at him in affectionate awe, that 
 something had got to be done about it. 
 
 Mr. Bodger's business was making socks. 
 Mr. Hackfeather may have been wearing a pair 
 of socks of Mr. Bodger's make at that very in 
 stant, yet had he never heard of Bodger; nor 
 did Mr. Bodger know that any part of his 
 growing business was built up on the money of 
 a man named Hackfeather. 
 
 To say that a party of Brooklyn people, 
 conducted in an old-fashioned carryall, by an 
 elderly woman of austere demeanor, entered the 
 deep pine wood in a chilled twilight of early 
 Spring certainly ought to convey an impression 
 of gloom. And certainly gloom of the deepest 
 enshrouded the beginning of that ride. Diligent 
 inquiry elicited from the elderly woman that she
 
 ^ /for. Wictte Hunt. ^ 
 
 was, as the Wicks supposed, Miss Hipsy, the 
 care-taker; that she had received their telegram, 
 or she would n't have been there nohow; that 
 she had had a contrack with the late owner of 
 the premises; that she had lived up to it, what 
 ever other people hed or hed n't done; that 
 what she had done she would do, and that 
 if she was not satisfactory to other parties, or 
 if other parties was not satisfactory to her, 
 which was most likely to be the case, she was 
 willin', as far as she was concerned, to take her 
 self off just as soon as she could ; that she 
 thanked Providence she had folks in Ellenville 
 she could go to, as respectable as some, that 
 she could go to and no obligations to nobody, 
 and that she was not aware that her contrack 
 called for no general conversation. 
 
 Now this extremely discouraging way and 
 manner of Miss Hipsy's was entirely general and 
 impersonal, like dampness or a close smell in a 
 long unused house. Congenitally sub - acid, a 
 failure to accomplish any sort of an early or 
 late love affair had completely soured her, and 
 many years of solitude had put a gray-green 
 coating of mildew over her moral nature. But 
 the Wicks did not know this, and, remembering 
 their peculiar position, it made them feel ex 
 tremely uncomfortable. 
 
 But the moon came out in the soft Spring 
 sky, and the mists of the evening rolled away, 
 and a great silvery radiance wrapped the cathe 
 dral - like spires and -pinnacles of the broad 
 spreading pine forest, and, after awhile, the rough 
 corduroy road grew smoother, and the baby 
 stopped crying and went to sleep, and they 
 
 8 99
 
 "Sbort Sijee." 
 
 were all, except Miss Hipsy, beginning to nod 
 off just a little when the wheels crunched on a 
 driveway of white pebbles, and they looked up 
 to see a spacious low building standing out 
 black against the sky, except where a half a 
 dozen brightly lit windows winked at them like 
 friendly eyes. 
 
 This was the bungalow, and here they found 
 a sportsman's supper of cold meat and ale await 
 ing them. Miss Hipsy told them, by way of 
 leaving no doubt of the unfriendliness of her 
 intentions, that this refection was provided for in 
 the contract. So, also, must have been the de- 
 liciously soft beds in which they were presently 
 all fast asleep, even to the baby. And when a 
 traveling baby will sleep, anybody else can. 
 
 In the morning the elder Wicks opened 
 their eyes on a world of wonderment and be 
 wilderment. They found themselves living in a 
 well-appointed and commodious club-house, on 
 the banks of a broad and beautiful lake, across 
 which other similar structures with pretty, low, 
 peaked roofs looked at them in neighborly fash-
 
 ^ Ar. waters Bunt. <y 
 
 ion from the other side. Mrs. Wick said that 
 it was too nice for anything. 
 
 There was nothing mysterious about the 
 surprise which the Wicks had found awaiting 
 them. Sportsmen have a habit of referring to 
 their possessions in a depreciatory way. They 
 call a comfortable club-house a " box " or a 
 "bungalow" or a "shack," and they make no 
 thing of calling a costly hotel a "camp." Indeed, 
 they seem to try to impart a factitious flavor of 
 profanity by christening such structures, whenever 
 they can, " Middle Dam Camp" or "Upper Dam 
 Camp."' And since Mrs. Wick's father's club had 
 died out, the further side of Jericho Pond had 
 become a fashionable resort, maintaining two or 
 three Winter and Summer Sanitariums. 
 
 Thanks to the contract, they made an excel 
 lent breakfast, and their praises of the fare molli 
 fied Miss Hipsy to some slight extent. Then 
 they remembered the baby, and after some search 
 they found the Irish nurse walking it up and 
 down on a broad sunny terrace at the back of 
 the house. Below stretched an old-fashioned 
 garden, full of homely, pleasant flowers and sim 
 ples just beginning to show their buds to the 
 tempting month of May. 
 
 The scene was so pleasant that Mr. and 
 Mrs. Wick started out for a walk, and the walk 
 was so pleasant that they prolonged it, pro 
 longed it until they reached the settlement on the 
 other side of the lake, and the people there were 
 so pleasant that they staid to dinner at a club, 
 and did not get back till nearly supper-time. 
 
 * 
 tor
 
 You will please observe that, so far as the 
 members of the Wick family are concerned, they 
 stand as clear at this point as they did when we 
 got them down to bed-rock level, on the tenth of 
 April, eighteen hundred and tumty-tum. Their 
 ways have been ways of pleasantness, and their 
 paths have been paths of peace. The two Wicks 
 we are dealing with, like all the other Wicks, 
 have kept their engagements and filled their con 
 tract. They have minded their own business and 
 nobody else's. They are, in fact, all straight on 
 the record. 
 
 But now we have to recount the fortunes of 
 two social reformers, and it is hard for a reformer 
 to keep straight on the record. Whether they 
 have a genuine reform on their hands, like Martin 
 Luther or the Abolitionists, or whether they are 
 like Mr. Harold Kettledrum Monocle, of New 
 York, who thinks that the Mayor of that city 
 ought to be elected by Harvard College, they are
 
 -y dfcr. Mich's aunt. ^ 
 
 all likely to have what one might call a mote- 
 and-beam sort of time with their neighbors. 
 
 Thus did it happen with Mr. Bodger, of 
 Bunker's Mills, and with Mr. Hackfeather, of 
 Ellenville South Farms, who both found their 
 way to Jericho Pond that pleasant afternoon, the 
 theological student a little in advance of the busi 
 ness man. Mr. Hackfeather came to rebuke a 
 shocking case of impropriety in two so young; 
 Mr. Bodger came to express the sentiment of 
 society at large toward a man who would inflict 
 corporal chastisement on' a lady. 
 
 Terrible as with an army with banners, and 
 consumed with the fire of righteousness, Mr. 
 Hackfeather bore down on the old-fashioned 
 garden at the back of the bungalow, in the full 
 glory of the Spring afternoon. As to his person, 
 he was attired in a long, black diagonal frock- 
 coat, worn unbuttoned, and so well worn that 
 its flaps waved in the wind with all the easy 
 grace of a linen duster. Trousers of the kind 
 that chorus together : " We are pants," adorned 
 his long, thin but heavily-kneed legs. A shoe 
 string necktie, a low cut waistcoat, and a whole- 
 souled, oh-be-joyful shirtfront added to this simple 
 but harmonious effect, and his last year's hat 
 had a mellow tone against the pale Spring 
 time greens. He tackled Miss Hipsy (who had 
 so far relented from her austerity as to take the 
 baby while the nurse got dinner,) in that old- 
 fashioned garden ; and the benign influences of 
 budding nature had no effect whatever upon his 
 pious wrath. He pointed out the discrepancy 
 in the dates of the vital statistics of the Wick 
 family, and he told Miss Hipsy that she was
 
 y- More "Sbort Stjes." V 
 
 the servant of sin, (who had been a respectable 
 woman for forty- three years, and if some as 
 ought to know better said it was forty-seven 
 there was no truth in it,) that she was the slave 
 of iniquity and abettor of sin, (and if them she 
 knowed of, one leastways, was alive to-day she 
 would not be insulted,) that the demon vice 
 should not rear its hideous head in that unpol 
 luted community, (and she was n't rarin' no 
 heads, but she could go to them she knowed 
 of as could rare their heads as high as him or 
 any of his friends,) and that even if he, Mr. 
 
 Hackfeather, had to face all the minions of 
 Satan, and all the retinue of the Scarlet Woman, 
 he would purify the stain or die in the attempt. 
 Mr. Hackfeather's allusion to the Lady of 
 Babylon probably was born of a mixed condi 
 tion of mind, and a desire to use forcible lan 
 guage. It did not seem clear to him and it did 
 not seem clear to Miss Hipsy, either. She said 
 she was no such a thing, and never expected 
 104.
 
 ^ dfcr. TlBUcfe's Bunt, <y 
 
 to live to see the day she would be so called, 
 especially at her time of life. And, tearful and 
 vociferous, Miss Hipsy marched back to the 
 bungalow, delivered over the baby to the Irish 
 nurse, packed her little old hair trunk with the 
 round top, dragged it down herself to the lake- 
 front dock, and there sat on it in stern grandeur 
 until the afternoon boat came down the lake 
 and took her to Ellenville, presumably to the 
 sheltering arms of them that she knowed of. 
 
 Meanwhile, a thing she did not know of 
 was happening on the other side of the house 
 in that same old-fashioned garden. Mr. Bodger, 
 accompanied by Mr. Stalls and Mr. Wilkins, 
 had arrived from Bunker's Mills to interview the 
 new arrival in the county, whose latitude in ad 
 ministering corporal punishment had aroused the 
 indignation of every humane heart that had 
 been made acquainted with the station master's 
 story. Mr. Bodger saw the departure of the 
 weeping woman of elderly aspect, he heard her 
 wails, and he saw their cause in a strange 
 young man. This was all the evidence that he 
 wanted. Mr. Bodger made no inquiries into 
 identity or relationship. He weighed two hun 
 dred and twenty pounds, he had three men 
 behind him, and he fell upon Mr. Hackfeather 
 as the cyclone falls upon the chicken-coop. 
 
 The consequences of these two meetings 
 were so far-reaching, extending to warrants of 
 arrest, counter charges, civil suits and much 
 civiler compromises, that it was July before the
 
 ladies of the Bodger and Hackfeather families 
 picked up their threads of social intercourse, 
 which were knotted only at one point. To both 
 of them it occurred on a fine Summer's day to 
 call on the new comers at the old bungalow by 
 way of seeing whether the innocent causes of so 
 much dire mischief knew anything about the 
 agitation they had caused. 
 
 As the train from Bunker's Mills met the 
 boat from Ellenville, Mr. Bodger's wife and Mr. 
 Hackfeather's mother arrived at the same time, 
 and, sitting in the sunny reception room of the 
 bungalow, glared at each other in chilly and 
 silent hostility, while poor, innocent little Mrs. 
 Wick, much troubled by their strange behavior, 
 tried to talk to both of them at once, and 
 rattled away in her embarrassment until she had 
 talked a great deal more than she had meant 
 to. She told them all the story of Beatrice 
 Brighton Wick, and the will, and the hurried 
 flight to Jericho, and at their surprise at finding 
 Jericho Pond with its Summer and Winter colony 
 so delightful a place that they hardly felt as if 
 
 106
 
 V d&r. imtcfc's Bunt. ~f 
 
 they could tear themselves away from it when 
 the four years were up. And she told them 
 that both she and Mr. Wick had thought it 
 might be quite awkward for so newly married 
 a couple to be traveling with a six month's 
 old baby, and that baby Mr. Wick's aunt. 
 
 "But, do you know," she said, "we must 
 have been over-sensitive about it, for we never 
 had the first least little bit of trouble. Indeed, 
 the only mishap we had was the other way. 
 The old woman who was in charge of the 
 place here left us suddenly the first day with 
 out a word of warning. I couldn't make out 
 why she was dissatisfied, but my nurse, Nora, 
 told me that she thought that Miss Hipsy 
 thought that the baby was too young. Some 
 people have such an objection to young babies, 
 
 fO?
 
 ^ flfoore "Sbort Sfjes." -y 
 
 you know. However, it did n't the least bit 
 matter, for Nora turned out to be a very good 
 cook, and I took the baby. I wanted to learn, 
 you know." 
 
 ro8
 
 WHAT MRS. FORTESCUE DID.
 
 WHAT MRS. FORTESCUE DID. 
 
 IGHT in the rear of the First Con 
 gregational Church of 'Qua'wket, 
 and cornerwise across the street, 
 the Old Ladies' Home of Aquaw- 
 ket sits on the topmost of a 
 series of velvety green terraces. 
 It is a quiet street ; the noisiest 
 thing in it, or rather over it, is the bell 
 in the church steeple, and that is as deep 
 toned and mellow as all church bells ought to be 
 and few church bells are. As to the Old Ladies' 
 Home, itself, it looks like the veritable abode of 
 peace. A great wistaria clambers over its dull 
 brown stucco walls. Beds of old-fashioned flow 
 ers nod and sway in the chastened breezes on its 
 two sunny sides, and thick clumps of lilacs and 
 syringas shield it to the north and east. Dainty 
 little dimity curtains flutter at the open windows 
 all Summer long; and, whether it comes from 
 the immaculately neat chambers of the old ladies, 
 or from some of the old-fashioned flower beds, 
 there is always, in warm weather, a faint smell 
 of lavender floating down upon the breeze to 
 the passer-by in the quiet street. You would 
 never dream, to look at it, that the mad, in 
 human, pitiless strife and fury of an Old Ladies'
 
 ,^i, A 
 
 Home raged ceaselessly, year after year, within 
 those quiet walls. 
 
 Now suppose that every wasp in a certain 
 wasp's nest had an individual theology of its 
 own, totally different from the theology of any 
 other wasp, and that each one personally con 
 ducted his theology in the real earnest calvinistic 
 spirit you would call that wasp's nest a pretty 
 warm, lively, interesting domicile, would you not ? 
 Well, it would he a paradise of paralysis along 
 side of an Old Ladies' Home. If you want to 
 get at the original compound tincture of envy, 
 malice and all uncharitableness, go to a nice, 
 respectable Old Ladies' Home with a list of 
 "Lady Patronesses" as long as your arm, and 
 get the genuine article in its most highly con 
 centrated form. 
 
 There were eleven inmates of the ' Old 
 Ladies' Home of Aquawket, besides the matron, 
 the nurse, the cook, and a couple of "chore- 
 girls." These two last led a sort of life that 
 came very near to qualifying them for admis 
 sion to the institution on a basis of premature 
 old age. Of the real old ladies in the home,
 
 -y flfcore "Sbort Sties." V 
 
 every one of the eleven had a bitter and un 
 dying grievance against at least one, and, pos 
 sibly, against ten of her companions, and the 
 only thing that held the ten oldest of the 
 band together was the burning scorn and hatred 
 which they all felt for the youngest of the 
 flock, Mrs. Williametta Fortescue, who signed 
 what few letters she wrote "Willie," and had 
 been known to the world as "Billy" Fortescue 
 when she sang in comic opera and wore pink 
 tights. 
 
 All the other old ladies said that Mrs. 
 Fortescue was a daughter of Belial, a play 
 actress, and no old lady, anyway. I know 
 nothing about her ancestry and I don't believe 
 that she did, either; but as to the other two 
 counts in the indictment I am afraid I must 
 plead guilty for Mrs. Fortescue. An actress she 
 was, to the tips of her fingers, an unconscious, 
 involuntary, dyed-in-the-wool actress. She acted 
 because she could not help it, not from any 
 wish to deceive or mislead, but just because it 
 came as natural to her as breathing. If you 
 asked her to take a piece of pie, it was not 
 enough for her to want the pie, and to tell you 
 so, and to take the pie; she had to act out 
 the whole dramatic business of the situation 
 her passion for pie, her eager craving and 
 anxicfus expectation, her incredulous delight when 
 she actually got the pie, and her tender, brood 
 ing thankfulness and gratitude when she had 
 got outside of the pie, and put it where it 
 could n't be taken away from her. No; there 
 was n't the least bit of humbug in it all. She 
 did want the pie; but she wanted to act, too.
 
 It was this characteristic of Mrs. Fortescue 
 that got her into the Old Ladies' Home on 
 false pretenses ; for, to tell the truth, Mrs. For 
 tescue was only an old lady by courtesy. She 
 had beautiful white hair; but she had had 
 beautiful white hair ever since she was twenty 
 years old. Before she had reached that age 
 she had had red hair, black hair, brown hair, 
 golden hair, and hair of half-a-dozen interme 
 diate shades. Either the hair or the hair dye 
 finally got tired, and Mrs. Fortescue's head be 
 came white that is, when she gave it a chance 
 to be its natural self. That, however, was not 
 often ; and, at last, there came a day when, 
 as her manager coarsely expressed it, "she 
 monkeyed with her fur one time too many." 
 For ten years she had been the leading lady 
 in a small traveling opera company, where tire- 
 113
 
 "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 less industry and a willingness to wait for salary 
 were accepted as substitutes for extreme youth 
 and commanding talent. Ten years is a long 
 time, especially when it is neither the first nor 
 the second, and, possibly, not the third ten years 
 of an actress's professional career; and when 
 Mrs. Fortescue asked for a contract for three 
 years more, her manager told her that he was 
 not in the business for his health, and that 
 While he regarded her as one of the most 
 elegant ladies he had ever met in his life, her 
 face was not made of India rubber; and, further 
 more, that the public was just about ready for 
 the Spring styles in leading ladies. This did 
 not hurt Mrs. Fortescue's feelings, for the lead 
 ing juvenile had long been in the habit of 
 calling her "Mommer, dear," whenever they 
 had to rehearse impassioned love scenes. But 
 it did put her on her mettle, and she tried a 
 new hair dye, just to show what she could do. 
 The result was a case of lead poisoning, that 
 laid her up in a dirty little second-class hotel, 
 in a back street of 'Quawket for three months 
 of suffering and helplessness. The company 
 went its way and left her, and went to pieces 
 in the end. The greater part of her poor 
 savings went for the expenses of her sickness. 
 At last, when the critical period was over, her 
 doctor got some charitably-disposed ladies and 
 gentlemen interested in her case ; and, between 
 them all, they procured admission to the Old 
 Ladies' Home for a poor, white-haired, half- 
 palsied wreck of a woman, who not only was 
 decrepit before her time, but who acted de 
 crepitude so successfully that nobody thought
 
 of asking her if she were less than eighty years 
 old. I do not mean to say that Mrs. Fortescue 
 willfully deceived her benefactors : she was old 
 oldish, anyway she was helpless, partially 
 paralyzed, and her system was permeated with 
 lead; but when she came to add to this the 
 correct dramatic outfit of expression, she was 
 so old, and so sick, and so utterly miserable 
 and 'stricken and done for that the hearts of 
 the managers of the Old Ladies' Home were 
 opened, and they took her in at half the usual 
 entrance fee; because, as the matron very 
 thoughtfully remarked, she could n't possibly 
 live six weeks, and it was just so much clear 
 gain for the institution. By the end of six- 
 weeks, however, Mrs. Fortescue was just as well 
 as she had ever been in her life, and was 
 acting about twice as healthy as she felt. 
 
 With her trim figure, her elastic step, and 
 her beautiful white hair setting off her rosy 
 cheeks and Mrs. Fortescue knew how to have 
 rosy cheeks whenever she wanted them she
 
 "Sbort Sixes." -^ 
 
 certainly was an incongruous figure in an Old 
 Ladies' Home, and it was no wonder that her 
 presence made the genuine old ladies genuinely 
 mad. And every day of her stay they got 
 madder and madder; for by the constitution of 
 the Home, an inmate might, if dissatisfied with 
 her surroundings, after a two -years' stay, with 
 draw from the institution, taking her entrance 
 fee with her. And that was why Mrs. Fortescue 
 staid on in the Old Ladies' Home, snubbed, 
 sneered at, totally indifferent to it "all, eating 
 three square meals a day, and checking off the 
 dull but health -giving weeks that brought her 
 nearer to freedom, and the comfortable little 
 nest-egg with which she meant to begin life 
 again. 
 
 And yet the time came when Mrs. For- 
 tescue's histrionic capacity won for her, if not 
 a friend, at -least an ally, out of the snarling 
 sisterhood ; and for a few brief months there 
 was just one old woman out of the lot who 
 was decently civil to her, and who even showed 
 rudimentary systems of polite intentions. 
 
 This old woman was Mrs. Filley, and this 
 was the manner of her .modification. 
 
 One pleasant Spring day, a portly gentle 
 man of powerful frame, with ruddy cheeks and 
 short, steel-gray hair a man whose sturdy 
 physique hardly suited with his absent-minded, 
 unbusiness - like expression of countenance as 
 cended the terraces in front of the Old Ladies' 
 Home. His brows were knit; he looked upon 
 
 Ji6
 
 V "Wlbat dfcrs. tfortescue 2>tt>. ^ 
 
 the ground as he walked, and he did not in 
 the least notice the eleven old ladies, the 
 matron, the nurse, the cook and the two 
 "chore-girls" who were watching his every step 
 with profound interest. 
 
 Mrs. Fortescue was watching the gentle 
 man with interest, because she thought that he 
 was a singularly fine-looking and well-preserved 
 man, as indeed he was. All the other inmates 
 of the Home were watching him with interest 
 because he was Mr. Josiah Heatherington Filley, 
 the millionaire architect, civil engineer and con 
 tractor. Their interest, however, was not excited 
 by Mr. Filley's fame as a designer of mighty 
 bridges, of sky-scraping office buildings, and of 
 other triumphs of mechanical skill; they looked 
 on him with awe and rapture simply because 
 he was the richest man in 'Quawket, or, more 
 properly speaking, in 'Quawket Township; for 
 Mr. Filley lived in the old manor-house of the 
 Filley family, a couple of miles out of town. 
 
 You might think that with a millionaire 
 Mr. Filley coming up the steps, the heart of 
 indigent Mrs. Filley in the Old Ladies' Home 
 might beat high with expectation ; but, as a 
 matter of fact, it did not. In Connecticut and 
 New Jersey family names mean no more than 
 the name of breeds of poultry - like Plymouth 
 Rocks or Wyandottes. All Palmers are kin, so 
 are all Vreelands, and the Smiths of Peapack 
 are of one stock. But so are all speckled hens, 
 and kinship may mean no more In one case 
 than it does in the other. In colonial times, 
 Filleys had abounded in 'Quawket. But to 
 Mrs. Filley of the Home the visit of Mr. Filley
 
 of the Manor House was as the visit of a 
 stranger; and very much surprised, indeed, was 
 she when the great man asked to see her. 
 
 In spite of his absent-minded expression, 
 Mr. Filley proved to be both direct and busi 
 ness-like. He explained his errand briefly and 
 clearly. 
 
 Mr. Filley was a bachelor, and the last of 
 his branch of the family. His only surviving 
 relative was a half-brother by his mother's first 
 marriage, who had lived a wandering and worth 
 less life, and who had died in the West a 
 widower, leaving one child, a girl of nine, in a 
 
 118
 
 y *WHbat /l&rs. fforteecue Did. y 
 
 Massachusetts boarding - school. This child he 
 had bequeathed to the loving care and atten 
 tion of his brother. It is perfectly wonderful 
 how men of that particular sort, who never can 
 get ten dollars ahead of the world, Will pick up 
 a tremendous responsibility of that kind, and 
 throw it around just as if it were a half-pound 
 dumb-bell. They don't seem to mind it at all ; 
 it does not weigh upon their spirits; they will 
 pass over a growing child to anybody who hap 
 pens to be handy, to be taken care of for life, 
 just as easily as you would hand a towel over to 
 the next man at the wash-basin, as soon as you 
 are done with it. Mr. Filley's half-brother may 
 have died easily, and probably did, but he could 
 not possibly have made such a simple job of it 
 as he did of turning over Etta Adelina, his 
 daughter, to the care of the half-brother whom 
 he hardly knew well enough to borrow money 
 from oftener than once a year. 
 
 Now, Mr. Josiah Filley had promised his 
 mother on her death-bed that he would assume 
 a certain sort of responsibility for the conse 
 quences of the perfectly legitimate but highly 
 injudicious matrimonial excursion of her early 
 youth, and so he accepted the guardianship of 
 Etta Adelina. But he was not, as the worldly 
 phrase it, "too easy." He was a profound sci 
 entific student, and a man whose mind was 
 wrapt up in his profession, but he did not pro 
 pose to make a parade-ground of himself for 
 everybody who might feel inclined to walk over 
 him. He had no intention of taking the care of a 
 nine-year-old infant upon himself, and the happy 
 idea had come to him of hunting up the last
 
 flfcore "Short Stjes. 
 
 feminine bearer of his name in the 'Quawket 
 Old Ladies' Home, and hiring her for a liberal 
 cash payment to represent him as a quarterly 
 visitor to the school where the young one was 
 confined. 
 
 " I don't suppose," he said, " there is any 
 actual relationship between us " 
 
 "There ain't none," interrupted Mrs. 
 Filley; "leastwise there ain't 
 been none since your father 
 got money enough to send 
 you to college." 
 
 Mr. Filley smiled indul 
 gently. 
 
 " Well," he suggested, 
 "suppose we re-establish re 
 lationship as cousins. All 
 you have to do for some 
 years to come is to visit the 
 Tophill Institute once in 
 three months, satisfy your 
 self that the child is properly 
 1 taken care of and educated, 
 and kindly treated, and to 
 make a full and complete re 
 port to me in writing. If any 
 thing is wrong, let me know. I 
 shall examine your reports carefully. W r hether 
 it is favorable or unfavorable, if I am satisfied 
 that it is correct and faithful, I will send you 
 my check for fifty dollars. Is it a bargain ? " 
 
 It was a bargain, but poor old Mrs. Filley 
 stipulated for a payment in cash instead of by 
 check. She had once in her life been caught 
 on a worthless note, and she never had got the
 
 ^r imbat /Ifcre. ffortescue 
 
 distinction between notes and checks clear in htr 
 mind. As to Mr. Josiah Filley, he was not 
 wholly satisfied with the representative of his 
 family, so far as grammar and manners were 
 concerned ; but he saw with his scholar's eye, 
 that looked so absent-minded and took in so 
 much, that the old lady was both shrewd and 
 kindly-natured, and he felt sure that Etta Ade- 
 lina would be safe in her hands. 
 
 When I said that Mrs. Filley was kindly, I 
 meant that as a human being she was capable of 
 kindness. Of course, as an inmate of an Old 
 Ladies' Home, she was just as spiteful as any 
 other of the old Jadies, and her first natural im 
 pulse was to make a profound mystery of Mr. 
 Filley's errand, not only because by so doing she 
 could tease the other old ladies, but from a nat 
 ural, old-ladylike fear that somebody else might 
 get her job away from her. But she found her 
 self unable to carry out her pleasant scheme in 
 its entirety. Nine of her aged comrades, and all 
 the members of the household staff, consumed 
 their souls in bitterness, wondering .what the mil 
 lionaire had wanted of his humble kinswoman; 
 and three times in the course of one year they 
 saw that excellent woman put on her Sunday 
 black silk and take her silent way to the railroad 
 station. On the day following they saw her re 
 turn, but where she had been or why she had 
 been there they knew not. By the rules of the 
 Home she had a right to eight days of absence 
 annually. She told the matron that she was going 
 to see her "folks." The matron knew well that 
 she had not a folk in the world, but she had 
 to take the old lady's word.
 
 But did not those dear old ladies ask the 
 ticket-agent at the station what station Mrs. 
 Filley took tickets for? Indeed they did, bless 
 them ! And the ticket - agent told them that 
 Mrs. Filley had bought a thousand -mile ticket, 
 and that they would have to hunt up the con 
 ductors who took up her coupons on the next 
 division of the road, if they wanted to find out. 
 (A thousand -mile ticket, gentle reader, is a de 
 lightful device by means of which you can buy 
 a lot of travel in one big chunk, and work it 
 out in little bits whenever you want to. Next 
 to a sure and certain consciousness of salvation, 
 it gives its possessor more of a feeling of pride 
 and independence than anything else this life 
 has to offer.) 
 
 And yet Mrs. Filley's happiness* was in 
 complete, for it was necessary to let one person 
 into her secret. She put it on her spectacles, 
 which had not been of the right kind for a 
 number of years, owing to the inferiority of 
 modern glass ware, but defective education was
 
 y "Wabat /Hbrs. jfortescue 5>f&, -y 
 
 what brought Mrs. Filley to making a con 
 fidant of Mrs. Fortescue. No spectacles that 
 ever were made would have enabled Mrs. Filley 
 to spell, and when she began her first report 
 thus: 
 
 " i sene the gerl She had or to hav cod- 
 
 livor roil " 
 
 even she, herself, felt that it was hardly the 
 report for Mr. Filley 's fifty-dollars. Here is the 
 way that Mrs. Fortescue started off that report 
 in her fine Italian hand : 
 
 "It gives me the greatest pleasure, my 
 dear Mr. Filley, to inform you that, pursuant 
 to your instructions, I journeyed yesterday to 
 the charming, and I am sure salubrious shades 
 of Tophill, to look after the welfare of your 
 interesting and precocious little ward. Save for 
 the slight pallor which might suggest the addi 
 tion of some simple tonic stimulant, such as 
 codliver oil, to the generous fare of the Tophill 
 Academy, I found your little Ey;a Adelina- in 
 every respect " 
 
 Mrs. Filley's name was signed to that re 
 port in the same fine Italian hand; and it sur 
 prised Mr. Filley very much when he saw it. 
 But there was more surprise ahead for Mr. Filley. 
 
 As a business man Mr. Filley read the 
 paper, but not the local papers of 'Quawket, for 
 it was seldom that the papers were local there 
 long enough to get anybody into the habit of 
 reading them. Thus it came about that he 
 failed to see the notice of the death of old
 
 Mrs. Filley, which occurred in the Old Ladies' 
 Home something less than a twelve-month after 
 the date of his first and only visit. The death 
 occurred, however, but the reports kept on com 
 ing in the same fine Italian hand, and with the 
 same generous freedom in language of the most 
 expensive sort. No man could have got more 
 report for fifty dollars than Mr. Filley got, and 
 the- report dj^d not begin to be the most of 
 what he was getting. 
 
 Sometimes clergymen but slightly acquainted 
 with the theatrical business are surprised when 
 traveling through small towns to see lithographs 
 and posters displaying the features of great stars 
 of the theatrical and operatic world, who are 
 billed to appear in some local opera house about 
 two sizes larger than a cigar-box. The portraits 
 are familiar, the names under them are not; 
 you may recognize the features of Joe Jefferson 
 and Adelina Patti, with labels on them establish- 
 
 124
 
 ^f IWbat tors, ffortescue 2>l&. ^ 
 
 ing their identity as "Comical Maginnis, the 
 Monkey Mugger," and "Sadie Sylvester, the 
 Society Clog Artiste." These are what are 
 known as "Stock-printing," and it is pleasant 
 to reflect that the printers who get them up for 
 a fraud on the public rarely are able to collect 
 their bills from the actors and actresses that use 
 them, and that the audiences that go to such 
 shows don't know the difference between Adelina 
 Patti and an oyster patty. 
 
 This explanation of an interesting, custom 
 is made to forestall the reader's surprise at 
 learning that two years and a half after her 
 retirement from the stage, and ten years, at 
 least, after the retirement of such of her youth 
 ful charms as might have justified the exhibi 
 tion, the portrait of Mrs. Fortescue, arrayed in 
 silk tights, of a most constricted pattern not 
 constrained at all, simply constricted decorated 
 scores of fences in what theatrical people call 
 the " 'Quawket Circuit," which circuit includes 
 the -charming and presumably salubrious shades 
 of Tophill. There was no mistaking Mrs. For- 
 tescue's face ; Mrs. Fortescue's attire might have 
 given rise to almost any sort of mistake. The 
 name tinder the picture was not that of Mrs. 
 Fortescue ; it was that of a much advertised 
 young person whose "dramatic speciality" was 
 entitled "Too Much for London; or, Oh, My! 
 Did you Ever ! " 
 
 Now it is necessary to disinter old Mrs. 
 Filley for a moment, and to smirch her char- 
 123
 
 "Sbort Sfjes." 
 
 acter a little by way of introducing some 
 excuse for what Mrs. Fortescue did. 
 
 By the time Mrs. Fortescue had cooked her 
 third report, she had found out that the old lady 
 had not quite kept faith with her employer. At 
 the Tophill Institute she had represented herself 
 as Mr. Filley's mother, gaining thereby much con 
 sideration and many cups of tea. So that when 
 she died, with the rest of her secret hidden from 
 all but Mrs. Fortescue, the latter lady, having 
 fully made up her mind to appropriate the job, 
 felt that it behooved her to go her predecessor 
 one better, and when she made her appearance 
 at Tophill it was in the character of Mr. Filley's 
 newly married wife. She told the sympathetic 
 all about it, how Mr. Filley and she had known 
 each other from childhood, how he had always 
 
 \s*~^ 
 
 I2f>
 
 ^ Mbat ASrs. tfortescue 
 
 loved her, how she had wedded another to please 
 her family, how the other had died, and Mr. Filley 
 had renewed his addresses, how she had staved 
 him off (I am not quoting her language) until his 
 dear old mother had died, and left him so help 
 less and lonely that she really had to take pity on 
 him. Mrs, Filley No. 2. got all the consideration 
 she wanted, and the principal sent out for cham 
 pagne for her, under the impression that that was 
 the daily and hourly drink in all millionaire fami 
 lies. He never found out otherwise from Mrs. 
 Filley, either. 
 
 Probably Mrs. Fortescue-Filley had calcu 
 lated on keeping up her pretty career of imposture 
 until her time of probation at the Home was up, 
 and she could withdraw her entrance fee and 
 vanish at once from 'Quawket and Tophill. She 
 had the report business well in hand; her em 
 ployer occasionally wrote her for detailed informa 
 tion on minor points of the child's work or per 
 sonal needs, but in general expressed himself 
 perfectly satisfied; and she felt quite safe, so far 
 as he was concerned, when he commissioned her 
 to put the child through an all-round examina 
 tion, and sent her fifty dollars extra with his 
 "highest compliments" on her manner of doing 
 it. Indeed, in this she was no humbug. She 
 could have put the principal, himself, through his 
 scholastic facings if she had cared to. 
 
 But the appearance of those unholy portraits 
 came without warning, and did their work thor 
 oughly. Even if it had not been that every child 
 in the institute could recognize that well-known 
 countenance, a still more damning disclosure 
 came in the prompt denunciation of the fraud 
 127
 
 *p More "Sbort Sir.es." ^ 
 
 by the " Indignant Theatre Goer " with a long 
 memory, who wrote to the local paper to protest 
 against the profanation, as he put it, of the fea 
 tures of a peerless Mrs. Fortescue, once an orna 
 ment of the stage, and now dwelling in retirement 
 in 'Quawket. Ordinary, common, plain, every 
 day gossip did the rest. 
 
 Mrs. Fortescue saw the posters on her way 
 to Tophill, but she dauntlessly presented herself 
 at the portal. She got no further. The prin 
 cipal interposed himself between her and his 
 shades of innocents, and he addressed that crea 
 ture of false pretenses in scathing language or 
 it might have scathed if the good man had not 
 been so angry that he talked falsetto. 
 It did not look as if there were much 
 in the situation for Mrs. P'ortescue, 
 but it would be a strange situation 
 out of which the old lady could not 
 extract just the least little bit of 
 acting. She drew herself up in ma 
 jestic indignation, hurled the calum 
 nies back at the astonished principal, and with a 
 magnificent threat to bring Mr. Filley right to 
 the spot to utterly overwhelm and confute him, 
 she swept away, leaving the Institute looking 
 two sizes smaller, and its principal looking no 
 particular size at all. 
 
 And, what is more, she did, for her mag 
 nificent dramatic outburst made her fairly acting- 
 drunk. She could not help herself; she was ine-" 
 128
 
 ^ "Wflbat flfcrs. tforteacue 2>t>. $* 
 
 briated with the exuberance of her own verbosity, 
 to use a once famous phrase, and she simply had 
 to go off on a regular histrionic bat. 
 
 She went straight off to the old Filley Manor 
 House at the extreme end of 'Quawket township ; 
 she bearded the millionaire builder in his great 
 cool, darkened office, among his mighty plans and 
 elevations and mysterious models, and she told 
 that great man the whole story of her imposture 
 with such a torrent of comic force, with such 
 marvelous mimicry of the plain-spoken Mrs. Filley 
 and the prim principal, and with so humorous an 
 introduction of the champagne episode that her 
 victim lay back in his leather arm-chair, slapped 
 his sturdy leg, roared out mighty peals of laugh 
 ter, told her she was the most audacious little 
 woman in the whole hemisphere, and that he 
 never heard of anything so funny in his life, and 
 that he 'd call down any number of damn school 
 masters if she wanted him to. 
 
 " I don't see how we can arrange a retro 
 active, Ma'am; I 'm a little too old for that sort 
 of thing, I 'm afraid. But I '11 tell you what I 
 can do. I '11 send my agent at once to take 
 the child out of school, and I '11 see that my 
 man does n't give him any satisfaction or a 
 chance for explanation. 
 
 " Why, damn it ! " concluded the hearty Mr. 
 Filley; "if I ever see the little prig I '11 tell 
 him I think it is a monstrous and great conde 
 scension on your part to let yourself be known 
 as the wife of a plain old fellow like me. Why 
 does n't a man know a handsome woman when 
 he sees her?" 
 
 " Then I am forgiven for all my wicked- 
 129
 
 V More "Sbort Ste0." V 
 
 ness?" said Mrs. Fortescue but, oh! how she 
 said it! 
 
 " Forgiveness ? " repeated Mr. Fiiley, thought 
 fully. "Yes; I think so." Then he rose, crossed 
 the room to a large safe, in which he opened a 
 small drawer. From this he took a small pack 
 age of papers which he placed in Mrs. Fortes- 
 
 cue's hands. She recognized her own reports, 
 and also a curious scrawl on a crumpled and 
 discolored piece of paper, which also she prompt 
 ly recognized. It was a "screw" that had held 
 three cents' worth of snuff, and she had seen it 
 in Mrs. Filley's hand just about the time that 
 dear old lady was passing away. She read it 
 now for the first time : 
 
 1 30
 
 " dere mr Filley i kno that fort escew 
 woman is gone to kepon senden them re ports 
 an nottel you ime dedd but iam Sara Filley." 
 
 " She sent that to me," said Mr. Filley, " by 
 Doctor Butts, the house physician, and between 
 us we managed to get a ' line ' on you, Mrs. 
 Fortescue ; so that there 's been a little duplicity 
 on both sides." 
 
 Mrs. Fortescue looked at him with admira 
 tion mingled with respect ; then she looked 
 puzzled. 
 
 " But why, if you knew it all along, why 
 did you " 
 
 " Why did I let you go on ? " repeated Mr. 
 
 10 131
 
 y+ flSore "Sbort Sties." ^ 
 
 Filley. " Well, you Ve got to have the whole 
 duplicity, 1 see." He went back to the drawer 
 and took out another object. It was a faded 
 photograph of a young lady with her hair clone 
 up in a net, and with a hat like a soap-dish 
 standing straight up on her head. 
 
 " Twenty-five years ago," said Mr. Filley, 
 "boy; three dollars a week in an architect's 
 office ; spent two-fifty of them, two weeks run 
 ning, for flowers for that young lady when she 
 played her first engagement in New Haven. 
 Walked there. Paid the other fifty cents to get 
 into the theatre. Lived on apples the rest of 
 the week. Every boy does it. Never forgets 
 it. Place always remains soft." 
 
 And, as Mrs. Fortescue sat and looked long 
 and earnestly at the picture, a soft color came 
 into her face that was born rather of memory 
 than of her love for acting; and yet it wonder 
 fully simulated youth and fresh beauty and a 
 young joy in life. 
 
 132
 
 "THE MAN WITH THE PINK 
 PANTS."
 
 THE MAN WITH THE PINK PANTS." 
 
 [HIS is a tale of pitiless and persistent 
 vengeance, and it shows by what sim 
 ple means a very small and unim 
 portant person may bring about 
 the undoing of the rich, great and 
 influential. It was told to me by 
 my good -friend, the Doctor, as we 
 strolled through the pleasant suburbs 
 of a pretty little city that is day by 
 day growing into greatness and ugliness, as 
 what they call a manufacturing centre. 
 
 We had been watching the curious antics 
 of a large man who would have attracted atten 
 tion at any time on account of his size, his 
 luxuriant hair and whiskers, and the strange con 
 dition of the costly clothing he wore a frock- 
 coat and trousers of the extremes! fashion, a 
 rolling white waist - coat, gray - spatted patent- 
 leathers, and a silk hat. But all these fine arti 
 cles of apparel were much soiled in places, his 
 coat-collar was half turned up, the hat had met 
 with various mishaps, his shoes were scratched 
 and dusty, his cravat ill -tied, and altogether his 
 appearance suggested a puzzling combination of 
 prosperity and hard luck. His doings were 
 stranger than his looks. He tacked cautiously 
 134
 
 "Cbe 
 
 Wttb Cbe pink pants." 
 
 from side to side of the way, peered up a 
 cross-street here ; went slowly and cautiously up 
 another for a few yards, only to return and to 
 efface himself for a moment behind a 
 tree or in a doorway. 
 
 Suddenly he gave signs of 
 having caught sight of somebody 
 far up a narrow lane. Promptly 
 bolting into the nearest front 
 yard, he got behind the syringa 
 bush and waited patiently until 
 another man, smaller^ but much 
 more active, hurried sharply 
 down the lane, glancing sus 
 piciously around. This second 
 person missed seeing the big 
 man, and after waiting irreso 
 lutely a moment or two, he 
 hailed a street-car going toward 
 the town. At the same time an 
 other car passed him going in 
 the opposite direction. With 
 incredible agility, the large man 
 darted from behind the syringa bush and made 
 the second car in the brief second the little man's 
 back was turned. Swinging himself inside, the 
 figures on the rear platform promptly concealed 
 him from view, and as he was whirled past us 
 we could distinctly hear him emit a tremendous 
 sigh or puff of profound relief. 
 
 "You don't know him?" said the Doctor, 
 smiling. "Yes, you do; at least, you have 
 seen him before; and I will show you him in 
 his likeness as you saw him two little years ago. 
 
 "Such as you see that man to-day," con- 
 rjf
 
 Sbort Stjee." V 
 
 tinued the Doctor, as we strolled toward the 
 town, "he is entirely the creation of one small 
 and insignificant man; not the man you just 
 saw watching for him, but another so very in 
 significant that his name even is forgotten by 
 the few who have heard it. I alone remember 
 his face. Nobody knows anything else that 
 throws light on his identity, except the fact 
 that he was on one occasion addressed as 
 'Mr. Thingumajig,' and that he is or was a 
 writer for the press, in no very great way of 
 business. Now let us turn down Main Street, 
 and I will show you the man he reduced to 
 the ignominious object we have just been 
 watching." 
 
 We soon stopped at a photograph gallery, 
 and the Doctor led me, in a way that showed 
 that his errand was not a rare one, to a little 
 room in the rear, where, on a purple velvet 
 background, hung a nearly life-size crayon por 
 trait. It represented a large gentleman the 
 large gentleman whom we had just seen 
 attired in much similar garments, only that in 
 the picture his neatness was spotless and per 
 fect. Not a wrinkle, not a stain marred him 
 from top to toe. He stood in the graceful 
 and dignified attitude of one who has been set 
 up by his fellow-citizens to be looked at and 
 admired, and who knows that his fellow-citizens 
 are only doing the right thing by him. His 
 silk hat was jauntily poised upon his hip, and 
 the smile that illuminated his moustache and 
 whiskers was at once genial, encouraging, con 
 descending, and full of deep religious and po 
 litical feeling. It was hardly necessary to look
 
 ^ "Cbe flfean mitb Cbe iMnft pants." -^ 
 
 at the superb gilt inscription below to know 
 that that portrait was "Presented by the Vestry 
 of St. Dives Church, on the Occasion of his 
 Retirement from their Body to Assume the 
 Burden of Civic Duties in the Assembly of the 
 State that Counts Him Among her Proudest 
 Ornaments." 
 
 "Mr. Silo!" cried I. 
 
 "Mr. Silo," said the Doctor; "but he did 
 not go to the Assembly, and that picture has 
 never been presented. When you saw him to 
 day he was running away from his brother-in- 
 law, to get to New York to go on any sort 
 of a spree to drown his misery. Come along, 
 and you shall hear the tale of a fallen idol. 
 And if, as you listen, an ant should cross your 
 
 '37
 
 "Sbort Stjes." ^ 
 
 path, do not step on it. Mr. Silo stepped 
 upon an ant, and the ant made of him the 
 thing you saw." 
 
 I do not tell this story exactly in the Doc 
 tor's own words, though I will let it look as 
 if I did. The trouble of letting non- literary 
 people tell stories in their own language is that 
 the "says I's," and the "says he's," and the 
 " well, this man " passages, and " then this other 
 man I was telling you about " interpolations take 
 up so much of the narrative that a story like 
 this could not be read while a pound of candles 
 burned. 
 
 But here is about the way the Doctor ought 
 to have told it : 
 
 I do not wish to undervaluate the good in 
 fluence of Mr. Silo in our city. He has been 
 a large and enterprising investor. He has built 
 up the town in many ways. He has been chari 
 table and patriotic. He was a good man; but 
 he was not a saint. And a man has to be a 
 saint to boom town lots and keep straight. No ; 
 I '11 go further than that it can't be done! 
 George Washington could n't have boomed town 
 lots and kept straight. And Silo, as you can see 
 by those whiskers, was no George Washington. 
 Real estate is n't sold on the Golden Rule, you 
 know. There were times when it was mighty 
 lucky for Silo that he was six feet high and 
 weighed two hundred pounds. 
 
 I don't know the details of the transac 
 tion, but I am afraid that Silo treated the 
 little newspaper man pretty shabbily. He was 
 a decent, hard-working, unobtrusive little fellow, 
 and he and his wife had been scraping and 
 rj*
 
 -y "Cbe /foan "Wflitb Cbe fcfnft pants." ^r 
 
 saving for years and years to buy a house 
 with a garden to it, in just such a town as 
 this. Well, no, that 's not the way to put it. 
 They had fixed on a particular house in this 
 particular town, and they had been waiting 
 several years for the lease of it to fall in. 
 They were ready with the price, and I do not 
 doubt that Silo or his agents had at one time 
 accepted their offer for the place. But when 
 the time came, Silo backed out, refused to sell, 
 and disowned the whole transaction. 
 
 That, in itself, was a mean act. It was a 
 trifling matter to Silo, but it was a biggest kind 
 
 of matter to the other man and his wife. They 
 had set their hearts on that particular house; 
 they had stinted themselves for a long, long 
 time to lay up the money to buy it; and 
 probably no other house in the whole world 
 could ever be so desirable to those two people. 
 But that was n't the worst of it. The man 
 might have put up with his disappointment, and 
 perhaps even have forgiven Silo for the shabby 
 trick. But Silo, I suppose, felt ashamed of 
 130
 
 V dfcore "Sbort Sixes." V 
 
 himself and went further than he had meant to, 
 in trying to lash himself into a real good, 
 honest indignation. At least, that is my guess 
 at it; for Silo was neither brutal nor stupid by 
 nature; but on this occasion he had the in 
 credible cussedness to twit the little man on 
 his helplessness. It was purely a question of 
 veracity between the two, and Silo pointed out 
 that, as against him, nobody would take the 
 stranger's word. That was true; but, good 
 Lord ! Silo himself told me subsequently that it 
 was the meanest thing, under the circumstances, 
 that he ever heard one man say to another. 
 He always maintained that he was right about 
 the sale; but he admitted that his roughing of 
 the poor fellow was inexcusable ; and the thing 
 that graveled him most and frightened him most 
 in the end was that he had called the poor 
 man " Mr. Thingumajig." He had not caught 
 the real name; he only remembered that it had 
 some sort of a foreign sound that suggested 
 "Thingumajig" to his mind. 
 
 Now, all that Silo had had before him 
 previous to that outburst was only a plain 
 case of angry man ; but from that time on 
 he had ahead of him through his pathway in 
 life an incarnation of human hatred, out for 
 vengeance, and bound to have it. 
 
 "Well, now the fun of the thing comes 
 in," said the Doctor. 
 
 "I should think it was high time," said I. 
 
 There was nothing very unusual in that 
 little episode; but somehow it got public, and 
 140
 
 y "Sbe d&an "Wattb Cbe flMnfc pants." y 
 
 was a good deal talked about; although, as 
 I said, hardly anybody knew the stranger, even 
 by name. But, of course, it was well nigh for 
 gotten six months later, when the newspaper 
 man came to the front again. 
 
 His reappearance took the form of such 
 a singular exhibition of meekness that it ought 
 to have made Silo suspicious, to say the least. 
 But he was a bit of a bully; and, like all 
 bullies, it was hard for him to believe that 
 a man who did not bluster could really mean 
 fight. Perhaps he had no chance of mercy at 
 that time ; but if he did he threw it away. 
 
 The stranger wrote to the local paper a 
 polite, even modest letter, stating, very moder 
 ately, his grievance against Mr. Silo. He 
 further proposed a scheme, the adoption of 
 which would obviate all possibilities of such 
 misunderstanding. I have forgotten what the 
 scheme was. It was not a good one, and I 
 know now that it was not meant to be. The 
 local paper was the Echo. It was run by a 
 shiftless young man named Meecham ; and, of 
 course, Silo had him deep in his debt; and, 
 of course, again, Silo more or less ran the 
 paper. So, when that letter arrived, Meecham 
 showed it to Silo, and Silo gave new cause 
 of offense by violating the honorable laws of 
 newspaper controversy, and answering back in 
 the very same number of the paper. The 
 matter of his reply was also injudicious. He 
 lost his temper at once when he saw that the 
 letter was signed " Mr. Thingumajig," and he 
 characterized both the plan and its proposer as 
 " preposterous," I am inclined to think that 
 
 f4T
 
 that word " preposterous " was just the word 
 that the other man was setting a trap for. 
 At any rate, he got it, and he wanted nothing 
 better. Here is his reply: 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO P. Q. SILO, ESQ. 
 MY DEAR MR. SILO: 
 
 I greatly regret that my little scheme for the 
 simplification of the relations between intending 
 purchasers and non-intending sellers (so-called) 
 of real estate should have fallen under your dis 
 approbation. Of course, I do not attempt to 
 question your judgement; but you must allow me 
 to take exception to the language in which that 
 judgement is expressed; which is at once inap 
 propriate and insulting. You call me and my 
 scheme "preposterous;" and this shows that you
 
 ^ "Cbe Man IClitb Cbe flMnfc fcants." V 
 
 do not know the meaning of that frequently 
 misused word. "Preposterous" is a word that 
 may be properly applied to a scheme that puts 
 the cart before the horse "having that first 
 which ought to be last," as Mr. Webster's Inter 
 national Dictionary puts it or to a thing or 
 creature " contrary to nature or reason ; not 
 adapted to the end; utterly and glaringly foolish; 
 unreasonably absurd; perverted." If you want 
 an instance of its proper application, the word 
 "preposterous" might fitly be used in all its 
 senses to describe your own brief but startling 
 appearance on Thursday evening last, between 
 the hours of nine and ten, in a certain quiet 
 street of New York, in a pair of pink pants. 
 I remain, dear sir, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 MR. THINGUMAJIG. 
 
 That was all. Nothing more. But, as the 
 lineman said of the two - thousand volt shock, 
 "it is n't necessary to see some things to know 
 that they 're there." 
 
 Now I want you to note the devilish 
 ingenuity of that phraseology. To speak of 
 "pink trousers" would serve only to call up an 
 unattractive mental picture. "Pink breeches" 
 would only suggest the satin knee-breeches of 
 a page in a comic opera; but "pink pants" is 
 a combination you can't get out of your head. 
 It is not English; the word "pants" is a vulgar 
 contraction of the word pantaloons, and we 
 don't wear pantaloons in these days. But 
 "pants" is the funniest word of its size that 
 ever was invented, and it is just about the 
 143
 
 ^ /Ifcore "Sbort Stjes." ^ 
 
 right word for the hideous garment it belongs 
 to. And whether there 's any reason or logic 
 in it or not, when I put those two little cheap 
 words together and say "pink pants," I am 
 certain of two things. First, you have got to 
 smile; second, you can't forget it to save your 
 neck. And that 's what Mr. Thingumajig knew. 
 I think he had everything "laid out in his mind 
 just as it was going to happen. 
 
 Meecham got that letter, and laid it aside 
 to show to Silo; but as he sat at his desk 
 and worked, the salient phrase kept bobbing 
 around in his mind ; and, finally, he said aloud : 
 
 " Pink pants ! What in thunder are pink 
 pants, anyway?" 
 
 His foreman heard him, and looked at him 
 in amazement. 
 
 " Pink pants," he repeated ; that 's a new 
 one on me." 
 
 Meecham picked up the letter again, and 
 knit his brows as he studied it. 
 
 "That 's right," he said; "that 's what it is." 
 
 The foreman came and looked over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " ' Pink pants,'" he repeated; "that 's right." 
 
 A man who had just come into the office 
 looked at the two speakers with astonishment. 
 Meecham knew that he had come to put an 
 advertisement in the paper, and so he showed 
 him the letter. 
 
 "Well, I 'm damned!" he said. "That 's 
 right, though. It 's ' pink pants,' on your life. 
 But where in blazes would a man get pink pants, 
 anyway? " 
 
 W T hen Mr. Silo saw the letter he told Mee- 
 
 144
 
 cham to "burke" it; and Meecham put it in the 
 waste-basket. The next day Silo made him take 
 it out of the waste-basket and print it. He 
 explained that so many people had asked him 
 about the letter and he said something to 
 Meecham as to his methods of. running the 
 office that he thought it better to print it 
 and let the people see for themselves how ab 
 surd it was, or else they might magnify it and 
 think he was afraid to print it. Meecham did 
 not say anything at the moment. He did not 
 like being blown up any more than the rest of 
 us do, however; and, when he had got the let 
 ter safely printed and out before the public, he 
 said to Silo: 
 
 " You did just right about that letter. It 
 would n't have done for a man of your position 
 to have folks going around asking where you 
 were on any particular Thursday evening." 
 
 "Why, no!" said Silo; "of course it would 
 145
 
 V /Bore "Short Sijcs." <& 
 
 n't. Lemme see; was that the day the infernal 
 crank picked out ? " 
 
 " Thursday night, the eleventh," said Mee- 
 cham, his finger on the calendar; "between nine 
 and ten o'clock at night. Now, of course, Mr. 
 Silo, you know just where you were then." 
 
 "Why, of course! " said Silo. "Lemme see, 
 now. Thursday the eleventh, nine, ten at night. 
 Why, I was no why, Thursday, the elmenth ! 
 Oh, thunder! no it can't be! Oh, cer 
 tainly ! yes ; that 's all right, of course ! Is that 
 Mr. Smith over there, the other side of the street ? 
 I 've got to speak to him a minute. I '11 see you 
 to-morrow. Good-night, my boy ! " 
 
 How much of an expert in human nature 
 are you? If I tell you that Mr. Silo insisted on 
 having every first impression of an edition of the 
 Echo sent to. his house by special messenger the 
 instant it was printed, whether he was at home or 
 not, and that he did this just to make Meecham 
 feel the bitterness of the servitude of debt, what 
 do you deduce or infer from that? That some 
 body else was tyrannizing over Silo? Quite 
 right! Mrs. Silo was a woman who opened all 
 of her husband's letters that came to the 
 house. And she looked at Silo's paper before he 
 saw it himself. 
 
 And when Silo got home that day, Mrs. Silo 
 was waiting for him. Mrs. Silo and the copy 
 of the Echo, with the letter concerning Mr. Silo 
 and the pink pants. Mrs. Silo wanted to know 
 about it. If Mr. Silo was in any doubt about
 
 "Sbe flban Witb Cbe pinfc fcants." 
 
 Thursday night, the eleventh, Mrs. Silo was not. 
 On that night Mr. Silo had been expected out 
 on the train leaving New York at eight o'clock. 
 He had arrived on the train leaving New York 
 at ten o'clock. There was no trouble at all .in 
 identifying the night. Mrs. Silo reminded him 
 that it was the night of the day when he took in 
 a certain hank of red Berlin wool to be delivered 
 to Mrs. Silo's mother, who lived 
 in 1 4th Street ; which, as 
 Mrs. Silo remarked, is not 
 a quiet street. She also 
 reminded Mr. Silo that 
 on his appearance that 
 evening she had asked 
 him if he had delivered 
 that hank of red Berlin 
 wool at the house of 
 his mother-in-law, and 
 he had answered that 
 he had; that his late 
 ness was due to that 
 cause ; and, further 
 more, that his dear 
 mother-in law was very 
 well. 
 
 To this Mr. Silo responded 
 
 that his statements on Thursday evening were 
 perfectly correct. 
 
 Then Mrs. Silo told him that since the 
 arrival of the paper she had made a trip to New 
 York to inform herself as to the true condition 
 of affairs. And, furthermore, on Thursday the 
 eleventh, Mrs. Silo's mother had been confined 
 to her bed all day with a severe neuralgic head-
 
 ^ dfcore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 ache, all the other members of the family being 
 absent at the bedside of a sick relative; the 
 cook had had a day off, and the aged waitress, 
 who had been in the family twenty-five years, 
 was certain that no one had entered the house 
 up to the return of the absent members at eight, 
 sharp, when, the sick relative being by that time 
 a dead relative, the house was closed. So much 
 for furthermore. Now, moreover, the hank of 
 red Berlin wool had arrived at the house in 
 Fourteenth Street four days after the date in 
 
 question. It came through the United States 
 mail, wrapped up in a sheet of tinted note- 
 paper, scented with musk, and addressed in a 
 sprawling but unmistakably feminine hand. 
 
 Mr. Silo made an explanation. It was un 
 satisfactory. 
 
 148
 
 dfcan Illflitb be pfnh fcants." V 
 
 It had long been known in the town that 
 suspicion was rife in the Silo household. It was 
 now known that suspicion had ripened into 
 certainty. Events of that kind belong to what 
 may be classed as the masculine or strictly neces 
 sary and self-protective scandal. News of the 
 event goes in hushed whispers through the mas 
 culine community the brotherhood of man, as 
 you might say. One man says to his neighbor, 
 "Let 's get Johnston and go down to Coney 
 Island this afternoon." " Johnston is n't going 
 down to Coney Island this week," says the 
 neighbor. "Johnston miscalculated his wine last 
 night, and Mrs. Johnston is good people to leave 
 alone this morning." 
 
 In a case so much more serious than a mere 
 case of intoxication as Silo's was supposed to be, 
 you can readily understand that the scandal of 
 the pink pants spread through the town like wild 
 fire. Silo had already resigned from the vestry, 
 so all the vestry could do was to pitch in and 
 see that he did not get the ghost of a show as 
 a candidate for assembly. It was not much of a 
 job, under the circumstances, and the vestry did 
 it very easily. 
 
 " Well, but what had Silo done ? " I asked 
 the Doctor. "And what were the pink pants, 
 anyway ? " 
 
 " Silo had n't done a thing," replied the 
 
 Doctor. "Not a blessed thing except to tell 
 
 a tiny little bit of a two-for-one-cent fib about 
 
 that hank of worsted. I met Mr. Thingumajig in 
 
 149
 
 ^ toore "Sbort Sixes." <y 
 
 Chicago last year, and he told me how he worked 
 the whole scheme. The gist of the invention 
 lay in the < pink pants.' Any fool can put up 
 a job to make a man's wife jealous; but it takes 
 the genius of deathless malevolence to invent a 
 phrase sure to catch every ear that hears it; sure 
 to interest and puzzle and excite every mind that 
 gives it lodgment, and to tie that phrase up to 
 an individuality in such a way that it conveys 
 an accusation almost without form and void, and 
 yet hideously suggestive of iniquity. 
 
 " That is just what the little newspaper cuss 
 did with Silo. He was bent on revenge, and he 
 gave up a certain portion of his time to shadow 
 ing him. You must remember that, while he had 
 reason to remember Silo, Silo had hardly any to 
 remember him. Well, he told me that he dogged 
 Silo for days months, even trying to catch 
 him in some wrong-doing. But Silo, big and 
 blustering as he looked, with his whiskers and 
 his knowing air, was an innocent, respectable, 
 henpecked ass. Outside of business, all that he 
 ever did in New York was to go to his mother- 
 in-law's house at his wife's bidding to execute 
 shopping commissions and the like. For in 
 stance, this hank of Berlin wool the old lady had 
 bought for her daughter; the shade was wrong, 
 and the daughter sent it back. Mr. Thinguma 
 jig never mind his name now had been 
 tracking Silo on his trips to Fourteenth Street 
 for weeks, and had just learned their innocent 
 nature. His soul was full of rage. He got into 
 a green car with Silo, going to the ferry. The 
 evening was hot. Silo dozed in the corner of 
 the car. The hank of red Berlin wool lay on 
 150
 
 Cbe fMnfc pants." 
 
 the seat beside him. Mr. Thingumajig saw it, 
 and saw the letter pinned to it, addressed by Mrs. 
 Silo to her mother. In that instant he conceived 
 the crude basis of his plot 
 to appropriate the hank, sup 
 press the letter, souse the 
 wool with cheap per 
 fume, get his wife to 
 readdress the parcel in 
 her worst hand and 
 to rely in pretty good 
 confidence on Silo's 
 telling a lie at one end 
 or both ends of the line 
 about the missing wool. 
 Silo was not much of a 
 sinner, but a man who 
 loses his wife's hank of 
 Berlin wool and goes 
 home and owns up about 
 it is a good deal of a saint. 
 The chances were all in Mr. Thingumajig's favor." 
 
 " But," said I, " when you had met Mr. 
 Thingumajig and became possessed of the plot, 
 why did n't you come back here and tell all 
 about it, and clear up poor Silo ? " 
 
 The Doctor looked at me pityingly, almost 
 contemptuously. 
 
 " My dear fellow," he said, as if he were talk 
 ing to a child, "what was my word to those pink 
 pants? I tried it on, until I found that people 
 simply began to suspect me, and to think that I 
 might be Silo's accomplice in iniquity. There
 
 V fl&re "Sbort Sfjes." v 
 
 was n't the least use in it. If I talked to a man, 
 he would hear me through; and then he would 
 wag his head and say, ' That 's all very well ; but 
 how about those pink pants? If there were n't 
 any pink pants how did they come to be men 
 tioned?' And that was the way everywhere. I 
 could explain all about poor Silo's foolish little lie, 
 and they would say, 'Oh, yes, that 's possible; 
 a man might lie about a hank of wool if he had 
 the kind of wife Silo 's got; but how about those 
 pink pants ? ' And when it was n't those pink 
 pants, it was them pink pants. And after a while 
 I gave it up. Silo had got to drinking pretty 
 hard by that time, in order to drown his miseries ; 
 and of course that only confirmed the earlier scan 
 dal. Now, Silo never was a man that could drink; 
 it never did agree with him, and he has got so 
 wild recently that Mrs. Silo has her two brothers 
 take turns to come out here and try to control 
 him. Of course that makes him all the wilder." 
 
 At the end of Main Street I parted from 
 my friend, the Doctor, and shortly I crossed the 
 pathway of another citizen who had seen the two 
 of us bidding good-by. 
 
 " He 's a nice man, the Doctor is," said 
 the citizen ; " but the trouble with him is, he 's 
 altogether too. credulous and sympathetic. Now, 
 I would n't be surprised if he 'd been making 
 some defense to you of the goings on of that 
 man Silo. He 's a sort of addled on that sub 
 ject. May be it 's just pure charity, of course ; 
 and may be, equally, he was in with Silo when 
 Silo was n't so openly disgraceful ; but if you 
 want to know what that man Silo is, I '11 tell 
 you. The people around here, sir the people 
 152
 
 who ought to know do you know what they 
 call him, sir ? Well, sir, they call him, < The 
 Man with the Pink Pants.' And do you sup 
 pose for one minute, sir, that a man gets a 
 name fixed on him like that without he 's de 
 served it? No, sir; your friend the^e is a good 
 man, and a charitable man, but as for judgement 
 of character, he ain't got it. And if you 're a 
 friend of his, you '11 tell him that the less he has 
 to say about ' The Man with the Pink Pants ' 
 the better for him." 
 
 153
 
 THE THIRD FIGURE IN THE 
 COTILLION.
 
 THE THIRD FIGURE IN THE 
 COTILLION. 
 
 ROUND the little island of Aus- 
 serland the fishing - smacks hover 
 all through the season. They 
 rarely go out of sight ; or, indeed, 
 stand* far off shore, for life is easy 
 in Ausserland, and the famous Aus- 
 serland herrings, which give the island 
 its prosperity, are oftenest to be caught 
 in the broad reaches of shallow water that sur 
 round the island. Beyond these reaches there 
 are fish, too ; but out there the waters are more 
 turbulent. And why should a fisherman risk his 
 life and his beautiful brown duck sails in 
 treacherous seas, when he has his herring-pond 
 at his own door - step, so to speak. And they 
 have a saying in Ausserland that if you are 
 drowned you may go to heaven; but certainly 
 not to Ausserland. 
 
 And who would want to leave Ausserland ? 
 Life is so easy there that it takes most of the 
 inhabitants about ninety years to die and even 
 then you can hardly call it dying. Life's pendu 
 lum only slows down day by day, and swings 
 through an arc that imperceptibly diminishes as
 
 the years go on, until at last, without surprise, 
 without shock, almost without regret, so gradual 
 is the process, you perceive that it has stopped. 
 And then the whole village, all in Sunday clothes, 
 marches out to the little graveyard on the hill, 
 and somebody's great birchen beer-mug is hung 
 on the living-room wall in memory of one who 
 ate and drank and slept, and who is no more. 
 There are rooms in those old houses in Ausser- 
 land where the wooden mugs hang in a double 
 row, and the oldest of them was last touched 
 by living lips in days when the dragon-ships of 
 the Vikings ploughed that Northern sea. 
 
 Ausserland is a principality, and a part of 
 a mighty empire; but except that it has to pay 
 its taxes, and in return is guaranteed immunity 
 from foreign invasion, it might just as well be 
 an independent kingdom; or, rather, an inde 
 pendent state, for it is governed by Burgesses, 
 elected by the people to administer laws made 
 hundreds of years ago, and still quite good and 
 suitable. If a man steals his neighbor's goods, 
 he is put in the pillory. But what should a
 
 V fl&ore "Sbort Sir.es." V 
 
 man steal his neighbor's goods for when he has 
 all the goods that he wants of his own ? The 
 last time the pillory was used was for a ship 
 wrecked Spanish sailor who refused to go to 
 church on the ground of a rooted prejudice 
 against the Protestant religion. And it must 
 have been a singularly comfortable pillory, for 
 somehow or other he managed to carve his 
 name on it during the hour in which he stood 
 there his name and the date of the event, 
 and there they are to this day : " Miguel Diaz 
 jul 6 1743." My own opinion is that they did 
 not even let the top-piece down on him. 
 
 The men of Ausserland are not liable to 
 conscription, and as no ships of war ever come 
 to their odd corner of the sea, they know no 
 more of the mighty struggles of their great 
 empire than if they were half a world away. 
 This is a part of the beautiful understanding 
 which the Ausserlanders have established with 
 their hereditary Prince and with the imperial 
 government. The Prince lives at the court of 
 the Emperor, and none of his line has seen 
 Ausserland since his grandfather was there in 
 the last century for a day's visit. Yet his rela 
 tions with his subjects are of a permanently 
 pleasant nature. They pay him his taxes, of 
 which he hands over the lion's share to the 
 government, keeping enough for himself to attire 
 his plump person in beautiful uniforms and tight 
 cavalry boots, and to cultivate the most beautiful 
 port-wine nose in the whole court. The amount 
 of the taxes has been settled long ago, and it 
 is always exactly the same. The Ausserland 
 fishermen are like a sort of deep-sea Dutchmen, 
 138
 
 Gbe tTbiro jfiflure in Gbe Cotillion. 
 
 independent, sturdy and shrewd. They know 
 just how much they ought to pay; and they pay 
 it, and not one soumarkee more or less. Ages 
 ago the hereditary Princes discovered that 
 if they put up the tax-rate, the herring 
 fisheries promptly failed just in the 
 necessary proportion to bring the 
 assessment back to the old figure. 
 When they lowered the rate the 
 accommodating herring came back. 
 It was a curious if not pleasing 
 freak of nature to which they had 
 to accustom themselves, for it never 
 would have done to leave the mar 
 ket open to any other supply of 
 herrings than the famous herrings 
 of Ausserland. So that question 
 settled itself. 
 
 Twice a year the finest of the broad- 
 breasted fishing smacks sailed for the distant 
 mainland, bearing heavy cargoes of dried fish, 
 and beautiful seashells such as were to be found 
 nowhere else. Twice a year they came back, 
 bringing cloths and calicos, always of the same 
 quality, color and pattern, for the fashions never 
 change in Ausserland. They brought also drugs 
 and medicines, school-books and pipes, tools and 
 household utensils of the finer sort, more delicate 
 than the Ausserland ironsmiths could fashion; 
 brandy and cordials and wine in casks great and 
 small, and the few other articles of commerce 
 for which they were dependent upon the outer 
 world ; for the Ausserlanders supplied their own 
 needs for the most part, spun their own linen, 
 tanned their own leather, built their own boats, 
 
 159
 
 "Sbort Sixes.'* ^ 
 
 and generally "did" for themselves, as they say 
 in New England. Then it was, and then only, 
 that the newspapers came to Ausserland a six- 
 months' collection of newspapers at each trip. 
 And the Head Burgess read them for the whole 
 town. The Head Burgess was always a man 
 who had reached that period of thrift and pros 
 perity at which it seemed futile to toil longer, 
 and who was both willing and able to give his 
 whole leisure to affairs of state. He it was who 
 collected and forwarded the taxes, and who stood 
 ready to punish offenders, should any one feel 
 tempted to offend. The Head Burgess always 
 grumbled a good deal, and talked much of the 
 burdens of public life; but it was observant 
 among even the unobservant Ausserlanders that 
 the Head Burgess was usually the fattest man 
 in town; and the post was much sought after 
 because few Head Burgesses had been known to 
 die under ninety-two or three years of age. 
 
 As a rule, the Head Burgess read slowly and 
 with deliberation. Of a June afternoon, when the 
 fishermen came in from their day's work, he would 
 stroll leisurely down to the wharves, with his long 
 pipe with the painted china bowl, and would give 
 forth the news of the day to the fishermen. 
 
 " Three families," he would say, " were 
 frozen to death in Hamburg." 
 
 "Ah, indeed! " some courteous listener would 
 respond; "and when was that?" 
 
 " In February last," the Head Burgess would 
 reply; "it seems scandalous, does it not, that 
 people should never learn to go in-doors and keep 
 the fires lighted in Winter? Thank heaven, we 
 have no such idiots here ! " 
 
 160
 
 tbe Cbiro jfigure in be Cotillion, 
 
 For an Ausserlander can never understand 
 what it means to be poor or needy. How can 
 anybody want, he argues, while there are mil 
 lions of herring in the sea, and they come along 
 every year just at the same time ? 
 
 In Spring, of course, the 
 Head Burgess gave the Aus- 
 serlanders a budget of 
 news that began with the 
 preceding Summer. They 
 listened to it politely, as 
 they listened to the pas- ' L 
 tor's sermons. Outside of 
 the market -reports they 
 had little interest in the 
 world which ate their her 
 rings. Still, they were a polite 
 and intelligent people, and they 
 were willing for once in a way to 
 lend a courteous and attentive ear 
 to the doings and sayings of people who were 
 not happy enough to live in Ausserland. Thus 
 it happened that they knew, several months after 
 it occurred, of the death of the reigning Emperor 
 and the accession to the throne of his son. The 
 news was received with just the least shade of 
 disapproval. The preceding Emperor had come 
 to the throne a sick man, and had reigned but a 
 short time. His father had reigned about as 
 long as an Emperor can possibly reign, and they 
 felt that he had done what was expected of him. 
 They hoped that their Emperors were not going 
 to get into the habit of reigning for a few months 
 and then dying. It was annoying, they thought, 
 to have to learn new names every few years.
 
 ^ /Ifcore "Sbort Sijes." <J^ 
 
 So it is not remarkable that the new Em 
 peror had been several months on his throne 
 before the good people of Ausserland learned 
 that he was a very peculiar young man, with 
 a character of his own, and with a passion, that 
 almost amounted to a mania, for re-establishing 
 an ancient order of things that had well - nigh 
 perished from the face of the earth. Nor is it 
 to be wondered at that, considering all news of 
 the court as frivolous and probably fictitious, 
 they were -utterly ignorant of a controversy that 
 had divided the whole social system of the em 
 pire into two camps. Who could expect that 
 in the cosy, well-furnished rooms of the weather- 
 beaten old houses of Ausserland it should be 
 known that there was a vast commotion in the 
 Imperial court over the new cotillion introduced 
 by the Lord Chamberlain ? It was a charming 
 cotillion, all agreed; the music was ravishing, 
 and the figures were exquisitely original ; but 
 the third figure ah, there was the trouble! 
 the third figure had not met with the approval 
 of the matrons. The young girls and the very 
 young married women all liked it; and the men 
 were as a unit in its favor; but the more elderly 
 ladies thought that it was indelicate, and that 
 it afforded opportunities for objectionable famili 
 arities. A hot war was raged between the two 
 parties. The Emperor, of course, was arbiter. 
 He hesitated long. He was a very young man, 
 and he took himself very much in earnest. To 
 him a matter of court punctilio had an impor 
 tance scarcely second to that of the fate of na 
 tions. As soon as an objection was offered, he 
 issued an edict proscribing the performance of 
 162
 
 the dance of dubious propriety until such time 
 as he should have made up his imperial mind 
 as to its character. For three months its fate 
 trembled in the balance. Then he decided that 
 it should be and continue to be; and he issued 
 a formal proclamation to that effect the first 
 formal proclamation of his reign. It was an op 
 portunity for the re-introduction of ancient and 
 ancestral methods which the young Emperor 
 could not lose. The edict had gone forth in 
 haste by word of mouth and by notice in the 
 daily papers ; but he resolved that the procla 
 mation should go by special envoy to all the 
 principalities that composed his powerful em 
 pire. Accordingly, an officer of high rank, spe 
 cially despatched from the court, read his Impe 
 rial Majesty's proclamation in every principality 
 of the nation; and thereafter it was legitimate 
 and proper to dance the third figure of the new 
 Lord Chamberlain's cotillion on all occasions of 
 lordly festivities, and all the elderly ladies ac 
 cepted the situation with a cheerful submissive-
 
 V M>re "Sbort Sijes." if 
 
 ness, and set about using it for scandal-monger 
 ing purposes with promptitude and alacrity. 
 
 Early one Midsummer morning a strange 
 fishing - smack was sighted from the Ausserland 
 wharves far out at sea, beating up against an 
 obstinate wind, and coming from the direction 
 of the mainland. This in itself was enough to 
 cause general comment and to stir the whole 
 village with a thrill of interest; for strange 
 vessels rarely came that way, except under 
 stress of storm; and though the sea was run 
 ning unusually high there had been no storm 
 in many days. Besides, why should a vessel 
 obviously unfitted for that sort of sailing, beat 
 up against a wind that would take her to the 
 mainland in half the time ? Yet there she was, 
 making for the island in long, laborious tacks. 
 Everybody stopped work to look at her; but 
 work was suspended and utterly thrown aside 
 when she hoisted a pennant that, according to 
 the nautical code, signified that she had on 
 board an Envoy from his Imperial Majesty. 
 
 The whole town was astir in a moment. 
 The shops and schools closed. The village 
 band began to practice as it had never prac 
 ticed before. The burgesses and other officials 
 donned their garments of state. A committee 
 was promptly appointed to prepare a public 
 banquet worthy of the Emperor's messenger. 
 The children were sent collecting flowers, and 
 were instructed how to strew them in his path. 
 The bell-ringers gathered and arranged an elabo- 
 164.
 
 mM> 
 
 rate programme of chimes. The citizens got 
 into their Sunday clothes, which were most 
 wonderful clothes in their way; and the town- 
 crier, who played the trumpet, got his instru 
 ment out and polished it up until it shone 
 like gold. But the man who felt most of the 
 burden of responsibility upon his shoulders was 
 the Head Burgess. He got into his robes of 
 office as quickly as his wife and his three 
 daughters could array him, and then he hastened 
 to the Rathhaus, or Town Hall, and there con 
 sulted the archives to find out from the records 
 of his predecessors what it became him to do 
 when his Majesty's Envoy should announce his
 
 "Sbort Sties." ^ 
 
 errand. He must make a speech, that was 
 clear, for the honor of the Island. But what 
 speech should he make? He could not com 
 pose one on the instant in fact, he could not 
 compose one at all. What had his forerunners 
 done on like occasions ? He looked over the 
 record and found that three King's Envoys had 
 landed on the Island: one in 1699, to announce 
 that the Island had been ceded by one kingdom 
 to another; another in 1764, to inform the 
 people that the great -grandmother of the heredi 
 tary Prince was dead; and another in 1848, 
 to proclaim that the Islanders' right of exemption 
 from conscription was suspended. In not one 
 of these cases, it should be remarked, did the 
 message of King, Prince or Emperor, change the 
 face of affairs on the Island in the smallest 
 degree. The herring market remaining stable, 
 the Ausserlanders cared no whit to whom they 
 paid taxes; as to the death of the Prince's great- 
 grandmother, they simply remarked that it was a 
 pity to die at the early age of eighty-seven ; and 
 when they were told that they would have to get 
 up a draft and be conscripted into the army or 
 navy, they just went fishing, and there the 
 matter dropped. One is not an Ausserlander for 
 nothing. 
 
 But the Head Burgess found that the same 
 speech had been used on all three occasions. It 
 was short, and he had little difficulty in commit 
 ting it to memory, for it took the ship of his 
 Majesty's Envoy six good hours to get into port. 
 This was the speech i 
 
 "Noble and Honorable, Well and High- 
 Born Sir, the people of Ausserland desire through 
 
 /66
 
 ^ Cbe Cbtrfc ffigure in Gbe Cotillion, y 
 
 their representative, the Head Burgess, to affirm 
 their unwavering loyalty to the most illustrious 
 and high-born personage who condescends to 
 assume the government of a loyal and inde 
 pendent populace, and to express the hope that 
 Divine Providence may endow him with such 
 power and capacity as properly befit a so-situated 
 ruler." 
 
 So heartily did the whole population throw 
 itself into the work of preparing to receive the 
 distinguished visitor, that everything had been in 
 readiness a full hour, when, in the early after 
 noon, the fishing-smack finally made her landing. 
 During this long hour, the whole town watched 
 the struggles of the little boat with the baffling 
 wind and waves. Everybody was in a state of 
 delighted expectancy. An Emperor's Envoy does 
 not call on one every day, and his coming offered 
 an excuse for merry-making such as the prosper 
 ous and easy-going people of Ausserland were 
 only too willing to seize. 
 
 So, when the boat made fast to the wharf, 
 the signal guns boomed, and the people cheered 
 again and again, and threw their caps in the air 
 when the King's Envoy appeared from the cabin 
 and returned the salute of the Head Burgess. 
 
 And, indeed, the King's Envoy was a most 
 satisfactory and gratifying spectacle of grandeur. 
 He was so grand and so gorgeous generally that 
 he might have been taken for the hereditary 
 Prince, himself, had it not been well known that 
 the color of the hereditary Prince's nose was 
 unchangeable being what the ladies call a fast 
 red whereas, this gentleman's face was as 
 white as the Head Burgess's frilled shirt-front.
 
 t^ flfcore "Sbort Sijes." -y 
 
 But his clothes! So splendid a uniform was 
 never seen before. Some of it was of cobalt 
 blue and some of it of Prussian blue, and some 
 of it of white; and, all over, in every possible 
 place, it was decorated with a gold lace and gold 
 buttons and silken frogs and tassels, and every 
 other device of beauty that ingenuity could sug 
 gest, with complete disregard of cost. 
 
 And then His Serene Highness, Herr Graf 
 Maximilian von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummel- 
 fels in the Schwarzwald, stepped on the wharf 
 and graciously introduced himself to the repre 
 sentative of the people, who grasped him warmly 
 by the hand with a cordiality untempered by 
 
 168
 
 y Cbe Cbirfc ffigure in Cbe Cotillion, -y 
 
 awe ; and the people shouted again as they saw 
 the two great men together; and not one sus 
 pected the anguish hidden by that martial out 
 side. For, of course, as such things will happen, 
 the Envoy selected to carry the Emperor's proc 
 lamation to this marine principality was a man 
 who had never been to sea in his life, and who 
 never would have made a sailor if he had been 
 kept at sea until he was pickled. And for 
 eighteen hours the unfortunate messenger of good 
 tidings had been tossed about in the dark, close, 
 malodorous little cabin of a fishing-smack on the 
 breast of a chopping sea, beating up against a 
 strong head wind. And, oh ! had he not been 
 sick? Sick, sick, sick, and then again sick 
 so sick, indeed, that he had had to hide his 
 gorgeous clothes under a sailor's dirty tarpaulin. 
 This made him feel sicker yet; but, though in 
 the course of the trip he lost his respect for 
 mankind, including himself, for royalty, for 
 religion, for life and for death, he still retained 
 a vital spark of respect for his beautiful clothes. 
 He stood motionless upon the wharf and re 
 turned the compliments of the Head Burgess in 
 a husky voice that sounded in his own ears 
 strange and far offi The Herr Graf Maximilian 
 von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the 
 Schwarzwald, Envoy of his Imperial Majesty, was 
 waiting for the ground to steady itself, for it 
 was behaving as it had never behaved before, to 
 his knowledge. It rolled and it heaved, it flew 
 up and it nearly hit him in the face, then it 
 slipped away from under him and rocked back 
 again sidewise. Never having been on an island 
 before, the King's Envoy might have thought that
 
 "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 the land was really afloat if he had not seen 
 that the wine in the silver cup which the Burgess 
 was presenting to him was swinging around like 
 everything else without spilling a drop. 
 
 Things began to settle a little after the 
 Envoy had drunk the wine, and when he had 
 found that there was actually a carriage to take 
 him to the Town Hall, he brightened up won 
 derfully. He was much pleased to see also that 
 the Town Hall was solidly built of brick, and 
 that it was to a stone balcony that he was led 
 to read his proclamation to the people. Grasp 
 ing the balustrade firmly with one hand, he read 
 to the surging crowd before him he had heard 
 of surging crowds before, but now he saw one 
 that really did surge the message of his Im 
 perial Master. The proclamation was exceed 
 ingly brief, except for the recital of the titles of 
 the P_^mperor. The body of the document ran 
 as follows: 
 
 " I announce to my faithful, loyal and de 
 voted subjects of the honorable principality of 
 Ausserland, that hereafter, by my favor and 
 pleasure, the use of the Third Figure in the 
 Cotillion is graciously granted to them without 
 further restriction. Done, under my hand and 
 seal, this first day of July, in the year of our 
 Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-two." 
 
 That was all. The people listened atten 
 tively and cheered enthusiastically. Then the 
 Envoy handed the proclamation and his creden 
 tials to the Head Burgess, with a bow and a 
 flourish, and signified his intention of returning 
 at once by the way he had come. Nor could 
 any entreaties prevail upon him even to stay to
 
 the banquet already spread. He told the Bur 
 gesses, with many compliments and assurances 
 of his lofty esteem, that he had another princi 
 pality to notify before six o'clock the next morn 
 ing, and that the business of his Imperial Mas 
 ter admitted of not so much as a moment's 
 delay. The truth of the matter, however, he 
 kept to himself. For one thing, he could not 
 have gazed upon food without disastrous results. 
 For another, he was experiencing an emotion 
 which in any other than a military breast would 
 have been fear. He had but one wish in the 
 world, and that was to get back to the main 
 land, the breeze being in his favor going back 
 and promising a quicker passage. Indeed it was 
 with difficulty that he repressed a mad desire to 
 ask the Head Burgess whether the island ever 
 fetched loose and floated further out, or sank to 
 the bottom. However, he maintained his dig-
 
 ^ /Bbore "Sbort Stjes." ^ 
 
 nity to the last; and, a half an hour later, as 
 the people watched the fishing - smack with the 
 Imperial ensign sail forth upon the dancing sea, 
 bearing the Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummel- 
 berg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the Scrfwarzwald, 
 they all agreed that, for a short visit, he made a 
 very satisfactory King's Envoy. 
 
 But they could banquet very well without 
 assistance from Envoys or anybody, and they sat 
 them down in the great hall of the Rathhaus, and 
 they fell upon the smoked herring and the fresh 
 herring, and the pickled herring, and the smoked 
 goose-breast and the potato salad, and all the rest 
 of the good things, and they drank great tankards 
 of home-made beer, and great flagons of imported 
 Rhenish wine; and, after that, they smoked long 
 pipes and chatted contentedly, mainly about the 
 herring-market. 
 
 They had reached this stage in the proceed 
 ings before it occurred to any one in the com 
 pany to broach the comparatively uninteresting 
 subject of the Imperial proclamation, and then 
 somebody said in a casual way that he did not 
 think he had quite caught the sense of it. Soon 
 it appeared that no one else had. The Head 
 Burgess was puzzled. " I have just copied it into 
 the Town Archives," he said; "but, upon my soul, 
 I never thought of considering the sense of it." 
 So the document was taken from the ponderous 
 safe of the Rathhaus and passed around among 
 the goodly company, each one of whom read it 
 slowly through and smoked solemnly over it. 
 The Head Burgess was appealed to for the mean 
 ing of the word " cotillion." He had to confess 
 that he did not exactly know. He believed,
 
 however, that it was a custom-house word, and 
 had reference to the gauging of proof spirits. 
 Then the Doctor was asked his opinion. He 
 said, somewhat uneasily, that he thought it was 
 one of the new chemicals recently derived from 
 coal tar; but, with all due respect to his Imperial 
 Majesty, he took no stock in such new-fangled 
 nonsense, and castor-oil would be good enough 
 for his patients while he lived. The School- 
 Master would know, some one suggested; but 
 the School- Master had gone home early, being 
 in expectation of an addition to his family. The 
 Dominie took a hand in the discussion, and call 
 ing attention to the word figure, opined that it 
 belonged to some branch of astronomy hitherto 
 under the ban of the universities on account of its 
 tendency to unsettle the minds of young men and 
 promote the growth of infidelity. He lamented 
 the atheistical tendency of modern times, and 
 shook his head gravely as he said he hoped that 
 the young Emperor would not be led astray.
 
 "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 Many suggestions were made ; so many, in 
 deed, that, it being plainly impossible to arrive at 
 a consensus of opinion, the subject was dropped; 
 and, wrapped in great clouds of tobacco smoke, 
 the conversation made its way back to the herring 
 fisheries. 
 
 But, later in the night, as the Head Burgess 
 and the Doctor strolled slowly homeward, smok 
 ing their pipes in the calm moonlight, the ques 
 tion came up again, and they were earnestly dis 
 cussing it in deep, sonorous tones when they 
 came in front of the house of the School- Master, 
 and saw by a light in the window of his study 
 that he was still waiting the pleasure of Mrs. 
 School- Master. They rapped with their pipes on 
 the door-post, giving the signal that had often 
 called their old friend forth to late card-parties at 
 the tavern, and in a couple of minutes for no 
 one hurries in Ausserland he appeared at the 
 door in his old green dressing-gown and with his 
 long-stemmed pipe in his mouth. 
 
 Now, the School-Master was not only a 
 man of profound learning, but a man of rapid 
 mental processes. He had heard from his open 
 window the discussion as his two friends slowly 
 came down the street; and, in point of fact, his 
 professional instinct had led him to note the 
 mystic word when it dropped from the Envoy's 
 lips. This it was, rather than domestic expecta 
 tions, that had kept him awake so late. And in 
 the time that elapsed between the arrival of his 
 friends and his appearance at the door, he had 
 prepared himself to meet the situation. 
 
 He listened solemnly to the question with 
 the tolerant interest of a man of science, and he 
 '74
 
 ^ff- be abirD jrtflure in ftbe Cotillion. ^ 
 
 answered it without hesitation, in the imposing 
 tone of perfect knowledge. 
 
 " A cotillion," he said, decisively, " is the 
 one-billionth part of a minus million in quater 
 nions, and is used by surveyors to determine the 
 
 logarithm of the cube root. That is, its use has 
 hitherto been forbidden to the government sur 
 veyors on account of the uncertainty of the 
 formula. That, however, has been finally deter 
 mined by Prof. Lipsius, of Munich, and here 
 after it may be applied to delicate calculations 
 in determining the altitude of mountains too 
 lofty for ascent. Gentlemen, I should like to 
 175
 
 y- /Ifcore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 ask you in to take a night-cap with me, but, 
 under the circumstances, you understand .... 
 Doctor, I don't think we shall need you to 
 night. Good-evening, friends." 
 
 The Doctor and the Head Burgess rumi 
 nated over this new acquisition to their stock 
 of knowledge as they strolled on down the street. 
 At last the latter broke the silence and said, in 
 a tone in which conviction struggled with sleepi 
 ness : 
 
 " Doctor, I have often thought what a hard 
 life those poor devils on the mainland must have 
 with their impassable mountains, and their rail 
 roads that kill and mangle you if they get a mil 
 lionth part of a cube root out of the way, and the 
 boundary-lines they are everlastingly quarreling 
 about. Why, here in Ausserland, see how simple 
 it all is ! We never have any trouble about our 
 boundary-lines. Where the land stops the water 
 begins, and where the land begins the water 
 stops ; and that 's all there is to it ! " 
 
 And with these words, as the last puff of 
 his pipe rose heavenward, the Burgess dismissed 
 the matter from his mind, and the Emperor's
 
 ^ Cbe tTbirfc jfigure in tTbe Cotillion, -y- 
 
 proclamation legitimizing the Third Figure of 
 the Cotillion vanished from his memory and 
 from that of all Ausserland passing into ob 
 livion with those that had told of Ausserland's 
 change of nationality, of the conscription of her 
 exempt citizens, and of the death of the great- 
 grandmother of the hereditary Prince. 
 
 177
 
 " SAMANTH A BOOM-DE-AY."
 
 "SAMANTHA BOOM-DE-AY." 
 
 T was a long, rough, sunlit stretch of stony 
 turnpike that climbed across the flanks of a 
 mountain range in Maine, and skirted a 
 great forest for many miles, on its way to 
 an upland farming-country near the Canada 
 border. 
 
 As you ascended this road, on your right 
 hand was a continuous wall of dull-hued ever 
 greens, straggly pines and cedars, crowded closely 
 and rising high above a thick underbrush. Be 
 hind this lay the vast, mysterious, silent wilder 
 ness. Here and there the emergence of a foamy, 
 rushing river, or the entrance of a narrow 
 corduroy road or trail, afforded a glimpse into its 
 depths, and then you saw the slopes of hills and 
 valleys, clad ever in one smoky, bluish veil of 
 fir and pine. 
 
 On the other hand, where you could see 
 through the roadside brush, you looked down the 
 mountain slope to the plains below, where the 
 brawling mountain streams quieted down into 
 pleasant water-courses; where broad patches of 
 meadow land and wheat field spread out from 
 edges of the woods, and where, far, far off, clusters 
 of farm-houses, and further yet, towns and vil 
 lages, sent their smoke up above the hazy horizon. 
 
 180
 
 ^r "Samantba $oom*fce*aB." ^ 
 
 It was a road of so much variety and sweep 
 of view, as it kept its course along the boundary 
 of the forest's dateless antiquity, and yet in full 
 view of the prosperous outposts of a well- 
 established civilization, that the most calloused 
 traveler might have been expected to look about 
 him and take an interest in his surroundings. 
 But the three people who drove slowly up this 
 hill one August afternoon might have been pass 
 ing through a tunnel for all the attention they 
 paid to the shifting scene. 
 
 Their vehicle was a farm - wagon ; a fine, 
 fresh- painted Concord wagon. The horses that 
 drew it were large, sleek, and a little too fat. A 
 comfortable country prosperity appeared in the 
 whole outfit ; and, although the raiment of the 
 three travelers was unfashionably plain, they all 
 three had an aspect of robust health and physical 
 well-being, which was much at variance with 
 their dismal countenances for the middle-aged 
 man who was driving looked sheepish and embar 
 rassed; the good-looking, sturdy young fellow by 
 his side was clearly in a state of frank, undis 
 guised dejection, and the black-garbed woman, 
 who sat behind in a splint-bottomed chair, had 
 the extra-hard granite expression of the New 
 England woman who particularly disapproves -of 
 something ; whether that something be the des 
 truction of her life's best hopes or her neighbor's 
 method of making pie. 
 
 For mile after mile they jogged along in 
 silence. Occasionally the elder man would make 
 some brief and commonplace remark in a tenta 
 tive way, as though to start a conversation. To 
 these feeble attempts the young man made no
 
 response whatever. The woman in black some 
 times nodded and sometimes said "Yes?" with 
 a rising inflection, which is a form of torture 
 invented and much practiced in the New Eng 
 land States. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when a noise 
 behind and below them made them all glance 
 round. The middle-aged man drew his horses 
 to one side; and, in a cloud of dust, a big, old- 
 fashioned stage of a dull-red color overtook them 
 and lumbered on its way, the two drivers inter 
 changing careless nods. 
 
 The woman did not alter her rigid attitude, 
 and kept her eyes cast down ; but the passing 
 of the stage awakened a noticeable interest in 
 the two men on the front seat. The elder gazed 
 with surprise and curiosity at the freight that the 
 top of the stage - coach bore three or four 
 182
 
 "Samantba 
 
 traveling trunks of unusual size, shape and color, 
 clamped with iron and studded with heavy nails. 
 
 " Be them trunks ? " he inquired, staring 
 open-mouthed at the sight. "I never seen trunks 
 like them before." 
 
 Neither of his com 
 panions answered him; 
 but a curious new 
 expression came 
 into the young 
 man's face. He 
 sat up straight 
 for the first 
 time ; and, as 
 the wagon drew 
 back into the 
 narrow road, he 
 began to whistle 
 softly and melodiously 
 
 When Samantha Spaulding was left a widow 
 with a little boy, she got, as one of her neighbors 
 expressed it, " more politeness than pity." In 
 truth, in so far as. the condition has any luck 
 about it, Samantha was lucky in her widowhood. 
 She was a young widow, and a well-to-do widow. 
 Old man Spaulding had been a good provider 
 and a good husband ; but he was much older 
 than his wife, and had not particularly engaged 
 her affections. Now that he was dead, after 
 some eighteen months of married life, and had 
 left her one of the two best farms in the county, 
 everybody supposed that Mis' Spaulding would 
 183
 
 "Short Sijes." 
 
 marry Reuben Pett, who owned the other best 
 farm, besides a saw-mill and a stage-route. That 
 is, everybody thought so, except Samantha and 
 Pett. They calmly kept on in their individual 
 ways, and showed no inclination to join their 
 two properties, though these throve and waxed 
 more and more valuable year by year. They 
 were good friends, however. Reuben Pett was 
 a sagacious counselor, and a prudent man of 
 affairs ; and when Samantha's boy became old 
 enough to work, he was apprenticed to Mr. Pett, 
 to the end that he might some day take charge 
 of the saw-mill business, which his mother stood 
 ready to buy. for him. 
 
 But the youthful Baxter 
 Spaulding had not reached the 
 age of twenty when he cast 
 down his mother's hopes in 
 utter ruin by coming home 
 from a business trip to Augusta 
 and announcing that he was 
 going to marry, and that the 
 bride of his choice was a young 
 lady of the variety stage who 
 danced for a living, her spe 
 cialty being known as "hitch- 
 and-kick." 
 
 Now, this may not seem, to you who read 
 this, quite a complete, perfect and unimprovable 
 thing in the way of the abomination of deso 
 lation; but then you must remember that you 
 were not born and raised in a far corner of the 
 Maine hills, and that you probably have so 
 frequently seen play-actoress-women of all sorts 
 that the mere idea of them has ceased to give
 
 ^ "Samantba ;ooms&e*a8." ^ 
 
 you cold creeps down your back. And to 
 Samantha Spaulding the whole theatrical system, 
 from the Tragic Muse to the " hitch-and-kick 
 artiste," was conceived in sin and born in in 
 iquity ; and what her son proposed to do was 
 to her no whit better than forgery, arson, or any 
 other ungodliness. To you of a less distinctively 
 Aroostook code of morals, I may say that the 
 enchainer of young Spaulding's heart was quite 
 as good a little girl in her morals and her man 
 ners as you need want to find on the stage or 
 off it; and "hitch-and-kick" dancing was to her 
 only a matter of business, as serio-comic singing 
 had been to her mother, as playing Harlequin 
 had been to her father, and as grinning through 
 a horse-collar had been to her grandfather and 
 great-grandfather, famous old English clowns in 
 their day, one of whom had been a partner of 
 Grimaldi. She made her living, it is true, by 
 traveling around the country singing a song 
 called "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," which required a 
 great deal of high-kicking for its just and full 
 artistic expression ; but then, it should be re 
 membered, it was the way she had always made 
 her living, and her mother's living, too, since the 
 old lady lost her serio-comic voice. And as her 
 mother had taught her all she knew about danc 
 ing, and as she and her mother had hardly been 
 separated for an hour since she was out of her 
 cradle, Little Betty Billington looked on her pro 
 fession, as you well may imagine, with eyes quite 
 different from those with which Mrs. Samantha 
 Spaulding regarded it. It was a lop-sided contest 
 that ensued, and that lasted for months. On one 
 side were Baxter and his Betty and Betty's mama
 
 ^ tf&ore "Short Stjes." ^ 
 
 after that good lady got over her natural 
 objections to having her daughter marry " out 
 of the profession." On the other side was 
 Samantha, determined enough to be a match for 
 all three of them. Mr. Reuben Pett hovered on 
 the outskirts, asking only peace. 
 
 At last he was dragged into the fight. 
 Baxter Spaulding went to Bangor, where his 
 lady's company happened to be playing, with 
 the avowed intention of wedding Betty out of 
 hand. When his mother found it out, she took 
 Reuben Pett and her boy's apprenticeship - in 
 denture to Bangor with her, caught the youngster 
 ere the deed was done, and, having the majesty 
 of the law behind her, she was taking her help 
 less captive home on this particular August 
 afternoon. He was on the front seat of the 
 wagon, Samantha was on the splint - bottomed 
 chair, and Reuben Pett was driving. 
 
 It was a two-days' drive from the railroad 
 station at Byram's Pond around the spur of the 
 mountain to their home. The bi-weekly stage 
 did it in a day; but it was unwonted traveling 
 for Mr. Pett's easy-going team. Therefore, the 
 three travelers put up at Canada Jake's camp ; 
 so called, though it was only on the edge of 
 the wilderness, because it was what Maine people 
 generally mean when they talk of a "camp" 
 a large shanty of rough, unpainted planks, with 
 a kitchen and eating-room below, and rudely 
 partitioned sleeping -rooms in the upper story. 
 It stood by the roadside, and served the purpose 
 of an inn. 
 
 iS6
 
 y- "Samantba JBoom*Ce*aE." ^ 
 
 Canada Jake was lounging in the doorway 
 as they came up, squat, bullet-headed and bead- 
 eyed; a very ordinary specimen of mean French 
 Canadian. He welcomed them in as if he were 
 conferring a favor upon them, fed them upon 
 black, fried meat and soggy, boiled potatos, 
 and later on bestowed them in three wretched 
 enclosures overhead. 
 
 He himself staid awake until the sound of 
 two bass and one treble snore penetrated the 
 thin partition planks ; and then he stole softly 
 up the ladder that served for stairway, and 
 slipped into the moonlit little room where Baxter 
 Spaulding was lying on a cot -bed six inches 
 too short for him. Putting his finger upon his 
 lips, he whispered to the wakeful youth : 
 
 "Sh-h-h-h-h-h! You got you' boots on?" 
 
 "No," said Baxter softly. 
 
 " Come wiz me and don' make no noise ! " 
 
 And the next thing that Baxter Spaulding 
 knew, he was outside of the house, behind the 
 wood-pile, holding a slight but charming figure 
 in his arms, and saying : 
 
 "Why, Betty! why, Betty!" in a dazed 
 sort of way, while a fat and motherly lady 
 near by stood shaking with silent sobs, like a 
 jelly-fish convulsed with sympathy and affection. 
 
 "We 'eaded you off in the stage-coach!" 
 was all she said. 
 
 The next morning Mr. Reuben Pett was 
 called out of the land of dreams by a familiar 
 feminine voice from the next room. 
 187
 
 ' 
 
 "Reuben Pett ! " it said; "where is Baxter?" 
 
 "Baxter!" yelled Mr. Pett; "your ma 
 wants yer! " 
 
 But Baxter came not. His room was 
 empty. Mr. Pett descended and found his host 
 out by the wood-pile, splitting kindling. Canada 
 Jake had seen nothing whatever of the young 
 man. He opined that the youth most 'ave got 
 up airlee, go feeshin'. 
 
 Reuben Pett went back and reported to 
 Samantha Spaulding through the door. Sa- 
 mantha's voice came back to him as a voice 
 from the bottom sub-cellar of abysmal gloom. 
 
 "Reuben," she said; "them women have 
 been here ! " 
 
 "Why, Samantha!" he said; "it ain't 
 possible ! " 
 
 "I heard them last night," returned Sa 
 mantha, in tones of conviction. " I know, 
 now. I did. I thought then I was dreamin'." 
 188
 
 %f "Samantba 
 
 " Most likely you was, too ! " said Mr. Pett, 
 encouragingly. 
 
 "Well, I wa'n't!" rejoined Mrs. Spaulding, 
 with a suddenness and an acerbity that made her 
 listener jump. " They 've stole my clothes /" 
 
 "Whatever do you mean, Samantha ?" roared 
 Reuben Pett. 
 
 "I mean," said Mrs. Spaulding, in a tone 
 that left no doubt whatever that what she did 
 mean she meant very hard; "I mean that that 
 hussy has been here in the night, and has took 
 every stitch and string of my clothing, and ain't 
 left me so much as a button-hole, except ex 
 cept except " 
 
 "Except what?" demanded Reuben, in 
 stark amazement. 
 
 " Except that there idolatrous flounced frock 
 the shameless critter doos her stage-dancing in ! " 
 
 Mr. Pett might, perhaps, have offered appro 
 priate condolences on this bereavement had not 
 a thought struck him which made him scramble 
 down the ladder again and hasten to the wood 
 shed, where he had put up his team the night 
 before. The team was gone the fat horses and 
 fresh painted wagon, and the tracks led back 
 down the road up which they had ridden the day 
 before. 
 
 Once more Mr. Pett climbed the ladder; 
 but when he announced his loss he was met, to 
 his astonishment, with severity instead of with 
 sympathy. 
 
 "I don't care, Reuben Pett," Samantha 
 
 spoke through the door ; " if you 've lost ten 
 
 horses and nineteen wagons. You got to hitch 
 
 some kind of a critter to suthin\ for we 're goin' 
 
 189
 
 /Jfcore "Sbort Sixes." 
 
 to ketch them people to-day or my name 's not 
 Samantha Spaulding." 
 
 "But Law Sakes Alive, Samantha!" expos 
 tulated Mr. Pett ; " you ain't goin' to wear no 
 circus clothes, be ye ? " 
 
 "You go hunt a team, Mr. Pett," returned 
 his companion, tartly ; I know my own business." 
 Mr. Pett remonstrated. He point 
 ed out that there was neither 
 horse nor vehicle to be 
 had in the neighbor 
 hood, and that pur 
 suit was practically 
 hopeless in view of 
 the start which the 
 runaways had. But 
 Mrs. Spaulding was 
 obdurate with an ob 
 duracy that made the 
 heart of Reuben Pett 
 creep into his boots. 
 After ten minutes of 
 vain combating, he 
 saw, beyond a doubt, 
 that the chase would 
 have to continue even 
 if it were to be carried 
 on astraddle a pair of confis 
 cated cows. Having learned that 
 much, he went drearily down again to discuss the 
 situation with Canada Pete. Canada Pete was in 
 disposed to be of the slightest assistance, until 
 Mr. Pett reminded him of the danger of the 
 law in which he stands who aids a runaway 
 apprentice in his flight. After that, the sulky
 
 Canadian awoke to a new and anxious interest; 
 and, before long, he remembered that a lumberer 
 who lived "a piece" up the road had a bit of 
 meadow - land reclaimed from the forest, and 
 sometimes kept an old horse in it. It was a 
 horse, however, that had always positively refused 
 to go under saddle, so that a new complication 
 barred the way, until suddenly the swarthy face 
 of the habitant lit up with a joyful, white-toothed 
 grin. 
 
 "My old caleche zat I bring from Canada! 
 I let you have her, hey? You come wiz me!" 
 
 And Canada Pete led the way through the 
 underbrush to a bit of a clearing near his house, 
 where were accumulated many years' deposits 
 of household rubbish; and here, in a desert of 
 tin-cans and broken bottles and crockery, stood 
 the oldest of all old calashes. 
 
 There are calashes and calashes, but the 
 calash or caleche of Canada is practically of one 
 type. It is a high-hung, tilting chaise, with a 
 commodious back seat and a capacious hood, 
 and with an absurd, narrow, cushioned bar in 
 front for the driver to sit on. It is a startling- 
 looking vehicle in its mildest form, and when you 
 gaze upon a calash for the first time you will 
 probably wonder whether, if a stray boy should 
 catch on behind, the shafts would not fly up 
 into the air, bearing the horse between them. 
 Canada Pete's calash had evidently stood long 
 a monument of decay, yet being of sturdy and 
 simple construction, it showed distinct signs of 
 life when Pete seized its curved shafts and ran 
 it backward and forward to prove that the wheels 
 could still revolve and the great hood still nod
 
 and sway like a real calash in commission. It 
 was ragged, it was rusty, it was water-soaked and 
 weather-beaten, blistered and stained; but it 
 hung together, and bobbed along behind Canada 
 Pete, lurching and rickety, but still a vehicle, and 
 entitled to rank as such. 
 
 The calash was taken into Pete's back-yard ; 
 and then, after a brief and energetic campaign, 
 Pete secured the horse, which was a very good 
 match for the calash. He was an old horse, and 
 he had the spring-halt. He held his long ewe- 
 neck to one side, being blind in one eye ; and 
 this gave him the coquettish appearance of a 
 mincing old maid. A little polka step, which he 
 affected with his fore-feet, served to carry out 
 this idea. 
 
 Also, he had been feeding on grass for a 
 whole Summer, and his spirits were those of the 
 young lambkin that gambols in the mead. He 
 was happy, and he wanted to make others happy, 
 although he did not seem always to know the 
 
 IQ2
 
 ^ "Samantba 
 
 right way to go about it. When Mr. Pett and 
 Canada Pete had got this animal harnessed up 
 with odds and ends of rope and leather, they sat 
 down and wiped their brows. Then Mr. Pett 
 started off to notify Mrs. Samantha Spaulding. 
 
 Mr. Pett was a man unused to feminine 
 society, except such as he had grown up 
 with from early childhood, and he was of a 
 naturally modest, even bashful disposition. It 
 is not surprising, therefore, that he was startled 
 when, on re-entering the living-room of Canada 
 Pete's camp, he found himself face to face with a 
 strange lady, and a lady, at that, of a strangeness 
 that he had never conceived of before. She 
 wore upon her head a preposterously tall bonnet, 
 or at least a towering structure that seemed to be 
 intended to serve the purpose of a bonnet. It 
 reminded him except for its shininess and 
 newness of the hood of the calash ; indeed, it 
 may have suggested itself vaguely to his memory 
 that his grandmother had worn a piece of head 
 gear something similar, though not so shapely, 
 which in very truth was nicknamed a "calash" 
 from this obvious resemblance. The lady's shape 
 ly and generously feminine figure was closely 
 drawn into a waist of shining black satin, cut 
 down in a V on the neck, before and behind, and 
 ornamented with very large sleeves of a strange 
 pattern. But her skirts for they were vo 
 luminous beyond numeration were the wonder 
 of her attire. Within fold after fold they swathed 
 a foamy mystery of innumerable gauzy white 
 underpinnings. As Mr. Pett's abashed eye trav 
 eled down this marvel of costume it landed upon 
 a pair of black stockings, the feet of which 
 193
 
 ^ toore "Sbort Stjes." V 
 
 appeared to be balanced somewhat uncertainly in 
 black satin slippers with queer high heels. 
 
 "Reuben Pett," said the lady suddenly and 
 and with decision, "don't you say nothing! If 
 you knew how them shoes was pinching me, 
 you 'd know what I was goin' through." 
 
 Mr. Pett had to lean up against the door 
 post before recovering himself. 
 
 "Why, Samantha!" he said at last; "seems 
 to me like you had gone through more or less." 
 
 Here Mrs. Spaulding reached out in an 
 irritation that carried her beyond all speech, and 
 boxed Mr. Pett's ears. Then she drew back, 
 startled at her own act, but even more surprised 
 at Mr. Pett's reception of it. He was neither 
 surprised nor disconcerted. He leaned back 
 against the door-post and gazed on unperturbed. 
 
 "My!" he said; "Samantha, be them that 
 play-actresses' clo'es ? " 
 
 Mrs. Spaulding nodded grimly. 
 
 " Well, all I 've got to say, Samantha," 
 remarked Reuben Pett, as he straightened him 
 self up and started out to bring their chariot to 
 the door; "all I 've got to say, and all I want to 
 say, is that she must be a mighty fine figure of a 
 woman, and that you 're busting her seams." 
 
 Down the old dusty road the old calash 
 jiggled and juggled, "weaving" most of the way 
 in easy tacks down the sharp declivities. On the 
 front seat or, rather, on the upholstered bar 
 sat Reuben Pett, squirming uncomfortably, and 
 every now and then trying to sit side-saddle 
 fashion for the sake of easier converse with his 
 fair passenger. Mrs. Spaulding occupied the 
 back seat, lifted high above her driver by the tilt 
 194
 
 of the curious vehicle, which also served to make 
 the white foundation of her costume particularly 
 visible, so that there were certain jolting mo 
 ments when she suggested a black-robed Venus 
 rising from a snowy foam-crest. At such mo 
 ments Mr. Pett lost control of his horse to such 
 an extent that the animal actually danced and 
 fairly turned his long neck around as though it 
 were set on a pivot. When such a crisis was 
 reached, Mrs. Spaulding would utter a shrill and 
 startling "hi!" which would cause the horse to
 
 ^ rtbore "Short Sijee." ^ 
 
 stop suddenly, hurling Mr. Pett forward with 
 such force that he would have to grab his narrow 
 perch to save his neck, and for the next hundred 
 yards or so of descent his attention would be 
 wholly concentrated upon his duties as driver 
 for the horse insisted upon waltzing at the 
 slightest shock to his nerves. 
 
 Mr. Pett's tendency to turn around and 
 stare should not be laid up against him. For 
 twenty years he had seen his neighbor, Mrs. 
 Samantha Spaulding, once, at least ; perhaps 
 twice or thrice; mayhap even six or seven times 
 a week; and yet, on this occasion, he had fair 
 excuse for looking over his shoulder now and 
 then to assure himself that the fair passenger at 
 whose feet he literally sat, was indeed that 
 very Samantha of his twenty years' knowledge. 
 How was he, who was only a man, and no ladies' 
 man at that, to understand that the local dress 
 maker and the local habit of wearing wrinkly 
 black alpaca and bombazine were to blame for 
 his never having known that his next door neigh 
 bor had a superb bust and a gracious waist ? 
 How was he to know that the blindness of his 
 own eyes was alone accountable for his ignorance 
 of the whiteness of her teeth, and the shapeliness 
 of the arms that peeped from the big, old-fash 
 ioned sleeves? Samantha's especial care upon 
 her farm was her well-appointed dairy, and it is 
 well known that to some women work in the 
 spring-house imparts a delicate creaminess of 
 complexion ; but he was no close observer, and 
 how was he to know that that was the rea 
 son why the little V in the front of Samantha's 
 black satin bodice melted so softly into the fresh 
 196
 
 bright tint of her neck and chin ? How, indeed, 
 was a man who had no better opportunities than 
 Reuben Pett had enjoyed, to understand that the 
 pretty skirt-dancer dress, a dainty, fanciful trav 
 esty of an old-time fashion, had only revealed 
 and not created an attractive and charming 
 woman in his life-long friend and neighbor? 
 
 Samantha was not thinking in the least of 
 herself. She had accepted her costume as some 
 thing which she had no choice but to assume 
 in the exercise of an imperative duty. She 
 wore it for conscience sake only, just as any 
 other New England martyr to her New Eng 
 land convictions of right might have worn a 
 mealsack or a suit of armor had circumstances 
 imposed such a necessity. 
 
 But when Reuben Pett had looked around 
 three or four times, she grasped her skirts in 
 both hands and pushed them angrily down to 
 797
 
 V dfcore "Sbort Sijeg." t^ 
 
 their utmost length. Then, with a true woman's 
 dislike of outraging pretty dress material, she 
 made a furtive experiment or two to see if 
 her skirts would not answer all the purposes 
 of modesty without hanging wrong. Perhaps 
 she had a natural talent that way; at any 
 rate, she found that they would. 
 
 " Samantha," said Reuben Pett, over his 
 shoulder, "what under the sun sense be there in 
 chasin' them two young fools up? If they 
 want to marry, why not let 'em marry ? It 's 
 natural for 'em to want to, and it 's agin nature 
 to stop 'em. May be it would n't be sech 
 a bad marriage, after all. Now you look at 
 it in the light of conscience " 
 
 " You 're a nice hand to be advocating 
 marriage, Reuben Pett," said Mrs. Spaulding; 
 " you jest hurry up that horse and I '11 look 
 out for the light of conscience." 
 
 Mr. Pett chirruped to the capering ewe- 
 neck, and they jolted downward in silence for 
 a half a mile. Then he said suddenly, as if 
 emerging from a cloud of reflection : 
 
 " I ain't never said nothing agin marriage ! " 
 
 Noon-time came, and the hot August sun 
 poured down upon them, until the old calash 
 felt, as Mr. Pett remarked, like a chariot of 
 fire. This observation was evolved in a hu 
 morous way to slacken the tension of a situa 
 tion which was becoming distinctly unpleasant. 
 Moved by a spirit of genial and broadly human 
 benevolence which was somewhat unnatural to 
 198
 
 ^ "Samantba aSoom*Oe*aB." ^ 
 
 him, Mr. Pett had insisted upon pleading the 
 cause of the youthful runaways with an in 
 sistence that was at once indiscreet and futile. 
 In the end his companion had ordered him to 
 hold his tongue, an injunction he was quite 
 incapable of obeying. After a series of fail 
 ures in the way of conversational starters, he 
 finally scored a success by suggesting that they 
 should pause and partake of the meagre re 
 fection which Canada Pete had furnished them 
 .a modest repast of doughnuts, apples and store- 
 pie. This they ate at the first creek where 
 they found a convenient place to water the 
 horse. 
 
 When they resumed their journey, they 
 found that they were all refreshed and in 
 brighter mood. Even the horse was intoxi 
 cated by the water and that form of verdure 
 which may pass for grass on the margin of 
 a mountain highway in Maine. 
 
 This change of feeling was also percepti 
 ble in the manner and bearing of the human 
 beings who made up the cavalcade. Samantha 
 adjusted her furbelows with unconscious deft 
 ness and daintiness, while she gazed before 
 her into the bright blue heaven; and, I am 
 sorry to say, sucked her teeth. Reuben frankly 
 flung one leg over the end of his seat, and 
 conversed easily as he drove along, poised like 
 a boy who rides a bare-back horse to water. 
 After awhile he even felt emboldened to re 
 sume the forbidden theme of conversation. 
 
 " Nature is nature, Samantha," he said. 
 
 " 'T is in some folks," responded Samantha, 
 dryly; "there 's others seems to be able to 
 
 IQQ
 
 ^ flbore "Sbort Sixes." ^ 
 
 git along without it." And Reuben turned this 
 
 speech over in his mind for a good ten minutes. 
 
 Then, just as he was evidently about to 
 
 say something, he glanced up and saw a sight 
 
 which changed the current of his reflections. 
 
 It was only a cloud in the heavens, but it 
 
 evidently awakened a new idea in his mind. 
 
 " Samantha," he said, in. a tone of voice 
 
 that seemed inappropriately cheerful; "they 's 
 goin' to be a thunder storm." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Spaulding. 
 
 "Certain," asseverated Mr. Pett; "there 
 she is a-comin up, right agin the wind." 
 
 A thunder storm on the edge of a Maine 
 forest is not wholly a joke. It sometimes has 
 a way of playing with the forest trees much 
 as a table d'hote diner plays with the wooden 
 tooth-picks. Samantha's protests, when Mr. Pett
 
 ^ "Samantfca 38oom=De*aB." V 
 
 stated that he was going to get under the 
 cover of an abandoned saw-mill which stood 
 by the roadside a little way ahead of them, 
 were more a matter of form than anything 
 else. But still, when they reached the . rough 
 shed of unpainted and weather-beaten boards, 
 and Mr. Pett, in turning in gave the vehicle 
 a sudden twist that broke the shaft, her anger 
 at the delay thus rendered necessary was beyond 
 her control. 
 
 " 1 declare to goodness, Reuben Pett," she 
 cried; "if you ain't the awkwardest ! Anybody 
 'd a'most think you 'd done that a purpose." 
 
 " Oh, no, Samantha ! " said Reuben Pett, 
 pleasantly; "it ain't right to talk like that. 
 This here machine 's dreadful old. Why, Sa 
 mantha, we 'd ought to sympathize with it 
 you and me! " 
 
 " Speak for yourself, Mr. Pett," said Sa 
 mantha. " I ain't so dreadful old, whatever you 
 may be." 
 
 At the moment Mr. Pett made no rejoinder 
 to this. He unshipped the merry horse, and 
 tied him to a post under the old saw-mill, and 
 then he pulled the calash up the runway into 
 the first story, and patiently set about the diffi 
 cult task of mending the broken shaft, while 
 Samantha, looking out through the broad, open 
 doorway, watched the fierce Summer storm de 
 scend upon the land ; and she tapped her im 
 patient foot until it almost burst its too narrow 
 satin covering. 
 
 " No, Samantha," Mr. Pett said, at last, 
 intently at work upon his splicing ; " you ain't 
 50 dreadful old, for a fact; but I Ve knowed you
 
 Sbort Sfjes." 
 
 when you was a dreadful sight younger. I 've 
 knowed you," he continued, reflectively, " when 
 you was the spryest girl in ten miles round 
 when you could dance as lively as that young 
 lady whose clo'es you 're a-wearin'." 
 
 " Don't you dare to talk to me about that 
 jade!" said Mrs. Spaulding, snappishly. 
 
 " Why, no ! certainly not ! " said Mr. Pett ; 
 " I did n't mean no comparison. Only, as I 
 was a-sayih', there was a time, Samantha, when 
 you could dance." 
 
 "And who says I can't dance now?" de 
 manded Mrs. Spaulding, with anger in her voice. 
 
 " My ! I remember wunst," said Mr. Pett ; 
 and then the sense of Samantha's angry question 
 seemed to penetrate his wandering mind. 
 
 " ' Dance now ? ' " he repeated. " Sho ! Sa-
 
 y "Samantba 3Boom=De*aB." ^ 
 
 mantha, you could n't dance nowadays if you 
 was to try." 
 
 '' Who says I could n't ? " asked Samantha, 
 again, with a set look developing around the 
 corners of her mouth. 
 
 " / say you could n't," replied Mr. Pett, 
 obtusely. " T ain't in nature. But there was a 
 time, Samantha, when you was great on fancy 
 steps." 
 
 " Think I 'm too old for fancy steps now, 
 do you ? " She looked at her tormentor savagely', 
 out of the corners of her eyes. 
 
 " Well, not too old, may be, Samantha," went 
 on Mr. Pett ; " but may be you ain't that limber 
 you was. I know how it is. I ain't smart as 
 I used to be, myself. Why, do you remember 
 that night down at the Corners, when we two 
 was the only ones that could jump over Squire 
 Tate's high andirons and cut a pigeon-wing before 
 we come down ? " 
 
 Mr. Pett appeared to be entirely uncon 
 scious that Mrs. Spaulding's bosom was heaving, 
 that her eyes were snapping angrily, and that her 
 foot was beating on the floor in that tattoo with 
 which a woman announces that she is near an 
 end of her patience. 
 
 " How high was them andirons?" she asked, 
 breathlessly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," answered Reuben, in 
 differently. He kept his eyes fixed on his work; 
 but while he worked his splice closer with his 
 right hand, with his left he took off his hat and 
 held it out rather more than two feet above 
 the floor. 
 
 " 'Bout as high as that, may be," he said. 
 303
 
 *p above "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 "Remember the tune we done that to? Went 
 some sort of way like this, did n't it ? " And 
 with that remarkable force of talent which is only 
 developed in country solitudes, Mr. Pett began to 
 whistle an old-time air, a jiggetty, wiggetty whirl- 
 around strain born of some dead darkey's sea- 
 sawing fiddle-bow, with a volume of sustained 
 sound that would have put to shame anything the 
 saw -mill could have done for itself in its buz- 
 zingest days. 
 
 "Whee-ee-ee, ee-ee, ee^ ee ee, whee, ee, ee, 
 ee ee f" whistled Mr. Pett; and then, softly, and 
 as if only the dim stirring of memory moved 
 him, he began to call the old figures of the old 
 dance. 
 
 "Forward all!" he crooned. "Turn part 
 ners! Sashay! Alleman' all! Whee-ee-ee, ee- 
 ee, ee ee, ee ee ee, whee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee eef" 
 
 And suddenly, like the tiger leaping from 
 her lair, the soft pattering and shuffling of feet 
 behind him resolved itself into a quick, furious 
 rhythmic beat, and Samantha Spaulding shot 
 high into ,the air, holding up her skirts with both 
 hands, while her neat ankles crossed each other 
 in a marvelous complication of agility a good 
 twelve inches above his outstretched hat. 
 
 "There!" she cried, as she landed with a 
 flourish that combined skill and grace ; " there 's 
 what I done with you, and much I think of it ! 
 If you want to see dancin' that is dancin' look 
 here. Here 's what I did with Ben Griggs at 
 the shuckin' that same year ; and you wa'n't 
 there, and good reason why ! " 
 
 And then and there, while Reuben Pett's 
 great rasping whistle rang through the old saw- 
 304
 
 mill, shrilling above the roar of the storm outside, 
 Mrs. Samantha Spaulding executed with lightning 
 rapidity and with the precision of perfect and 
 confident knowledge, a dancing -step which for 
 scientific complexity and daring originality had 
 been twenty years before the surprise, the delight, 
 the tingling, shocking, tempting nine-days'-wonder 
 of the country-side. 
 
 "Whee-ee-ee, ee-ee, ee ee, ee ee ee, whee, 
 ee, ee ee, ee ee!" Reuben Pett's whistle died 
 away from sheer lack of breath as Samantha 
 came to the end of her dance. 
 
 There is nothing that hath a more heavy 
 and leaden cold than a chilled enthusiasm. When 
 the storm was over, although a laughing light 
 205
 
 ^ flbore "Sbort Sijes." t> 
 
 played over the landscape; although diamond 
 sparkles lit up the grateful white mist that rose 
 from the refreshed earth; although the sun shone 
 as though he had been expecting that thunder 
 storm all day, and was inexpressibly glad that it 
 was over and done with, Samantha leaned back 
 in her seat in the calash, and nursed a cheerless 
 bitterness of spirit such a bitterness as is known 
 only to the New England woman to whom has 
 come a realization of the fact that she has made 
 a fool of herself. Samantha Spaulding. Made a 
 fool of herself. At her age. After twenty years 
 of respectable widowhood. Her, of all folks. 
 And with that old fool. Who 'd be'n a-settin'
 
 V "Samantba 
 
 and a-settin' and a-settin' all these years. And 
 never said Boo ! And now for him to twist her 
 round his finger like that. She felt like well, 
 she did n't know how she did feel. 
 
 She was so long wrapped up in her own 
 thoughts that it was with a start that she awoke 
 to the fact that they were making very slow pro 
 gress, and that this was due to the very peculiar 
 conduct of Mr. Pett. He was making little or 
 no effort to urge the horse along, and the horse, 
 consequently, having got tired of wasting his 
 bright spirits on the empty air, was maundering. 
 So was Mr. Pett, in another way. He mumbled 
 to himself; from time to time he whistled scraps 
 of old-fashioned tunes, and occasionally he sang 
 to himself a brief catch the catch coming in 
 about the third or fourth bar. 
 
 " Look here, Reuben Pett ! " demanded 
 Samantha, shrilly ; " be you going to get to 
 Byram's Pond to-night ? " 
 
 " I kin" replied Reuben. 
 
 " Well, be you ? " Samantha Spaulding in 
 quired. 
 
 " I d'no. Fact is, I wa'n't figurin' on that 
 just now." 
 
 " Well, what was you figurin' on ? " snapped 
 Mrs. Spaulding. 
 
 " When you 's goin' to marry me," Mr. Pett 
 answered with perfect composure. " Look here, 
 Samantha ! it 's this way : here 's twenty years 
 you Ve kept me waitin'." 
 
 " Me kept you waitin' ! Well, Reuben 
 Pett, if I ever ! " 
 
 "Don't arguefy, Samantha; don't arguefy," 
 remonstrated Mr. Pett; "I ain't rakin up no 
 207
 
 "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 details. What we 've got to deal with is this 
 question as it stands to-day. Be you a-goin' to 
 marry me or be you not ? And if you be, when 
 be you?" 
 
 "Reuben Pett," exclaimed Samantha, with 
 a showing of severity which was very creditable 
 under the circumstances; "ain't you ashamed of 
 talk like that between folks of our age ? " 
 
 " We ain't no age no age in particular, 
 Samantha," said Mr. Pett. "A woman who can 
 cut a pigeon-wing over a hat held up higher than 
 any two pair of andirons that I ever see is young 
 enough for me, anyway." And he chuckled over 
 his successful duplicity. 
 
 Samantha blushed a red that was none the 
 less becoming for a tinge of russet. Then she 
 took a leaf out of Mr. Pett's book. 
 
 "Young enough for you?" she repeated. 
 "Well, I guess so! I wa'n't thinkin' of myself 
 when I said old, Mr. Pett. I was thinkin' of 
 folks who was gettin' most too old to drive down 
 hill in a hurry." 
 
 "Who's that?" asked Reuben. 
 
 " I ain't namin' any names," said Samantha ; 
 " but I 've knowed the time when you was n't so 
 awful afraid of gettin' a spill off the front seat 
 of a calash. Lord ! how time does take the 
 tuck out of some folks ! " she concluded, address 
 ing vacancy. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that I da'sn't drive 
 you down to Byram's Pond to-night ? " Mr. Pett 
 inquired defiantly. 
 
 "I don't know anything about it," said Mrs. 
 Spaulding. 
 
 Mr. Pett stuck a crooked forefinger into his 
 208
 
 Samantba $oom*fce=aB." 
 
 lady-love's face, and gazed at her with such an 
 intensity that she was obliged at last to return his 
 penetrating gaze. 
 
 "If I get you to Byram's Pond before the 
 train goes, will you marry me the first meetin' 
 house we corne to ? " 
 
 " I will," . said Mrs. Spaulding, after a mo 
 ment's hesitation, well remembering what the 
 other party to the bargain had forgotten, that 
 there was no church in Byram Pond, nor nearer 
 than forty miles down the railroad. 
 
 j 
 
 * * 
 
 In the warm dusk 
 of a Summer's evening, 
 a limping, shackle- 
 gaited, bewildered 
 horse, dragging a 
 calash in the last 
 stages of ruin, 
 brought two travel 
 ers into the village 
 of Byram's Pond. 
 Far up on the hills 
 there lingered yet the 
 clouds of dust that marked 
 where that calash had come down those hills 
 at a pace whereat no calash ever came down 
 hill before. Dust covered the two travelers so 
 thickly, that, although the woman's costume 
 was of peculiar and striking construction, its 
 eccentricities were lost in a dull and uniform 
 grayness. . Her bonnet, however, would have 
 excited comment. It had apparently been of 
 209
 
 Sbort Sijes." 
 
 remarkable height; but pounding against the 
 hood of the calash had so knocked it out of 
 all semblance to its original shape, that with 
 its great wire hoops sticking out "four ways 
 for Sunday," it looked more like a discarded 
 crinoline perched upon her head than any 
 known form of feminine bonnet. 
 
 The calash slowed up as it drew near the 
 town. Suddenly it stopped short, and both 
 the travelers gazed with startled interest at a 
 
 capacious white tent reared by the roadside. 
 
 From within this tent came the strains of a 
 
 straining melodeon. Over the portal was 
 stretched a canvas sign : 
 
 GOSPEL TENT OF REV. J. HANKEY. 
 
 As the travelers stared with all their eyes, 
 they saw the flap of the tent thrown back,
 
 *je- "Samantba 
 
 and fou:: figures came out. There were two 
 ladies, a stout, middle-aged lady, a shapely, 
 buxom young lady, a tall, broad - shouldered 
 young man, and the fourth figure was un 
 mistakably a Minister of one of the Congrega 
 tional denominations. The young man and 
 the -wo ladies walked down the road a little 
 way, and, entering a solid-looking farm wagon, 
 drove off behind a pair of plump horses, in 
 the direction of the railroad station, while the 
 minister waved them a farewell that was also 
 a benediction. 
 
 " Git down, Samantha ! " said Reuben Pett, 
 " and straighten out that bonnet of yours. 
 Parson 's got another job before prayer-meetin' 
 begins."
 
 MY DEAR MRS. BILLINGTON.
 
 MY DEAR MRS. BILLINGTON. 
 
 ISS CARMELITA BILLINGTON sat in 
 a bent-wood rocking-chair in an upper 
 room of a great hotel by the sea, and 
 cried for a little space, and then for a 
 little space dabbed at her hot cheeks 
 and red eyes with a handkerchief wet 
 with cologne; and dabbed and cried, 
 and dabbed and cried, without seeming to get 
 any " forwarder." The sun and the fresh breeze 
 and the smell of the sea came in through her 
 open windows, but she heeded them not. She 
 mopped herself with cologne till she felt as if she 
 could never again bear to have that honest scent 
 near her dainty nose; but between the mops 
 the tears trickled and trickled and trickled; and 
 she was dreadfully afraid that inwardly, into the 
 surprising great big cavity that had suddenly 
 found room for itself in her poor little heart, 
 the tears would trickle, trickle, trickle forever. 
 It was no use telling herself she had done 
 right. When you have done right and wish you 
 had n't had to you can't help having a profound 
 contempt for the right, The right is respectable, 
 of course, and proper and commendable and 
 in short, it 's the right ; but, oh ! what a nui 
 sance it is! You can't help wondering in your 
 214
 
 private mind why the right is so disagreeable 
 and unpleasant and unsatisfactory, and the wrong 
 so extremely nice. Of course, it was right to 
 refuse Jack Hatterly; but why, why on earth 
 could n't it just as easily have been right to 
 accept him? And the more she thought about 
 it the more she doubted whether it was always 
 quite right to do right, and whether it was not 
 sometimes entirely wrong not to do wrong. 
 
 No ; it was no use telling herself to be a brave 
 girl. She was a brave girl and she knew it. 
 In the face of the heartless world she could bear 
 herself as jauntily as if she were heartless, too; 
 but in the privacy of her own room, with Mama 
 fast asleep on the verandah below, she could not 
 see the slightest use in humbugging herself. She 
 was perfectly miserable, and the rest of her reflec-
 
 ^ flbore "Sbort Sijeg." <y+ 
 
 tions might have been summed up in the simple 
 phrase of early girlhood, "So there!" 
 
 It was no consolation to poor Carmelita's 
 feelings that her little private tragedy was of a 
 most business - like, commonplace, unromantic 
 complexion. It only made her more disgusted 
 with herself for having made up her mind to do 
 the right thing. She was not torn from her 
 chosen love by the hands of cruel parents. Her 
 parents had never denied her anything in her life, 
 and if she had really wanted to wed a bankrupt 
 bashaw with three tails and an elephant's head, 
 she could have had her will. Nor did picturesque 
 poverty have anything to do with the situation. 
 She was rich and so was Jack. Nor could she 
 rail against a parental code of morality too stern 
 for tender hearts. There was not the least atom 
 of objection to Jack in any respect. He was 
 absolutely as nice as could be and, unless I am 
 greatly misinformed, a good-looking young man, 
 deeply in love, can be very nice indeed. 
 
 And yet there was no doubt in Carmelita's 
 mind that it was her plain duty to refuse Jack. 
 To marry him would mean to utterly give up 
 and throw aside a plan of life, which, from her 
 earliest childhood, she had never imagined to be 
 capable of the smallest essential alteration. If a 
 man who had devoted his whole mind and soul 
 to the business of manufacturing overshoes were 
 suddenly invited to become a salaried poet on 
 a popular magazine, he could not regard the 
 proposed change of profession as more prepos 
 terously impossible than the idea of marriage 
 with Jack Hatterly seemed to Miss Carmelita 
 Billington.
 
 2>ear flfcrs. JBflltngton. ^ 
 
 For Miss Billington occupied a peculiar 
 position. She was the Diana of a small but highly 
 prosperous city in the South-West; a city which 
 her father had built up in years of enterprising 
 toil. To mention the town of Los Brazos to any 
 capitalist in the land was to call up the name 
 of Billington, the brilliant speculator who, ruined 
 on the Boston stock-market, went to Texas and 
 absolutely created a town which for wealth, 
 beauty and social distinction had not its equal 
 in the great South-West. It was colonized with 
 college graduates from New York, Boston and 
 Philadelphia; and, in Los Brazos, boys who 
 had left cane-rushes and campus choruses scarce 
 ten years behind them had fortunes in the hun 
 dred thousands, and stood high in public places. 
 As the daughter of the founder of Los Brazos, 
 Miss Billington's fortunes were allied, she could 
 not but feel, to the place of her birth. There 
 must she marry, there must she continue the 
 social leadership which her mother was only 
 too ready to lay down. The Mayor of the 
 town, the District Attorney, the Supreme Court 
 Judge and the Bishop were all among her many 
 suitors; and six months before she had wished, 
 being a natural-born sport, if she was a girl, 
 that they would only get together and shake 
 dice to see which of them should have her. 
 But then she had n't come East and met Jack 
 Hatterly. 
 
 She thought of the first day she had seen 
 the Atlantic Ocean and Jack, and she wished 
 now that she had never been seized with the 
 fancy to gaze on the great water. And yet, 
 what a glorious day that was ! How grand 
 217
 
 -?+ dfcore "Sbort Sijes." v 
 
 she had thought the ocean ! And how grand 
 she had thought Jack ! And now she had given 
 him up forever, that model of manly beauty and 
 audacity; Jack with his jokes and his deviltries 
 and his exhaustless capacity for ever new and 
 original larks. Was it absolutely needful ? Her 
 poor little soul had to answer itself that it was. 
 To leave Los Brazos and the great house with 
 
 the cool quiet court-yard and the broad veran 
 dahs, and to live in crowded, noisy New York, 
 where she knew not a soul except Jack to be 
 separated from those two good fairies who lived 
 only to gratify her slightest wish to "go back" 
 on Los Brazos, the pride of the Billingtons no; 
 it was impossible, impossible! She must stick 
 to her post and make her choice between the 
 Mayor and the Judge and the District Attorney 
 and the Bishop. But how dull and serious and 
 business-like they all seemed to her now that she 
 had known Jack Hatterly, the first man she had 
 ever met with a well-developed sense of humor! 
 218
 
 ^ /IRE Dear /Rbrs. asillington. ^ 
 
 What made it hardest for poor Carmelita 
 was, perhaps, that fate had played her cruel 
 pranks ever since the terrible moment of her 
 act of renunciation. Thirty-six hours before, at 
 the end of the dance in the great hotel parlors, 
 Jack had proposed to her. For many days 
 she had known what was coming, and what 
 her answer must be, and she had given him no 
 chance to see her alone. But Jack was Jack, 
 and he had made his opportunity for himself, 
 and had said his say under cover of the con 
 fusion at the end of the dance ; and she had 
 promised to give him his answer later, and she 
 had given it, after a sleepless and tearful night; 
 just a line to say that it could never, never be, 
 and that he must not ask her again. And it 
 had been done in such a commonplace, unro- 
 mantic way that she hated to think of it the 
 meagre, insufficient little note handed to her 
 maid to drop in the common letter-box of the 
 hotel, and to, lie there among bills and circulars 
 and all sorts of silly every-day correspondence, 
 until the hotel-clerk should take it out and put 
 it in Jack's box. She had passed through the 
 office a little later, and her heart had sunk 
 within her as she saw his morning's mail wait 
 ing for him in its pigeon-hole, and thought 
 what the opening of it would bring to him. 
 
 But this was the least of her woe. Later 
 came the fishing trip on the crowded cat-boat. 
 She had fondly hoped that he would have the 
 delicacy to excuse himself from that party of 
 pleasure; but no, he was there, and doing just 
 as she had asked ' him to, treating her as if 
 nothing had happened, which was certainly the
 
 <y flfcore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 most exasperating thing he could have done. 
 And then, to crown it all, they had been caught 
 in a storm; and had not only been put in serious 
 danger, which Carmelita did not mind at all, 
 but had been tossed about until they were sore, 
 and drenched with water, and driven into the 
 stuffy little hole that was called a cabin, to 
 choke and swelter and bump about in nauseated 
 
 misery for two mortal hours, with the spray driv 
 ing in through the gaping hatches; a dozen of 
 them in all, packed together in there in the ill- 
 smelling darkness. And so it was no wonder 
 that, after a second night of utter misery, Miss 
 Carmelita Billington felt so low in her nerves 
 that she was quite unable to withhold her tears as
 
 y /fog Dear /Ifors. JSillington. -y 
 
 she sat alone and thought of what lay behind her 
 and before her. 
 
 She had been sitting alone a long time 
 when she heard her mother come up the stairs 
 and enter her own room. Mrs. Billington was as 
 stout as she was good-natured, and her step was 
 not that of a light-weight. An irresistible desire 
 came, to the girl to go to her and pour out her 
 grief, with her head pillowed on that broad and 
 kindly bosom. She started up and hurried into 
 the little parlor that separated her room from her 
 mother's. As she entered the room at one door, 
 Mr. Jack Hatterly entered through the door open 
 ing into the corridor. Then Carmelita lost her 
 breath in wonderment, anger and dismay, for 
 Mr. Jack Hatterly put his arm around her waist, 
 kissed her in a somewhat casual manner, and 
 then the door of her mother's room opened and 
 her mother appeared; and instead of rebuking 
 such extraordinary conduct, assisted Mr. Hat 
 terly in gently thrusting her into the chamber of 
 the elder lady with the kind of caressing but 
 steering push with which a child is dismissed 
 when grown-ups wish to talk privately. 
 
 " Stay in there, my dear, for the present ; 
 Mr. Hatterly and I have something to say to 
 each other. I will call you later." 
 
 And before Carmelita fairly knew what had 
 happened to her she found herself on the other 
 side of the door, wondering exactly where in 
 sanity had broken out in the Billington family. 
 
 It took the astonished Miss Billington a 
 couple of seconds to pull herself together, and 
 then she seized the handle of the door with the 
 full intention of walking indignantly into the
 
 ^f- dfoore "Sbort Sijes." ^ 
 
 parlor and demanding an explanation. But she 
 had hardly got the door open by the merest 
 crack when the discourse of Mr. John Hatterly 
 paralyzed her as thoroughly as had his previous 
 actions. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Billington," he was saying, 
 in what Carmelita always called his " florid " 
 voice, " I thoroughly understand your position, 
 and I know the nature of the ties that bind Car 
 melita to her father's home. Had I known of 
 them earlier, I might have avoided an association 
 that could only have one ending for me. But it 
 is not for myself that I speak now. Perhaps I 
 have been unwise, and even wrong; but what is 
 
 done is done, and I know now that she loves me 
 as she could love no other man." 
 
 " Good gracious ! " said Carmelita to herself, 
 behind the door; "how does he know that?" 
 
 "Is it not possible, Mr. Hatterly, that there
 
 y ffoy SJear flbrs. ffiillinflton. ^ 
 
 is some misunderstanding ? " asked Mrs. Bil- 
 lington. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Billington," said Jack, im 
 pressively ; " there is no possible misunderstand 
 ing. She told me so herself." 
 
 Carmelita opened her eyes and her mouth, 
 and stood as one petrified. 
 
 " Well, if I ever ! " was all that she 
 whispered to herself, in the obscurity of her 
 mother's room. She had addressed just seven 
 words to Jack Hatterly on the fishing trip, and 
 five of these were "Apple pie, if you please;" and 
 the other two, uttered ' later, were " Not very." 
 
 " But, Mr. Hatterly," persisted Mrs. Billing- 
 ton, " whien did you receive this assurance of my 
 daughter's feelings ? You tell me that you spoke 
 to her on this subject only the night before last, 
 and I am sure she has hardly been out of my 
 sight since." 
 
 " Yesterday," said Jack, in his calmest and 
 most assured tone; "on the boat, coming home, 
 during the squall." 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (behind the door, aside). 
 "The shameless wretch! Why, he doesn't 
 seem even to know that he 's lying!" 
 
 "But, Mr. Hatterly," exclaimed Mrs. Bil 
 lington ; " during the squall we were all in the 
 cabin, and you were outside, steering!" 
 
 "Certainly," said Jack. 
 
 " Then excuse me, Mr. Hatterly but 
 how could my daughter have conveyed any such 
 intelligence to you ? " 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before). "What is 
 the man going to say now? He must be per 
 fectly crazy ! " 
 
 223
 
 <y dfcore "Sbort Slice." t^ 
 
 Mr. Hatterly was calm and imperturbecl. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Billington," he responded, 
 " you may or may not have observed a small 
 heart-shaped aperture in each door or hatch of 
 the cabin, exactly opposite the steersman's seat. 
 It was through one of these apertures that your 
 daughter communicated with me. Very appro 
 priate shape, I must say, although their purpose 
 is simply that of ventilation." 
 
 " It was very little ventilation we had in 
 that awful place, Mr. Hatterly ! " interjected Mrs. 
 Billington, remembering those hours of horror. 
 
 "Very little, indeed, my dear Mrs. Billing 
 ton," replied Mr. Hatterly, in an apologetic tone- 
 "and I am afraid your daughter and I, between 
 us, were responsible for some of your discomfort. 
 She had her hand through the port ventilator 
 about half the time." 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before). "I wonder 
 the man is n't struck dead, sitting there! Of
 
 ^f dfcg S>ear /ftrs. ttfllington. ^ 
 
 all the wicked, heartless falsehoods I ever 
 heard ! " 
 
 "And may I ask, Mr. Hatterly," inquired 
 Mrs. Billington, "what my daughter's hand was 
 doing through the ventilator?" 
 
 '" Pressing mine, God bless her ! " responded 
 Mr. Hatterly, unabashed. 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON, (as before, but conscious 
 of a sttdden, hideous chill). "Good heavens ! 
 the man can't be lying; he's simply mistaken." 
 
 "I see, my dear Mrs. Billington," said Mr. 
 Hatterly, "that I shall have to be perfectly frank 
 with you. Such passages are not often repeated, 
 especially to a parent; but under the circum 
 stances I think you will admit that I have no 
 other guarantee of my good faith to give you. 
 I have no doubt that if you were to ask your 
 daughter at this minute about her feelings, she 
 would think she ought to sacrifice her affection 
 to the duty that she thinks is laid out for her 
 in a distant life. Did I feel that she could ever 
 have any happiness in following that path, be 
 lieve me, I should be the last to try to win her 
 from it, no matter what might be my own lone 
 liness and misery. But after what she confided 
 to me in that awful hour of peril, where, in the 
 presence of imminent death, it was impossible 
 for her to conceal or repress the deepest feelings 
 of her heart, I should be doing an injustice to 
 her as well as to myself, and even to you, my 
 dear Mrs. Billington for I know how sincerely 
 you wish her happiness if I were to let any 
 false delicacy keep me from telling you what 
 she said to me." Jack Hatterly could talk when 
 he got going.
 
 "Sbort Sijes." V 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON, ^ before, but hot, noi 
 cold). "Now, I am going to know which one 
 of those girls was talking to him, if I have to 
 stay here all day." 
 
 It was with a quavering voice that Mrs. 
 Billington said : 
 
 " Under the circumstances, Mr. Hatterly, I 
 think you might tell me all she said all 
 all " 
 
 Here Mrs. Billington drew herself up and 
 spoke with a certain dignity. "I should explain 
 to you, Mr. Hatterly, that during the return 
 trip I was not feeling entirely well, myself, and I 
 probably was not as observant as I should have 
 been under other circumstances." 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON, (as before, reflectively). 
 "Poor Ma! She was so sick that she went 
 to sleep with her head on my feet. I believe 
 it was that Peterson girl who was nearest the 
 port ventilator." 
 
 Mr. Hatterly's tone was effusively grateful. 
 "I knew that I could rely upon your clear sense, 
 my dear Mrs. Billington," he said, "as well 
 as upon your kindness of heart. Very well, 
 then ; the first thing I knew as I sat there alone, 
 steering, almost blinded by the spray, Carmelita 
 slipped her hand through the ventilator and 
 caught mine in a pressure that went to my 
 heart." 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before, but without 
 stopping to reflect). "If I find out the girl that 
 did that " 
 
 Mr. Hatterly went on with warm gratitude 
 in his voice: "And let me add, my dear Mrs. 
 Billington, that every single time I luffed, that 
 
 22(>
 
 ^ fl&S Dear flfcra. ffiillfngton. ~y 
 
 dear little hand came out and touched mine, 
 to inspire me with strength and confidence. " t 
 Miss BILLINGTON ( as before, with decision). 
 
 "I'll cut her hand off!" 
 
 "And in the lulls of the storm," Mr. Hat- 
 terly continued, "she said to me what nothing 
 but the extremity of the occasion would induce 
 me to repeat, my dear Mrs. Billington; 'Jack,' 
 she said, 'I am yours, I am all yours, and yours 
 forever.' " 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before, but more so). 
 
 "That was n't the Peterson girl. That was 
 Mamie Jackson, for I have known of her saying 
 it twice before." 
 
 Mrs. Billington leaned back in her chair, 
 and fanned herself with her handkerchief. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hatterly ! " she cried. 
 
 Mr. Hatterly leaned forward and captured 
 one of Mrs. Billington's hands, while she covered 
 her eyes with the other. 
 
 "Call me Jack," he said. 
 
 "I I 'm afraid I shall have to," sobbed 
 Mrs. Billington. 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before, grimly). 
 "Mamie Jackson's mother won't; I know that f" 
 
 "And then," Mr. Hatterly continued, "she 
 said to me, 'Jack, 1 am glad of this fate. I can 
 speak now as I never could have spoken before.'" 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON (as before, but highly 
 charged with electricity). "Now I want to 
 know what she did say when she spoke." 
 
 Mr. -Hatterly's clear and fluent voice con 
 tinued to report the interesting conversation, 
 while Mrs. Billington sobbed softly, and per 
 mitted her kind old hand to be fondled. 
 
 16 227
 
 ^ dfcore "Sbort Stjeg." yr 
 
 "'Jack,' she said," Mr. Hatterly went on, 
 " ' life might have separated us, but death 
 unites us.' " 
 
 Miss BILLINGTON ( as before, but with 
 clenched hands and set lips). "That is neither 
 one of those girls. They have n't got the sand. 
 Whoever it is, that settles it." She flung open 
 the door and swept into the room. 
 
 " Jack," she said, " if I did talk any such 
 ridiculous, absurd, contemptible, utterly despic 
 able nonsense, I don't choose to have it repeated. 
 Mama, dear, you know we can see a great deal 
 of each other if you can only make Papa come 
 and spend the Summer here by the sea, and we 
 go down to Los Brazos for part of the Winter." 
 
 That evening Miss Carmelita Billington 
 asked her Spanish maid if she had dropped 
 the letter addressed to Mr. Hatterly in the 
 letter-box. The Spanish rnaid went through a 
 pleasing dramatic performance, in which she 
 first assured her mistress that she had ; then be 
 came aware of a sudden doubt; hunted through 
 six or eight pockets which were not in her 
 dress, and then produced the crumpled envelope 
 unopened. She begged ten thousand pardons ; 
 she cursed herself and the day she was born, 
 and her incapable memory ; and expressed a 
 willingness to drown herself, which might have 
 been more terrifying had she ever before dis 
 played any willingness to enter into intimate 
 relations with water. 
 
 Miss Billington treated her with unusual 
 indulgence.
 
 /Ifcg Dear flbrs. ffitllington. 
 
 " It 's all right, Concha," she said ; " it 
 did n't matter in the least, only Mr. Hatterly 
 told me that he had never received it, and so 
 I thought I 'd as-k you." 
 
 Then, as the girl was leaving the room, 
 Carmelita called her back, moved by a sudden 
 impulse. 
 
 "Oh, Concha!" she said; "you wanted 
 one of those shell breast-pins, did n't you? 
 Here, take this and buy yourself one ! " and 
 she held out a dollar-bill. 
 
 When she reached 
 her own room, Concha 
 put the dollar-bill in 
 a gayly - painted 
 little box on top 
 of a new five- 
 dollar bill, and 
 hid them both 
 under her prayer- 
 book. 
 
 " W T omen," she 
 said, in her simple 
 
 Spanish way; "women are pigs. The gentleman, 
 he gives me five dollars, only that I put the letter 
 in my pocket; the lady, she gets the gentleman, 
 and she gives me one dollar, and I hasten out 
 of the room that she shall not take it back. 
 Women women are pigs!"
 
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