was a magician in driving it away from others. Miss Chester's sobs
grew easier. Presently she took her little plain-bordered handkerchief
and wiped away a drop or two that had fallen from her eyes upon Father
Abram's big hand. Then she looked up and smiled through her tears.
Miss Chester could always smile before her tears had dried, just as
Father Abram could smile through his own grief. In that way the two
were very much alike.
The miller asked her no questions; but by and by Miss Chester began to
tell him.
It was the old story that always seems so big and important to the
young, and that brings reminiscent smiles to their elders. Love was
the theme, as may be supposed. There was a young man in Atlanta, full
of all goodness and the graces, who had discovered that Miss Chester
also possessed these qualities above all other people in Atlanta or
anywhere else from Greenland to Patagonia. She showed Father Abram the
letter over which she had been weeping. It was a manly, tender letter,
a little superlative and urgent, after the style of love letters
written by young men full of goodness and the graces. He proposed for
Miss Chester's hand in marriage at once. Life, he said, since her
departure for a three-weeks' visit, was not to be endured. He begged
for an immediate answer; and if it were favourable he promised to fly,
ignoring the narrow-gauge railroad, at once to Lakelands.
"And now where does the trouble come in?" asked the miller when he had
read the letter.
"I cannot marry him," said Miss Chester.
"Do you want to marry him?" asked Father Abram.
"Oh, I love him," she answered, "but - " Down went her head and she
sobbed again.
"Come, Miss Rose," said the miller; "you can give me your confidence.
I do not question you, but I think you can trust me."
"I do trust you," said the girl. "I will tell you why I must refuse
Ralph. I am nobody; I haven't even a name; the name I call myself is
a lie. Ralph is a noble man. I love him with all my heart, but I can
never be his."
"What talk is this?" said Father Abram. "You said that you remember
your parents. Why do you say you have no name? I do not understand."
"I do remember them," said Miss Chester. "I remember them too well.
My first recollections are of our life somewhere in the far South. We
moved many times to different towns and states. I have picked cotton,
and worked in factories, and have often gone without enough food and
clothes. My mother was sometimes good to me; my father was always
cruel, and beat me. I think they were both idle and unsettled.
"One night when we were living in a little town on a river near
Atlanta they had a great quarrel. It was while they were abusing and
taunting each other that I learned - oh, Father Abram, I learned that I
didn't even have the right to be - don't you understand? I had no right
even to a name; I was nobody.
"I ran away that night. I walked to Atlanta and found work. I gave
myself the name of Rose Chester, and have earned my own living ever
since. Now you know why I cannot marry Ralph - and, oh, I can never
tell him why."
Better than any sympathy, more helpful than pity, was Father Abram's
depreciation of her woes.
"Why, dear, dear! is that all?" he said. "Fie, fie! I thought
something was in the way. If this perfect young man is a man at all he
will not care a pinch of bran for your family tree. Dear Miss Rose,
take my word for it, it is yourself he cares for. Tell him frankly,
just as you have told me, and I'll warrant that he will laugh at your
story, and think all the more of you for it."
"I shall never tell him," said Miss Chester, sadly. "And I shall never
marry him nor any one else. I have not the right."
But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And then
came a shorter one bobbing by its side; and presently two strange
figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss Phoebe
Summers, the organist, come to practise. Tommy Teague, aged twelve,
was responsible for the shorter shadow. It was Tommy's day to pump the
organ for Miss Phoebe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the dust of
the road.
Miss Phoebe, in her lilac-spray chintz dress, with her accurate little
curls hanging over each ear, courtesied low to Father Abram, and shook
her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant
climbed the steep stairway to the organ loft.
In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester
lingered. They were silent; and it is likely that they were busy with
their memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with
her eyes fixed far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking
thoughtfully out of the door at the road and the ruined cottage.
Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of
years into the past. For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck
a low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air
that it contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram
was concerned. The deep, booming vibration that shook the little
frame building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill
machinery. He felt sure that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that
he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old mountain mill. And
now evening was come, and soon would come Aglaia with flying colours,
toddling across the road to take him home to supper. Father Abram's
eyes were fixed upon the broken door of the cottage.
And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of
flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps a mouse had been at one of
them; anyway the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the
cracks of the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram
from head to foot with the white dust. And then the old miller stepped
into the aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller's
song:
"The wheel goes round,
The grist is ground,
The dusty miller's merry."
- and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning
forward from her pew, as pale as the flour itself, her wide-open eyes
staring at Father Abram like one in a waking dream. When he began the
song she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to
him in dreamy tones: "Da-da, come take Dums home!"
Miss Phoebe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been
well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a
closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his
arms.
When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They
will tell you how the lines of it were afterward traced, and the
history of the miller's daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers
had stolen her on that September day, attracted by her childish
beauty. But you should wait until you sit comfortably on the shaded
porch of the Eagle House, and then you can have the story at your
ease. It seems best that our part of it should close while Miss
Phoebe's deep bass note was yet reverberating softly.
And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father
Abram and his daughter were walking back to the Eagle House in the
long twilight, almost too glad to speak.
"Father," she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, "have you a great
deal of money?"
"A great deal?" said the miller. "Well, that depends. There is plenty
unless you want to buy the moon or something equally expensive."
"Would it cost very, very much," asked Aglaia, who had always counted
her dimes so carefully, "to send a telegram to Atlanta?"
"Ah," said Father Abram, with a little sigh, "I see. You want to ask
Ralph to come."
Aglaia looked up at him with a tender smile.
"I want to ask him to wait," she said. "I have just found my father,
and I want it to be just we two for a while. I want to tell him he
will have to wait."
XVII
NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.
We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a
little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it
was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer
folks that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis,
and a week or two at other times, and he was pleased to discourse to
us of what he had seen.
Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wandering
family of Indians that had come up and settled there for the night. An
old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot
hung upon three sticks.
Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he
came back we complimented him playfully upon his gallantry.
"Oh," said Bud, "don't mention it. It's a way I have. Whenever I see a
lady trying to cook things in a pot and having trouble I always go to
the rescue. I done the same thing once in a high-toned house in. New
York City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady
kind of recalled it to my mind. Yes, I endeavours to be polite and
help the ladies out."
The camp demanded the particulars.
"I was manager of the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle," said Bud.
"It was owned at that time by old man Sterling, of New York. He wanted
to sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and explain
the ranch to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort
Worth and has a forty dollar suit of clothes made, and hits the trail
for the big village.
"Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly
laid themselves out to be agreeable. We had business and pleasure so
mixed up that you couldn't tell whether it was a treat or a trade half
the time. We had trolley rides, and cigars, and theatre round-ups, and
rubber parties."
"Rubber parties?" said a listener, inquiringly.
"Sure," said Bud. "Didn't you never attend 'em? You walk around and
try to look at the tops of the skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch,
and old man Sterling asks me 'round to his house to take grub on the
night before I started back. It wasn't any high-collared affair - just
me and the old man and his wife and daughter. But they was a
fine-haired outfit all right, and the lilies of the field wasn't in
it. They made my Fort Worth clothes carpenter look like a dealer in
horse blankets and gee strings. And then the table was all pompous
with flowers, and there was a whole kit of tools laid out beside
everybody's plate. You'd have thought you was fixed out to burglarize
a restaurant before you could get your grub. But I'd been in New York
over a week then, and I was getting on to stylish ways. I kind of
trailed behind and watched the others use the hardware supplies, and
then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble
to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got
along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was
talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West,
and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and
you never saw people so interested.
"But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little
trick she was, not bigger than two bits' worth of chewing plug; but
she had a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you
believed it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me
the same as if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek
dog feast and listened like it was news from home.
"By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck
that never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind
of camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under
it.
"Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the
supper table. I wondered why old man Sterling didn't hire a cook, with
all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting
truck that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a
Molly cotton tail in a mile of it.
"The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around
in little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty
thirsty, and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there
was where the little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon
all right, but she'd forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up
sometimes. I thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep
house and cook - that rabbit would surely make you think so - and I says
to myself, 'Little lady, sugar or no sugar I'll stand by you,' and I
raises up my bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And
then all the balance of 'em picks up their bowls and does the same.
And then I gives Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off
like a joke, so she wouldn't feel bad about the mistake.
"After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me
quite awhile.
"'It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, 'to bring my
blunder off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar.'
"'Never you mind,' says I, 'some lucky man will throw his rope over a
mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.'
"'If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, laughing out loud, 'I hope
he will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.'
"'Don't mention it,' says I. 'Anything to oblige the ladies.'"
Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he
considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.
"The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks," answered Bud,
"is New York. Most of 'em has New York on the brain. They have heard
of other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and London;
but they don't believe in 'em. They think that town is all Merino. Now
to show you how much they care for their village I'll tell you about
one of 'em that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was
working there.
"This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He
said he was a good horseback rider, and there was pieces of tanbark
hanging on his clothes yet from his riding school.
"Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store,
for he was a devil at figures. But he got tired of that, and asked for
something more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch liked
him all right, but he made us tired shouting New York all the time.
Every night he'd tell us about East River and J. P. Morgan and the
Eden Musee and Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin
plates and branding irons at him.
"One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of
sidled up his back and went to eating grass while the New Yorker was
coming down.
"He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquit wood, and he didn't
show any designs toward getting up again. We laid him out in a tent,
and he begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and
burns the wind for old Doc Sleeper's residence in Dogtown, thirty
miles away.
"The doctor comes over and he investigates the patient.
"'Boys,' says he, 'you might as well go to playing seven-up for his
saddle and clothes, for his head's fractured and if he lives ten
minutes it will be a remarkable case of longevity.'
"Of course we didn't gamble for the poor rooster's saddle - that was
one of Doc's jokes. But we stood around feeling solemn, and all of us
forgive him for having talked us to death about New York.
"I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful
than this fellow. His eyes were fixed 'way up in the air, and he was
using rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful
streets and white-robed forms, and he was smiling like dying was a
pleasure.
"'He's about gone now,' said Doc. 'Whenever they begin to think they
see heaven it's all off.'
"Blamed if that New York man didn't sit right up when he heard the Doc
say that.
"'Say,' says he, kind of disappointed, 'was that heaven? Confound it
all, I thought it was Broadway. Some of you fellows get my clothes.
I'm going to get up.'
"And I'll be blamed," concluded Bud, "if he wasn't on the train with a
ticket for New York in his pocket four days afterward!"
XVIII
THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York
detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the
"inside man" of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use
of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a "murder
mystery" to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and
take down the messages of "cranks" who 'phone in their confessions to
having committed the crime.
But on certain "off" days when confessions are coming in slowly and
three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty
persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my
great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation
and deduction.
The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great
detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around
his little finger.
"Good morning, Whatsup," he said, without turning his head. "I'm glad
to notice that you've had your house fitted up with electric lights at
last."
"Will you please tell me," I said, in surprise, "how you knew that? I
am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was
a rush order not completed until this morning."
"Nothing easier," said Jolnes, genially. "As you came in I caught the
odour of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and
I know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke
cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy
one. But I am working just now on a little problem of my own."
"Why have you that string on your finger?" I asked.
"That's the problem," said Jolnes. "My wife tied that on this morning
to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down,
Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments."
The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with
the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.
"Were you listening to a confession?" I asked, when he had returned to
his chair.
"Perhaps," said Jolnes, with a smile, "it might be called something of
the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I've cut out the dope. I've
been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn't have
much effect on me any more. I've got to have something more powerful.
That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf
where there's an author's reading in progress. Now, to get at the
solution of this string."
After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a
smile, and nodded his head.
"Wonderful man!" I exclaimed; "already?"
"It is quite simple," he said, holding up his finger. "You see
that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a
forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour
that I was to send home!"
"Beautiful!" I could not help crying out in admiration.
"Suppose we go out for a ramble," suggested Jolnes.
"There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man
McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many
bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police
have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2,
and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The
detective force has not yet been called on for assistance."
Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we
were to catch a surface car.
Half-way up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who
held a City Hall position.
"Good morning, Rheingelder," said Jolnes, halting.
"Nice breakfast that was you had this morning."
Always on the lookout for the detective's remarkable feats of
deduction, I saw Jolnes's eye flash for an instant upon a long
yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of
Rheingelder - both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.
"Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness," said Rheingelder, shaking all
over with a smile. "Vell, I pet you trinks und cigars all round dot
you cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast."
"Done," said Jolnes. "Sausage, pumpernickel and coffee."
Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet.
When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:
"I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front."
"I did," said Jolnes. "That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder
is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market
to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted at forty-two.
Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual
fare. A little thing like this isn't anything, Whatsup; it belongs to
the primary arithmetic class."
When we boarded the street car we found the seats all
occupied - principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear
platform.
About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short,
gray beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At
successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four
of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring
meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely
retained his place.
"We New Yorkers," I remarked to Jolnes, "have about lost our manners,
as far as the exercise of them in public goes."
"Perhaps so," said Jolnes, lightly; "but the man you evidently refer
to happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old
Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two
daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night."
"You know him, then?" I said, in amazement.
"I never saw him before we stepped on the car," declared the
detective, smilingly.
"By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can
construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else
than black art."
"The habit of observation - nothing more," said Jolnes. "If the old
gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to
you the accuracy of my deduction."
Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes
addressed him at the door:
"Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk,
Virginia?"
"No, suh," was the extremely courteous answer. "My name, suh, is
Ellison - Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same
state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk - the Goodriches, the
Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of
meeting yo' friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am
going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo' city
with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten
days, and if you will give me yo' name, suh, I will take pleasure in
looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him,
suh."
"Thank you," said Jolnes; "tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if
you will be so kind."
I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of
intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the
slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.
"Did you say your _three_ daughters?" he asked of the Virginia
gentleman.
"Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in
Fairfax County," was the answer.
With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.
Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.
"One moment, sir," he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone
detected the anxiety - "am I not right in believing that one of the
young ladies is an _adopted_ daughter?"
"You are, suh," admitted the major, from the ground, "but how the
devil you knew it, suh, is mo' than I can tell."
"And mo' than I can tell, too," I said, as the car went on.
Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested
victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he
invited me into a café, promising to reveal the process of his latest
wonderful feat.
"In the first place," he began after we were comfortably seated, "I
knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy
and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he
did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance
that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.
"Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat
to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly,
impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that
one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red
and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about
the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his
patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals
cut off square at one end.
"Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound
to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort - and that
is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth
Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French
heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from
umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that
he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a
man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such
dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk.
Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had
received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his
traditions of Southern chivalry."
"That is all very well," I said, "but why did you insist upon
daughters - and especially two daughters? Why couldn't a wife alone
have taken him shopping?"
"There had to be daughters," said Jolnes, calmly. "If he had only a
wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going
alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there
you are."
"I'll admit that," I said; "but, now, why two daughters? And how, in
the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when
he told you he had three?"
"Don't say guess," said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air;
"there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major
Ellison's buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a
geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into
a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your
imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the
carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And
then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add
her rosebud to the adornment?"
"And then," I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, "when he declared
that he had three daughters - "
"I could see," said Jolnes, "one in the background who added no
flower; and I knew that she must be - "
"Adopted!" I broke in. "I give you every credit; but how did you know
he was leaving for the South to-night?"
"In his breast pocket," said the great detective, "something large and
oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a
long journey from New York to Fairfax County."
"Again, I must bow to you," I said. "And tell me this, so that my last
shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was
from Virginia?"
"It was very faint, I admit," answered Shamrock Jolnes, "but no
trained observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the
car."
XIX
THE LADY HIGHER UP
New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze
was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of
feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five
feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on
Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in
the direction of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of
the great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with
sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures
in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into
tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden - its
constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating
of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single,
graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of
ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift
flight to catch a Harlem train - remained poised with its arrow pointed
across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it
would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose
duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other
lands.
Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began
to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened
her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size
of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to
"enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it)
requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a
sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua
schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid,
classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel
the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C's.
"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.
"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoarse I am I can
hardly talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me
throat by that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis
after being a fine evening, miss."
"If you don't mind my asking," came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I
didn't know that Liberty was necessarily Irish."
"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications
ye'd not need to ask," replied the offshore statue. "If ye wasn't
so light-headed and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and
presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government
for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of
New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected.
Ye must know, Miss Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with
people - 'tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were
created that influence the operations of their tongues at all - it's
the associations with which they become associated, I'm telling ye."
"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of
the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air
in the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a
Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare."
"I'm right glad ye've made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,"
said Mrs. Liberty. "'Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there
anything doin' up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?"
"Oh, la, la, la! - no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt
Liberty? Got that from 'Paris by Night' on the roof garden under me.
You'll hear that 'la, la, la' at the Café McCann now, along with
'garsong.' The bohemian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong'
since O'Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling
him it. Oh, no; the town's strickly on the bum these nights.
Everybody's away. Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this
evening with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A
waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up.
He looks around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator. 'H'm!' says
he, 'will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?' 'Sure, in a
minute,' says she, 'if you'll make it an X.'
"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!"
"'Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the
cat show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the
privates look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand
as floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl
that measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam
on the banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the
Vanderbilts, Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And
ye have the French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert
Emmet-Sangerbund Society dance the Highland fling one with another.
And ye have the grand O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant
in the world, where the French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers
in doin' the cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole
town, Miss Diana.
"'Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the
science of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down
at Ellis Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light
up, 'tis tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write
out their naturalization papers."
"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came
the sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. "It must be
awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see
how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are
wearing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to
be held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady.
That's where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I'm always a little ahead of
the styles; but they're coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a
moment - I caught a puff of wind from the north - shouldn't wonder if
things had loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it's in the West - I
should think that gold plank would have calmed the air out in that
direction. What were you saying, Mrs. Liberty?"
"A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one
of them European steamers a-sailin' up the Narrows, and I must be
attendin' to me duties. 'Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of
Liberty to welcome all them that survive the kicks that the steerage
stewards give 'em while landin.' Sure 'tis a great country ye can come
to for $8.50, and the doctor waitin' to send ye back home free if he
sees yer eyes red from cryin' for it."
The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points
on the horizon with its aureate arrow.
"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some
night, when the wind's right. I'll call you up again. But - say! you
haven't got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept a
pretty good watch on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here.
That's a pretty sick-looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down
at your end of it; but they don't all stay that way. Every little
while up here I see guys signing checks and voting the right ticket,
and encouraging the arts and taking a bath every morning, that was
shoved ashore by a dock labourer born in the United States who never
earned over forty dollars a month. Don't run down your job, Aunt
Liberty; you're all right, all right."
XX
THE GREATER CONEY
"Next Sunday," said Dennis Carnahan, "I'll be after going down to see
the new Coney Island that's risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes
of the old resort. I'm going with Norah Flynn, and we'll fall victims
to all the dry goods deceptions, from the red-flannel eruption of
Mount Vesuvius to the pink silk ribbons on the race-suicide problems
in the incubator kiosk.
"Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the
sights? I did not.
"Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers' Union, and in
accordance with the rules I was ordered to quit work the same day on
account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners' Lodge No.2,
of Tacoma, Washington.
"'Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job,
bein' already harassed in me soul on account of havin' quarrelled
with Norah Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the
Dairymen and Street-Sprinkler Drivers' semi-annual ball, caused by
jealousy and prickly heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.
"So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the
short change and the green-corn silk between the teeth don't create
diversions and get me feeling better, then I don't know at all.
"Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The
old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye
knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall
Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to
keep a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are examined every four
years by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man's head that
was used by the old patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal;
and, by order of the Police Commissioner the image of a man drivin'
an automobile has been substituted. I hear that the old immoral
amusements have been suppressed. People who used to go down from New
York to sit in the sand and dabble in the surf now give up their
quarters to squeeze through turnstiles and see imitations of city
fires and floods painted on canvas. The reprehensible and degradin'
resorts that disgraced old Coney are said to be wiped out. The
wipin'-out process consists of raisin' the price from 10 cents to 25
cents, and hirin' a blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead of
Micky, the Bowery Bite. That's what they say - I don't know.
"But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the 'L' and starts for the
glitterin' show. 'Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the
Hindoo roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and
the streets was thick with people. 'Tis a true thing they say that
Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn and trampin'
along with the crowd; and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin'-store
clerks in red automobiles fightin' one another for who'd squeeze the
horn when they come to a corner.
"'I made a mistake,' I says to myself. 'Twas not Coney I needed.
When a man's sad 'tis not scenes of hilarity he wants. 'Twould be
far better for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services
at the Paradise Roof Gardens. 'Tis no consolation when a man's lost
his sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him the
powdered sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to
have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist, tell him that he has three children
and to look out for another serious calamity; price twenty-five cents.
"I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion
near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland. A year ago that
old pavilion was standin' up straight and the old-style waiters was