pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did
to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its
preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The
member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his
conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not
considered honourable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat
straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction
of the supereminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a
calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle
tourneys of Cupid - these were the approved arms and ammunition of the
Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, genuflexions and alluring poses
of this visitor with their chins at a new angle.
"A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan," was Maggie's formula of
introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each
new-arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique
luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and
a kitten with its first mouse.
"Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round
among the paper-box girls. "Pipe Mag's floor-walker" - thus the Give and
Takes expressed their indifferent contempt.
Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her
back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing
partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and
diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the
reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum
to walk over his feet through a two-step.
But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan
was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first
butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland be mixed with
those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the
rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night.
The girls besieged her for introductions to her "fellow." The Clover
Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms
in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and
bespoke her for the dance.
Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honours of the evening fell
thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through
the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open
window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced manner
and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his tongue,
and - he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box girl that Dempsey
Donovan brought.
Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and
could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of "Big Mike"
O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop
dared to arrest him. Whenever be broke a pushcart man's head or shot a
member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in
the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:
"The Cap'n 'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye
have time, Dempsey, me boy."
But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and
black cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey
would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound dumbbells. So,
doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe
terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey
Donovan's paper-box girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly round face of "Big
Mike" O'Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene. He
always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out
real perfectos to the delighted boys.
Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. "Big Mike"
looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed.
The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls.
Terry O'Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in
blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted
him in the middle of the floor.
Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly
every one to turn and look at them - there was a subtle feeling that two
gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with tight
coat sleeves drew nearer.
"One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Dempsey. "I hope you're enjoying
yourself. Where did you say you live?"
The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten
pounds of weight to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with
quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an
indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a
champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control
over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when
the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too
incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive.
"I live on Grand," said O'Sullivan, insolently; "and no trouble to find
me at home. Where do you live?"
Dempsey ignored the question.
"You say your name's O'Sullivan," he went on. "Well, 'Big Mike' says he
never saw you before."
"Lots of things he never saw," said the favourite of the hop.
"As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O'Sullivans in this
district know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here,
and we want a chance to make good. If you've got a family tree let's
see a few historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want
us to dig it out of you by the roots?"
"Suppose you mind your own business," suggested O'Sullivan, blandly.
Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a
brilliant idea had struck him.
"I've got it now," he said cordially. "It was just a little mistake. You
ain't no O'Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not
recognising you at first."
O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Geoghan was
ready and caught his arm.
Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club,
and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other
members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little
group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and
Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted
him out through the same door at the rear.
This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of
elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by
the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom
floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the
supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a
fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members
guaranteed that.
So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary
work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the
fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She
looked about for her escort.
"Smoke up!" said Rose Cassidy. "Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a
scrap with your Lizzie-boy, and they've waltzed out to the slaughter
room with him. How's my hair look done up this way, Mag?"
Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist.
"Gone to fight with Dempsey!" she said, breathlessly. "They've got to be
stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why, he'll - he'll kill him!"
"Ah, what do you care?" said Rosa. "Don't some of 'em fight every hop?"
But Maggie was off, darting her zig-zag way through the maze of dancers.
She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her
solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave
way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene - the
Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt
sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern
pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan
standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And
without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a
scream - leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that
was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto
that he had drawn from his bosom.
The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of
the Give and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened before.
Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the
stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has
come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning.
And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth.
Dempsey and the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at
O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his
head in the direction of the door.
"The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said, briefly. "Somebody'll pitch your
hat down after you."
Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red
in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him
bravely in the eye.
"I knew it, Dempsey," she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their
tears. "I knew he was a Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in
when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries
knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my
life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed
it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought him along. I knew
there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll
resign from the club now."
Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan.
"Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, "and tell 'em
inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to
Tammany Hall."
And then he turned back to Maggie.
"Say, Mag," he said, "I'll see you home. And how about next Saturday
night? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around for you?"
It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull to
a shining brown.
"With you, Dempsey?" she stammered. "Say - will a duck swim?"
MAN ABOUT TOWN
There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care
about a mystery. So I began to inquire.
It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases.
And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This
serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded
like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of
construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes
up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they
were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned.
The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was
enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He was
more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete
idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can
comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear
as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown vest
and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing
something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it
again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take
my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue wristlets
showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes
polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere
about him turquoises.
But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About
Town, was blank. I fancied that he bad a detachable sneer (like the
smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all.
Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.
"Why," said he, "a 'Man About Town' something between a 'rounder' and
a 'clubman.' He isn't exactly - well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish's
receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn't - well, he doesn't belong
either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron
Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association. I don't exactly
know how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere there's
anything doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every evening;
knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in town by their first
names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives. You generally
see him alone or with another man."
My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this
time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed,
but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed.
Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors,
highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled,
sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I
knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my Man
About Town. He was a type, and to drop him would be an error - a
typograph - but no! let us continue.
Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the
Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is
earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising
before an open window, and bending - but there, there! Mamma is
interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k.
The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a
certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer
in Q., X. & Z. Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New
York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to
make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on
graduation day.
Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours' grip; and
little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the real
estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is
desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces
strong drink.
I went into a café to - and while it was being mixed I asked the man
who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what
he understood by the term, epithet, description, designation,
characterisation or appellation, viz.: a "Man About Town."
"Why," said he, carefully, "it means a fly guy that's wise to the
all-night push - see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail
anywhere between the Flatirons - see? I guess that's about what it
means."
I thanked him and departed.
On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle
gently against my waistcoat pocket.
"Would you mind telling me," I asked her, "if you ever meet with the
character commonly denominated as 'A Man About Town' during your daily
wanderings?"
"I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile. "We
see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil's body
guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are,
their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few
pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service."
She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it.
In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing
from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to him. He
answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would.
"There is a type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The
term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon
to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out
an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a
hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and
know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the
conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose
into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet
cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town
from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until
you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti
with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' has done that. He is always on the
scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence.
Hansoms were made for him, and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of
music at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report
is adopted everywhere.
"I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this
nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it
before. I can see now that your 'Man About Town' should have been
classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models;
and the orchestra plays 'Let's All Go Up to Maud's' for him, by request,
instead of Händel. He makes his rounds every evening; while you and I
see the elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks
at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away immune, while
you and I search among the Presidents for names, and among the stars for
addresses to give the desk sergeant."
My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence.
I seized my advantage.
"You have classified him," I cried with joy. "You have painted his
portrait in the gallery of city types. But I must meet one face to face.
I must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him?
How shall I know him?"
Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on. And his cab-driver was
waiting for his fare, too.
"He is the sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic extract
of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit
of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his
nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with
the indefatigability of a - "
"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but can you produce one of this type? It is
a new thing to me. I must study it. I will search the town over until I
find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway."
"I am about to dine here," said my friend. "Come inside, and if there is
a Man About Town present I will point him out to you. I know most of the
regular patrons here."
"I am not dining yet," I said to him. "You will excuse me. I am going to
find my Man About Town this night if I have to rake New York from the
Battery to Little Coney Island."
I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a
pleasant savour of life and interest to the air I breathed. I was glad
to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and
with something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at
the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its
magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige.
I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and
then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont.
When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said
aloud: "Hasn't it passed yet?"
A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow
that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned, and
handed me a morning newspaper.
"Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily. I read the article.
Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night
before. It closed with these lines:
" - Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not
serious. He appeared to be a typical Man About Town."
THE COP AND THE ANTHEM
On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese
honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind
to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the
park, you may know that winter is near at hand.
A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is
kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning
of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his
pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors,
so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.
Soapy's mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for
him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to
provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily
on his bench.
The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them
there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific
Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island
was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and
congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the
essence of things desirable.
For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just
as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to
Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble
arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time
was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed
beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to
repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain
in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's
mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the
city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than
Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and
eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food
accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit
the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in
humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of
philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have
its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private
and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the
law, which though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a
gentleman's private affairs.
Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about
accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this.
The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant;
and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and
without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do
the rest.
Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the
level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up
Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering café, where are gathered
together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and
the protoplasm.
Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest
upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black,
ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary
on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant
unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show
above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted
mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing - with a bottle of
Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for
the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call
forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the café management; and
yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his
winter refuge.
But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye
fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands
turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk
and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.
Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted
island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering
limbo must be thought of.
At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed
wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a
cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around
the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands
in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.
"Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer excitedly.
"Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?"
said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good
fortune.
The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who
smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take
to their heels. The policeman saw a man half way down the block running
to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with
disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.
On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great
pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its
crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into
this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without
challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks,
doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter be betrayed the fact that
the minutest coin and himself were strangers.
"Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. "And don't keep a gentleman
waiting."
"No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and
an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. "Hey, Con!"
Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched
Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat
the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island
seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two
doors away laughed and walked down the street.
Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo
capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously
termed to himself a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing
guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest
at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the
window a large policeman of severe demeanour leaned against a water
plug.
It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated
"masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the
contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he
would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would
insure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.
Soapy straightened the lady missionary's ready-made tie, dragged his
shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled
toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden
coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the
impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an eye Soapy
saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved
away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the
shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his
hat and said:
"Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?"
The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to
beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular
haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the
station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand,
caught Soapy's coat sleeve.
"Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds.
I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching."
With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked
past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.
At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the
district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and
librettos. Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry
air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had
rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic
upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in
front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of
"disorderly conduct."
On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his
harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the
welkin.
The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to
a citizen.
"'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the
Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them
be."
Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a
policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an
unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling
wind.
In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a
swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering.
Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it
slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.
"My umbrella," he said, sternly.
"Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why
don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call
a cop? There stands one on the corner."
The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a
presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman
looked at the two curiously.
"Of course," said the umbrella man - "that is - well, you know how these
mistakes occur - I - if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me - I
picked it up this morning in a restaurant - If you recognise it as yours,
why - I hope you'll - "
"Of course it's mine," said Soapy, viciously.
The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall
blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that
was approaching two blocks away.
Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He
hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against
the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into
their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no
wrong.
At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter
and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison
Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park
bench.
But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an
old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained
window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over
the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For
there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him
transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.
The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were
few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves - for a little while the
scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the
organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it
well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and
roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.
The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences
about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul.
He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the
degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base
motives that made up his existence.
And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel
mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with
his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would
make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken
possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet;
he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without
faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in
him. To-morrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find
work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would
find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the
world. He would -
Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the
broad face of a policeman.
"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.
"Nothin'," said Soapy.
"Then come along," said the policeman.
"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court
the next morning.
AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE
In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been
sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named
Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an
unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His
theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was
a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a
fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft - but that is not the beginning of the
story.
Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at
Cypher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say "took." When we had money, Cypher got
it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called
for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in
Cypher's sullenness end smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless
soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten
desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the
bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for.
Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed
perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of
his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked
back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now
and then we paid up back scores.
But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She
was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of
nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of
scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled
and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic
sisters as "Liver-and-Bacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to
Cypher's. You expected to see her colossal figure loom through that
reeking blue cloud of smoke from frying fat just as you expect the
Palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog. There amid the
steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of "ham and," the crash of
crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of "short orders," the
cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man,
surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by
Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner
cleaving among the canoes of howling savages.
Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be
followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows.
She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped
us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she
was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the
beginning. Cypher's store of eatables she poured out upon us with royal
indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no
exhaustion. Her voice rang like a great silver bell; her smile was
many-toothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain
tops. I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I
could never think of her as existing outside of Cypher's. There nature
had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed
happy, and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed
pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation.
It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held
latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at
which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony existing between
a Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite congruity
between Milly and Cypher's.
"There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, "and if it
overtakes her she is lost to Cypher's and to us."
"She will grow fat?" asked Judkins, fearsomely.
"She will go to night school and become refined?" I ventured anxiously.
"It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with
a stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his Brutus - the cotton has its bollworm,
the chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison
ivy, the hero has his Carnegie medal, art has its Morgan, the rose has
its - "
"Speak," I interrupted, much perturbed. "You do not think that Milly
will begin to lace?"
"One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, "there will come to Cypher's for a
plate of beans a millionaire lumberman from Wisconsin, and he will marry
Milly."
"Never!" exclaimed Judkins and I, in horror.
"A lumberman," repeated Kraft, hoarsely.
"And a millionaire lumberman!" I sighed, despairingly.
"From Wisconsin!" groaned Judkins.
We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less
improbable. Milly, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was
made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the
Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie,
and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a
beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's
headliner's work is cut for him.
"Winsome Waitress Wins Wealthy Wisconsin Woodsman."
For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us.
It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that
inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed
by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her
voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee
of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher's she belonged - in the bacon smoke,
the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone
china and rattling casters.
Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the
wildwood discharged upon us Milly's preordained confiscator - our fee to
adjustment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of
the visitation.
We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted in
as if on the heels of a dog team, and made one of the mess at our table.
With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the
fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as
a specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another as
friends.