The Gentle Grafter.............................................................................................................................................1

O. Henry ...................................................................................................................................................1

"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, 'Why is a policeman?'"

"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a policeman. My remark was an

epitograman axisa kind of mulct'em in parvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not

like an egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the outside. The only way to break up a trust

is from the inside. Keep sitting on it until it hatches. Look at the brood of young colleges and libraries that's

chirping and peeping all over the country. Yes, sir, every trust bears in its own bosom the seeds of its

destruction like a rooster that crows near a Georgia colored Methodist camp meeting, or a Republican

I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered, plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career,

conducted an enterprise of the class to which the word "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to my surprise he

"Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into a charter that opened up a solider and safer

piece of legitimate octopusing. We had everything in our favorwind, water, police, nerve, and a clean

monopoly of an article indispensable to the public. There wasn't a trust buster on the globe that could have

found a weak spot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculation look like a bucket shop.

"No, sir, it was just as I said. We were selfcurbed. It was a case of autosuppression. There was a rift within

"You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for some years. That man was the most

talented conniver at stratagems I ever saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a

personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy was educated, too, besides having a lot of useful

information. He had acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for hours on any

subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine

with a lot of magic lantern pictures of the annual Custommade Clothiers' Association convention at Atlantic

"One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip during which a Philadelphia capitalist

had paid us $2,500 for a half interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all right. The other

half interest must have been worth two or three thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.

"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes against a little town in Texas on the bank

of the Rio Grande. The name of it was Bird City; but it wasn't. The town had about 2,000 inhabitants, mostly

men. I figured out that their principal means of existence was in living close to tall chaparral. Some of 'em

were stockmen and some gamblers and some horse peculators and plenty were in the smuggling line. Me and

Andy put up at a hotel that was built like something between a roofgarden and a sectional bookcase. It

began to rain the day we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius was sure turning on the water plugs on

"Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither Andy nor me drank. But we could see the

townspeople making a triangular procession from one to another all day and half the night. Everybody

"The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so me and Andy walked out to the edge of

town to view the mudscape. Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to

be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and its old bed was cracking and giving away, when

we saw it, on account of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That man's intellects

was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was

"First we went to the main saloon in Bird City, called the Blue Snake, and bought it. It cost us $1,200. And

then we dropped in, casual, at Mexican Joe's place, referred to the rain, and bought him out for $500. The

"The next morning Bird City woke up and found itself an island. The river had busted through its old

channel, and the town was surrounded by roaring torrents. The rain was still raining, and there was heavy

clouds in the northwest that presaged about six more mean annual rainfalls during the next two weeks. But

"Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pin feathers and strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican

Joe's place was closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So, naturally the body politic

emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?

"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a sixshooter on each side of him, ready to

make change or corpses as the case may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten foot sign

reading: 'All Drinks One Dollar.' Andy sits on the safe in his neat blue suit and goldbanded cigar, on the

lookout for emergencies. The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been promised

"Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it was in a cage. We expected trouble; but there

wasn't any. The citizens saw that we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it would be two

weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on

"There was about 1,500 grownup adults in Bird City that had arrived at years of indiscretion; and the

majority of 'em required from three to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the

only place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It was beautiful and simple as all truly great

"About ten o'clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed down to playing twosteps and marches

instead of jigs. But I looked out the window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at

Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more money to be sucked in by the

"At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. We told the bartenders to take advantage

of the lull, and do the same. Then me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. We calculated

that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeks the trust would be able to endow the Chicago

University with a new dormitory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthy poor man in Texas

"Andy was especial inroaded by selfesteem at our success, the rudiments of the scheme having originated in

his own surmises and premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the house.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you could find three cormorants with brighter

ideas about downtreading the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker, incorporated. We have

"'Well,' says I, 'it does look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite

of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten

"Andy pours himself out four fingers of our best rye and does with it as was so intended. It was the first drink

"And then after thus doing umbrage to the heathen diabetes he drinks another to our success. And then he

begins to toast the trade, beginning with Raisuli and the Northern Pacific, and on down the line to the little

ones like the school book combine and the oleomargarine outrages and the Lehigh Valley and Great Scott

"'It's all right, Andy,' says I, 'to drink the health of our brother monopolists, but don't overdo the wassail. You

know our most eminent and loathed multicorruptionists live on weak tea and dog biscuits.'

"Andy went in the back room awhile and came out dressed in his best clothes. There was a kind of murderous

and soulful look of gentle riotousness in his eye that I didn't like. I watched him to see what turn the whiskey

was going to take in him. There are two times when you never can tell what is going to happen. One is when

"In less than an hour Andy's skate had turned to an ice yacht. He was outwardly decent and managed to

"'That's a selfevident hypothesis,' says I. 'But you're not Irish. Why don't you say 'creature,' according to the

"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm all aflame and crammed inside with an assortment of words and

phrases that have got to have an exodus. I can feel millions of synonyms and parts of speech rising in me,'

says he, 'and I've got to make a speech of some sort. Drink,' says Andy, 'always drives me to oratory.'

"'From my earliest recollections,' says he, 'alcohol seemed to stimulate my sense of recitation and rhetoric.

Why, in Bryan's second campaign,' says Andy, 'they used to give me three gin rickeys and I'd speak two

hours longer than Billy himself could on the silver question. Finally, they persuaded me to take the gold cure.'

"'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I, 'why not go out on the river bank and speak a piece?

It seems to me there was an old spellbinder named Cantharides that used to go and disincorporate himself of

"'No,' says Andy, 'I must have an audience. I feel like if I once turned loose people would begin to call

Senator Beveridge the Grand Young Sphinx of the Wabash. I've got to get an audience together, Jeff, and get

this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on me and I'd go about feeling like a deckleedge edition de

"'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desire for vocality seem to be connected

"'I ain't particular,' says Andy. 'I am equally good and varicose on all subjects. I can take up the matter of

Russian immigration, or the poetry of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature, or drainage, and make

"'Well, Andy,' says I, 'if you are bound to get rid of this accumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in

town and work it on some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the business. Everybody will

be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork and beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500

"So Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men on the street and talking to 'em. By and by

he has half a dozen in a bunch listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms and elocuting at a

goodsized crowd on a corner. When he walks away they string out after him, talking all the time; and he

leads 'em down the main street of Bird City with more men joining the procession as they go. It reminded me

of the old legerdemain that I'd read in books about the Pied Piper of Heidsieck charming the children away

"One o'clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire for place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a

drink. The streets were deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There was only a light

"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to scrape the mud off his boots.

"'Pardner,' says I, 'what has happened? This morning there was hectic gaiety afoot; and now it seems more

like one of them ruined cities of Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main

"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool warehouse listening to your sidekicker make

a speech. He is some gravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and conclusions,' says

"'Well, I hope he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for trade languishes.'

"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying

across the back of a burro. We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his hands and feet.

"Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. I met a man who told me all about it.

Andy had made the finest two hour speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in the

"'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every man in Bird City signed the pledge for a year.'"

Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in

Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners,

living hand to mouth, heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune for his last coin.

"I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw," said he, "in a buckskin suit, moccasins, long hair and a thirtycarat diamond

ring that I got from an actor in Texarkana. I don't know what he ever did with the pocket knife I swapped him

"I was Dr. Waughhoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried only one best bet just then, and that

was Resurrection Bitters. It was made of lifegiving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by Taqua la,

the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while gathering truck to garnish a platter of boiled dog

"Business hadn't been good in the last town, so I only had five dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and

he credited me for half a gross of eightounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and ingredients in my valise,

left over from the last town. Life began to look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running

"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of cinchona and a dime's worth of aniline in that

halfgross of bitters. I've gone through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for 'em again.

"I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on Main Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial

town; and a compound hypothetical pneumocardiac antiscorbutic tonic was just what I diagnosed the crowd

as needing. The bitters started off like sweetbreadsontoast at a vegetarian dinner. I had sold two dozen at

fifty cents apiece when I felt somebody pull my coat tail. I knew what that meant; so I climbed down and

sneaked a five dollar bill into the hand of a man with a German silver star on his lapel.

"'Have you got a city license,' he asks, 'to sell this illegitimate essence of spooju that you flatter by the name

"'I have not,' says I. 'I didn't know you had a city. If I can find it tomorrow I'll take one out if it's necessary.'

"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the landlord about it.

"'Oh, you won't stand no show in Fisher Hill,' says he. 'Dr. Hoskins, the only doctor here, is a brotherinlaw

"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've got a State peddler's license, and I take out a city one wherever they

"I went to the Mayor's office the next morning and they told me he hadn't showed up yet. They didn't know

when he'd be down. So Doc Waughhoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpsonweed

"By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to me and asks the time.

"'Halfpast ten,' says I, 'and you are Andy Tucker. I've seen you work. Wasn't it you that put up the Great

Cupid Combination package on the Southern States? Let's see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement ring, a

wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and Dorothy Vernonall for fifty cents.'

"Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him. He was a good street man; and he was more than thathe

respected his profession, and he was satisfied with 300 per cent. profit. He had plenty of offers to go into the

illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never to be tempted off of the straight path.

"I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out together. I told him about the situation in Fisher Hill

and how finances was low on account of the local mixture of politics and jalap. Andy had just got in on the

train that morning. He was pretty low himself, and was going to canvass the whole town for a few dollars to

build a new battleship by popular subscription at Eureka Springs. So we went out and sat on the porch and

"The next morning at eleven o'clock when I was sitting there alone, an Uncle Tom shuffles into the hotel and

asked for the doctor to come and see Judge Banks, who, it seems, was the mayor and a mighty sick man.

"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de country to see some sick persons. He's de

only doctor in de town, and Massa Banks am powerful bad off. He sent me to ax you to please, suh, come.'

"'As man to man,' says I, 'I'll go and look him over.' So I put a bottle of Resurrection Bitters in my pocket and

goes up on the hill to the mayor's mansion, the finest house in town, with a mannered roof and two cast iron

"This Mayor Banks was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. He was making internal noises that would have

had everybody in San Francisco hiking for the parks. A young man was standing by the bed holding a cup of

"'Doc,' says the Mayor, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you do nothing for me?'

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm not a regular preordained disciple of S. Q. Lapius. I never took a course in a medical

college,' says I. 'I've just come as a fellow man to see if I could be off assistance.'

"'I'm deeply obliged,' says he. 'Doc Waughhoo, this is my nephew, Mr. Biddle. He has tried to alleviate my

"I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the mayor's pulse. 'Let me see your liveryour

tongue, I mean,' says I. Then I turns up the lids of his eyes and looks close that the pupils of 'em.

"'I was taken downowouchlast night,' says the Mayor. 'Gimme something for it, doc, won't you?'

"'Biddle,' says the young man. 'Do you feel like you could eat some ham and eggs, Uncle James?'

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade and listening, 'you've got a bad attack of

"'Good Lord!' says he, with a groan, 'Can't you rub something on it, or set it or anything?'

"'You ain't going, doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You ain't going away and leave me to die with

"'Common humanity, Dr. Whoaha,' says Mr. Biddle, 'ought to prevent your deserting a fellowhuman in

"'Dr. Waughhoo, when you get through plowing,' says I. And then I walks back to the bed and throws back

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'there is only one hope for you. Drugs will do you no good. But there is another power

"'Scientific demonstrations,' says I. 'The triumph of mind over sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain

and sickness except what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in arrears. Demonstrate.'

"'What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?' says the Mayor. 'You ain't a Socialist, are you?'

"'I am speaking,' says I, 'of the great doctrine of psychic financieringof the enlightened school of

longdistance, subconscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitisof that wonderful indoor sport

"'I'm one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner Pulpit,' says I. 'The lame talk and the

blind rubber whenever I make a pass at 'em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous control. It

was only through me at the recent seances at Ann Arbor that the late president of the Vinegar Bitters

Company could revisit the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling medicine on the

street,' says I, 'to the poor. I don't practice personal magnetism on them. I do not drag it in the dust,' says I,

"'Listen,' says I. 'I've had a good deal of trouble with medical societies everywhere I've been. I don't practice

medicine. But, to save your life, I'll give you the psychic treatment if you'll agree as mayor not to push the

"'Of course I will,' says he. 'And now get to work, doc, for them pains are coming on again.'

"'Now,' says I, 'get your mind off the disease. You ain't sick. You haven't got a heart or a clavicle or a funny

bone or brains or anything. You haven't got any pain. Declare error. Now you feel the pain that you didn't

"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I don't. Now state a few lies about my not having

this swelling in my left side, and I think I could be propped up and have some sausage and buckwheat cakes.'

"'Now,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the perihelion has subsided. You're getting sleepy.

You can't hold your eyes open any longer. For the present the disease is checked. Now, you are asleep.'

"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the treatment, Dr. Poohpooh?'

"'Waughhoo,' says I. 'I'll come back at eleven tomorrow. When he wakes up give him eight drops of

"The next morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and

"The mayor's color and pulse was fine. I gave him another treatment, and he said the last of the pain left him.

"'Now,' says I, 'you'd better stay in bed for a day or two, and you'll be all right. It's a good thing I happened to

be in Fisher Hill, Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'for all the remedies in the cornucopia that the regular schools of

medicine use couldn't have saved you. And now that error has flew and pain proved a perjurer, let's allude to

a cheerfuller subjectsay the fee of $250. No checks, please, I hate to write my name on the back of a check

"'I've got the cash here,' says the mayor, pulling a pocket book from under his pillow.

"I signed the receipt and the mayor handed me the money. I put it in my inside pocket careful.

"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waughhoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for practising medicine without authority under

"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. Mayor, sitting up in bed. 'He's a detective employed by the State Medical

Society. He's been following you over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this scheme to

catch you. I guess you won't do any more doctoring around these parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had,

doc?' the mayor laughs, 'compoundwell, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess, anyway.'

"'Let's see you do it,' says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat and half throws him out the window, but he pulls

a gun and sticks it under my chin, and I stand still. Then he puts handcuffs on me, and takes the money out of

"'I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bank bills that you and I marked, Judge Banks. I'll turn them over

to the sheriff when we get to his office, and he'll send you a receipt. They'll have to be used as evidence in the

"'All right, Mr. Biddle,' says the mayor. 'And now, Doc Waughhoo,' he goes on, 'why don't you

demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocuspocus them handcuffs

"'Come on, officer,' says I, dignified. 'I may as well make the best of it.' And then I turns to old Banks and

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'the time will come soon when you'll believe that personal magnetism is a success. And

"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet somebody now, Andy. I reckon you better take 'em

off, and' Hey? Why, of course it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that's how we got the capital

Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly, for a story, he will maintain that his life

has been as devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will divulge. Therefore I cast

"I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their prosperity, are running after their old populistic

"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees and the Connemaugh river. I know

something about farmers. I thought I struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved to

me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker,' said Andy. 'He's the man that's shoved into the front row

among bullets, ballots and the ballet. He's the funnybone and gristle of the country,' said Andy, 'and I don't

"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixtyeight cents between us in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of

the predigested hoecake belt of Southern Indiana. How we got off the train there the night before I can't

tell you; for she went through the village so fast that what looked like a saloon to us through the car window

turned out to be a composite view of a drug store and a water tank two blocks apart. Why we got off at the

first station we could, belongs to a little oroide gold watch and Alaska diamond deal we failed to pull off the

"When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something like the fumes of nitromuriatic acid, and

"'Cheer up, Andy,' says I. 'We're in a rural community. Somebody has just tested a gold brick downstairs.

We'll go out and get what's coming to us from a farmer; and then yoicks! and away.'

"Farmers was always a kind of reserve fund to me. Whenever I was in hard luck I'd go to the crossroads,

hook a finger in a farmer's suspender, recite the prospectus of my swindle in a mechanical kind of a way, look

over what he had, give him back his keys, whetstone and papers that was of no value except to owner, and

stroll away without asking any questions. Farmers are not fair game to me as high up in our business as me

and Andy was; but there was times when we found 'em useful, just as Wall Street does the Secretary of the

"When we went down stairs we saw we was in the midst of the finest farming section we ever see. About two

miles away on a hill was a big white house in a grove surrounded by a widespread agricultural

"'That,' says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial and horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra

"After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left, casts the horoscope of the rural potentate.

"'Let me go alone,' says I. 'Two of us against one farmer would look as onesided as Roosevelt using both

"'All right,' says Andy. 'I like to be a true sport even when I'm only collecting rebates from the rutabag

"'Oh,' I says, 'the first thing that come to hand in the suit case. I reckon I'll take along some of the new income

tax receipts, and the recipe for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and the order blanks

for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn out to be McCormick's reapers; and the pearl necklace

"'That'll be enough,' says Andy. 'Any one of the lot ought to land on Ezra. And say, Jeff, make that succotash

fancier give you nice, clean, new bills. It's a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, Civil Service and

Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers hand out to use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that

"So, I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I drove out to the Plunkett farm and hitched.

There was a man sitting on the front steps of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond ring, golf

"I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself the rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man

with the Hoe.' When I looked at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket for buncoing the

pushedback brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shake down the Beef Trust with a mittimus and a parlor

"'Well,' says he, looking at me close, 'speak up. I see the left pocket of your coat sags a good deal. Out with

the goldbrick first. I'm rather more interested in the bricks than I am in the trick sixtyday notes and the lost

"I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas of ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick

"'One dollar and eighty cents,' says the farmer hefting it in his hand. 'Is it a trade?'

"'The lead in it is worth more than that,' says I, dignified. I put it back in my pocket.

"'All right,' says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection I'm starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for

"'Come in, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'and look at my place. It's kind of lonesome here sometimes. I think that's

"We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker'slight oak desks, two 'phones, Spanish

leather upholstered chairs and couches, oil paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hitting off the

"'Hello, hello!' says this funny farmer. 'Is that the Regent Theatre? Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre.

Reserve four orchestra seats for Friday eveningmy usual ones. Yes; Fridaygoodbye.'

"'I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch

the eighteenhour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get

home in time to see the chickens go to roost fortyeight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of

the cavedwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don'tBlow OuttheGas

"'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the agrarian traditions in which heretofore, I have reposed

"'Sure, Bunk,' says he. 'The yellow primrose on the river's brim is getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday

"'Hello, hello!' says he. 'Oh, that's Perkins, at Milldale. I told you $800 was too much for that horse. Have you

got him there? Good. Let me see him. Get away from the transmitter. Now make him trot in a circle. Faster.

Yes, I can hear him. Keep onfaster yet. . . . That'll do. Now lead him up to the phone. Closer. Get his nose

nearer. There. Now wait. No; I don't want that horse. What? No; not at any price. He interferes; and he's

"'Now, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'do you begin to realize that agriculture has had a hair cut? You belong in a

bygone era. Why, Tom Lawson himself knows better than to try to catch an uptodate agriculturalist

napping. It's Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm, you bet. Now, look here, and see how we keep up with

"He shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears like the pennyintheslot affairs. I puts it

on and listens. A female voice starts up reading headlines of murders, accidents and other political casualities.

"'What you hear,' says the farmer, 'is a synopsis of today's news in the New York, Chicago, St. Louis and

San Francisco papers. It is wired in to our Rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On this table

you see the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Also a special service of advance sheets of the

"I picks up one sheet and sees that it's headed: 'Special Advance Proofs. In July, 1909, the /Century/ will

"The farmer rings up somebodyhis manager, I reckonand tells him to let that herd of 15 Jerseys go at

$600 a head; and to sow the 900acre field in wheat; and to have 200 extra cans ready at the station for the

milk trolley car. Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out a bottle of green chartreuse, and goes over and

"'Stand back!' says he, raising his hand, 'or I'll call the dog. I told you not to waste your time.'

"After a while he says: 'Bunk, if you don't mind my telling you, your company begins to cloy slightly. I've

got to write an article on the Chimera of Communism for a magazine, and attend a meeting of the Race Track

Association this afternoon. Of course you understand by now that you can't get my proxy for your Remedy,

"Well, sir, all I could think of to do was to go out and get in the buggy. The horse turned round and took me

back to the hotel. I hitched him and went in to see Andy. In his room I told him about this farmer, word for

"'I don't understand it,' says I, humming a sad and foolish little song to cover my humiliation.

"Andy walks up and down the room for a long time, biting the left end of his mustache as he does when in the

"'Jeff,' says he, finally, 'I believe your story of this expurgated rustic; but I am not convinced. It looks

incredulous to me that he could have inoculated himself against all the preordained systems of bucolic bunco.

Now, you never regarded me as a man of special religious proclivities, did you, Jeff?' says Andy.

"'Well,' says I, 'No. But,' says I, not to wound his feelings, 'I have also observed many church members whose

said proclivities were not so outwardly developed that they would show on a white handkerchief if you

"'I have always been a deep student of nature from creation down,' says Andy, 'and I believe in an ultimatum

design of Providence. Farmers was made for a purpose; and that was to furnish a livelihood to men like me

and you. Else why was we given brains? It is my belief that the manna that the Israelites lived on for forty

years in the wilderness was only a figurative word for farmers; and they kept up the practice to this day. And

now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test my theory "Once a farmer, always a comeon," in spite of the veneering

"'You'll fail, same as I did,' says I. 'This one's shook off the shackles of the sheepfold. He's entrenched

"'I'll try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that Free Rural Delivery can't overcome.'

"Andy fumbles around awhile in the closet and comes out dressed in a suit with brown and yellow checks as

big as your hand. His vest is red with blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat. I noticed he'd soaked his sandy

"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come back. I won't be long.'

"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of money on the table.

"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said he. 'Let me tell you. He was in. He looked me over and began to guy

me. I didn't say a word, but got out the walnut shells and began to roll the little ball on the table. I whistled a

"'Step up lively, gentlemen,' says I, 'and watch the little ball. It costs you nothing to look. There you see it,

and there you don't. Guess where the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

"'I steals a look at the farmer man. I see the sweat coming out on his forehead. He goes over and closes the

front door and watches me some more. Directly he says: "I'll bet you twenty I can pick the shell the ball's

"'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He only had $860 cash in the house. When I left he

"'"Bunk," says he, "thank you for the only real pleasure I've had in years. It brings up happy old days when I

"Yes," said Jeff. "Something like that. You let the farmers go ahead and amuse themselves with politics.

"I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of more than fifty millions of dollars," said I.

I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut.

"Which same," said Jeff, "calls for a new deck, and a recitation by the entire class in philanthromathematics."

"It is," said Jeff. "I never told you about the time when me and Andy Tucker was philanthropists, did I? It

was eight years ago in Arizona. Andy and me was out in the Gila mountains with a twohorse wagon

prospecting for silver. We struck it, and sold out to parties in Tucson for $25,000. They paid our check at the

bank in silvera thousand dollars in a sack. We loaded it in our wagon and drove east a hundred miles

before we recovered our presence of intellect. Twentyfive thousand dollars doesn't sound like so much when

you're reading the annual report of the Pennsylvania Railroad or listening to an actor talking about his salary;

but when you can raise up a wagon sheet and kick around your bootheel and hear every one of 'em ring

against another it makes you feel like you was a nightandday bank with the clock striking twelve.

"The third day out we drove into one of the most specious and tidy little towns that Nature or Rand and

McNally ever turned out. It was in the foothills, and mitigated with trees and flowers and about 2,000 head of

cordial and dilatory inhabitants. The town seemed to be called Floresville, and Nature had not contaminated it

"Me and Andy deposited our money to the credit of Peters and Tucker in the Esperanza Savings Bank, and

got rooms at the Skyview Hotel. After supper we lit up, and sat out on the gallery and smoked. Then was

"When a man swindles the public out of a certain amount he begins to get scared and wants to return part of

it. And if you'll watch close and notice the way his charity runs you'll see that he tries to restore it to the same

people he got it from. As a hydrostatical case, take, let's say, A. A made his millions selling oil to poor

students who sit up nights studying political economy and methods for regulating the trusts. So, back to the

"There's B got his from the common laboring man that works with his hands and tools. How's he to get some

"'Aha!' says B, 'I'll do it in the name of Education. I've skinned the laboring man,' says he to himself, 'but,

"So he puts up eighty million dollars' worth of libraries; and the boys with the dinner pail that builds 'em gets

"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I suppose if I'd given ye preferred steel trust

stock instead ye'd have wanted the water in it set out in cut glass decanters. Hoot, for ye!'

"But, as I said, the owning of so much money was beginning to give me philanthropitis. It was the first time

me and Andy had ever made a pile big enough to make us stop and think how we got it.

"'Andy,' says I, 'we're wealthynot beyond the dreams of average; but in our humble way we are

comparatively as rich as Greasers. I feel as if I'd like to do something for as well as to humanity.'

"'I was thinking the same thing, Jeff,' says he. 'We've been gouging the public for a long time with all kinds of

little schemes from selling selfigniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke Smith presidential

campaign buttons. I'd like, myself, to hedge a bet or two in the graft game if I could do it without actually

banging the cymbalines in the Salvation Army or teaching a bible class by the Bertillon system.

"'What'll we do?' says Andy. 'Give free grub to the poor or send a couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'We've got too much money to be implicated in plain charity; and we haven't got enough to

make restitution. So, we'll look about for something that's about half way between the two.'

"The next day in walking around Floresville we see on a hill a big red brick building that appears to be

disinhabited. The citizens speak up and tell us that it was begun for a residence several years before by a mine

owner. After running up the house he finds he only had $2.80 left to furnish it with, so he invests that in

"As soon as me and Andy saw that building the same idea struck both of us. We would fix it up with lights

and pen wipers and professors, and put an iron dog and statues of Hercules and Father John on the lawn, and

"So we talks it over to the prominent citizens of Floresville, who falls in fine with the idea. They give a

banquet in the engine house to us, and we make our bow for the first time as benefactors to the cause of

progress and enlightenment. Andy makes an hourandahalf speech on the subject of irrigation in Lower

"Andy and me didn't lose any time in philanthropping. We put every man in town that could tell a hammer

from a step ladder to work on the building, dividing it up into class rooms and lecture halls. We wire to

Frisco for a car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders, dictionaries, chairs for the professors, slates,

skeletons, sponges, twentyseven cravenetted gowns and caps for the senior class, and an open order for all

the truck that goes with a firstclass university. I took it on myself to put a campus and a curriculum on the

list; but the telegraph operator must have got the words wrong, being an ignorant man, for when the goods

"While the weekly papers was having chalkplate cuts of me and Andy we wired an employment agency in

Chicago to express us f.o.b., six professors immediatelyone English literature, one uptodate dead

languages, one chemistry, one political economydemocrat preferred one logic, and one wise to painting,

Italian and music, with union card. The Esperanza bank guaranteed salaries, which was to run between $800

"Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was carved the words: 'The World's University; Peters

& Tucker, Patrons and Proprietors. And when September the first got a crossmark on the calendar, the

comeons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the triweekly express from Tucson. They was mostly

young, spectacled, and redheaded, with sentiments divided between ambition and food. Andy and me got

"They came in bunches. We had advertised the University in all the state papers, and it did us good to see

how quick the country responded. Two hundred and nineteen husky lads aging along from 18 up to chin

whiskers answered the clarion call of free education. They ripped open that town, sponged the seams, turned

it, lined it with new mohair; and you couldn't have told it from Harvard or Goldfields at the March term of

"They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the World's University colorsultramarine and

blueand they certainly made a lively place of Floresville. Andy made them a speech from the balcony of

"In about two weeks the professors got the students disarmed and herded into classes. I don't believe there's

any pleasure equal to being a philanthropist. Me and Andy bought high silk hats and pretended to dodge the

two reporters of the Floresville Gazette. The paper had a man to kodak us whenever we appeared on the

street, and ran our pictures every week over the column headed 'Educational Notes.' Andy lectured twice a

week at the University; and afterward I would rise and tell a humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my

"Andy was as interested in philanthropy as I was. We used to wake up of nights and tell each other new ideas

"'Andy,' says I to him one day, 'there's something we overlooked. The boys ought to have dromedaries.'

"'I do not,' says I. 'I mean dromedaries.' But I never could make Andy understand; so we never ordered 'em.

Of course, I meant them long bedrooms in colleges where the scholars sleep in a row.

"Well, sir, the World's University was a success. We had scholars from five States and territories, and

Floresville had a boom. A new shooting gallery and a pawn shop and two more saloons started; and the boys

"The scholars was a fine lot of young men, and me and Andy was as proud of 'em as if they belonged to our

"But one day about the last of October Andy comes to me and asks if I have any idea how much money we

had left in the bank. I guesses about sixteen thousand. 'Our balance,' says Andy, 'is $821.62.'

"'What!' says I, with a kind of a yell. 'Do you mean to tell me that them infernal clodhopping,

doughheaded, pupfaced, goosebrained, gatestealing, rabbiteared sons of horse thieves have soaked us

"'Not necessarily,' says Andy. 'Philanthropy,' says he, 'when run on a good business basis is one of the best

grafts going. I'll look into the matter and see if it can't be straightened out.'

"The next week I am looking over the payroll of our faculty when I run across a new nameProfessor James

Darnley McCorkle, chair of mathematics; salary $100 per week. I yells so loud that Andy runs in quick.

"'What's this,' says I. 'A professor of mathematics at more than $5,000 a year? How did this happen? Did he

"'I wired to Frisco for him a week ago,' says Andy. 'In ordering the faculty we seemed to have overlooked the

"'A good thing we did,' says I. 'We can pay his salary two weeks, and then our philanthropy will look like the

"'Wait a while,' says Andy, 'and see how things turn out. We have taken up too noble a cause to draw out

now. Besides, the further I gaze into the retail philanthropy business the better it looks to me. I never thought

about investigating it before. Come to think of it now,' goes on Andy, 'all the philanthropists I ever knew had

plenty of money. I ought to have looked into that matter long ago, and located which was the cause and

"I had confidence in Andy's chicanery in financial affairs, so I left the whole thing in his hands. The

University was flourishing fine, and me and Andy kept our silk hats shined up, and Floresville kept on

heaping honors on us like we was millionaires instead of almost busted philanthropists.

"The students kept the town lively and prosperous. Some stranger came to town and started a faro bank over

the Red Front livery stable, and began to amass money in quantities. Me and Andy strolled up one night and

piked a dollar or two for sociability. There were about fifty of our students there drinking rum punches and

shoving high stacks of blues and reds about the table as the dealer turned the cards up.

"'Why, dang it, Andy,' says I, 'these freeschoolhunting, ganderheaded, silksocked little sons of

sapsuckers have got more money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out of their

"'Yes,' says Andy, 'a good many of them are sons of wealthy miners and stockmen. It's very sad to see 'em

"At Christmas all the students went home to spend the holidays. We had a farewell blowout at the University,

and Andy lectured on 'Modern Music and Prehistoric Literature of the Archipelagos.' Each one of the faculty

answered to toasts, and compared me and Andy to Rockefeller and the Emperor Marcus Autolycus. I

pounded on the table and yelled for Professor McCorkle; but it seems he wasn't present on the occasion. I

wanted a look at the man that Andy thought could earn $100 a week in philanthropy that was on the point of

"The students all left on the night train; and the town sounded as quiet as the campus of a correspondence

school at midnight. When I went to the hotel I saw a light in Andy's room, and I opened the door and walked

"There sat Andy and the faro dealer at a table dividing a twofoot high stack of currency in thousanddollar

"'Correct,' says Andy. 'Thirtyone thousand apiece. Come in, Jeff,' says he. 'This is our share of the profits of

the first half of the scholastic term of the World's University, incorporated and philanthropated. Are you

convinced now,' says Andy, 'that philanthropy when practiced in a business way is an art that blesses him

"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get your collars and cuffs and press

"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I could have met that Professor James Darnley

"Many of our great men," said I (apropos of many things), "have declared that they owe their success to the

"I know," said Jeff Peters. "I've read in history and mythology about Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale and Mrs.

Caudle and Eve and other noted females of the past. But, in my opinion, the woman of today is of little use

in politics or business. What's she best in, anyway?men make the best cooks, milliners, nurses,

housekeepers, stenographers, clerks, hairdressers and launderers. About the only job left that a woman can

"I would have thought," said I, "that occasionally, anyhow, you would have found the wit and intuition of

"Now, wouldn't you," said Jeff, with an emphatic nod"wouldn't you have imagined that? But a woman is

an absolutely unreliable partner in any straight swindle. She's liable to turn honest on you when you are

"Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived the illusion that he wanted to be appointed

United States Marshall. At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling walking

canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would

go trickling down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The deputies was annoying me and

Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as

"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education, besides having knowledge and information

"'I do,' says I, 'and I have never regretted it. I am not one,' says I, 'who would cheapen education by making it

free. Tell me,' says I, 'which is of the most value to mankind, literature or horse racking?'

"'Whyer, playing the poI mean, of course, the poets and the great writers have got the call, of course,'

"'Exactly,' says I. 'Then why do the master minds of finance and philanthropy,' says I, 'charge us $2 to get

into a racetrack and let us into a library free? Is that distilling into the masses,' says I, 'a correct estimate of

"'You are arguing outside of my faculties of sense and rhetoric,' says Bill. 'What I wanted you to do is to go to

Washington and dig out this appointment for me. I haven't no ideas of cultivation and intrigue. I'm a plain

citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men,' says Bill; 'I've got nine children; I've been a good

Republican ever since the first of May; I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain't illegible for the

office. And I think your partner, Mr. Tucker,' goes on Bill, 'is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and

connected system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you

preliminary,' says Bill, '$1,000 for drinks, bribes and carfare in Washington. If you land the job I will pay you

$1,000 more, cash down, and guarantee you impunity in bootlegging whiskey for twelve months. Are you

patriotic to the West enough to help me put this thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great Father

"Well, I talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy was a man of an involved nature. He

was never content to plod along, as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak

beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork.

Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is by purely

commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and strikes out for Washington.

"Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota Avenue, G.S.S.W. 'Now Andy, for the first

time in our lives we've got to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we've never been used to; but

we've got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble's sake. In a straight and legitimate business,' says I, 'we

could afford to introduce a little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly and heinous piece of malpractice

like this it seems to me that the straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,' says I, 'that we

hand over $500 of this money to the chairman of the national campaign committee, get a receipt, lay the

receipt on the President's desk and tell him about Bill. The President is a man who would appreciate a

"Andy agreed with me, but after we talked the scheme over with the hotel clerk we give that plan up. He told

us that there was only one way to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady lobbyist.

He gave us the address of one he recommended, a Mrs. Avery, who he said was high up in sociable and

"The next morning at 10 o'clock me and Andy called at her hotel, and was shown up to her reception room.

"This Mrs. Avery was a solace and a balm to the eyesight. She had hair the color of the back of a twenty

dollar gold certificate, blue eyes and a system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July

"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and diamond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was

bare; and she was using a desk telephone with one hand, and drinking tea with the other.

"I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for Bill, and the price we could pay.

"'Those western appointments,' says she, 'are easy. Le'me see, now,' says she, 'who could put that through for

us. No use fooling with the Territorial delegates. I guess,' says she, 'that Senator Sniper would be about the

man. He's from somewheres in the West. Let's see how he stands on my private menu card.' She takes some

"'Yes,' says she, 'he's marked with a star; that means "ready to serve." Now, let's see. "Age 55; married twice;

Presbyterian, likes blondes, Tolstoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third bottle of wine." Yes,' she

goes on, 'I am sure I can have your friend, Mr. Bummer, appointed Minister to Brazil.'

"'Oh, yes,' says Mrs. Avery. 'I have so many deals of this sort I sometimes get them confused. Give me all the

memoranda you have of the case, Mr. Peters, and come back in four days. I think it can be arranged by then.'

"So me and Andy goes back to our hotel and waits. Andy walks up and down and chews the left end of his

"'As rare,' says I, 'as an omelet made from the eggs of the fabulous bird known as the epidermis,' says I.

"'A woman like that,' says Andy, 'ought to lead a man to the highest positions of opulence and fame.'

"'I misdoubt,' says I, 'if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job any more than to have his meals ready

promptly and spread a report that the other candidate's wife had once been a shoplifter. They are no more

adapted for business and politics,' says I, 'than Algernon Charles Swinburne is to be floor manager at one of

Chuck Connor's annual balls. I know,' says I to Andy, 'that sometimes a woman seems to step out into the

kalsomine light as the charge d'affaires of her man's political job. But how does it come out? Say, they have a

neat little berth somewhere as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or lockkeeper on the Delaware and

Raritan Canal. One day this man finds his wife putting on her overshoes and three months supply of bird seed

into the canary's cage. "Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful light in his eye. "No, Arthur," says she,

"Washington. We're wasted here," says she. "You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of St. Bridget

"'Then this lady,' I says to Andy, 'moves against the authorities at Washington with her baggage and

munitions, consisting of five dozen indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet when

she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume

"'Well and then what?' I goes. 'She has the letters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she

lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the B. & O. Depot and then calls on the President. The

ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aidedecamp of the Blue Room and an

unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the handsand feet. They carry her out to S.W.B.

street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the

"'Then,' says Andy, 'you don't think Mrs. Avery will land the Marshalship for Bill?'

"'I do not,' says I. 'I do not wish to be a sceptic, but I doubt if she can do as well as you and me could have

"'I don't agree with you,' says Andy. 'I'll bet you she does. I'm proud of having a higher opinion of the talent

"We was back at Mrs. Avery's hotel at the time she appointed. She was looking pretty and fine enough, as far

as that went, to make any man let her name every officer in the country. But I hadn't much faith in looks, so I

was certainly surprised when she pulls out a document with the great seal of the United States on it, and

"'You might have had it the next day, boys,' says Mrs. Avery, smiling. 'I hadn't the slightest trouble in getting

it,' says she. 'I just asked for it, that's all. Now, I'd like to talk to you a while,' she goes on, 'but I'm awfully

busy, and I know you'll excuse me. I've got an Ambassadorship, two Consulates and a dozen other minor

applications to look after. I can hardly find time to sleep at all. You'll give my compliments to Mr. Humble

"Well, I handed her the $500, which she pitched into her desk drawer without counting. I put Bill's

"We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired Bill: 'Job landed; get the tall glasses ready,' and

"'All right,' says I. 'I'll admit that she surprised me. But it's the first time I ever knew one of 'em to manipulate

"Down about the edge of Arkansas I got out Bill's appointment and looked it over, and then I handed it to

"The paper was for Bill, all right, and a genuine document, but it appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.

"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's appointment to him by mail. Then we struck

"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman.

As partners or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy."

"They deserve the compliment," said I. "I think they are entitled to be called the honest sex."

"Why shouldn't they be?" said Jeff. "They've got the other sex either grafting or working overtime for 'em.

They're all right in business until they get their emotions or their hair touched up too much. Then you want to

have a flat footed, heavy breathing man with sandy whiskers, five kids and a building and loan mortgage

ready as an understudy to take her desk. Now there was that widow lady that me and Andy Tucker engaged to

"When you've got enough advertising capitalsay a roll as big as the little end of a wagon tonguethere's

money in matrimonial agencies. We had about $6,000 and we expected to double it in two months, which is

about as long as a scheme like ours can be carried on without taking out a New Jersey charter.

"Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years, possessing $3,000 cash and owning valuable country

property, would remarry. Would prefer a poor man with affectionate disposition to one with means, as she

realizes that the solid virtues are oftenest to be found in the humble walks of life. No objection to elderly man

or one of homely appearance if faithful and true and competent to manage property and invest money with

"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary concoction. 'And now,' says I, 'where is the

"'Jeff,' says he, 'I thought you had lost them ideas of realism in your art. Why should there be a lady? When

they sell a lot of watered stock on Wall Street would you expect to find a mermaid in it? What has a

"'Now listen,' says I. 'You know my rule, Andy, that in all my illegitimate inroads against the legal letter of

the law the article sold must be existent, visible, producible. In that way and by a careful study of city

ordinances and train schedules I have kept out of all trouble with the police that a five dollar bill and a cigar

could not square. Now, to work this scheme we've got to be able to produce bodily a charming widow or its

equivalent with or without the beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances set forth in the catalogue and writ of

"'Well,' says Andy, reconstructing his mind, 'maybe it would be safer in case the post office or the peace

commission should try to investigate our agency. But where,' he says, 'could you hope to find a widow who

"I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party. An old friend of mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw

soda water and teeth in a tent show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some dyspepsia

cure of the old doctor's instead of the liniment that he always got boozed up on. I used to stop at their house

"'Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped out on the I.C. and finds her in the

same cottage with the same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub. Mrs. Trotter fitted our ad first

rate except, maybe for beauty and age and property valuation. But she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the

"'Is this an honest deal you are putting on, Mr. Peters,' she asks me when I tell her what we want.

"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and

unfair country will endeavor to secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property through our

advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they

should win you, the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and contemptible

"'Me and Andy,' says I, 'propose to teach these preyers upon society a lesson. It was with difficulty,' says I,

'that me and Andy could refrain from forming a corporation under the title of the Great Moral and Millennial

"'It does, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I might have known you wouldn't have gone into anything that wasn't

opprobrious. But what will my duties be? Do I have to reject personally these 3,000 ramscallions you speak

"'Your job, Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'will be practically a cynosure. You will live at a quiet hotel and will have no

work to do. Andy and I will attend to all the correspondence and business end of it.

"'Of course,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors who can raise the railroad fare may come

to Cairo to personally press their suit or whatever fraction of a suit they may be wearing. In that case you will

be probably put to the inconvenience of kicking them out face to face. We will pay you $25 per week and

"'Give me five minutes,' says Mrs. Trotter, 'to get my powder rag and leave the front door key with a

"So I conveys Mrs. Trotter to Cairo and establishes her in a family hotel far enough away from mine and

"'Great,' says Andy. 'And now that your conscience is appeased as to the tangibility and proximity of the bait,

"So, we began to insert our advertisement in newspapers covering the country far and wide. One ad was all

we used. We couldn't have used more without hiring so many clerks and marcelled paraphernalia that the

"We placed $2,000 in a bank to Mrs. Trotter's credit and gave her the book to show in case anybody might

question the honesty and good faith of the agency. I knew Mrs. Trotter was square and reliable and it was

"About one hundred a day was what came in. I never knew there was so many large hearted but indigent men

in the country who were willing to acquire a charming widow and assume the burden of investing her money.

"Most of them admitted that they ran principally to whiskers and lost jobs and were misunderstood by the

world, but all of 'em were sure that they were so chock full of affection and manly qualities that the widow

"Every applicant got a reply from Peters & Tucker informing him that the widow had been deeply impressed

by his straightforward and interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more particulars; and

enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker also informed the applicant that their fee for handing

"There you see the simple beauty of the scheme. About 90 per cent. of them domestic foreign noblemen

raised the price somehow and sent it in. That was all there was to it. Except that me and Andy complained an

amount about being put to the trouble of slicing open them envelopes, and taking the money out.

"Some few clients called in person. We sent 'em to Mrs. Trotter and she did the rest; except for three or four

who came back to strike us for carfare. After the letters began to get in from the r.f.d. districts Andy and me

"One afternoon when we were busiest and I was stuffing the two and ones into cigar boxes and Andy was

whistling 'No Wedding Bells for Her' a small slick man drops in and runs his eye over the walls like he was

on the trail of a lost Gainesborough painting or two. As soon as I saw him I felt a glow of pride, because we

"'Come on,' says I. 'We've been expecting you. I'll show you the goods. How was Teddy when you left

"I took him down to the Riverview Hotel and had him shake hands with Mrs. Trotter. Then I showed him her

"'It is,' says I. 'And if you're not a married man I'll leave you to talk a while with the lady. We won't mention

"Toward the end of three months we had taken in something over $5,000, and we saw it was time to quit. We

had a good many complaints made to us; and Mrs. Trotter seemed to be tired of the job. A good many suitors

"So we decides to pull out, and I goes down to Mrs. Trotter's hotel to pay her last week's salary and say

"When I got there I found her crying like a kid that don't want to go to school.

"'Now, now,' says I, 'what's it all about? Somebody sassed you or you getting homesick?'

"'No, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I'll tell you. You was always a friend of Zeke's, and I don't mind. Mr. Peters, I'm

in love. I just love a man so hard I can't bear not to get him. He's just the ideal I've always had in mind.'

"'Then take him,' says I. 'That is, if it's a mutual case. Does he return the sentiment according to the

"'He does,' says she. 'But he's one of the gentlemen that's been coming to see me about the advertisement and

he won't marry me unless I give him the $2,000. His name is William Wilkinson.' And then she goes off

"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'there's no man more sympathizing with a woman's affections than I am. Besides, you

was once the life partner of one of my best friends. If it was left to me I'd say take this $2,000 and the man of

"'We could afford to do that, because we have cleaned up over $5,000 from these suckers that wanted to

"'He is a good man, but keen in business. He is my equal partner financially. I will talk to Andy,' says I, 'and

"'I was expecting something like this all the time,' says Andy. 'You can't trust a woman to stick by you in any

"'It's a sad thing, Andy,' says I, 'to think that we've been the cause of the breaking of a woman's heart.'

"'It is,' says Andy, 'and I tell you what I'm willing to do, Jeff. You've always been a man of a soft and

generous heart and disposition. Perhaps I've been too hard and worldly and suspicious. For once I'll meet you

half way. Go to Mrs. Trotter and tell her to draw the $2,000 from the bank and give it to this man she's

"I jumps up and shakes Andy's hand for five minutes, and then I goes back to Mrs. Trotter and tells her, and

"'Wouldn't you like to go down and meet Mrs. Trotter once before we leave?' I asks him. 'She'd like mightily

"'Why, I guess not,' says Andy. 'I guess we'd better hurry and catch that train.'

"I was strapping our capital around me in a memory belt like we always carried it, when Andy pulls a roll of

"'She gave it to me,' says Andy. 'I've been calling on her three evenings a week for more than a month.'

"Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he

keeps you the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: 'He always finds

"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to take a layoff from our professional

"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of

May he wraps mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick, breviary and fishing pole and

hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by

his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think about business except to hunt around in

Deuteronomy and Proverbs and Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer penances

as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a Presbyterian widow to swim.

"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation that wasn't one.

"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever

"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I

want to loaf and indict my soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del Val or give a

knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or

"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession before you can taste the laurels that crown

the footprints of the great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would be a summer sojourn

in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny, labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or

so of sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take away the white man's burdens in the

"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general passenger agents of all the railroads for

summer resort literature, and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first passenger agent

in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The

Lord made the earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what extent the press agents of the

"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El

Paso, and from Skagway to Key West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new laid

eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours'

"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise

Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North Carolina.

"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and thither me and Andy bent and almost

broke our footsteps over the rocks and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees, and it

looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow

Knob was a post office and some scenery set an angle of fortyfive degrees and a welkin.

"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the walk to greet us? Old

Smoke'emout Smithers, who used to be the best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the

"Old Smoke'emout is dressed clericorural, and has the mingled air of a landlord and a claim jumper.

Which aspect he corroborates by telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I introduces

Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will go around at meetings of boards of directors and

old associates like us three were. Old Smoke'emout leads us into a kind of summer house in the yard near

the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with his mighty right.

"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street

work, so I leased this dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before the season

opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage

"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery it would be to have for guests two

gentlemen whose names are famous from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a lot of

handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these distinguished boarders during the summer,

except in places where it leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and Charlotte and

"'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke'emout, 'at them disconsolate specimens of their

fair sex waiting for the arrival of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to cellar with

"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three high school graduates between 37 and

42; there's two literary old maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and a lady from

Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn crib, and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and

the society editress of the Chattanooga /Opera Glass/. You see how names draw, gents.'

"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'

"'I ain't through,' says Smoke'emout. 'Yesterday was the day for the advent of the auspicious personages. I

goes down to the depot to welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train, both carrying

"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake

was due to my poor eyesight. Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena explorer was

none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out

to be Theo. Drake of Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked 'em both back on

"'Now you see the fix I'm in, gents,' goes on Smoke'emout Smithers. 'I told the ladies that the notorious

visitors had been detained on the road by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an ice jam

and an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When they find out that they've been deceived,' says

Smoke'emout, 'every yard of cross barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will pack up and

"'Friend,' says Andy, touching the old man on the aesophagus, 'why this jeremiad when the polar regions and

the portals of Blenheim are conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hallmarked silver salver. We have

"'Can you do it, gents?' he asks. 'Could ye do it? Could ye play the polar man and the little duke for the nice

"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That

man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband

"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke'emout. 'Can we do it? You behold before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the

finest equipped men on earth for inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleightofhand or

swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost, but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after

the comeons forever. If you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And you'll find,'

says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of the title roles from the aurora borealis to the ducal

"Old Smoke'emout is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by an arm apiece, telling us on the

way that the finest fruits of the can and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long as we

"On the porch Smoke'emout says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of

"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy bows and then goes on in with old

Smoke'emout to register. And then we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the

rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina real mountain dew.

"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic metempsychosis which is half drunk when

"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch, where the ladies are to begin to earn

our keep. We sit in two special chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their rockers close

"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And

I couldn't tell from her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial expeditions. So I gave an

"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze outright smart of a freeze out, ma'am.'

"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew which one of the renowned

ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that he

was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and of Arctic exploration from Sir John

Franklin down. It was the union of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D.

"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to visit America. I do not consider the magna

charta,' says he, 'or gas balloons or snowshoes in any way a detriment to the beauty and charm of your

American women, skyscrapers or the architecture of your icebergs. The next time,' says Andy, 'that I go after

the North Pole all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the coldI mean make it hot

"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle

of Blenheim up to latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says Andy, 'it was a sad sight

to see a Duke allied by a civil and liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a region of

semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a

drop to eat. At noon we threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At midnight,'

continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was

snow and ice. Six times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar, so we could keep time

with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down

"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and weeps on the porch.

"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left the next morning. The landlord wouldn't

speak to us for two days, but when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.

"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we

Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was under discussion.

"The only times," said he, "that me and Andy Tucker ever had any hiatuses in our cordial intents was when

we differed on the moral aspects of grafting. Andy had his standards and I had mine. I didn't approve of all of

Andy's schemes for levying contributions from the public, and he thought I allowed my conscience to

interfere too often for the financial good of the firm. We had high arguments sometimes. One word led on to

"'I don't know how you mean that, Andy,' says I, 'but we have been friends too long for me to take offense, at

a taunt that you will regret when you cool off. I have yet,' says I, 'to shake hands with a subpoena server.'

"One summer me and Andy decided to rest up a spell in a fine little town in the mountains of Kentucky called

Grassdale. We was supposed to be horse drovers, and good decent citizens besides, taking a summer

vacation. The Grassdale people liked us, and me and Andy declared a cessation of hostilities, never so much

as floating the fly leaf of a rubber concession prospectus or flashing a Brazilian diamond while we was there.

"One day the leading hardware merchant of Grassdale drops around to the hotel where me and Andy stopped,

and smokes with us, sociable, on the side porch. We knew him pretty well from pitching quoits in the

afternoons in the court house yard. He was a loud, red man, breathing hard, but fat and respectable beyond all

"After we talk on all the notorious themes of the day, this Murkison for such was his entitlementstakes a

letter out of his coat pocket in a careful, careless way and hands it to us to read.

"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it through. It was one of them old time

typewritten green goods letters explaining how for $1,000 you could get $5,000 in bills that an expert

couldn't tell from the genuine; and going on to tell how they were made from plates stolen by an employee of

"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' says Andy. 'If you don't answer the first letter they let you drop. If you answer it

"'Boys,' says he, 'I know you are all right or I wouldn't confide in you. I wrote to them rascals again just for

fun. They answered and told me to come on to Chicago. They said telegraph to J. Smith when I would start.

When I get there I'm to wait on a certain street corner till a man in a gray suit comes along and drops a

newspaper in front of me. Then I am to ask him how the water is, and he knows it's me and I know it's him.'

"'Ah, yes,' says Andy, gaping, 'it's the same old game. I've often read about it in the papers. Then he conducts

you to the private abattoir in the hotel, where Mr. Jones is already waiting. They show you brand new real

money and sell you all you want at five for one. You see 'em put it in a satchel for you and know it's there. Of

"'Oh, they couldn't switch it on me,' says Murkison. 'I haven't built up the best paying business in Grassdale

without having witticisms about me. You say it's real money they show you, Mr. Tucker?'

"'Boys,' says Murkison, 'I've got it in my mind that them fellows can't fool me. I think I'll put a couple of

thousand in my jeans and go up there and put it all over 'em. If Bill Murkison gets his eyes once on them bills

they show him he'll never take 'em off of 'em. They offer $5 for $1, and they'll have to stick to the bargain if I

tackle 'em. That's the kind of trader Bill Murkison is. Yes, I jist believe I'll drop up Chicago way and take a 5

"Me and Andy tries to get this financial misquotation out of Murkison's head, but we might as well have tried

to keep the man who rolls peanuts with a toothpick from betting on Bryan's election. No, sir; he was going to

perform a public duty by catching these green goods swindlers at their own game. Maybe it would teach 'em

"After Murkison left us me and Andy sat a while prepondering over our silent meditations and heresies of

reason. In our idle hours we always improved our higher selves by ratiocination and mental thought.

"'Jeff,' says Andy after a long time, 'quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have

been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business. I may have been often wrong.

But here is a case where I think we can agree. I feel that it would be wrong for us to allow Mr. Murkison to

go alone to meet those Chicago green goods men. There is but one way it can end. Don't you think we would

both feel better if we was to intervene in some way and prevent the doing of this deed?'

"'Andy,' says I, 'I may have had one or two hard thoughts about the heartlessness of your corporation, but I

retract 'em now. You have a kind nucleus at the interior of your exterior after all. It does you credit. I was just

thinking the same thing that you have expressed. It would not be honorable or praiseworthy,' says I, 'for us to

let Murkison go on with this project he has taken up. If he is determined to go let us go with him and prevent

"Andy agreed with me; and I was glad to see that he was in earnest about breaking up this green goods

"'I don't call myself a religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in moral bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man

who has built up his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous trickster

"'Right, Jeff,' says Andy. 'We'll stick right along with Murkison if he insists on going and block this funny

"'No, boys,' says he. 'I can't consent to let the song of this Chicago siren waft by me on the summer breeze.

I'll fry some fat out of this ignis fatuus or burn a hole in the skillet. But I'd be plumb diverted to death to have

you all go along with me. Maybe you could help some when it comes to cashing in the ticket to that 5 to 1

shot. Yes, I'd really take it as a pastime and regalement if you boys would go along too.'

"Murkison gives it out in Grassdale that he is going for a few days with Mr. Peters and Mr. Tucker to look

over some iron ore property in West Virginia. He wires J. Smith that he will set foot in the spider web on a

"On the way Murkison amuses himself with premonitions and advance pleasant recollections.

"'In a gray suit,' says he, 'on the southwest corner of Wabash avenue and Lake street. He drops the paper, and

I ask how the water is. Oh, my, my, my!' And then he laughs all over for five minutes.

"Sometimes Murkison was serious and tried to talk himself out of his cogitations, whatever they was.

"'Boys,' says he, 'I wouldn't have this to get out in Grassdale for ten times a thousand dollars. It would ruin

me there. But I know you all are all right. I think it's the duty of every citizen,' says he, 'to try to do up these

robbers that prey upon the public. I'll show 'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars for onethat's what J.

Smith offers, and he'll have to keep his contract if he does business with Bill Murkison.'

"We got into Chicago about 7 P.M. Murkison was to meet the gray man at half past 9. We had dinner at a

"'Now, boys,' says Murkison, 'let's get our gumption together and inoculate a plan for defeating the enemy.

Suppose while I'm exchanging airy bandage with the gray capper you gents come along, by accident, you

know, and holler: "Hello, Murk!" and shake hands with symptoms of surprise and familiarity. Then I take the

capper aside and tell him you all are Jenkins and Brown of Grassdale, groceries and feed, good men and

"'"Bring 'em along," he'll say, of course, "if they care to invest." Now, how does that scheme strike you?'

"'Why, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. 'I say let's settle this thing right here now. I don't see any use of wasting

any more time.' I took a nickelplated .38 out of my pocket and clicked the cylinder around a few times.

"'You undevout, sinful, insidious hog,' says I to Murkison, 'get out that two thousand and lay it on the table.

Obey with velocity,' says I, 'for otherwise alternatives are impending. I am preferably a man of mildness, but

now and then I find myself in the middle of extremities. Such men as you,' I went on after he had laid the

money out, 'is what keeps the jails and court houses going. You come up here to rob these men of their

money. Does it excuse you?' I asks, 'that they were trying to skin you? No, sir; you was going to rob Peter to

stand off Paul. You are ten times worse,' says I, 'than that green goods man. You go to church at home and

pretend to be a decent citizen, but you'll come to Chicago and commit larceny from men that have built up a

sound and profitable business by dealing with such contemptible scoundrels as you have tried to be today.

How do you know,' says I, 'that that green goods man hasn't a large family dependent upon his extortions? It's

you supposedly respectable citizens who are always on the lookout to get something for nothing,' says I, 'that

support the lotteries and wildcat mines and stock exchanges and wire tappers of this country. If it wasn't for

you they'd go out of business. The green goods man you was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe for years to

learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money and liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all

sanctified and vanoplied with respectability and a pleasing post office address to swindle him. If he gets the

money you can squeal to the police. If you get it he hocks the gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr.

Tucker and me sized you up,' says I, 'and came along to see that you got what you deserved. Hand over the

"'Now get out your watch,' says I to Murkison. 'No, I don't want it,' says I. 'Lay it on the table and you sit in

that chair till it ticks off an hour. Then you can go. If you make any noise or leave any sooner we'll handbill

you all over Grassdale. I guess your high position there is worth more than $2,000 to you.'

"On the train Andy was a long time silent. Then he says: 'Jeff, do you mind my asking you a question?'

"'Why, certainly,' says I. 'What else could it have been? Wasn't it yours, too?'

"In about half an hour Andy spoke again. I think there are times when Andy don't exactly understand my

"'Jeff,' says he, 'some time when you have the leisure I wish you'd draw off a diagram and footnotes of that

"I hope some day to retire from business," said Jeff Peters; "and when I do I don't want anybody to be able to

say that I ever got a dollar of any man's money without giving him a quid pro rata for it. I've always managed

to leave a customer some little gewgaw to paste in his scrapbook or stick between his Seth Thomas clock and

"There was one time I came near having to break this rule of mine and do a profligate and illaudable action,

but I was saved from it by the laws and statutes of our great and profitable country.

"One summer me and Andy Tucker, my partner, went to New York to lay in our annual assortment of clothes

and gents' furnishings. We was always pompous and regardless dressers, finding that looks went further than

anything else in our business, except maybe our knowledge of railroad schedules and an autograph photo of

the President that Loeb sent us, probably by mistake. Andy wrote a nature letter once and sent it in about

animals that he had seen caught in a trap lots of times. Loeb must have read it 'triplets,' instead of 'trap lots,'

and sent the photo. Anyhow, it was useful to us to show people as a guarantee of good faith.

"Me and Andy never cared much to do business in New York. It was too much like pothunting. Catching

suckers in that town, is like dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between the

North and East rivers is to stand in the street with an open bag marked, 'Drop packages of money here. No

checks or loose bills taken.' You have a cop handy to club pikers who try to chip in post office orders and

Canadian money, and that's all there is to New York for a hunter who loves his profession. So me and Andy

used to just nature fake the town. We'd get out our spyglasses and watch the W.s along the Broadway

swamps putting plaster casts on their broken legs, and then we'd sneak away without firing a shot.

"One day in the papier mache palm room of a chloral hydrate and hops agency in a side street about eight

inches off Broadway me and Andy had thrust upon us the acquaintance of a New Yorker. We had beer

together until we discovered that each of us knew a man named Hellsmith, traveling for a stove factory in

Duluth. This caused us to remark that the world was a very small place, and then this New Yorker busts his

string and takes off his tin foil and excelsior packing and starts in giving us his Ellen Terris, beginning with

the time he used to sell shoelaces to the Indians on the spot where Tammany Hall now stands.

"This New Yorker had made his money keeping a cigar store in Beekman street, and he hadn't been above

Fourteenth street in ten years. Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had gone by when a true sport will do

anything to a man with whiskers. No grafter except a boy who is soliciting subscribers to an illustrated

weekly to win the prize air rifle, or a widow, would have the heart to tamper with the man behind with the

razor. He was a typical city ReubI'd bet the man hadn't been out of sight of a skyscraper in twentyfive

"Well, presently this metropolitan backwoodsman pulls out a roll of bills with an old blue sleeve elastic

"'There's $5,000, Mr. Peters,' says he, shoving it over the table to me, 'saved during my fifteen years of

business. Put that in your pocket and keep it for me, Mr. Peters. I'm glad to meet you gentlemen from the

West, and I may take a drop too much. I want you to take care of my money for me. Now, let's have another

"'You'd better keep this yourself,' says I. 'We are strangers to you, and you can't trust everybody you meet.

Put your roll back in your pocket,' says I. 'And you'd better run along home before some farmhand from the

"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I guess Little Old New York can take care of herself. I guess I know a

man that's on the square when I see him. I've always found the Western people all right. I ask you as a favor,

Mr. Peters,' says he, 'to keep that roll in your pocket for me. I know a gentleman when I see him. And now

"In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and snores. Andy looks at me and says: 'I

reckon I'd better stay with him for five minutes or so, in case the waiter comes in.'

"I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And then I came back and sat down at the

"'Andy,' says I, 'I can't do it. It's too much like swearing off taxes. I can't go off with this man's money

without doing something to earn it like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle of eczema

"'Well,' says Andy, 'it does seem kind of hard on one's professional pride to lope off with a bearded pard's

competency, especially after he has nominated you custodian of his bundle in the sappy insouciance of his

urban indiscrimination. Suppose we wake him up and see if we can formulate some commercial sophistry by

"We wakes up Whiskers. He stretches himself and yawns out the hypothesis that he must have dropped off

for a minute. And then he says he wouldn't mind sitting in at a little gentleman's game of poker. He used to

play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn; and as he was out for a good time, whyand so forth.

"Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a solution to our financial troubles. So we all

three go to our hotel further down Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to Andy's room. I tried

once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural Gardens take his five thousand. But no.

"'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and oblige. I'll ask you fer it when I want it. I guess I know

when I'm among friends. A man that's done business on Beekman street for twenty years, right in the heart of

the wisest old village on earth, ought to know what he's about. I guess I can tell a gentleman from a con man

or a flimflammer when I meet him. I've got some odd change in my clothes enough to start the game with,

"He goes through his pockets and rains $20 gold certificates on the table till it looked like a $10,000 'Autumn

"The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down his hand, claims low and jack and big casino and

"Andy always took a pride in his poker playing. He got up from the table and looked sadly out of the window

"'Well, gentlemen,' says the cigar man, 'I don't blame you for not wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine

points of the game, I guess, it's been so long since I indulged. Now, how long are you gentlemen going to be

"I told him about a week longer. He says that'll suit him fine. His cousin is coming over from Brooklyn that

evening and they are going to see the sights of New York. His cousin, he says, is in the artificial limb and

lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight years. They expect to have the time of their lives,

and he winds up by asking me to keep his roll of money for him till next day. I tried to make him take it, but

"'I'll use what I've got in loose change,' says he. 'You keep the rest for me. I'll drop in on you and Mr. Tucker

tomorrow afternoon about 6 or 7,' says he, 'and we'll have dinner together. Be good.'

"'Well, Jeff,' says he, 'it looks like the ravens are trying to feed us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em

down again we ought to have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside too often. I

know this is something like paternalism, but don't you think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about

"I put my feet up on the table and my hands in my pockets, which is an attitude unfavorable to frivolous

"'Andy,' says I, 'this man with the hirsute whiskers has got us in a predicament. We can't move hand or foot

with his money. You and me have got a gentleman's agreement with Fortune that we can't break. We've done

business in the West where it's more of a fair game. Out there the people we skin are trying to skin us, even

the farmers and the remittance men that the magazines send out to write up Goldfields. But there's little sport

in New York city for rod, reel or gun. They hunt here with either one of two thingsa slungshot or a letter of

introduction. The town has been stocked so full of carp that the game fish are all gone. If you spread a net

here, do you catch legitimate suckers in it, such as the Lord intended to be caughtfresh guys who know it

all, sports with a little coin and the nerve to play another man's game, street crowds out for the fun of

dropping a dollar or two and village smarties who know just where the little pea is? No, sir,' says I. 'What the

grafters live on here is widows and orphans, and foreigners who save up a bag of money and hand it out over

the first counter they see with an iron railing to it, and factory girls and little shopkeepers that never leave the

block they do business on. That's what they call suckers here. They're nothing but canned sardines, and all the

"'Now, this cigar man,' I went on, 'is one of the types. He's lived twenty years on one street without learning

as much as you would in getting a onceover shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas crossroads town.

But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in

front of street cars or paying out money to wiretappers or standing under a safe that's being hoisted into a

skyscraper. When a New Yorker does loosen up,' says I, 'it's like the spring decomposition of the ice jam in

the Allegheny River. He'll swamp you with cracked ice and backwater if you don't get out of the way.

"'It's mighty lucky for us, Andy,' says I, 'that this cigar exponent with the parsley dressing saw fit to bedeck

us with his childlike trust and altruism. For,' says I, 'this money of his is an eyesore to my sense of rectitude

and ethics. We can't take it, Andy; you know we can't,' says I, 'for we haven't a shadow of a title to itnot a

shadow. If there was the least bit of a way we could put in a claim to it I'd be willing to see him start in for

another twenty years and make another $5,000 for himself, but we haven't sold him anything, we haven't been

embroiled in a trade or anything commercial. He approached us friendly,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful

idiocy laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he wants it.'

"'Your arguments,' says Andy, 'are past criticism or comprehension. No, we can't walk off with the

moneyas things now stand. I admire your conscious way of doing business, Jeff,' says Andy, 'and I

wouldn't propose anything that wasn't square in line with your theories of morality and initiative.

"'But I'll be away tonight and most of tomorrow Jeff,' says Andy. 'I've got some business affairs that I want

to attend to. When this free greenbacks party comes in tomorrow afternoon hold him here till I arrive. We've

"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man, with his eyes half open.

"'Been having a glorious time, Mr. Peters,' says he. 'Took in all the sights. I tell you New York is the onliest

only. Now if you don't mind,' says he, 'I'll lie down on that couch and doze off for about nine minutes before

Mr. Tucker comes. I'm not used to being up all night. And tomorrow, if you don't mind, Mr. Peters, I'll take

that five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at the racetrack tomorrow. Excuse me for

"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes himself and begins to snore, while I sit there

musing over things and wishing I was back in the West, where you could always depend on a customer

"'I've been over to Trenton,' says Andy, pulling a document out of his pocket. 'I think I've got this matter

"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued by the State of New Jersey to 'The Peters and

Tucker Consolidated and Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited.'

"'It's to buy up rights of way for airship lines,' explained Andy. 'The Legislature wasn't in session, but I found

a man at a postcard stand in the lobby that kept a stock of charters on hand. There are 100,000 shares,' says

Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. I had one blank certificate of stock printed.'

"'The whole bunch,' says he, 'goes to our friend in dreamland for $5,000. Did you learn his name?'

"We put the certificate of stock in the cigar man's hand and went out to pack our suit cases.

"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about taking the money now, Jeff?'

"'Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any other Holding Corporation?'"

"I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics of pure swindling," said Jeff Peters to

"Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise schemes of moneygetting so fraudulent

and highfinancial that they wouldn't have been allowed in the bylaws of a railroad rebate system.

"Myself, I never believed in taking any man's dollars unless I gave him something for itsomething in the

way of rolled gold jewelry, garden seeds, lumbago lotion, stock certificates, stove polish or a crack on the

head to show for his money. I guess I must have had New England ancestors away back and inherited some

"But Andy's family tree was in different kind. I don't think he could have traced his descent any further back

"One summer while we was in the middle West, working down the Ohio valley with a line of family albums,

headache powders and roach destroyer, Andy takes one of his notions of high and actionable financiering.

"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop these rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to

something more nourishing and prolific. If we keep on snapshooting these hinds for their egg money we'll be

classed as nature fakers. How about plunging into the fastnesses of the skyscraper country and biting some

"'Well,' says I, 'you know my idiosyncrasies. I prefer a square, nonillegal style of business such as we are

carrying on now. When I take money I want to leave some tangible object in the other fellow's hands for him

to gaze at and to distract his attention from my spoor, even if it's only a Komical Kuss Trick Finger Ring for

Squirting Perfume in a Friend's Eye. But if you've got a fresh idea, Andy,' says I, 'let's have a look at it. I'm

not so wedded to petty graft that I would refuse something better in the way of a subsidy.'

"'I was thinking,' says Andy, 'of a little hunt without horn, hound or camera among the great herd of the

"'No, sir,' says Andy, 'in Pittsburg. That's their habitat. They don't like New York. They go there now and

"'A Pittsburg millionaire in New York is like a fly in a cup of hot coffeehe attracts attention and comment,

but he don't enjoy it. New York ridicules him for "blowing" so much money in that town of sneaks and snobs,

and sneers. The truth is, he don't spend anything while he is there. I saw a memorandum of expenses for a ten

days trip to Bunkum Town made by a Pittsburg man worth $15,000,000 once. Here's the way he set it down:

"'That's the voice of New York,' goes on Andy. 'The town's nothing but a head waiter. If you tip it too much

it'll go and stand by the door and make fun of you to the hat check boy. When a Pittsburger wants to spend

money and have a good time he stays at home. That's where we'll go to catch him.'

"Well, to make a dense story more condensed, me and Andy cached our paris green and antipyrine powders

and albums in a friend's cellar, and took the trail to Pittsburg. Andy didn't have any especial prospectus of

chicanery and violence drawn up, but he always had plenty of confidence that his immoral nature would rise

"As a concession to my ideas of selfpreservation and rectitude he promised that if I should take an active

and incriminating part in any little business venture that we might work up there should be something actual

and cognizant to the senses of touch, sight, taste or smell to transfer to the victim for the money so my

conscience might rest easy. After that I felt better and entered more cheerfully into the foul play.

"'Andy,' says I, as we strayed through the smoke along the cinderpath they call Smithfield street, 'had you

figured out how we are going to get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not that I

would decry my own worth or system of drawing room deportment, and work with the olive fork and pie

knife,' says I, 'but isn't the entree nous into the salons of the stogie smokers going to be harder than you

"'If there's any handicap at all,' says Andy, 'it's our own refinement and inherent culture. Pittsburg

millionaires are a fine body of plain, wholehearted, unassuming, democratic men.

"'They are rough but uncivil in their manners, and though their ways are boisterous and unpolished, under it

all they have a great deal of impoliteness and discourtesy. Nearly every one of 'em rose from obscurity,' says

Andy, 'and they'll live in it till the town gets to using smoke consumers. If we act simple and unaffected and

don't go too far from the saloons and keep making a noise like an import duty on steel rails we won't have any

"Well Andy and me drifted about town three or four days getting our bearings. We got to knowing several

"One used to stop his automobile in front of our hotel and have a quart of champagne brought out to him.

When the waiter opened it he'd turn it up to his mouth and drink it out of the bottle. That showed he used to

"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About 11 o'clock he came into my room.

"'Landed one, Jeff,' says he. 'Twelve millions. Oil, rolling mills, real estate and natural gas. He's a fine man;

no airs about him. Made all his money in the last five years. He's got professors posting him up now in

"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel Corporation man that there'd be four suicides in

the Allegheny rolling mills today. So everybody in sight had to walk up and have drinks on him. He took a

fancy to me and asked me to dinner with him. We went to a restaurant in Diamond alley and sat on stools and

"'Then he wanted to show me his bachelor apartment on Liberty street. He's got ten rooms over a fish market

with privilege of the bath on the next floor above. He told me it cost him $18,000 to furnish his apartment,

"'He's got $40,000 worth of pictures in one room, and $20,000 worth of curios and antiques in another. His

name's Scudder, and he's 45, and taking lessons on the piano and 15,000 barrels of oil a day out of his wells.'

"'All right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And

"'Now, that man,' says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, 'ain't what you would call an ordinary scutt.

When he was showing me his cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke oven. He says

that if some of his big deals go through he'll make J. P. Morgan's collection of sweatshop tapestry and

Augusta, Me., beadwork look like the contents of an ostrich's craw thrown on a screen by a magic lantern.

"'And then he showed me a little carving,' went on Andy, 'that anybody could see was a wonderful thing. It

was something like 2,000 years old, he said. It was a lotus flower with a woman's face in it carved out of a

"Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian carver named Khafra made two of 'em for

King Rameses II. about the year B.C. The other one can't be found. The junkshops and antique bugs have

rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock. Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought we came here to teach the millionaires

"'Be patient,' says Andy, kindly. 'Maybe we will see a rift in the smoke ere long.'

"All the next morning Andy was out. I didn't see him until about noon. He came to the hotel and called me

into his room across the hall. He pulled a roundish bundle about as big as a goose egg out of his pocket and

unwrapped it. It was an ivory carving just as he had described the millionaire's to me.

"'I went in an old second hand store and pawnshop a while ago,' says Andy, 'and I see this half hidden under a

lot of old daggers and truck. The pawnbroker said he'd had it several years and thinks it was soaked by some

"'I offered him $2 for it, and I must have looked like I wanted it, for he said it would be taking the

pumpernickel out of his children's mouths to hold any conversation that did not lead up to a price of $35. I

"'Jeff,' goes on Andy, 'this is the exact counterpart of Scudder's carving. It's absolutely a dead ringer for it.

He'll pay $2,000 for it as quick as he'd tuck a napkin under his chin. And why shouldn't it be the genuine

"'Why not, indeed?' says I. 'And how shall we go about compelling him to make a voluntary purchase of it?'

"I got a pair of blue spectacles, put on my black frock coat, rumpled my hair up and became Prof. Pickleman.

I went to another hotel, registered, and sent a telegram to Scudder to come to see me at once on important art

business. The elevator dumped him on me in less than an hour. He was a foggy man with a clarion voice,

"'I've neither the time nor the desire,' says I, 'for such harmful and deleterious amusements. I have come from

"'I learned there that you are the owner of an Egyptian ivory carving of the time of Rameses II., representing

the head of Queen Isis in a lotus flower. There were only two of such carvings made. One has been lost for

many years. I recently discovered and purchased the other in a pawnin an obscure museum in Vienna. I

"'Well, the great ice jams, Profess!' says Scudder. 'Have you found the other one? Me sell? No. I don't guess

Cornelius Scudder needs to sell anything that he wants to keep. Have you got the carving with you, Profess?'

"'It's the article,' says he. 'It's a duplicate of mine, every line and curve of it. Tell you what I'll do,' he says. 'I

"'Since you won't sell, I will,' says I. 'Large bills, please. I'm a man of few words. I must return to New York

"Scudder sends a check down and the hotel cashes it. He goes off with his piece of antiquity and I hurry back

"'We've got just eleven minutes,' says Andy, 'to catch the B. & O. westbound. Grab your baggage.'

"'What's the hurry,' says I. 'It was a square deal. And even if it was only an imitation of the original carving

it'll take him some time to find it out. He seemed to be sure it was the genuine article.'

"'It was,' says Andy. 'It was his own. When I was looking at his curios yesterday he stepped out of the room

for a moment and I pocketed it. Now, will you pick up your suit case and hurry?'

Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano's restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me

Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch the shipping in East River from the depths of

his chinchilla overcoat, and to lay in a supply of Chicagomade clothing at one of the Fulton street stores.

During the other three seasons he may be found further westhis range is from Spokane to Tampa. In his

profession he takes a pride which he supports and defends with a serious and unique philosophy of ethics. His

profession is no new one. He is an incorporated, uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the

In the wilderness of stone in which Jeff seeks his annual lonely holiday he is glad to palaver of his many

adventures, as a boy will whistle after sundown in a wood. Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the time of his

coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano's concerning the little winestained table in the

corner between the rakish rubber plant and the framed palazzio della something on the wall.

"There are two kinds of graft," said Jeff, "that ought to be wiped out by law. I mean Wall Street speculation,

"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I wondered whether the laugh had been redundant.

"About three months ago," said Jeff, "it was my privilege to become familiar with a sample of each of the

aforesaid branches of illegitimate art. I was /sine que grata/ with a member of the housebreakers' union and

"Interesting combination,' said I, with a yawn. "Did I tell you I bagged a duck and a groundsquirrel at one

"Let me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of

rectitude with their upaslike eye," said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muckraker in his own.

"As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two times in a man's life when he does

"Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at

a crossroad, and drives into this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and disfigured

Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600 worth of young fruit trees thereplums, cherries,

peaches and pears. The Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping I might pass that way

again. I drove down Main street as far as the Crystal Palace drugstore before I realized I had committed

"The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began a conversation that wasn't entirely

disassociated with the subject of fruit trees. A committee of 'em ran some tracechains through the armholes

"Their fruit trees hadn't lived up to their labels. Most of 'em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods,

with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a

fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's nest and half of an old corsetcover.

"The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town. They took my watch and money on

account; and they kept Bill and the wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees

put forth an Amsden's June peach I might come back and get my things. Then they took off the trace chains

and jerked their thumbs in the direction of the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope for the

"When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an unidentified town on the A., T. & S. F.

railroad. The Peaviners hadn't left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewingthey wasn't after my

lifeand that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my

"And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the town; and off of it drops a black bundle

that rolls for twenty yards in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and interjections. I

see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind

of smile in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow's job look like a chimneysweep' s.

"'Haven't looked it up on the map yet,' says I. 'I got in about five minutes before you did. How does it strike

"'Hard,' says he, twisting one of his arms around. 'I believe that shoulderno, it's all right.'

"He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his pocket drops a fine, nineinch burglar's

steel jimmy. He picks it up and looks at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

"'Brother,' says he, 'greetings. Didn't I see you in Southern Missouri last summer selling colored sand at

"'Oil,' says I, 'never explodes. It's the gas that forms that explodes.' But I shakes hands with him, anyway.

"'My name's Bill Bassett,' says he to me, 'and if you'll call it professional pride instead of conceit, I'll inform

you that you have the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gumshoe on ground drained by the

"Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems

he didn't have a cent, either, and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able burglar sometimes had

to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had played him false in Little Rock, and he was making a

"'It's part of my business,' says Bill Bassett, 'to play up to the ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles.

'Tis loves that makes the bit go 'round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty parlormaid, and you

might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the

napkin under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady's nephew teaches

a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl,' says Bill, 'and when she lets me inside I make an

impression on the locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,' says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with

another girl, and when I came 'round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had

keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill

"It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the girl emitted a succession of bravura

noises like the topriders of a tallyho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and depot. As he

had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a train that was just pulling out.

"'Well,' says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memories of our dead lives, 'I could eat. This town don't

look like it was kept under a Yale lock. Suppose we commit some mild atrocity that will bring in temporary

expense money. I don't suppose you've brought along any hair tonic or rolled gold watchchains, or similar

lawdefying swindles that you could sell on the plaza to the pikers of the paretic populace, have you?'

"'No,' says I, 'I left an elegant line of Patagonian diamond earrings and rainyday sunbursts in my valise at

Peavine. But they're to stay there until some of those blackgum trees begin to glut the market with yellow

clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can't count on them unless we take Luther Burbank in for a partner.'

"'Very well,' says Bassett, 'we'll do the best we can. Maybe after dark I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady,

"While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot near by. A person in a high hat gets off on the

wrong side of the train and comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat man with a big nose

and rat's eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a handsatchel careful, as if it had eggs or railroads bonds

in it. He passes by us and keeps on down the track, not appearing to notice the town.

"'Lordy!' says Bill, 'had you forgot you was in the desert? Didn't you see Colonel Manna drop down right

before your eyes? Don't you hear the rustling of General Raven's wings? I'm surprised at you, Elijah.'

"We overtook the stranger in the edge of some woods, and, as it was after sundown and in a quiet place,

nobody saw us stop him. Bill takes the silk hat off the man's head and brushes it with his sleeve and puts it

"'When I wore one of these,' says Bill, 'and felt embarrassed, I always done that. Not having one now I had to

use yours. I hardly know how to begin, sir, in explaining our business with you, but I guess we'll try your

"'Not even a watch,' he says. 'Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you whited sculpture? Going about dressed like

a headwaiter, and financed like a Count! You haven't even got carfare. What did you do with your transfer?'

"The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any sort. But Bassett takes his handsatchel

and opens it. Out comes some collars and socks and a half a page of a newspaper clipped out. Bill reads the

"'Brother,' says he, 'greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I am Bill Bassett, the burglar. Mr. Peters, you

must make the acquaintance of Mr. Alfred E. Ricks. Shake hands. Mr. Peters,' says Bill, 'stands about

halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line of havoc and corruption. He always gives something for

the money he gets. I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Ricksyou and Mr. Peters. This is the first time I ever attended

a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all

"The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago

paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the intelligence that

said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and

sold 'em to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago. After he had taken

in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (I've had 'em

actually try gold watches I've sold 'em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land where it is always

just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didn't need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a

few lemons in time for the Christmas present trade. He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the

line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles S.,

27 degrees E. of the middle of Lake Okeechobee. This man's lot was under thirtysix feet of water, and,

besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that his title looked fishy.

"Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for Alfred E. Ricks as the morning after a

prediction of snow by the weather bureau. Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldn't deny the alligators. One

morning the papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks come out by the fireescape. It seems the

alleged authorities had beat him to the safedeposit box where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to

westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen 15andahalf English pokes in his shopping bag. He

happened to have some mileage left in his book, and that took him as far as the town in the wilderness where

he was spilled out on me and Bill Bassett as Elijah III. with not a raven in sight for any of us.

"Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too, and denies the hypothesis that he is good

for the value, let alone the price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a mind

to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital. Now, when trade has no capital there isn't a

dicker to be made. And when capital has no money there's a stagnation in steak and onions. That put it up to

"'Brother bushrangers,' says Bill Bassett, 'never yet, in trouble, did I desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I

"There was an old, deserted cabin in the grove, and we three took possession of it. After dark Bill Bassett

tells us to wait, and goes out for half an hour. He comes back with a armful of bread and spareribs and pies.

"'Panhandled 'em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,' says he. 'Eat, drink and be leary.'

"The full moon was coming up bright, so we sat on the floor of the cabin and ate in the light of it. And this

"'Sometimes,' says he, with his mouth full of country produce, 'I lose all patience with you people that think

you are higher up in the profession than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in the present

"'I must confess, Mr. Bassett,' says Ricks, speaking nearly inaudible out of a slice of pie, 'that at this

immediate juncture I could not, perhaps, promote an enterprise to relieve the situation. Large operations, such

"'I know, Ricksy,' breaks in Bill Bassett. 'You needn't finish. You need $500 to make the first payment on a

blond typewriter, and four roomsful of quartered oak furniture. And you need $500 more for advertising

contracts. And you need two weeks' time for the fish to begin to bite. Your line of relief would be about as

useful in an emergency as advocating municipal ownership to cure a man suffocated by eightycent gas. And

"'Oh,' says I, 'I haven't seen you turn anything into gold with your wand yet, Mr. Good Fairy. 'Most anybody

"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy and cheerful. 'The coach and six'll drive up

to the door before you know it, Miss Cinderella. Maybe you've got some scheme under your sleeveholders

"'Son,' says I, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young enough yet to take out an endowment policy.

I've been broke before. We can see the lights of that town not half a mile away. I learned under Montague

Silver, the greatest street man that ever spoke from a wagon. There are hundreds of men walking those streets

this moment with grease spots on their clothes. Give me a gasoline lamp, a drygoods box, and a twodollar

"'Where's your two dollars?' snickered Bill Bassett into my discourse. There was no use arguing with that

"'No,' he goes on; 'you're both babesinthewood. Finance has closed the mahogany desk, and trade has put

the shutters up. Both of you look to labor to start the wheels going. All right. You admit it. Tonight I'll show

"Bassett tells me and Ricks not to leave the cabin till he comes back, even if it's daylight, and then he starts

"This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a silk handkerchief over his hat, and lays down on

"'I think I will endeavor to secure a little slumber,' he squeaks. 'The day has been fatiguing. Goodnight, my

"About two o'clock, as near as I could guess by my watch in Peavine, home comes our laboring man and

kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads out

five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and begins to cackle over the nestegg like a hen.

"'I'll tell you a few things about that town,' says he. 'It's named Rocky Springs, and they're building a Masonic

temple, and it looks like the Democratic candidate for mayor is going to get soaked by a Pop, and Judge

Tucker's wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian

thesises before I could get a siphon in the fountain of knowledge that I was after. And there's a bank there

called the Lumberman's Fidelity and Plowman's Savings Institution. It closed for business yesterday with

$23,000 cash on hand. It will open this morning with $18,000all silver that's the reason I didn't bring

"'My young friend,' says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his hands, 'have you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear

"'You couldn't call it that,' says Bassett. "Robbing" sounds harsh. All I had to do was to find out what street it

was on. That town is so quiet that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking in that safe

lock"right to 45; left twice to 80; right once to 60; left to 15"as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in

the football dialect. Now, boys,' says Bassett, 'this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all up

and stirring before daylight. I asked what for, and they said because breakfast was ready at that time. And

what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers' chorus. I'll stake you. How much

"'My dear young friend,' says this ground squirrel of a Ricks, standing on his hind legs and juggling nuts in

his paws, 'I have friends in Denver who would assist me. If I had a hundred dollars I'

"'Put your money up, Labor,' says I. 'I never yet drew upon honest toil for its hardearned pittance. The

dollars I get are surplus ones that are burning the pockets of damfools and greenhorns. When I stand on a

street corner and sell a solid gold diamond ring to a yap for $3.00, I make just $2.60. And I know he's going

to give it to a girl in return for all the benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His profits are $122.00. Which

"'And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty cents to keep her lamp from exploding,' says

Bassett, 'what do you figure her gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?'

"'Listen,' says I. 'I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and well filled. If she does that it can't burst. And with

the sand in it she knows it can't, and she don't worry. It's a kind of Industrial Christian Science. She pays fifty

cents, and gets both Rockefeller and Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain't everybody that can let the golddust twins

"'My dear young friend,' says he, 'I will never forget your generosity. Heaven will reward you. But let me

"'Mousie,' says Bill, 'the hole in the wainscoting for yours. Your dogmas and inculcations sound to me like

the last words of a bicycle pump. What has your high moral, elevatorservice system of pillage brought you

to? Penuriousness and want. Even Brother Peters, who insists upon contaminating the art of robbery with

theories of commerce and trade, admitted he was on the lift. Both of you live by the gilded rule. Brother

Peters,' says Bill, 'you'd better choose a slice of this embalmed currency. You're welcome.'

"I told Bill Bassett once more to put his money in his pocket. I never had the respect for burglary that some

people have. I always gave something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle for a souvenir

"And then Alfred E. Ricks grovels at Bill's feet again, and bids us adieu. He says he will have a team at a

farmhouse, and drive to the station below, and take the train for Denver. It salubrified the atmosphere when

that lamentable bollworm took his departure. He was a disgrace to every nonindustrial profession in the

country. With all his big schemes and fine offices he had wound up unable even to get an honest meal except

by the kindness of a strange and maybe unscrupulous burglar. I was glad to see him go, though I felt a little

sorry for him, now that he was ruined forever. What could such a man do without a big capital to work with?

Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as we left him, was as helpless as turtle on its back. He couldn't have worked a scheme

"When me and Bill Bassett was left alone I did a little sleightofmind turn in my head with a trade secret at

the end of it. Thinks I, I'll show this Mr. Burglar Man the difference between business and labor. He had hurt

some of my professional selfadulation by casting his Persians upon commerce and trade.

"'I won't take any of your money as a gift, Mr. Bassett,' says I to him, 'but if you'll pay my expenses as a

travelling companion until we get out of the danger zone of the immoral deficit you have caused in this

"Bill Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as we could catch a safe train.

"When we got to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested that we once more try our luck on

terracotta. That was the home of Montague Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew

Monty would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing 'round the locality. Bill Bassett said

all towns looked alike to him as he worked mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los Perros, a fine

"I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial slugshot that I intended to hit Bassett behind the

ear with. I wasn't going to take his money while he was asleep, but I was going to leave him with a lottery

ticket that would represent in experience to him $4,755I think that was the amount he had when we got off

the train. But the first time I hinted to him about an investment, he turns on me and disencumbers himself of

"'Brother Peters,' says he, 'it ain't a bad idea to go into an enterprise of some kind, as you suggest. I think I

will. But if I do it will be such a cold proposition that nobody but Robert E. Peary and Charlie Fairbanks will

"'I do,' says he, 'frequently. I can't sleep on one side all night. I'll tell you, Brother Peters,' says he, 'I'm going

to start a poker room. I don't seem to care for the humdrum in swindling, such as peddling eggbeaters and

working off breakfast food on Barnum and Bailey for sawdust to strew in their circus rings. But the gambling

business,' says he, 'from the profitable side of the table is a good compromise between swiping silver spoons

"'Then,' says I, 'Mr. Bassett, you don't care to talk over my little business proposition?'

"'Why,' says he, 'do you know, you can't get a Pasteur institute to start up within fifty miles of where I live. I

"So, Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for some furniture and chromos. The same night I

went to Monty Silver's house, and he let me have $200 on my prospects. Then I went to the only store in Los

Perros that sold playing cards and bought every deck in the house. The next morning when the store opened I

was there bringing all the cards back with me. I said that my partner that was going to back me in the game

had changed his mind; and I wanted to sell the cards back again. The storekeeper took 'em at half price.

"Yes, I was seventyfive dollars loser up to that time. But while I had the cards that night I marked every one

in every deck. That was labor. And then trade and commerce had their innings, and the bread I had cast upon

"Of course I was among the first to buy chips at Bill Bassett's game. He had bought the only cards there was

to be had in town; and I knew the back of every one of them better than I know the back of my head when the

"When the game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars, and all Bill Bassett had was the

wanderlust and a black cat he had bought for a mascot. Bill shook hands with me when I left.

"'Brother Peters,' says he, 'I have no business being in business. I was preordained to labor. When a No. 1

burglar tries to make a James out of his jimmy he perpetrates an improfundity. You have a welloiled and

efficacious system of luck at cards,' says he. 'Peace go with you.' And I never afterward sees Bill Bassett

"Well, Jeff," said I, when the Autolycan adventurer seemed to have divulged the gist of his tale, "I hope you

took care of the money. That would be a respectathat is a considerable working capital if you should

"Me?" said Jeff, virtuously. "You can bet I've taken care of that five thousand."

"Gold mining stock," he explained, "every cent of it. Shares par value one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per

cent. within a year. Nonassessable. The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in

"Oh, this one's solid as an old goose," said Jeff. "Fifty thousand dollars' worth of ore in sight, and 10 per cent.

"Always carry it with me," said he. "So the burglar can't corrupt or the capitalist break in and water it."

"In Colorado, I see," said I. "And, by the way, Jeff, what was the name of the little man who went to

"I see," said I, "the president of this mining company signs himself A. L. Fredericks. I was wondering"

To mitigate, even though slightly, the embarrassment I summoned the waiter and ordered another bottle of

The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was

standing on a corner when I see Buck stick his strawcolored head out of a thirdstory window of a business

block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.

I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman, having his shoes shined, and a couple of

delivery wagons hitched to posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner, and runs to

the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs

of the fictitious team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the thirdstory room

again, and I see that the lettering on the window is "The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."

By and by Strawtop comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir,

when I got close I could see where he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and cowhide

boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to

the property man of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the best of me.

"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite. "I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I

"Gosh blame them darned mules," says Strawtop, in a voice so good that I nearly apologized; "they're a'lus

bustin' loose." And then he looks at me close, and then he takes off his hayseed hat, and says, in a different

voice: "I'd like to shake hands with Parleyvoo Pickens, the greatest street man in the West, barring only

"I learned under Silver," I said; "I don't begrudge him the lead. But what's your graft, son? I admit that the

phantom flight of the nonexisting animals at which you remarked 'Whoa!' has puzzled me somewhat. How do

"Pocket money," says he; "that's all. I am temporarily unfinanced. This little coup de rye straw is good for

forty dollars in a town of this size. How do I work it? Why, I involve myself, as you perceive, in the

loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas Stubblefielda name impossible to improve

upon. I repair noisily to the office of some loan company conveniently located in the thirdfloor, front. There I

lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor and ask to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's

musical education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies. It's ten to one that when the

note falls due the foreclosure will be leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.

"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I suddenly hear my team running away. I run to

the window and emit the wordor exclamation, whichever it may beviz, 'Whoa!' Then I rush

downstairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang them mules,' I says; 'they done run away

and busted the doubletree and two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along.

"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for the manna to drop.

"'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobstercolored party in the specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by

accepting this tendollar bill until tomorrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten. We'll be pleased

"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I said, only for temporary loose change."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course,

it's small compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago University had to be started in

"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the

Swiss Warbler's Bird Call, a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget, consisting of

a rolledgold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and

nailclipper, and fifty engraved visiting cardsno two names alikeall for the sum of 38 cents."

"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in Texas with a patent instantaneous

fire kindler, made of compressed wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like to

burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And just when I was doing the best they

strikes oil down there and puts me out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells me.

'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before your old flintandtinder truck can get him warm

enough to perfess religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C. This little curtainraiser

you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,

"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk on a loan corporation for even so small

a sum as ten dollars, when he is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's too much like

I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever stood over the axles and breathed

gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some time,

"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the

inwardness of your proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw in my hair and

assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars. Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia

This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I am some sentimental, and have always

felt gentle toward the mollifying elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and sciences;

and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human works of nature, such as romance and the

atmosphere and grass and poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the prismatic

beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the

beautiful harmony there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme; it was so full of

We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill

"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her pompadour to her Oxfords. No

Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I

see her I am pleased. She looked to be the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about herno peroxide,

patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twentytwo, brown hair, pleasant waysthe kind of a lady for the place.

"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and romantic, it would make the balcony

We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business partner. She said she was glad to get a

chance to give up her place as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into something

This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind of a proverb. The best grafts in the

world are built up on copybook maxims and psalms and proverbs and Esau's fables. They seem to kind of hit

off human nature. Our peaceful little swindle was constructed on the old saying: "The whole push loves a

One evening Buck and Miss Malloy drives up like blazes in a buggy to a farmer's door. She is pale but

affectionate, clinging to his arm always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and of the

cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married on account of cruel parents. They ask where they

can find a preacher. Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend Abels, four miles

over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on her apron and rubbers through her specs.

Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white

necktie, long face, sniffing his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter doxology.

It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little Bethel schoolhouse for to preach next

The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuing them with the plow mules and the

buckboard. So the Reverend Green, after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer grins, and

has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo

Pickens, the wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and farmeress sign it as witnesses.

And the parties of the first, second and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an idyllic

graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on the red barnsit certainly had all other

I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at about twenty farmhouses. I hated to

think how the romance was going to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in banks

where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes of hand they'd signed, running from $300

On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy nearly cried with joy. You don't often

"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this stake comes in handier than a powder rag

at a fat men's ball. It gives me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate business when you

fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of

the rutabaga propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about to accept a place in one of

these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where they build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a

"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati

and start a palm reading and clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I shall give

everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication. Goodby, boys. Take my advice and go into some

decent fake. Get friendly with the police and newspapers and you'll be all right."

So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and Buck also rose up and sauntered off a few

hundred miles; for we didn't care to be around when them marriage certificates fell due.

With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off the New Jersey coast they call New York.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptownon theHudson. Cosmopolitan they call

it. You bet. So's a piece of flypaper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of

the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"that's what they sing.

There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up a week's output of the factory in Augusta,

Maine, that makes Knaughty Knovelties and the little Phine Phum oroide gold finger ring that sticks a needle

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get a chance to learn. Everything's too

compressed. Even the hayseeds are baled hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off

It's no place for an honest grafter with a small capital. There's too big a protective tariff on bunco. Even when

Giovanni sells a quart of warm worms and chestnut hulls he has to hand out a pint to an insectivorous cop.

And the hotel man charges double for everything in the bill that he sends by the patrol wagon to the altar

But old BadvillenearConey is the ideal burg for a refined piece of piracy if you can pay the bunco duty.

Imported grafts come pretty high. The customhouse officers that look after it carry clubs, and it's hard to

smuggle in even a bibandtucker swindle to work Brooklyn with unless you can pay the toll. But now, me

and Buck, having capital, descends upon New York to try and trade the metropolitan backwoodsmen a few

At an East Side hotel we gets acquainted with Romulus G. Atterbury, a man with the finest head for financial

operations I ever saw. It was all bald and glossy except for gray side whiskers. Seeing that head behind an

office railing, and you'd deposit a million with it without a receipt. This Atterbury was well dressed, though

he ate seldom; and the synopsis of his talk would make the conversation of a siren sound like a cab driver's

kick. He said he used to be a member of the Stock Exchange, but some of the big capitalists got jealous and

Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on the canvas for us some of the schemes that had

caused his hair to evacuate. He had one scheme for starting a National bank on $45 that made the Mississippi

Bubble look as solid as a glass marble. He talked this to us for three days, and when his throat was good and

sore we told him about the roll we had. Atterbury borrowed a quarter from us and went out and got a box of

throat lozenges and started all over again. This time he talked bigger things, and he got us to see 'em as he

did. The scheme he laid out looked like a sure winner, and he talked me and Buck into putting our capital

against his burnished dome of thought. It looked all right for a kidgloved graft. It seemed to be just about an

inch and a half outside of the reach of the police, and as moneymaking as a mint. It was just what me and

Buck wanteda regular business at a permanent stand, with an open air spieling with tonsolitis on the street

So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down in the Wall Street neighborhood, with

"The Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his private

room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr. Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of

the conservatory, with his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside of an

And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G. Atterbury, with his priceless polished

poll, busy in the main office room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a

There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of varnish and culpability.

At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man, attired with unscrupulous plainness,

sitting with his feet up, eating apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man is no other

than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the vicepresident of the company.

"No recherche rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was organizing the stage properties of the robbery.

"I'm a plain man," says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military hairbrushes. Cast me for the role of

the rhinestoneintherough or I don't go on exhibition. If you can use me in my natural, though displeasing

"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you are you're worth more to the business than a

whole roomful of the things they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but disheveled

capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions. You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake

socks. Conservative, homely, rough, shrewd, savingthat's your pose. It's a winner in New York. Keep your

feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings

I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain capitalist without ruching or frills. The

way I deposited apple peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made Hetty Green look

like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating,

"That's our vicepresident, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments . . . delightfully plain

manners, but . . . could sign his check for half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .

Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all of it, though he explained it to us in

full. It seems the company was a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in the

profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interestwe had to have thatof the shares at 50 cents a

hundredjust what the printer charged usand the rest went to the public at a dollar each. The company

guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten per cent. each month, payable on the last day thereof.

When any stockholder had paid in as much as $100, the company issued him a Gold Bond and he became a

bondholder. I asked Atterbury one day what benefits and appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investor

more so than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the common sucker who only owned stock. Atterbury

picked up one of them Gold Bonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a big red seal tied with a blue

"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think of a thousand homes made happy by

possessing one of these beautiful gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household where

one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the whatnot, or is chewed by the baby, caroling gleefully

upon the floor! Ah, I see your eye growing moist, ColonelI have touched you, have I not?"

"You have not," says I, "for I've been watching you. The moisture you see is apple juice. You can't expect

Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I understand it, they was simple. The investors in stock

paid in their money, and well, I guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and I don't call

to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about selling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but

even we could see how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money. You take in

money and pay back ten per cent. of it; it's plain enough that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per

Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an eye at him and says: "You was to

furnish the brains. Do you call it good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too? Think

again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine die, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain

work free. Me and Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned increment as it

It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture; $1,500 more went for printing and advertising.

Atterbury knew his business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day longer than that and we'll

have to either go under or go under an alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money

belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the furniture men can pick the bones."

Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington handpress dailies, of course," says I when we

"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a Limburger cheese factory to remain

undiscovered during a hot summer. The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the

Harlem readingrooms. They're the people that the streetcar fenders and the Answers to Correspondents

columns and the pickpocket notices are made for. We want our ads. in the biggest city dailies, top of column,

Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretend to be busy; his desk was piled high up

with money orders and checks and greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock every day.

Most of the shares went in small amounts$10 and $25 and $50, and a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the

bald and inviolate cranium of President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel

Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes so many apples that the peelings

Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast

as it came in and kept the money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought much of

banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for

anybody to squeal about. We had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high as prize

One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and flippant, from our noon grub, we met an

easylooking fellow, with a bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury looking like

"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the

"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying some stock. He asked me about nine

hundred questions, and every one of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You

can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on

his coat collar, and knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put togetherif that ain't a reporter I

never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind detectives and postoffice inspectorsI talk to 'em eight

minutes and then sell 'em stockbut them reporters take the starch out of my collar. Boys, I recommend that

Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand still. That fellow didn't look like a

reporter to us. Reporters always pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've heard, and

The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about tenthirty. On the way we buys the papers, and

the first thing we see is a column on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way that

reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme

as he sees it, in a rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except a stockholder. Yes,

Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged

vicepresident of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real sudden and quick that

Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in the hall a crowd of people trying to

squeeze into our office, which is already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got Golconda

stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged they'd been reading the papers, too.

We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't quite the kind of a gang we supposed

had been investing. They all looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of young girls

that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old men that looked like war veterans, and some was

crippled, and a good many was just kidsbootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was

workingmen in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the gang looked like a stockholder in

anything unless it was a peanut stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you please.

I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly

"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all I had saved in a year. One of my children

is dying at home now and I haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some. The circulars

There was a smart kind of kid in the gangI guess he was a newsboy. "I got in twentyfi', mister," he says,

looking hopeful at Buck's silk hat and clothes. "Dey paid me twofifty a mont' on it. Say, a man tells me dey

can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you guess I can get out my twentyfi'?"

Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb distracted. They'd lost all their savings and

There was one girla pretty onein a red shawl, crying in a corner like her heart would dissolve. Buck

"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all over, "though I've been two years saving it

up; but Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know JJJakey. She's got $400 in the

Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then we see leaning against the wall,

puffing at his pipe, with his eye shining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.

"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean to carry it? Anything more up your

"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in case any news turns up. It's up to your

stockholders now. Some of them might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" he says,

listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc. Whittleford's old cadaver coupe from the

Roosevelt. I ought to know that gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at times."

Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant before he spoke. Confounded old

"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa

"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And I starts for the safe deposit vaults.

I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and me takes the journalist reporter

"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still, and I'll give you an interview. You see

before you two grafters from Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass jewelry,

hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines, Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and

albums in every town from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar whenever we saw

one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose

brick in the corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard 'fussily decency

averni'which means it's an easy slide from the street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've

took that slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now, you ought to be wise, but you

ain't. You've got New York wiseness, which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes. That

ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the buttonholes. While we are waiting for the patrol

wagon you might get out your little stub pencil and take notes for another funny piece in the paper."

And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterbury thinks. He only put in brains, and if he gets

"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was buying the stock."

"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into the main office and looks at the gang

trying to squeeze through the railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short speech.

"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't shove so. Get in a linea /line/not

in a pile. Lady, will you please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny, don't climb over

that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis; you ain't out a cent. Get in /line/, I say. Here, Pick, come and

Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head, and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at

the table with the boodle before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders strung out and

marches 'em, single file, through from the main room; and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door

into the hall again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying 'em cash, dollar for

dollar, the same as they paid in. The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't

hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands. Some of the women keep on crying, for

it's a custom of the sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears

The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom of their rusty dresses. The factory girls

just stoop over and flap their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the currency goes

Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the loudest outside had spasms of restored

confidence and wanted to leave the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and skip

along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing in bonds? The teapot or the crack in the wall

"A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda Company. And sayif Jakey ever follows his

nose, even at a respectful distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby authorized

When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter and shoves the rest of the money

"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books, showing every share and bond issued.

Here's the money to cover, except what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess you'll do

the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best way we know how to settle it. Me and our

substantial but appleweary vicepresident are going to follow the example of our revered president, and

skip. Now, have you got enough news for today, or do you want to interview us on etiquette and the best

"News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you think I could use this? I don't want to lose my

job. Suppose I go around to the office and tell 'em this happened. What'll the managing editor say? He'll just

hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea

serpent wiggling up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like this. A getrichquick

schemeexcuse megang giving back the boodle! Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."

"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall

Streeters like you know 'em. We never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take nickels

off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money from the people the Lord made to be

buncoedsports and rounders and smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to throw

away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters didn't come around and play with 'em when they

sold their crops. We never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir. We got too much

"Here!" says the journalist reporter; "wait a minute. There's a broker I know on the next floor. Wait till I put

this truck in his safe. I want you fellows to take a drink on me before you go."

"On you?" says Buck, winking solemn. "Don't you go and try to make 'em believe at the office you said that.

And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda Company went into involuntary

If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a little bum hotel over near the West Side

ferry landings. We was in a little back room, and I was filling up a gross of sixounce bottles with hydrant

water colored red with aniline and flavored with cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a

"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon

for a week. We'll rustle up the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey. Bald heads ain't

We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to settle our hotel bill in the morning and

"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is just opening up in the Hackensack

"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't it, Pick?"

I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the

revised statutes and undertook a thing that I'd have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws.

Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas

running a peripatetic lottery and monte game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico,

just like selling fortyeight cents' worth of postagestamps for fortynine cents is over here. So Uncle

/Rurales/? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental crayon portraits of the worthy

constables with a tin star and a gray goatee. The /rurales/well, if we'd mount our Supreme Court on

broncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe /et al/., we'd have about the same thing.

When the /rurales/ started for us we started for the States. They chased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a

brickyard; and that night we swum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absentminded, which

From there we emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans, where we took a rest. And in that

town of cotton bales and other adjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented by the

Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they are still served at the side doors. The most I can

remember of this town is that me and Caligula and a Frenchman named McCartywait a minute; Adolph

McCartywas trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back tradingstamps due on the Louisiana

Purchase, when somebody hollers that the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection of

buying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man swing a lantern and say "All

aboard!" I remembered no more, except that the train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta

When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against the State of Georgia at a spot hitherto

unaccounted for in time tables except by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other Thursday on

signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of

birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding and

the chicken coop was right under the window. Me and Caligula dressed and went downstairs. The landlord

was shelling peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in complexion though

in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and features.

Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though redhaired and impatient of painfulness of

"Pardner," says he, "goodmorning, and be darned to you. Would you mind telling us why we are at? We

know the reason we are where, but can't exactly figure out on account of at what place."

"Well, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I reckoned youall would be inquiring this morning. Youall dropped

off of the ninethirty train here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart in liquor. I can

inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the State of Georgia."

"On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't have anything to eat."

"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'll call you to the best breakfast you can get

That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a yellowish edifice that proved up something

between pound cake and flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of the

exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the

celebrated food that enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and twothirds Yankees for nearly four years at a

"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys didn't chase the Grant and Sherman

outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay. It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"

"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. I thought this was a hotel and not a stable.

Now, if we was in Muskogee at the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope steaks

and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with /chili con carne/ and pineapple fritters, and then some

sardines and mixed pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of beer. You won't find a

"Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, and I'm unprejudiced. There'll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until

some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to Norfolk for his

rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of butter out of a springhouse, and then turns over a

beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close to making a

"Too ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbit stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you

"I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with fancy ramifications of grub such as terrapins,

lobsters, reed birds, jambolaya, and canvascovered ducks; but after all there's nothing less displeasing to me

than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcards, with a

handorgan playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide. For the wine, give me

"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a conniseer; and when you go around with the

"It's a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into their ways if you was there."

"I've heard it was," says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't. I can polish my fingernails all they need myself."

After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two of the landlord's /flor de upas/ perfectos, and

The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked mighty poor. As far as we could see was red hills all

washed down with gullies and scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all that kept

the rail fences from falling down. About fifteen miles over to the north was a little range of welltimbered

That town of Mountain Valley wasn't going. About a dozen people permeated along the sidewalks; but what

you saw mostly was rainbarrels and roosters, and boys poking around with sticks in piles of ashes made by

And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high man in a long black coat and a beaver

hat. All the people in sight bowed, and some crossed the street to shake hands with him; folks came out of

stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of windows and smiled; and all the kids stopped

playing to look at him. Our landlord stepped out on the porch and bent himself double like a carpenter's rule,

"And is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord; "and why is he called great?"

"That, gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham, the president of the

Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of

"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the postoffice for his mail. His fellowcitizens take

pleasure in greeting him thus every morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of

the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land across the creek.

Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such worth and public spirit."

For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on the porch and studied a newspaper, which

was unusual in a man who despised print. When he was through he took me to the end of the porch among

the sunlight and drying dishtowels. I knew that Caligula had invented a new graft. For he chewed the ends

of his mustache and ran the left catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.

"What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining stocks or raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it

"Pennsylvania pinks? Oh, that refers to a coinraising scheme of the Keystoners. They burn the soles of old

"You see them mountains," said he, pointing. "And you seen that colonel man that owns railroads and cuts

more ice when he goes to the postoffice than Roosevelt does when he cleans 'em out. What we're going to

do is to kidnap the latter into the former, and inflict a ransom of ten thousand dollars."

"I knew you'd say that," says Caligula. "At first sight it does seem to jar peace and dignity. But it don't. I got

the idea out of that newspaper. Would you commit aspersions on a equitable graft that the United States itself

"Kidnapping," says I, "is an immoral function in the derogatory list of the statutes. If the United States

upholds it, it must be a recent enactment of ethics, along with race suicide and rural delivery."

"Listen," says Caligula, "and I'll explain the case set down in the papers. Here was a Greek citizen named

Burdick Harris," says he, "captured for a graft by Africans; and the United States sends two gunboats to the

State of Tangiers and makes the King of Morocco give up seventy thousand dollars to Raisuli."

"Go slow," says I. "That sounds too international to take in all at once. It's like 'thimble, thimble, who's got

"'Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula. "You'll see, six months from now. They'll be

confirmed by the monthly magazines; and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside the photos of

the Mount Pelee eruption photos in the whileyougetyour haircut weeklies. It's all right, Pick. This

African man Raisuli hides Burdick Harris up in the mountains, and advertises his price to the governments of

different nations. Now, you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on Caligula, "that John Hay would have

"Why, no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies, and I couldn't consciously say a word

against the Republican administration just now. But if Harris was a Greek, on what system of international

"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I suppose it's a matter of sentiment. You know he

wrote this poem, 'Little Breeches'; and them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay sends the

Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with thirtyinch guns. And then Hay cables after the

health of the /persona grata/. 'And how are they this morning?' he wires. 'Is Burdick Harris alive yet, or Mr.

Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the seventy thousand dollars, and they turn Burdick Harris

loose. And there's not half the hard feelings among the nations about this little kidnapping matter as there was

about the peace congress. And Burdick Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often

heard about the United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and most

gentlemanly kidnappers that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick," winds up Caligula, "we've got

the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them little

"Well, you seldom little redheaded territorial terror," I answers, "you can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh

Pickens! I'll be your company in this graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this Burdick

Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram from the Secretary of State asking about the

health of the scheme, I propose to acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in this section and

gallop diplomatically over into the neighboring and peaceful nation of Alabama."

Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch of mountains into which we proposed to

kidnap Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered with

bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that we cut out up the side of it. And the only way

to reach the mountain was to follow up the bend of a branch that wound among the elevations.

Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the proceedings. I went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in

a twohundredandfiftydollar supply of the most gratifying and efficient lines of grub that money could

buy. I always was an admirer of viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy are not

only inartistic to my stomach, but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel

Jackson T. Rockingham, president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would miss the

luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and Caligula's

capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as Burdick Harris or any other professional

I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts of cognac, two hundred Havana regalias

with gold bands, and a camp stove and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be

comfortable; and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars he would give me and Caligula as good a

name for gentlemen and entertainers as the Greek man did the friend of his that made the United States his

When the goods came down from Atlanta, we hired a wagon, moved them up on the little mountain, and

We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain Valley, on his way to look after some of his

burnt umber farm land. He was an elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled

shirtcuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula

"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia! I shall see that the board of

"Be so unfoolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by order of the board of perforation and

public depravity. This is a business meeting, and we're anxious to adjourn /sine qua non/."

We drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of it as far as the buggy could go. Then we

"Now, colonel," I says to him, "we're after the ransom, me and my partner; and no harm will come to you if

the King of Morif your friends send up the dust. In the mean time we are gentlemen the same as you. And

if you give us your word not to try to escape, the freedom of the camp is yours."

"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock, and me and Mr. Polk will proceed to inculcate the occasion

"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a slice of bacon and a plate of hominy."

"But you won't," says I emphatic. "Not in this camp. We soar in higher regions than them occupied by your

While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our coats and went in for a little luncheon /de

luxe/ just to show him. Caligula was a fine cook of the Western brand. He could toast a buffalo or fricassee a

couple of steers as easy as a woman could make a cup of tea. He was gifted in the way of knocking together

edibles when haste and muscle and quantity was to be considered. He held the record west of the Arkansas

River for frying pancakes with his left hand, broiling venison cutlets with his right, and skinning a rabbit with

his teeth at the same time. But I could do things /en casserole/ and /a la creole/, and handle the oil and tobasco

So at twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a banquet on a Mississippi River steamboat.

We spread it on the tops of two or three big boxes, opened two quarts of the red wine, set the olives and a

canned oyster cocktail and a readymade Martini by the colonel's plate, and called him to grub.

Colonel Rockingham drew up his campstool, wiped off his specs, and looked at the things on the table. Then

I thought he was swearing; and I felt mean because I hadn't taken more pains with the victuals. But he wasn't;

he was asking a blessing; and me and Caligula hung our heads, and I saw a tear drop from the colonel's eye

I never saw a man eat with so much earnestness and applicationnot hastily, like a grammarian, or one of

the canal, but slow and appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real /vive bonjour/.

In an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I brought him a pony of brandy and his black coffee, and set

"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe it back again, "when we view the eternal

hills and the smiling and beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator who"

"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend to now"; and I brought out paper and pen

and ink and laid 'em before him. "Who do you want to send to for the money?" I asks.

"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vicepresident of our railroad, at the general offices of the

I am kidnapped and held a prisoner by two desperate outlaws in a place which is useless to attempt to find.

They demand ten thousand dollars at once for my release. The amount must be raised immediately, and these

directions followed. Come alone with the money to Stony Creek, which runs out of Blacktop Mountains.

Follow the bed of the creek till you come to a big flat rock on the left bank, on which is marked a cross in red

chalk. Stand on the rock and wave a white flag. A guide will come to you and conduct you to where I am

After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to take on a postscript about how he was being

treated, so the railroad wouldn't feel uneasy in its bosom about him. We agreed to that. He wrote down that

he had just had lunch with the two desperate ruffians; and then he set down the whole bill of fare, from

cocktails to coffee. He wound up with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would probably

Me and Caligula read it, and decided to let it go; for we, being cooks, were amenable to praise, though it

I took the letter over to the Mountain Valley road and watched for a messenger. By and by a colored

equestrian came along on horseback, riding toward Edenville. I gave him a dollar to take the letter to the

About four o'clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as lookout, calls to me:

I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca coat and no collar.

"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to introduce my brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham,

"Otherwise the King of Morocco," says I. "I reckon you don't mind my counting the ransom, just as a

"Well, no, not exactly," says the fat man, "not when it comes. I turned that matter over to our second

vicepresident. I was anxious after Brother Jackson's safetiness. I reckon he'll be along right soon. What does

"Mr. VicePresident," says I, "you'll oblige us by remaining here till the second V.P. arrives. This is a private

I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot three, with a sandy beard and no other

dimension that you could notice. Thinks I to myself, if he's got ten thousand dollars on his person it's in one

"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up to disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee

Tucker, our general passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate full of our railroad bonds with the Perry

County Bank for a loan. My dear Colonel Rockingham, was that chicken gumbo or cracked goobers on the

bill of fare in your note? Me and the conductor of fiftysix was having a dispute about it."

"Another white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was

The guide goes down again, and convoys into the lair a person in blue overalls carrying an amount of

inebriety and a lantern. I am so sure that this is Major Tucker that I don't even ask him until we are up above;

and then I discover that it is Uncle Timothy, the yard switchman at Edenville, who is sent ahead to flag our

understandings with the gossip that Judge Pendergast, the railroad's attorney, is in the process of mortgaging

While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp, and Caligula, with no white flag to

disinter him from his plain duty, draws his gun. But again Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces

"Excuse us," says Batts, "but me and Jim have hunted squirrels all over this mounting, and we don't need no

white flag. Was that straight, colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real store cigars?"

"Towel on a fishingpole in the offing!" howls Caligula. "Suppose it's the firing line of the freight conductors

"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S. & E.T. wants to run an excursion up here just

because we kidnapped their president, let 'em. We'll put out our sign. 'The Kidnapper's Cafe and Trainmen's

This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession, and I felt easier. I asked him into the

creek, so I could drown him if he happened to be a trackwalker or caboose porter. All the way up the

mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his intelligence in life had skipped.

Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had raised the ransom.

"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our

"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait till after dinner, and we'll settle the business.

All of you gentlemen," I continues to the crowd, "are invited to stay to dinner. We have mutually trusted one

"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me. "Two baggagemasters and a ticketagent

dropped out of a tree while you was below the last time. Did the major man bring the money?"

If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours, me and Caligula did that day. At six o'clock we

spread the top of the mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever engulfed. We

opened all the wine, and we concocted entrees and /pieces de resistance/, and stirred up little savory /chef de

cuisines/ and organized a mass of grub such as has been seldom instigated out of canned and bottled goods.

After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes Major Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The

major pulls out an agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in the suburbs of

"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad has depreciated some. The best I could

do with thirty thousand dollars' worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eightyseven dollars and fifty

cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham, Judge Pendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth

mortgage, the sum of fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirtyseven fifty, correct."

"A railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, "and the owner of a thousand acres of land; and

"Gentlemen," says Tucker, "The railroad is ten miles long. There don't any train run on it except when the

crew goes out in the pines and gathers enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when times

was good, the net earnings used to run as high as eighteen dollars a week. Colonel Rockingham's land has

been sold for taxes thirteen times. There hasn't been a peach crop in this part of Georgia for two years. The

wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around here has money enough to buy fertilizer; and land is so

poor the corn crop failed and there wasn't enough grass to support the rabbits. All the people have had to eat

"Pick," interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are you going to do with that chickenfeed?"

I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the

"Colonel," says I, "I hope you've enjoyed our little joke. We don't want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well,

wouldn't it tickle your uncle? My name's Rhinegelder, and I'm a nephew of Chauncey Depew. My friend's a

second cousin of the editor of /Puck/. So you can see. We are down South enjoying ourselves in our

humorous way. Now, there's two quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the joke's over."

What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I remember Major Tallahassee Tucker playing

on a jew'sharp, and Caligula waltzing with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggagemaster. I hesitate

to refer to the cakewalk done by me and Mr. Patterson G. Coble with Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham

And even on the next morning, when you wouldn't think it possible, there was a consolation for me and

Caligula. We knew that Raisuli himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with the

On an eastbound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson Peters, the only man with a brain west of

the Wabash River who can use his cerebrum cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.

Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of

surplusage. His favorite disguise is that of the targetbird at which the spendthrift or the reckless investor

may shy a few inconsequential dollars. He is readily vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and

"In my line of business," said Jeff, "the hardest thing is to find an upright, trustworthy, strictly honorable

partner to work a graft with. Some of the best men I ever worked with in a swindle would resort to trickery at

"So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of country where I hear the serpent has not yet

entered, and see if I can find a partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet contaminated by

"I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. The inhabitants hadn't found that Adam had

been dispossessed, and were going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if they were in

the Garden of Eden. They call this town Mount Nebo, and it's up near the spot where Kentucky and West

Virginia and North Carolina corner together. Them States don't meet? Well, it was in that neighborhood,

"After putting in a week proving I wasn't a revenue officer, I went over to the store where the rude

fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to see if I could get a line on the kind of man I wanted.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round the driedapple barrel. 'I don't suppose

there's another community in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively permeated

than this. Life here, where all the women are brave and propitious and all the men honest and expedient,

must, indeed, be an idol. It reminds me,' says I, 'of Goldstein's beautiful ballad entitled "The Deserted

'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, What art can drive its charms away? The judge rode slowly down

"'Why, yes, Mr. Peters,' says the storekeeper. 'I reckon we air about as moral and torpid a community as there

be on the mounting, according to censuses of opinion; but I reckon you ain't ever met Rufe Tatum.'

"'Why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have ever. That air Rufe is shore the monstrousest

scalawag that has escaped hangin' on the galluses. And that puts me in mind that I ought to have turned Rufe

out of the lockup before yesterday. The thirty days he got for killin' Yance Goodloe was up then. A day or

"'Shucks, now,' says I, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me there's a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.'

"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the constable turned him out I got acquainted

with him and invited him out on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.

"What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural makeup to play a part in some little oneact outrages that

I was going to book with the Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this R. Tatum was born

for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept /Eliza/ from sinking into the river.

"He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue eyes like the china dog on the

mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the

statue of the dinkusthrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color of it reminded you of the 'Sunset in the

Grand Canon, by an American Artist,' that they hang over the stovepipe holes in the salongs. He was the

Reub, without needing a touch. You'd have known him for one, even if you'd seen him on the vaudeville

"'Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you

accomplished in the way of indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point to, with or

"'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated accents, 'hain't you heard tell? There ain't

any man, black or white, in the Blue Ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as I can without bein' heard, seen,

or cotched. I can lift a shoat,' he goes on, 'out of a pen, from under a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or

night, anywhere or anyhow, and I guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal. It's all in the way you grab hold of

'em and carry 'em atterwards. Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler of pigpens, 'I hope to become

"'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hogstealing will do very well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside

world, Mr. Tatum, it would be considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State Gas.

However, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We'll go into partnership. I've got a thousand dollars cash

capital; and with that homewardplods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a few shares of

"So I attaches Rufe, and we go away from Mount Nebo down into the lowlands. And all the way I coach him

for his part in the grafts I had in mind. I had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was feeling all

to the Ponce de Leon, besides having so many new schemes up my sleeve that I had to wear kimonos to hold

"I intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide though the farming belt of the Middle

West; so we headed in that direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley Brothers' circus

there, and the bluegrass peasantry romping into town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their

handpegged sabots as artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I never pass a circus

without pulling the valvecord and coming down for a little Key West money; so I engaged a couple of

rooms and board for Rufe and me at a house near the circus grounds run by a widow lady named Peevy. Then

I took Rufe to a clothing store and gent'soutfitted him. He showed up strong, as I knew he would, after he

was rigged up in the readymade rutabaga regalia. Me and old Misfitzky stuffed him into a bright blue suit

with a Nile green visible plaid effect, and riveted on a fancy vest of a light Tuskegee Normal tan color, a red

"They were the first clothes Rufe had ever worn except the gingham layette and the butternut topdressing of

his native kraal, and he looked as selfconscious as an Igorrote with a new nosering.

"That night I went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell game. Rufe was to be the capper. I gave

him a roll of phony currency to bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his winnings out of.

No; I didn't mistrust him; but I simply can't manipulate the ball to lose when I see real money bet. My fingers

"I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under.

The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bed.

Then was when Rufe ought to have singlefooted up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and

fives to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the

"The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed

the game with only fortytwo dollars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting on yanking the

yeomen for two hundred at least. I went home at eleven and went to bed. I supposed that the circus had

proved too alluring for Rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I meant to give him a

"Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress I hears a houseful of unbecoming and

ribald noises like a youngster screeching with greenapple colic. I opens my door and calls out in the hall for

the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says: 'Mrs. Peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off

"'Sir,' says she, 'it's no child of mine. It's the pig squealing that your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his

room a couple of hours ago. And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I'd appreciate your

"I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society and went into Rufe's room. He had gotten

up and lit his lamp, and was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingywhite, halfgrown,

"'How is this, Rufe?' says I. 'You flimflammed in your part of the work tonight and put the game on

"'Now, don't be too hard on me, Jeff,' says he. 'You know how long I've been used to stealing shoats. It's got

to be a habit with me. And tonight, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn't help takin' it.'

"'Well,' says I, 'maybe you've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when we get out of the pig belt you'll turn

your mind to higher and more remunerative misconduct. Why you should want to stain your soul with such a

distasteful, feebleminded, perverted, roaring beast as that I can't understand.'

"'Why, Jeff,' says he, 'you ain't in sympathy with shoats. You don't understand 'em like I do. This here seems

to me to be an animal of more than common powers of ration and intelligence. He walked half across the

"'Well, I'm going back to bed,' says I. 'See if you can impress it upon your friend's ideas of intelligence that

"I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper whenever I happen to be within the radius of a

Hoe cylinder or a Washington handpress. The next morning I got up early, and found a Lexington daily on

the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. The first thing I saw in it was a doublecolumn ad. on the

The above amount will be paid, and no questions asked, for the return, alive and uninjured, of Beppo, the

famous European educated pig, that strayed or was stolen from the sideshow tents of Binkley Bros.' circus

"I folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to Rufe's room. He was nearly dressed, and

"'Well, well, well, good morning all,' I says, hearty and amiable. 'So we are up? And piggy is having his

"'I'm going to crate him up,' says Rufe, 'and express him to ma in Mount Nebo. He'll be company for her

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'he looks better to me this morning. I was raised on a farm, and I'm very fond of pigs. I

used to go to bed at sundown, so I never saw one by lamplight before. Tell you what I'll do, Rufe,' I says. 'I'll

"'I reckon I wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. 'If it was any other one I might.'

"'Why, because,' says he, 'it was the grandest achievement of my life. There ain't airy other man that could

have done it. If I ever have a fireside and children, I'll sit beside it and tell 'em how their daddy toted off a

shoat from a whole circus full of people. And maybe my grandchildren, too. They'll certainly be proud a

whole passel. Why,' says he, 'there was two tents, one openin' into the other. This shoat was on a platform,

tied with a little chain. I seen a giant and a lady with a fine chance of bushy white hair in the other tent. I got

the shoat and crawled out from under the canvas again without him squeakin' as loud as a mouse. I put him

under my coat, and I must have passed a hundred folks before I got out where the streets was dark. I reckon I

wouldn't sell that shoat, Jeff. I'd want ma to keep it, so there'd be a witness to what I done.'

"'The pig won't live long enough,' I says, 'to use as an exhibit in your senile fireside mendacity. Your

grandchildren will have to take your word for it. I'll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.'

"'The shoat can't be worth anything like that to you,' he says. 'What do you want him for?'

"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't think that I've got an artistic side to my

temper. But I have. I'm a collector of pigs. I've scoured the world for unusual pigs. Over in the Wabash

Valley I've got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it, from a Merino to a Poland China. This looks like

a blooded pig to me, Rufe,' says I. 'I believe it's a genuine Berkshire. That's why I'd like to have it.'

"'I'd shore like to accommodate you,' says he, 'but I've got the artistic tenement, too. I don't see why it ain't art

when you can steal a shoat better than anybody else can. Shoats is a kind of inspiration and genius with me.

"'Now, listen,' says I, wiping off my forehead. 'It's not so much a matter of business with me as it is art; and

not so much art as it is philanthropy. Being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, I wouldn't feel like I'd

done my duty to the world unless I added that Berkshire to my collection. Not intrinsically, but according to

the ethics of pigs as friends and coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred dollars for the animal.'

"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll crush the sentiment out of my heart.'

"I went under my clothes for my moneybelt, and counted him out forty twentydollar gold certificates.

"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till after breakfast.'

"I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam calliope at the circus.

"'Let me tote him in for you,' says Rufe; and he picks up the beast under one arm, holding his snout with the

"After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever since I got his trousseau, says he believes

he will amble down to Misfitzky's and look over some royalpurple socks. And then I got as busy as a

onearmed man with the nettlerash pasting on wallpaper. I found an old Negro man with an express

wagon to hire; and we tied the pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

"I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He was a fattish man with an immediate

eye, in a black skullcap, with a fourounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

"'Designate,' says he. 'Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'I've got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. I found him rooting up the

flowers in my front yard this morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it's handy.'

"George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into one of the sideshows. In there was a

jet black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding

"'Hey, Mac,' calls G. B. 'Nothing wrong with the worldwide this morning, is there?'

"'How'd you get this pipe?' says Tapley to me. 'Eating too many pork chops last night?'

"'Fake,' says he. 'Don't know anything about it. You've beheld with your own eyes the marvelous,

worldwide porcine wonder of the fourfooted kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal,

"I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to drive to the most adjacent orifice of the

nearest alley. There I took out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and gave

him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold

"'To decide a bet,' says I, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in last night short and fat, with long black

"'He was not,' says the man. 'He would measure about six feet by four and a half inches, with cornsilk hair,

"'If you do, ma'am,' says I, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all

"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how hard it is ever to find a fairminded and honest

"But," I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule should work both ways. If you had offered to

"That don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "Mine was a legitimate and moral attempt at

speculation. Buy low and sell high don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigswhat's the