I proved this to my satisfaction.
Having some business over at the farm, I went to the house and knocked.
This little chap came to the door.
"Is this where Skeezer, Nathan Skeezer, lives?" I asked.
"It be," he replied.
"Is he at home?"
"Reckon he is, sah—you'll find him over yonder cleanin' out the pigpen."
I thanked the youngster, and was moving away when he called out:
"Say, mister, you'll know dad, 'cause he's got his hat on."
While I'm at it, let me relate an experience I had with homely men, and I remember it the better because it cost me five dollars.
I chanced to be on one of the Old Dominion steamers at the time, in company with Tom Plunger, whose game it was to play the races.
Tom was a mighty good fellow, and his only fault lay in the fact that he stuttered dreadfully.
That's an awful infliction, but it sometimes adds piquancy to a joke, just as Worcestershire sauce does to your chops.
We hadn't been long on the water, when I observed a most remarkable-looking individual pacing the deck.
I've seen some ill-looking men in my day, but this specimen was surely the very worst that had ever crossed the scope of my vision, and beat that old Alabama farmer out of sight.
I said as much to my friend, whereupon Tom offered to wager a five-dollar bill that he had seen a worse one in the steerage.
I at once accepted, and Tom started for his man for comparison.
BEAUTY SHOW
He found the fellow a bit of a wag, as an intolerably homely man is apt to be, and, after the promise of a nip, nothing loath to exhibit himself.
As they appeared on deck, my friend, with an air of conscious triumph, turned to direct my attention to his companion, who was making sure of his success by concocting faces.
"St-st-st-stop!" ordered Tom. "No-no-none ofthat! You st-st-stay just as you were made. You ca-ca-ca-ca-can't be beat!"
And he wasn't.
It takes an Irishman to be a Job's comforter.
Patrick Brannagan, whose face was so plain that his friends used to tell him it was an offense to the landscape, happened to be as poor as he was homely.
One day a neighbor met him, and asked:
"How are you, Pat?"
"Mighty bad! Sure, 'tis starvation that's starin' me in the face."
"Begorra!" exclaimed his neighbor, sympathetically, "it can't be very pleasant for either of yez!"
Say, have you ever tried the Christian Science cure? It's simply great.
And the cost is so little, too.
Apparently there are some people though who can't see things in the right way.
They simply lack faith.
I remember when out in the country, I dropped in to see friend Wilkins, the editor of the local sheet.
He was endeavoring to give some medicine to his little chap, who writhed and twisted in contortions.
Of course it was a case of too many green apples, and I could sympathize with Teddy.
We've all been there.
Now, it happened that a good woman next door had been called in.
She was a devout Christian Scientist, and the way she assured the boy he must be deceiving himself, and there could not be anything the matter with him, would have convinced you or me right away.
But Teddy stubbornly refused to take comfort.
"I think I ought to know," he groaned. "I guess I've got inside information."
Speaking of these fads puts me in mind of the widow McCree, whose husband when alive was noted as a tough case, but he left her well provided for, and she tries to make people believe she mourns for him.
Once she even went to a medium, hoping to hear some message of consolation from the dear departed.
But I rather guess that same medium had been acquainted with Billy during his lifetime.
"Is there any message from my dear husband?" asked the widow, anxiously.
"Yes, there is," snapped the medium, "and it's hot stuff, too."
By the way, on that Old Dominion steamer there was a newly-married couple—there always is.
I soon discovered that the lady had been something of a yachtswoman, and seemed perfectly at home on the heaving ocean.
Not so the newly-made Benedict.
As soon as the swell off the capes set us to dancing he rushed to the side and started lightening the ship.
This he repeated many times, but was too game to seek his berth.
So, as night came on, they sat there, she chipper as a lark, and he about as dejected a bridegroom as could be found in seven counties.
Perhaps she thought a touch of the romantic might get him out of his mood, so she tried this:
"The moon is up, isn't it, darling?"
"Yes," I heard him reply, languidly; "that is, if I swallowed it."
It isn't often that a shrewd lawyer gets two set-backs on the same day.
Yet I once witnessed such a thing.
It was in a Western city—never mind the name.
This lawyer was cross-examining a woman who it seemed was the spouse of a burglar of considerable notoriety.
It was his intention to shatter her testimony, and he went about it in the usual browbeating way.
"Madam, you are the wife of this man?"
"Yes."
"You knew he was a burglar when you married him?"
"Yes."
"How did you come to contract a matrimonial alliance with such a man?"
"Well," the witness said, sarcastically, "I was getting old, and I had to choose between a lawyer and a burglar."
The cross-examination ended there.
In the other case, the gentleman of the green bag received even a worse dose, and he was such a bulldozing character that no one felt sorry.
"Now, sir," began the attorney, knitting his brows and preparing to annihilate the witness whom he was about to cross-examine, "you say your name is Williams? Can you prove that to be your real name? Is there anybody in the courtroom who can swear that you haven't assumed it for purposes of fraud and deceit?"
"I think you can identify me yourself," answered the witness, quietly.
"I? Where did I ever see you before, sir?" demanded the astonished lawyer.
"I put that scar over your right eye twenty-five yearsago, when you were stealing peaches out of father's orchard. Yes, I'm the same Williams."
Which must have shattered some of the nerve of that same legal gentleman.
But that's nothing to the nerve of a Western landlord! One of them roped me in for fair. You see the blamed hotel burned down while I was there, and—would you believe it?—the next day I got a bill from the proprietor for a fire in my room.
I've been abroad more than once during my checkered career, the last time with a company that played the "Children of the Ghetto." When it was staged in New York, in order to get the best effect of the mob scene the manager went into the New York Ghetto and engaged the real article, employing at the same time an interpreter to explain to them in Yiddish the stage directions. The plan was successful.
But when the production was taken to London we abandoned this scheme.
The English manager had employed the usual group of cockney supers, and spent a good deal of English gold in buying make-ups for them. When our manager saw the lot he was furious.
"Why," he screamed, "that band of mutts looks like a gang of sneak thieves trying to dodge thepolice! They'll ruin the play!—ruin it!—do you hear me? They'll ruin it! Look at those whiskers!"
And he yanked off the beard of one of the supers, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.
"And look at that wig!" and a bit of false head-dressing followed the whiskers to the floor, and was shredded under the American's angry heel. "And that one, too!" Another wig went to destruction. "And that nose!—that nose!"
Here he made a grab at the very prominent and highly Roman nasal organ of a very short super, and tweaked it as through he would throw it, too, to the floor and stamp on it.
The super's eyes filled with tears, he uttered a cry of pain, indignantly grabbed and pulled away the manager's wrenchlike fingers, and then backing away, bowed and explained very humbly:
"Hi begs your pardon, sir, but that's me hown."
But, after all, it takes a young woman of the present day, to rub it in with a free hand.
There's Miss Gutting, for instance, whose father roped me in on many a deal on Wall Street. He made his little pile, and of course the daughter is considered a great catch, and among those who hover about the bright flame are several young society swells whose brains have never come out of their swaddling clothes.
Daughter of millionaire—Great catch—Counts and upward
She gave Softleigh an awful jolt the other day when he thought to get off a poem, which somehow seemed to lose all its point in his hands.
"I think, Mr. Softleigh, you will become quite a distinguished man if you live long enough," she said.
"Ah, thanks, awfully, doncher know. It's very good of you to say that. By the way, what do you—aw—think I will be distinguished for?"
"Longevity," said the minx.
It was cruel, perhaps, but I've no doubt she enjoyed it.
But Miss Gutting sometimes finds her match in the grim old Wall Street operator whom she calls papa.
She has a passion for hats, and of course her Easter creation was a dandy.
"Isn't it a duck of a hat?" she asked the old gentleman, parading it before him.
"Certainly; only I'd call it a pelican," he said, grimly glancing at the account on his desk, "judging from the size of the bill."
I suppose you've noticed that I've done a good deal of chin-scratching to-night. Some people do that when they're thinking hard, but not so with me. Oh, no, the simple fact is I got shaved by a new barber and I guess I'll grow a beard in future. Some people say there's lots of comedy in a barber shop. They mean tragedy. Again some people think there's poetry in the prattlings of the knight of the brush. I know one man who thinks different. Little Archie Rickets has a horror of the tribe and has a scheme to head 'em off.
Whenever he has to patronize a strange barber during the course of his travels, it is his invariable custom to immediately hand out a piece of money before sitting down in the chair, and whisper:
"Here, put this in your pocket for yourself."
The barber, delighted of course, always declaresthat he has never before received a tip before commencing operations.
Whereupon Rickets will frown and cut him short with:
"That is not a tip—it's hush money."
And in every case the barber tumbles to the racket, and puts a lock on his lips.
Rickets was telling me the other day about a wonderful bookkeeper his father used to have in his office.
"An all-around athlete," he declared, with a grin.
"Indeed," I replied, knowing he had a card up his sleeve, for Rickets is quite prone to have his little joke.
"Yes, indeed," he continued, "you ought to have seen him balancing the books. Why, he could keep the day-book in the air while he juggled the ledger on his nose and totaled up the journal with either right or left hand. Oh, he was fine, but pop had to let him go."
"How was that?" I asked.
"He was too much of an adept at the horizontal bar."
"Yes," I remarked, "that same bar has doubtless been the cause of many a fine fellow's downfall. But it is becoming the fashion now among men who lead a strenuous life to give up their tippling. I was just reading that Santos Dumont, the celebrated Brazilian air-ship navigator, does not indulge at all."
"Quite right," remarked Rickets, soberly; "probably he is afraid of taking a drop too much."
There's poor old Juggins, who used to be a great friend of mine till he took to drink.
I knew he would get his desserts if he continued his habit of a periodical spree, and the other day sure enough he turned up in the pen when the cases of drunk and disorderly were called.
"Officer," said the police-court judge, "what made you think the prisoner was drunk?"
"Well, your honor, as he was going along the sidewalk he ran plump into a street lamppost. He backed away, replaced his hat onhis head, and firmly started forward again, but once more ran into the post.
"Four times he tried to get by the post, but each time his uncertain steps took him right into the iron pole.
"After the fourth attempt and failure to pass the post he backed off, fell to the pavement, and clutching his head in his hands, murmured, as one lost to all hope:
"'Lost! Lost in an impenetrable forest.'"
"Ten days;" said the court.
Juggins has been given to this sort of thing ever since he lost his chance of marrying a belle in Washington, and the daughter of a rich senator.
As a newspaper man Juggins was rather free with his criticism of public men and measures, and one of his letters, written before he became infatuated with the young lady in question, had rubbed it in so hard that the senator had gone to the trouble of finding out just who the writer was.
His hour of revenge arrived when Juggins summoned up courage to ask for his daughter's hand.
Then he arose in all his awful majesty.
"Only a year ago, Mr. Juggins, you referred to me emphatically as an old pirate," he said.
Juggins was naturally overwhelmed.
His sins had found him out.
Of course he tried to stammer out excuses, and how he had regretted his indiscreet act ever since.
"No, I'm not a pirate, Mr. Juggins, I wish you to distinctly understand that—I'm only a sort of freebooter. This (biff-bing) won't cost you a cent."
And Juggins went out of that senatorial mansion a sadder and a wiser man.
That was why he took to drink.
I've known the poor fellow to have the delirium tremens, and see all manner of goblins.
Did you ever run across a ghost, any of you?
Not the nicest experience in the world.
Perhaps you'd like to hear of an exciting adventure in that line that once befell me.
I was out West at the time, traveling on horseback, and pulled up at a tavern when night came on.
There I learned to my chagrin that as a crowd was attending the races—it was in Kentucky, ofcourse—the landlord did not have a single place to stow me.
When I pressed the old chap, he admitted that there was one unoccupied room.
"But," he said, "no one can sleep in that room, for it's haunted. You must go on to the next village."
"I'll sleep in the room, ghost or no ghost," I declared, determined to go no further, as it promised to be a stormy night.
The landlord tried to persuade me; but I had established myself over the fire and called for supper.
Reluctantly the landlord gave orders to prepare the haunted chamber.
Meantime I was enlightened by the other guests as to the nature of the ghostly visitant.
Every night at a certain hour a sepulchral voice was heard outside the casement, saying:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
"And then, what happens?" I demanded.
No one could certainly say.
The last gentleman who slept in the room had fled, shrieking, on hearing the voice, and had spent the rest of his days in an asylum.
Some said that if you allowed the ghostly barber to approach and commence operations on your chin, your throat would infallibly be cut.
Fortified by this information, I retired early to rest, leaving the company engaged in an exciting game at cards, each with his pile of cash on the table before him.
Waking up from my first sleep, a hoarse, croaking sound seemed to come from the casement.
To my half-awakened senses the sound seemed to take form in the words:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
I jumped up and went to the window. The creaking branch of an old pear tree was swaying in the wind and scraping against the sash. This was the origin of the ghostly voice.
"What about those fellows downstairs?" I immediately asked myself, not thinking it fair that I should enjoy all of the fun.
I went to the door and listened. They were still at their cards.
So I dressed myself up in a sheet, took my razorin one hand, and a well-lathered brush in the other, and went downstairs.
Opening the door of the room where the card-players were still eagerly engaged in their game, I looked around. Every eye was fixed on me in terror. Advancing a step into the room, I waved my razor, and said, in a hoarse voice:
"Do you want to be shaved?"
There was a general stampede for the opposite door, and the ghost was left in possession. I walked around the table, and swept the various piles of money into my pocket. Retiring to bed, I slept soundly till the next morning. When I came down to breakfast, eager inquiries were made by the others as to what had happened.
"Well," I answered, "there was some one came, and asked, 'Do you want to be shaved?' So I said, 'No, I don't; but there are some chaps downstairs who do.'"
That's as near as I ever got to meeting a spectre.
But I have seen a dead man galvanized into life.
This is the way it happened.
It was on the stage.
We were playing Juliet at the time. I used to affect Shakespeare when I was young and foolish.
Paris had been duly slain, and Juliet lay stretched upon her bier.
Just then a portion of the scenery caught fire somehow, but some of us behind managed to extinguish it before much damage was done.
Juliet, with commendable presence of mind, did not move an eyelid, but the corpse of Paris was plainly nervous.
He raised himself to a sitting posture, gazing up at the fire in alarm, then scrambled to his feet and scuttled off the stage, the liveliest dead man you ever saw.
The danger being removed, his courage returned,and the audience shrieked with laughter at the spectacle of a corpse crawling along from the wings bent upon taking up his proper position for the final curtain.
I was around with the editor of the New York "Flapdoodle" yesterday, working up a sensational item about myself, when I heard a crash in the composing room. The editor and I dashed upstairs and found that a nervous printer had dropped the form of the first page and pied the whole business. The editor looked grimly at the wretch, and then remarked, mournfully:
"I wish you had broken the news more gently."
Now, we've got our quick-change artists on the stage, but to tell you the honest truth, I believe they can't hold a candle to some in private life.
There's Mrs. Stubb, for instance. You know her husband likes an occasional quiet game with the boys—the trouble is he is too confiding.
That sort of people always run up against a buzz saw for their pains.
"Maria," he said, penitently, one morning at breakfast, "last night I played poker and"——
"Played poker!" interrupted Mrs. Stubb. "How dare you spend your money gambling, sir!"
"As I was saying, I played poker and won enough to buy you a set of furs"——
"You did? Oh, John, you are so good! I knew those sharps could not get the best of you."
"And just as I was about to quit I dropped it all and fifty more."
"You brute! To think I should have married a gambler!"
I'm really sorry for Stubb.
He's a good fellow in the main, too, though somewhat henpecked at home.
You see he's at the head of a big syndicate, and lately the rumor went around that they might sell out if the right customer turned up.
I chanced to know this, and believed I could bring in a man who would pay their price.
It turned out that he also represented a company.
"Well," said Stubb, finally, "our price is just $150,000, not one cent less."
GREAT OPPORTUNITY! BARGAIN! $149,999.99 MARKED DOWN FROM $150,000!!!
"Make it just that much less," suggested the promotor, "and I think we can cinch the deal."
"How do you mean?"
"Make it $149,999.99. The head of our syndicate is a woman."
Stubb always prided himself on what he was pleased to call his wonderful gift of reading character.
I've often wondered how such a genius ever came to make such a mistake before he married.
But then love, they say, is blind.
And like Rip Van Winkle's drink, that one didn't count.
To tell you the truth he was a pretty good hand at guessing character, and I've known him to tell five out of six men's occupation or trade just by keen analysis of their appearances and actions.
Of course Stubb went in for reading all such books as Sherlock Holmes.
"After all," he said to me one day as we rode in a Broadway car, "it is really a very simple thing; requires nothing but close observation.
"For instance, it is easy to tell a man's occupation.
"His facial expression, his actions, even his dress, are stamped by his daily work.
NO TALKING ALLOWED
"You see that man sitting opposite us? Well, I am just as sure as though he had told me that he is a barber."
"You are mistaken," I replied, quickly. "That man is a butcher."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Stubb. "You never saw a butcher with slim, white hands, like his?"
"Perhaps not," I admitted, shaking my head, "but he is a butcher just the same."
"How do you know he is?"
"How do I know? Faith, I have very good reasons for persisting in my assertions, since the scoundrel shaved me once."
Our last servant girl is a daisy.
Only yesterday morning I heard my wife ask herwhy she left the alarm-clock on the kitchen table all night alongside the buckwheat batter.
"Sure, mum, so it would know what time to rise."
Her brother Mike has a saloon down on the Bowery.
The other day I went in to give him a message from Nora, and found him examining some sort of patent contraption guaranteed, if fastened in the furnace smokepipe, to effect a wonderful saving in the consumption of coal.
And just then such a thing was an object in New York, with hard coal soaring out of reach.
"And you say that wid wan av these patent dampers in me sthovepipe I'd save half me coal?" Mike was saying as I went in.
"That's it. It will do the work every time and save half your coal bill," declared the agent, eagerly.
"All right," says Mike, "thin, be jabers, phwat's thematter wid me takin' two and savin' the whole av it?"
Riding uptown on the elevated the other night, I noticed a parson sitting on one of the cross-seats, and he was evidently trying to extend sympathy to the cadaverous-looking young man who sat opposite him.
"Pardon me, sir," said the churchman; "but you look worn out. You know he who dissipates——"
"No, parson, it ain't dissipation. The truth is I'm most dead. I had about forty letters to write this afternoon."
"Why didn't you dictate them?" asked the parson.
"No typewriter."
"What's become of her?"
"I married her."
"Get another."
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"Costs too much to live now."
I can sympathize with that poor fellow.
Ah, me! What life was like in those old, old bachelor days, when a million hearts were at my feet. My wife came to me only this morning with an angelic smile on her face and, pointing to a book she held open, she said:
"George, dear, I have a little surprise for you. I have been going around among the girls who knew you before we were married and I have put down here the names of all those women you have kissed, and I'm going to ask you to give me a dollar for every kiss."
I had to pawn my watch to settle that terrible bill.
Talking about old days, when I was in budding manhood I thought I was in budding poethood as well. I wrote a little ballad for a grocery clerk, andhe was so effusive he made me blush. But the glad hand he gave me started me on the road to ruin. By some strange freak of fortune, I butted up against a real live versifier who had actually had his lines printed.
"Keep at it, my young friend," he said to me. "That's the only way to win. The railroad magnates are the first persons to recognize real genius. Why, before I was seventy years old, I was travelling on a pass!"
I steered away, for I reckoned if I'd have to wait till I was three-score-and-ten before passes came my way I wouldn't need 'em then.
I walked to a neighboring village and bribed the editor of the local paper to print a five-line poem which I had written. The poem was entitled "To Hell," and was pretty hot stuff for a youngster.Next day I trotted off to the paper office to preserve the original manuscript. As I was leaving some one shouted:
"That's the villiain, Jake, that makes love to your wife by writin' poetry to her."
"Aha!" roared Jake, "that 'ar shunk! the fellow what wrote the poem about Nell! Whoop!"
I caught a flash of a big farmer getting his gun in position. I waited for no more, but did a flying scoot.
Great Scot! There's the stage bell. I'll have to shut down, or the manager will be here with a club. Ting-ting!
Good night!
Peaceful ValleyFrom the DramaBy E. E. KidderOne of the most pleasing and touching narratives of country life ever written. Every reader will be thoroughly enraptured by Hosea's devotion to his sweetheart and his mother.Price, 25c.Illustrated with handsome, full-page half-tones. Sol Smith Russell as Hosea.At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of price and 4c. additional to cover postage.STREET & SMITH,Publishers,238 William St., New York City.
From the Drama
By E. E. Kidder
One of the most pleasing and touching narratives of country life ever written. Every reader will be thoroughly enraptured by Hosea's devotion to his sweetheart and his mother.
One of the most pleasing and touching narratives of country life ever written. Every reader will be thoroughly enraptured by Hosea's devotion to his sweetheart and his mother.
Price, 25c.
Illustrated with handsome, full-page half-tones. Sol Smith Russell as Hosea.
Illustrated with handsome, full-page half-tones. Sol Smith Russell as Hosea.
At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of price and 4c. additional to cover postage.
At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of price and 4c. additional to cover postage.
STREET & SMITH,
Publishers,
238 William St., New York City.
A
N extremely rare occurrence for the publishers of a magazine is to find themselves embarrassed by the obligation imposed by the degree and quality of prosperity that has attendedAinslee'sduring the past year. Such prosperity brings with it an obligation in a very real sense, for it means that in what has actually been accomplished in the past, there is implied a promise to the public and to the literary world, of a continued development toward what is best and most wholesome in fiction, poetry and essays. Here are some of the more familiar names:
It will thus be seen that in 1904 there will be plenty of quality to go along with the greatest quantity of reading matter to be found in any other magazine published at any price.
During the coming year special attention will be paid to the cover designs ofAinslee's. Such well-known artists asHenry Hutt,Edward Penfield,A. B. Wenzell,Thomas Mitchell Pierce,Harrison Fisher, and others, will contribute to help the magazine to a pleasing and appropriate outside appearance. Don't fail to readAinslee's. You may safely recommend it to your friends as well.
The Ainslee Magazine Co.,New York
Some image alignments have been changed from the original to better accommodate free-flowing text.
Apparent spelling errors within dialogue have been left unchanged on the assumption that they are intentional dialect.
Page 3, changed "its" to "it's" in "I suppose it's all right."
Page 4, changed "aint" to "ain't."
Page 13, added missing close quote after "home with me."
Page 43, changed "its" to "it's" in two places.
Page 56, changed "its" to "it's" in "it's jist this way."
Page 65, changed "Hear" to "Here" in "Here lies a foolish swine." Illustration was correct; error was in typeset text.
Page 70, added missing "I" to the beginning of the sentence "I soon discovered that the lady..."
Page 80, changed "Of couse" to "Of course."
Page 87, removed duplicate "a" from "was a a pretty good hand."