“Hello, Bing!” cried Jack Ready, as Ralph Bingham, the big sophomore, drifted into Merriwell’s room, a few days after his victory over Defarge.
“Nice old gal you had out to sup last night after the opera. Theatrical dame, wasn’t she? Belonged to the chorus, I should judge.”
“What the dickens makes you think so?” demanded Ralph, hardly pleased. “Did she look like a chorus girl?”
“Well, she looked something like a chorus lady,” chirped Jack. “Somebody told me she lowered the curtain the night Lincoln was shot.”
Bingham glared, while the others chuckled, with the exception of Ready himself, who looked very grave and innocent.
“You’ll get salted some time!” growled the big sophomore. “You need it, too, for you’re awfully fresh.”
“Sorry I can’t say the same about the ancient maid you were blowing to birds and fizz last eve, Bing, old mark,” purred Ready.
“She was simply an old flame of mine,” asserted Ralph, finding a seat.
“I thought so when I saw her hair,” nodded Jack. “I cried: ‘Fire, fire!’ Gamp was with me, and he says: ‘Wh-wh-wh-where is the fuf-fuf-fuf-fire?’ Then I pointed out your old flame.”
“That reminds me that she said something when she looked up and saw you and Gamp approaching,” observed Bingham carelessly.
“What did she say?” eagerly asked Jack, hastening to put his foot into the trap.
“She said: ‘Hello! things are coming my way,’” answered the satisfied sophomore, crossing his legs.
Then the entire party shouted with laughter, for it was not often that Ready, the practical joker, was caught in such an easy manner.
“Language fails me!” declared Ready, as the laughter lulled. “I’m like the old tramp I saw to-day. Fellows, he was a finely educated man, and he could speak five different languages, yet he confessed to me that his downfall was brought upon him because he did not know how to say one common little English word of two letters.”
“What rot!” grunted Browning, from the couch.
“It’s true,” asserted Jack, with great earnestness. “Drunkenness made him a vagabond, and he became a drunkard just because he could not say that one little word of two letters.”
“And he could speak five different languages?” incredulously asked Carson, from his corner.
“He could.”
“And the word of two letters was a simple English word?” broke in Greg Carker.
“So I stated.”
“Dud-dud-dud-did he have an impup-pup-pup-pediment in his sus-sus-sus-speech?” inquired Joe Gamp seriously.
“Not the least.”
“Well, what word was it that caused his downfall because he didn’t know how to say it?” asked Bingham impatiently.
“It was the word ‘No,’” explained Ready.
“There are lots of men right here at Yale who do not know how to say that word,” asserted Frank, who had been listening to the chatter of the others.
“Alas! too true,” sighed Ready. “Now, there’s Carker, who bunks with me in Durfee. I’ve seen the time when he found great difficulty in correctly pronouncing numerous words in the English language.”
“You’re another!” exclaimed Greg warmly.
“The earthquake rumbles,” grunted Browning.
“It’s true,” asserted Ready, with assumed earnestness. “Why, I remember the night he came in at two o’clock, walking cross-legged and stumbling over his own feet. He knew my virtuous abhorrence of such conduct, and he was naturally a trifle timid. I sat up and sternly said: ‘Carker, what is the meaning of this? You have been drinking’. Then he steadied himselfwith considerable trouble, and answered: ‘’Tain’t sho! I’m all ri’, thash whas I am. Nozzen massher wish me.’ ‘If you haven’t been drinking,’ said I, ‘why do you talk as if you had your mouth full of mush?’ ‘Caush,’ said he, ‘a shoft anshwer turnsh away wrath, ol’ boy.’ Then he lost his balance, fell down, and drove his head under the bookcase so hard that I had to take all the books off the shelves and lift the bookcase before I could get him out.”
“Gentlemen,” said Greg stiffly, in the face of their grins, “the man who will believe him on oath is an idiot, and so his lies do not worry me in the least.”
But Carker could not take a joke pleasantly, and the laughter of the others caused him to flush and look disturbed.
“Frivolous—all frivolous!” he exclaimed. “That’s the way with Americans to-day. They laugh and joke, regardless of the fact that the country is making gigantic strides toward imperialism—regardless of the fact that every sign points to the setting up of an empire——”
“Which shall be overthrown by your own pet earthquake, Carker,” said Frank.
“Even you, Merriwell,” cried Greg—“you do not seem willing to take life earnestly.”
“I am not willing to take life at all, my dear boy. I wouldn’t even kill a cat—unless she disturbed my slumbers.”
“That’s it!” Carker ejaculated, with a despairing gesture. “You pervert my meaning! You are not willing to look a thing squarely in the face. That same frivolous disposition possesses all the young men of our land who find themselves in fairly comfortable circumstances. They take no thought of the burdens of the poor and oppressed. They give no heed to the groans of the great mass of downtrodden slaves who are laboring for day pay at starvation wages.”
“He’s off!” cried Ready. “Cluk! cluk! git ap!”
Carker had risen to his feet. Having found an opportunity to launch forth on his pet hobby, he gave no heed to any interruption. Without noticing Ready in the least, he went on, his pale face flushing and his eyes glowing as his earnestness increased:
“But it is not altogether the young who are thus heedless of the storm-clouds gathering over our fair land. It is not altogether the rich. The great middle class seem just as careless. The moaning and the groaning of the shackled slaves of toil and oppression disturb them not. The muttering thunder behind the rising storm-cloud falls on deaf ears.”
“Get your umbrellas, fellows!” whispered Ready hoarsely. “We’re going to have a shower this time. The earthquake has a day off.”
“False prophets tell of growing prosperity and better times coming. They are liars, and sons of liars!” cried Carker, becoming more and more impassioned as heproceeded. “Already the common people are writhing in the grasp of the gigantic monopolies, which threaten to crush the life out of our nation. Already the tide of discontent is beating with threatening throbs against the sea-wall of money power.”
“Great Scott! it’s a tidal wave!” gasped Jack. “And I do not own a pair of rubber boots!”
“There’s rubber enough in your neck to make several pairs,” said Bingham.
“Look at the great trusts that are forming to squeeze the people!” the oratorical youth pursued, pointing tragically with one quivering finger. “Behold them in all their brutal insolence and contempt for the poor wretches they are bleeding! Tell me of one man connected with a trust who ever did a truly great, unselfish, and generous thing.”
“Carnegie,” said Frank.
“Bah!” exploded Greg. “Who knows the hidden meaning behind his seeming acts of munificence? Perhaps it is a blind to deceive the restless common people and lull their suspicions so that the great trust may continue to squeeze them still more. Besides, it is bread the masses are crying for, and he gives them a stone in the shape of a book.”
“Men do not live by bread alone,” reminded Frank.
“But it is bread the great masses must have,” asserted Carker. “What time has the slave of daytoil for reading? When he is not working, he must be sleeping.”
“Or drinking beer,” murmured Ready. “If he had sense enough to keep away from the saloons and save his money, he might not be such a downtrodden wretch.”
At this Frank nodded. He knew there was more or less truth in what Carker was saying in such a theatrical manner; and, at the same time, he was aware that Ready had struck the key of the cause for more than half the poverty and wretchedness of the poor.
“What we need——” Carker tried to go on.
“——is more saloons,” chuckled Ready. “Give the poor, downtrodden laborer a chance to blow in every dollar he earns.”
“The saloon is the poor man’s club,” asserted Greg.
“It’s the club with which he is beating out his own brains,” said Merriwell seriously.
Carker gasped a little, but he quickly recovered and swung off again:
“Because the poor man seeks to find a vent for his feelings by drinking occasionally in a saloon, the man of the upper class points the finger of scorn at him, crying out that the poor wretch has brought about his own misfortune. What would the poor man do if he didn’t have a chance to drink in saloons?”
“Save his money and make his family comfortable,” answered Frank promptly.
“Comfortable! comfortable!” sneered Greg. “And he would see the rich man who employed him rolling in luxury, living like a prince by the money the poor man had toiled to earn. It’s true! You all know it’s true. The laborer might be able to hold soul and body together, but none of the real pleasures of life could be his. No wonder the great masses are murmuring and groaning! Their hearts are eaten by a consuming fire that shall burst forth with all the fury of Vesuvius——”
“My goodness!it’s a volcano!” whispered Ready. “That’s hot stuff!”
“I’m not a drinker,” Carker asserted, “but I claim the right to take a drink when I like. In hot weather I do like beer, and I take it sometimes. Shall I say to the poor man: ‘This is not for you; I alone may have beer?’ The folly of it! I have sympathy with a poor man. My father was poor when he started out in life, and I am proud of it. He was a cooper.”
“Well, he put a mighty poor head into one beer-barrel,” said Ready, jerking his thumb significantly toward Greg.
This caused a burst of laughter, but Carker pretended that he had not heard it.
“The poor man of America is ambitious when he starts out in life,” the young socialist continued. “It is only after he has labored for years, and seen how fruitless is the result of his toil, that ambition is crushedfrom his soul. But the place of ambition is taken by a terrible thing—a feeling of hatred toward the rich. This feeling is growing day by day all over our land, and it causes the murmur that we hear growing louder and louder. If we pause to listen, we may hear it distinctly; we may even feel the ground shake a little beneath our feet.”
“By heavens! the earthquake is coming, after all!” sobbed Ready, dropping limply on a chair.
“The rich man in his carriage does not feel the slight tremor,” Greg spouted; “or, if he does, he smiles and says it means nothing. He may have noticed something of the kind before. If so, it lulled, and the threatened shock did not come, which leads him to think it will never come. Poor fool! Often in earthquake countries, before the coming of the mighty shock, there are slight warning tremors of the earth.These little quiversmay do no harm, or they may simply crack a few buildings, just to show what they can do when they get into action. At last comes the great shock, and the earth opens to swallow up whole cities, the sea rolls in upon the land, buildings topple and fall, flames burst forth, and the scene is the most awful mortal man can behold.”
All were silent now, their eyes closed, their positions seeming to indicate resignation.
“Thus it will be in the terrible hour when the earthquake shall shake our mighty land. The downtroddenmasses shall upheave like the rising waves of the tidal sea! The temples of the rich shall come toppling down with crashing thunder! Havoc and ruin shall spread from ocean to ocean! The sky shall be darkened by an ascending cloud of black smoke rising from the palacelike homes of millionaires! That day shall be even more terrible than those of the Commune. The cries of the victims shall be drowned by——”
At this point Browning snored loudly from the couch, Ready followed suit from his chair, and the sound seemed to echo all round the room. Carker paused and looked about, seeing that every one but himself seemed to be sound asleep. His face became still more flushed than before, and he sat down suddenly on his chair, muttering to himself.
Jack Ready stirred a little, opened his eyes, yawned, sat up, and called:
“Wake up, fellows! The earthquake is over.”