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The Enchanted Profile

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







There are few Caliphesses. Women are Scheherazades by birth,
predilection, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords. The
thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of
thousands of viziers' daughters to their respective sultans. But the
bowstring will get some of 'em yet if they don't watch out.

I heard a story, though, of one lady Caliph. It isn't precisely an
Arabian Nights story, because it brings in Cinderella, who flourished
her dishrag in another epoch and country. So, if you don't mind the
mixed dates (which seem to give it an Eastern flavour, after all),
we'll get along.

In New York there is an old, old hotel. You have seen woodcuts of it
in the magazines. It was built--let's see--at a time when there was
nothing above Fourteenth Street except the old Indian trail to Boston
and Hammerstein's office. Soon the old hostelry will be torn down.
And, as the stout walls are riven apart and the bricks go roaring down
the chutes, crowds of citizens will gather at the nearest corners and
weep over the destruction of a dear old landmark. Civic pride is
strongest in New Bagdad; and the wettest weeper and the loudest howler
against the iconoclasts will be the man (originally from Terre Haute)
whose fond memories of the old hotel are limited to his having been
kicked out from its free-lunch counter in 1873.

At this hotel always stopped Mrs. Maggie Brown. Mrs. Brown was a bony
woman of sixty, dressed in the rustiest black, and carrying a handbag
made, apparently, from the hide of the original animal that Adam
decided to call an alligator. She always occupied a small parlour and
bedroom at the top of the hotel at a rental of two dollars per day.
And always, while she was there, each day came hurrying to see her
many men, sharp-faced, anxious-looking, with only seconds to spare.
For Maggie Brown was said to be the third richest woman in the world;
and these solicitous gentlemen were only the city's wealthiest brokers
and business men seeking trifling loans of half a dozen millions or so
from the dingy old lady with the prehistoric handbag.

The stenographer and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've
let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a hold-over from
the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some old-timer
paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was a liberal
education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair and neat
white shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course in any
correspondence school in the country. She sometimes did a little
typewriting for me, and, as she refused to take the money in advance,
she came to look upon me as something of a friend and protege. She had
unfailing kindliness and a good nature; and not even a white-lead
drummer or a fur importer had ever dared to cross the dead line of
good behaviour in her presence. The entire force of the Acropolis,
from the owner, who lived in Vienna, down to the head porter, who had
been bedridden for sixteen years, would have sprung to her defence in
a moment.

One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium, and
saw in her place a black-haired unit--unmistakably a person--pounding
with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing on the mutability
of temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I went on a two weeks'
vacation. Returning, I strolled through the lobby of the Acropolis,
and saw, with a little warm glow of auld lang syne, Miss Bates, as
Grecian and kind and flawless as ever, just putting the cover on her
machine. The hour for closing had come; but she asked me in to sit for
a few minutes on the dictation chair. Miss Bates explained her absence
from and return to the Acropolis Hotel in words identical with or
similar to these following:

"Well, Man, how are the stories coming?"

"Pretty regularly," said I. "About equal to their going."

"I'm sorry," said she. "Good typewriting is the main thing in a story.
You've missed me, haven't you?"

"No one," said I, "whom I have ever known knows as well as you do how
to space properly belt buckles, semi-colons, hotel guests, and
hairpins. But you've been away, too. I saw a package of peppermint-
pepsin in your place the other day."

"I was going to tell you all about it," said Miss Bates, "if you
hadn't interrupted me.

"Of course, you know about Maggie Brown, who stops here. Well, she's
worth $40,000,000. She lives in Jersey in a ten-dollar flat. She's
always got more cash on hand than half a dozen business candidates for
vice-president. I don't know whether she carries it in her stocking or
not, but I know she's mighty popular down in the part of town where
they worship the golden calf.

"Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs. Brown stops at the door and rubbers
at me for ten minutes. I'm sitting with my side to her, striking off
some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man
from Tonopah. But I always see everything all around me. When I'm hard
at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave one
button unbuttoned in the back of my shirtwaist and see who's behind
me. I didn't look around, because I make from eighteen to twenty
dollars a week, and I didn't have to.

"That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to her
apartment. I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand words of
notes-of-hand, liens, and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in sight; but
I went. Well, Man, I was certainly surprised. Old Maggie Brown had
turned human.

"'Child,' says she, 'you're the most beautiful creature I ever saw in
my life. I want you to quit your work and come and live with me. I've
no kith or kin,' says she, 'except a husband and a son or two, and I
hold no communication with any of 'em. They're extravagant burdens on
a hard-working woman. I want you to be a daughter to me. They say I'm
stingy and mean, and the papers print lies about my doing my own
cooking and washing. It's a lie,' she goes on. 'I put my washing out,
except the handkerchiefs and stockings and petticoats and collars, and
light stuff like that. I've got forty million dollars in cash and
stocks and bonds that are as negotiable as Standard Oil, preferred, at
a church fair. I'm a lonely old woman and I need companionship. You're
the most beautiful human being I ever saw,' says she. 'Will you come
and live with me? I'll show 'em whether I can spend money or not,' she
says.

"Well, Man, what would you have done? Of course, I fell to it. And, to
tell you the truth, I began to like old Maggie. It wasn't all on
account of the forty millions and what she could do for me. I was kind
of lonesome in the world too. Everybody's got to have somebody they
can explain to about the pain in their left shoulder and how fast
patent-leather shoes wear out when they begin to crack. And you can't
talk about such things to men you meet in hotels--they're looking for
just such openings.

"So I gave up my job in the hotel and went with Mrs. Brown. I
certainly seemed to have a mash on her. She'd look at me for half an
hour at a time when I was sitting, reading, or looking at the
magazines.

"One time I says to her: 'Do I remind you of some deceased relative or
friend of your childhood, Mrs. Brown? I've noticed you give me a
pretty good optical inspection from time to time.'

"'You have a face,' she says, 'exactly like a dear friend of mine--the
best friend I ever had. But I like you for yourself, child, too,' she
says.

"And say, Man, what do you suppose she did? Loosened up like a Marcel
wave in the surf at Coney. She took me to a swell dressmaker and gave
her /a la carte/ to fit me out--money no object. They were rush
orders, and madame locked the front door and put the whole force to
work.

"Then we moved to--where do you think?--no; guess again--that's right
--the Hotel Bonton. We had a six-room apartment; and it cost $100 a
day. I saw the bill. I began to love that old lady.

"And then, Man, when my dresses began to come in--oh, I won't tell you
about 'em! you couldn't understand. And I began to call her Aunt
Maggie. You've read about Cinderella, of course. Well, what Cinderella
said when the prince fitted that 3 1/2 A on her foot was a hard-luck
story compared to the things I told myself.

"Then Aunt Maggie says she is going to give me a coming-out banquet in
the Bonton that'll make moving Vans of all the old Dutch families on
Fifth Avenue.

"'I've been out before, Aunt Maggie,' says I. 'But I'll come out
again. But you know,' says I, 'that this is one of the swellest hotels
in the city. And you know--pardon me--that it's hard to get a bunch of
notables together unless you've trained for it.'

"'Don't fret about that, child,' says Aunt Maggie. 'I don't send out
invitations--I issue orders. I'll have fifty guests here that couldn't
be brought together again at any reception unless it were given by
King Edward or William Travers Jerome. They are men, of course, and
all of 'em either owe me money or intend to. Some of their wives won't
come, but a good many will.'

"Well, I wish you could have been at that banquet. The dinner service
was all gold and cut glass. There were about forty men and eight
ladies present besides Aunt Maggie and I. You'd never have known the
third richest woman in the world. She had on a new black silk dress
with so much passementerie on it that it sounded exactly like a
hailstorm I heard once when I was staying all night with a girl that
lived in a top-floor studio.

"And my dress!--say, Man, I can't waste the words on you. It was all
hand-made lace--where there was any of it at all--and it cost $300. I
saw the bill. The men were all bald-headed or white-whiskered, and
they kept up a running fire of light repartee about 3-per cents. and
Bryan and the cotton crop.

"On the left of me was something that talked like a banker, and on my
right was a young fellow who said he was a newspaper artist. He was
the only--well, I was going to tell you.

"After the dinner was over Mrs. Brown and I went up to the apartment.
We had to squeeze our way through a mob of reporters all the way
through the halls. That's one of the things money does for you. Say,
do you happen to know a newspaper artist named Lathrop--a tall man
with nice eyes and an easy way of talking? No, I don't remember what
paper he works on. Well, all right.

"When we got upstairs Mrs. Brown telephones for the bill right away.
It came, and it was $600. I saw the bill. Aunt Maggie fainted. I got
her on a lounge and opened the bead-work.

"'Child,' says she, when she got back to the world, 'what was it? A
raise of rent or an income-tax?'

"'Just a little dinner,' says I. 'Nothing to worry about--hardly a
drop in the bucket-shop. Sit up and take notice--a dispossess notice,
if there's no other kind.'

"But say, Man, do you know what Aunt Maggie did? She got cold feet!
She hustled me out of that Hotel Bonton at nine the next morning. We
went to a rooming-house on the lower West Side. She rented one room
that had water on the floor below and light on the floor above. After
we got moved all you could see in the room was about $1,500 worth of
new swell dresses and a one-burner gas-stove.

"Aunt Maggie had had a sudden attack of the hedges. I guess everybody
has got to go on a spree once in their life. A man spends his on
highballs, and a woman gets woozy on clothes. But with forty million
dollars--say, I'd like to have a picture of--but, speaking of
pictures, did you ever run across a newspaper artist named Lathrop--a
tall--oh, I asked you that before, didn't I? He was mighty nice to me
at the dinner. His voice just suited me. I guess he must have thought
I was to inherit some of Aunt Maggie's money.

"Well, Mr. Man, three days of that light-housekeeping was plenty for
me. Aunt Maggie was affectionate as ever. She'd hardly let me get out
of her sight. But let me tell you. She was a hedger from Hedgersville,
Hedger County. Seventy-five cents a day was the limit she set. We
cooked our own meals in the room. There I was, with a thousand
dollars' worth of the latest things in clothes, doing stunts over a
one-burner gas-stove.

"As I say, on the third day I flew the coop. I couldn't stand for
throwing together a fifteen-cent kidney stew while wearing at the same
time, a $150 house-dress, with Valenciennes lace insertion. So I goes
into the closet and puts on the cheapest dress Mrs. Brown had bought
for me--it's the one I've got on now--not so bad for $75, is it? I'd
left all my own clothes in my sister's flat in Brooklyn.

"'Mrs. Brown, formerly "Aunt Maggie,"' says I to her, 'I'm going to
extend my feet alternately, one after the other, in such a manner and
direction that this tenement will recede from me in the quickest
possible time. I am no worshipper of money,' says I, 'but there are
some things I can't stand. I can stand the fabulous monster that I've
read about that blows hot birds and cold bottles with the same breath.
But I can't stand a quitter,' says I. 'They say you've got forty
million dollars--well, you'll never have any less. And I was beginning
to like you, too,' says I.

"Well, the late Aunt Maggie kicks till the tears flow. She offers to
move into a swell room with a two-burner stove and running water.

"'I've spent an awful lot of money, child,' says she. 'We'll have to
economize for a while. You're the most beautiful creature I ever laid
eyes on,' she says, 'and I don't want you to leave me.'

"Well, you see me, don't you? I walked straight to the Acropolis and
asked for my job back, and I got it. How did you say your writings
were getting along? I know you've lost out some by not having me to
type 'em. Do you ever have 'em illustrated? And, by the way, did you
ever happen to know a newspaper artist--oh, shut up! I know I asked
you before. I wonder what paper he works on? It's funny, but I
couldn't help thinking that he wasn't thinking about the money he
might have been thinking I was thinking I'd get from old Maggie Brown.
If I only knew some of the newspaper editors I'd--"

The sound of an easy footstep came from the doorway. Ida Bates saw who
it was with her back-hair comb. I saw her turn pink, perfect statue
that she was--a miracle that I share with Pygmalion only.

"Am I excusable?" she said to me--adorable petitioner that she became.
"It's--it's Mr. Lathrop. I wonder if it really wasn't the money--I
wonder, if after all, he--"

Of course, I was invited to the wedding. After the ceremony I dragged
Lathrop aside.

"You are an artist," said I, "and haven't figured out why Maggie Brown
conceived such a strong liking for Miss Bates--that was? Let me show
you."

The bride wore a simple white dress as beautifully draped as the
costumes of the ancient Greeks. I took some leaves from one of the
decorative wreaths in the little parlour, and made a chaplet of them,
and placed them on nee Bates shining chestnut hair, and made her turn
her profile to her husband.

"By jingo!" said he. "Isn't Ida a dead ringer for the lady's head on
the silver dollar?"




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