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New York by Camp Fire Light

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







Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.

We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a
little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it was
from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer folks
that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis, and a week
or two at other times, and he was pleased to discourse to us of what he
had seen.

Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wandering
family of Indians that had come up and settled there for the night. An
old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot hung
upon three sticks.

Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he
came back we complimented him playfully upon his gallantry.

"Oh," said Bud, "don't mention it. It's a way I have. Whenever I see a
lady trying to cook things in a pot and having trouble I always go to the
rescue. I done the same thing once in a high-toned house in. New York
City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady kind of
recalled it to my mind. Yes, I endeavours to be polite and help the
ladies out."

The camp demanded the particulars.

"I was manager of the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle," said Bud. "It
was owned at that time by old man Sterling, of New York. He wanted to
sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and explain the ranch
to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort Worth and has a
forty dollar suit of clothes made, and hits the trail for the big village.

"Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly laid
themselves out to be agreeable. We had business and pleasure so mixed up
that you couldn't tell whether it was a treat or a trade half the time.
We had trolley rides, and cigars, and theatre round-ups, and rubber
parties."

"Rubber parties?" said a listener, inquiringly.

"Sure," said Bud. "Didn't you never attend 'em? You walk around and try
to look at the tops of the skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch, and old
man Sterling asks me 'round to his house to take grub on the night before
I started back. It wasn't any high-collared affair -- just me and the old
man and his wife and daughter. But they was a fine-haired outfit all
right, and the lilies of the field wasn't in it. They made my Fort Worth
clothes carpenter look like a dealer in horse blankets and gee strings.
And then the table was all pompous with flowers, and there was a whole kit
of tools laid out beside everybody's plate. You'd have thought you was
fixed out to burglarize a restaurant before you could get your grub. But
I'd been in New York over a week then, and I was getting on to stylish
ways. I kind of trailed behind and watched the others use the hardware
supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't
much trouble to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait.
I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I
was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West,
and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you
never saw people so interested.

"But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little
trick she was, not bigger than two bits worth of chewing plug; but she had
a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you believed
it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me the same as
if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek dog feast and
listened like it was news from home.

"By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck that
never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind of camp
stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under it.

"Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the supper
table. I wondered why old man Sterling didn't hire a cook, with all the
money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting truck that
she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a Molly cotton tail
in a mile of it.

"The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around in
little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty thirsty, and
I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there was where the
little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon all right, but
she'd forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up sometimes. I
thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep house and cook --
that rabbit would surely make you think so -- and I says to myself,
'Little lady, sugar or no sugar I'll stand by you,' and I raises up my
bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And then all the
balance of 'em picks up their bowls and does the same. And then I gives
Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off like a joke, so she
wouldn't feel bad about the mistake.

"After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me
quite awhile.

"'It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, to bring my blunder off
so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar.'

"'Never you mind,' says I, 'some lucky man will throw his rope over a
mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.'

"'If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, laughing out loud, 'I hope he
will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.'

"'Don't mention it,' says I. 'Anything to oblige the ladies.'"

Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he
considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.

"The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks, answered Bud, "is
New York. Most of 'em has New York on the brain. They have heard of
other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and London; but
they don't believe in 'em. They think that town is all Merino. Now to
show you how much they care for their village I'll tell you about one of
'em that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was working there.

"This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He said
he was a good horseback rider, and there was pieces of tanbark hanging on
his clothes yet from his riding school.

"Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store, for
he was a devil at figures. But he got tired of that, and asked for
something more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch liked him
all right, but he made us tired shouting New York all the time. Every
night he'd tell us about East River and J. P. Morgan and the Eden Musee
and Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin plates and
branding irons at him.

"One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of sidled up
his back and went to eating grass while the New Yorker was coming down.

"He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquit wood, and he didn't show
any designs toward getting up again. We laid him out in a tent, and he
begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and burns the wind
for old Doc Sleeper's residence in Dogtown, thirty miles away.

"The doctor comes over and he investigates the patient.

"'Boys,' says he, 'you might as well go to playing seven-up for his saddle
and clothes, for his head's fractured and if he lives ten minutes it will
be a remarkable case of longevity.'

"Of course we didn't gamble for the poor rooster's saddle -- that was one
of Doc's jokes. But we stood around feeling solemn, and all of us forgive
him for having talked us to death about New York.

"I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful than
this fellow. His eyes were fixed 'way up in the air, and he was using
rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful streets and
white-robed forms, and he was smiling like dying was a pleasure.

"'He's about gone now,' said Doc. 'Whenever they begin to think they see
heaven it's all off. '

"Blamed if that New York man didn't sit right up when he heard the Doc say
that.

"'Say,' says he, kind of disappointed, 'was that heaven? Confound it all,
I thought it was Broadway. Some of you fellows get my clothes. I'm going
to get up.'

"And I'll be blamed," concluded Bud, "if he wasn't on the train with a
ticket for New York in his pocket four days afterward!"




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