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The Assessor of Success

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







Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a
pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They
were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven
faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining
their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks.

Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions
in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park
Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange
for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women
to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I
might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build
sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I
wanted to.

Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after
equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they
must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their
highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom,
ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of
mental equality.

Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That
was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It
is denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on
his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and
conversation.

Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a
hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have
no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter
building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have
enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but
sunrise had always seen them lined.

First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and
presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to
issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed
up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance.

On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a
pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist
and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.

"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just
on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my
aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come
up to the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a
walk."

Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about
Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed
off a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was
pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the
difference in the notes.

"You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley," said
Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen
you in dree mont'. Pros't!"

Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face.
The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to
avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that
Bergman ever went home by that route.

At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley
knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the
length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of
an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was
admitted.

In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung
for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept,
and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the
40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital.
At the corner he lingered, undecided.

Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth
gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and
glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary,
stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to
which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he
clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.

Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.

"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma.
She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin."

"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing
errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that
the cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some
chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?"

Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He
presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.

On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound.

"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride,
ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know
all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and
I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes."

"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink after he had
compounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is
the regular price."

"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly.

He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and
escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85
cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.

"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small
victim.

Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the
youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile
messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner
of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky
with vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand.

Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of
inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so
genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had
come his way.

"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one.
"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know
what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in
transactions of all kinds?"

"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by
the careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry
goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from
Staten Island, and"--

"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just--men,
women and children. The world--well, say New York and as far
as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island--is full of
greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this
steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois."

"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll"--

Morley lifted his hand in protest--slightly martyred protest.

"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse,
frappe and a demi-tasse."

Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful
arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he
stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the
tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast
his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good
Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.

A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with
cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for
a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded
and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest.

One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his
sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See
what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the
invitations.

"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it
desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of
the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at
8."

The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an
arc light down the frolicsome way.

Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and
laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his
breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it
in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how
they all take it in!"

An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a
corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street
cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side.

"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and
I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know
what I done with his street and number."

"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy
in them. "You had better apply to the police."

"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the
police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story
house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"--

"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the
name of Smithers, and I advise you to"--

"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A
heavy-sot man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth
out, about five foot"--

"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in
the next house to me. I thought you said 'Smithers.'"

Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do
it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the
ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads--according to these
watchmakers--are run by.

"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here
at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave
the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St.
Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no
name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have
a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me.
You must let me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But, before
we take the car I hope you will join me in"--

An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench
in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips
and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content,
light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon
drifting in and out amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged
man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench.

Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In
Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the
usual nightly occupants of the benches.

"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few
pennies to one who"--

Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar.

"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work
for"--

"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my
friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an
Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will
gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to
me whatever I want from it."

"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I
have known. And now I can get no more."

"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I
stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work."

"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man.

"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I
think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel
across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting
up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such
little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you."

Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He
blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman
passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was.

The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on
the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if
homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she
was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and
neither to the right nor the left.

Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with
her at school. There had been no sentiment between them--nothing but
the friendship of innocent days.

But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his
suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said
dully:

"God! I wish I could die."




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