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Thimble, Thimble

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







These are the directions for finding the I office of Carteret &
Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:
You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line,
the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Canons of the
Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a
push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton, four-horse dray and hop, skip,
and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story
synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the
office of Carteret & Carteret. The factory where they make the mill
supplies and leather belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities--to
say nothing of Brooklyn--not being of interest to you, let us hold the
incidents within the confines of a one-act, one-scene play, thereby
lessening the toil of the reader and the expenditure of the publisher.
So, if you have the courage to face four pages of type and Carteret &
Carteret's office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair in
the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the Old Nigger Man,
the Hunting-Case Watch, and the Open-Faced Question--mostly borrowed
from the late Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude.

First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for
the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill--the bitter on the outside.

The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule),
an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had
worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and
had slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings.
(Of course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been
shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the "et" after
"Carter.") Well, anyhow:

In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back
than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in
that year, but by different means of transportation. One brother,
named John, came in the Mayflower and became a Pilgrim Father. You've
seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting
turkeys in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the
other brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the
Virginia coast, and became an F.F.V. John became distinguished for
piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps;
marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.

Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this historical
interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; Lee surrendered; Grant

toured the world; cotton went to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim
Crow cars were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers
returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves the battle flag of
Lundy's Lane which they bought at a second-hand store in Chelsea kept
by a man named Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound
watermelon--and that brings us up to the time when the story begins.
My! but that was sparring for an opening! I really must brush op on
my Aristotle.

The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York long before the
war. Their house, as far as Leather Belting and Mill Supplies was
concerned, was as musty and arrogant and solid as one of those old
East India tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens.
There were some rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to
affect the business.

During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.V., lost his
plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little
more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that
Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the
leather-and-millsupplies branch of that name to come North and learn
business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his
fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy
jumped at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the
office of the firm equal partner with John, the Fifth, of the
blunderbuss-and-turkey branch. Here the story begins again.

The young men were about the same age, smooth of face, alert, easy of
manner, and with an air that promised mental and physical quickness.
They were razored, blue-serged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned
like other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires or bill clerks.

One afternoon at four o'clock, in the private office of the firm,
Blandford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk had just brought to
his desk. After reading it, he chuckled audibly for nearly a minute.
John looked around from his desk inquiringly.

"It's from mother," said Blandford. "I'll read you the funny part of
it. She tells me all the neighborhood news first, of course, and then
cautions me against getting my feet wet and musical comedies. After
that come some vital statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate
of the wheat crop. And now I'll quote some:

"'And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was seventy-six last
Wednesday, must go travelling. Nothing would do but he must go to New
York and see his "young Marster Blandford." Old as he is, he has a
deal of common sense, so I've let him go. I couldn't refuse him--he
seemed to have concentrated all his hopes and desires into this one
adventure into the wide world. You know he was born on the
plantation, and has never been ten miles away from it in his life.
And he was your father's body servant during the war, and has been
always a faithful vassal and servant of the family. He has often seen
the gold watch--the watch that was your father's and your father's
father's. I told him it was to be yours, And he begged me to allow
him to take it to you and to put it into your hands himself.

"'So he has it, carefully inclosed in a buck-skin case, and is
bringing it to you with all the pride and importance of a king's
messenger. I gave him money for the round trip and for a two weeks'
stay in the city. I wish you would see to it that he gets comfortable
quarters--Jake won't need much looking after--he's able to take care
of himself. But I have read in the papers that African bishops and
colored potentates generally have much trouble in obtaining food and
lodging in the Yankee metropolis. That may be all right; but I don't
see why the best hotel there shouldn't take Jake in. Still, I suppose
it's a rule.

"'I gave him full directions about finding you, and packed his valise
myself. You won't have to bother with him; but I do hope you'll see
that he is made comfortable. Take the watch that he brings you--it's
almost a decoration. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there
isn't a stain upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. Bringing it
to you is the crowning joy of old Jake's life. I wanted him to have
that little outing and that happiness before it is too late. You have
often heard us talk about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself,
crawled through the reddened grass at Chancellorsville to where your
father lay with the bullet in his dear heart, and took the watch from
his pocket to keep it from the "Yanks."

"'So, my son, when the old man comes consider him as a frail but
worthy messenger from the old-time life and home.

"'You have been so long away from home and so long among the people
that we have always regarded as aliens that I'm not sure that Jake
will know you when he sees you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I
rather believe that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I
can't conceive that even ten years in Yankee-land could change a boy
of mine. Anyhow, I'm sure you will know Jake. I put eighteen collars
in his valise. If he should have to buy others, he wears a number 15
1/2. Please see that he gets the right ones. He will be no trouble
to you at all.

"'If you are not too busy, I'd like for you to find him a place to
board where they have white-meal corn-bread, and try to keep him from
taking his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot
swells a little, and he likes to be comfortable.

"'If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come
back from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left. He
should be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to
go straight to your office when he arrives.'"

As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something
happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the
stage).

Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world's output
of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a
colored gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret.

"Bring him in," said Blandford, rising.

John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: "Ask
him to wait a few minutes outside. We'll let you know when to bring
him in."

Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that
was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:

"Bland, I've always had a consuming curiosity to understand the
differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you
all ' and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you
consider yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only
a collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never
could understand the differences between us."

"Well, John," said Blandford, laughing, "what you don't understand
about it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the
feudal way in which we lived that gave us our lordly baronial airs and
feeling of superiority."

"But you are not feudal, now," went on John. "Since we licked you and
stole your cotton and mules you've had to go to work just as we
'damyankees,' as you call us, have always been doing. And you're just
as proud and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war.
So it wasn't your money that caused it."

"Maybe it was the climate," said Blandford, lightly, "or maybe our
negroes spoiled us. I'll call old Jake in, now. I'll be glad to see
the old villain again."

"Wait just a moment," said John. "I've got a little theory I want to
test. You and I are pretty much alike in our general appearance. Old
Jake hasn't seen you since you were fifteen. Let's have him in and
play fair and see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surrey
ought to be able to pick out his 'young marster' without any trouble.
The alleged aristocratic superiority of a 'reb' ought to be visible to
him at once. He couldn't make the mistake of handing over the
timepiece to a Yankee, of course. The loser buys the dinner this
evening and two dozen 15 1/2 collars for Jake. Is it a go?"

Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, and told to usher
the "colored gentleman" in.

Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a
little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a
fringe of white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and
around his head. There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him:
his black suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat
was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he carried
something carefully concealed by his closed fingers.

Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two young men sat in
their revolving desk-chairs ten feet apart and looked at him in
friendly silence. His gaze slowly shifted many times from one to the
other. He felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of
the revered family among whose fortunes his life had begun and was to
end.

One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the other had the
unmistakable straight, long family nose. Both had the keen black
eyes, horizontal brows, and thin, smiling lips that had distinguished
both the Carteret of the Mayflower and him of the brigantine. Old
Jake had thought that he could have picked out his young master
instantly from a thousand Northerners; but he found himself in
difficulties. The best he could do was to use strategy.

"Howdy, Marse Blandford--howdy, suh ?" he said, looking midway between
the two young men.

"Howdy, Uncle Jake?" they both answered pleasantly and in unison.
"Sit down. Have you brought the watch ?"

Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on
the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in
its buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on
the battle-field to rescue that watch from his "old marster's" foes to
hand it over again to the enemy without a struggle.

"Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I'm gwine give it to you right
away in jus' a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse
Blandford's hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and
honor. It was a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make--
ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi'ginia, suh. You've
growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn't have reconnized you but
for yo' powerful resemblance to old marster."

With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the
space between the two men. His words might have been addressed to
either. Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a
sign.

Blandford and John exchanged winks.

"I reckon you done got you ma's letter," went on Uncle Jake. "She
said she was gwine to write to you 'bout my comin' along up this er-
way.

"Yes, yes, Uncle Jake," said John briskly. "My cousin and I have just
been notified to expect you. We are both Carterets, you know."

"Although one of us," said Blandford, "was born and raised in the
North."

"So if you will hand over the watch--" said John.

"My cousin and I-" said Blandford.

'Will then see to it--" said John.

"That comfortable quarters are found for you," said Blandford.

With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched,
protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the
brim in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure
afforded him a mask behind which he could roll his eyes impartially
between, above, and beyond his two tormentors.

"I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You gen'lemen is tryin'
to have fun with the po' old nigger. But you can't fool old Jake. I
knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a
po' skimpy little boy no mo' than about fo'teen when you lef' home to
come No'th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the
mawtal image of old marster. The other gen'leman resembles you
mightily, suh; but you can't fool old Jake on a member of the old
Vi'ginia family. No suh."

At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for
the watch.

Uncle Jake's wrinkled, black face lost the expression of amusement to
which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and
that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into
which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But
it seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of
the Virginia Carterets' was at stake. He had heard down South during
the war about that other branch of the family that lived in the North
and fought on "the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. He
had followed his "old marster's" fortunes from stately luxury through
war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of
him, blessed by "old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he
had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the
hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and
listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the
Carterets--of Virginia.

His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of
tyrants--"low-down, common trash"--in blue, laying waste with fire and
sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as
grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And
now he was face to face with one of them--and he could not distinguish
him from his "young marster" whom he had come to find and bestow upon
him the emblem of his kingship--even as the arm "clothed in white
samite, mystic, wonderful" laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur.
He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming,
either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled,
bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake
abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the
buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened.
Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the
two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one
difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white
pearl stickpin. The other's "four-in-hand " was a narrow blue one
pinned with a black pearl.

And then, to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction.
Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy
to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the
footlights.

Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he
handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie.

"'Olivia De Ormond,'" read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked
inquiringly at his cousin.

"Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring matters to a
conclusion?"

"Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you mind taking that
chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in--on
some business. We'll take up your case afterward."

The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly,
freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with
such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles
as mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore
would have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of
the merry helmet of Navarre.

Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue-Tie's desk. Then the
gentlemen drew leather-upholstered seats conveniently near, and spoke
of the weather.

"Yes," said she, "I noticed it was warmer. But I mustn't take up too
much of your time during business hours. That is," she continued,
"unless we talk business."

She addressed her words to Blue-Tie, with a charming smile.

"Very well," said he. "You don't mind my cousin being present, do
you? We are generally rather confidential with each other-especially
in business matters."

"Oh no," caroled Miss De Ormond. "I'd rather he did hear. He knows
all about it, anyhow. In fact, he's quite a material witness because
he was present when you--when it happened. I thought you might want
to talk things over before--well, before any action is taken, as I
believe the lawyers say."

"Have you anything in the way of a proposition to make?" asked Black-
Tie.

Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of one of her dull
kid-pumps.

"I had a proposal made to me," she said. "If the proposal sticks it
cuts out the proposition. Let's have that settled first."

"Well, as far as--" began Blue-Tie.

"Excuse me, cousin," interrupted Black-Tie, "if you don't mind my
cutting in." And then he turned, with a good-natured air, toward the
lady.

"Now, let's recapitulate a bit," he said cheerfully. "All three of
us, besides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many
larks together."

"I'm afraid I'll have to call the birds by another name," said Miss De
Ormond.

"All right," responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness;
"suppose we say 'squabs' when we talk about the 'proposal' and 'larks'
when we discuss the 'proposition.' You have a quick mind, Miss De
Ormond. Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for
day's run into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner.
My cousin proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced
to do so, of course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny
that you possess."

"I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," said the beauty,
with a dazzling smile.

"You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond," went on Black-Tie. "You have
had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must
remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion.
There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage
was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn't it been your
experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness
when viewed in the next day's sunlight? Isn't there something of a
'code' among good 'sports'--I use the word in its best sense--that
wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?"

"Oh yes," said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very well. And I've
always played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case--
with the silent consent of the defendant--I'll tell you something
more. I've got letters from him repeating the proposal. And they're
signed, too."

"I understand," said Black-Tie gravely. "What's your price for the
letters?"

"I'm not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But I had decided to
make you a rate. You both belong to a swell family. Well, if I am on
the stage nobody can say a word against me truthfully. And the money
is only a secondary consideration. It isn't the money I was after.
I--I believed him--and--and I liked him."

She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from under her long
eyelashes.

"And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably.

"Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly.

"Or--"

"Or the fulfillment of the engagement to marry."

"I think it is time," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to be allowed to
say a word or two. You and I, cousin, belong to a family that has
held its head pretty high. You have been brought up in a section of
the country very different from the one where our branch of the family
lived. Yet both of us are Carterets, even if some of our ways and
theories differ. You remember, it is a tradition of the family, that
no Carteret ever failed in chivalry to a lady or failed to keep his
word when it was given."

Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his countenance, turned
to Miss De Ormond.

"Olivia," said he, "on what date will you marry me?"

Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed.

"It is a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth rock to Norfolk Bay.
Between the two points we find the changes that nearly three centuries
have brought. In that time the old order has changed. We no longer
burn witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread our
cloaks on the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat them to the
ducking-stool. It is the age of common sense, adjustment, and
proportion. All of us--ladies, gentlemen, women, men, Northerners,
Southerners, lords, caitiffs, actors, hardware-drummers, senators,
hodcarriers, and politicians--are coming to a better understanding.
Chivalry is one of our words that changes its meaning every day.
Family pride is a thing of many constructions--it may show itself by
maintaining a moth-eaten arrogance in cobwebbed Colonial mansion or by
the prompt paying of one's debts.

"Now, I suppose you've had enough of my monologue. I've learned
something of business and a little of life; and I somehow believe,
cousin, that our great-great-grandfathers, the original Carterets,
would indorse my view of this matter."

Black-Tie wheeled around to his desk, wrote in a check-book and tore
out the check, the sharp rasp of the perforated leaf making the only
sound in the room. He laid the check within easy reach of Miss De
Ormond's hand.

"Business is business," said he. "We live in a business age. There
is my personal check for $10,000. What do you say, Miss De Ormond--
will it he orange blossoms or cash ?"

Miss De Ormond picked up the cheek carelessly, folded it
indifferently, and stuffed it into her glove.

"Oh, this '11 do," she said, calmly. "I just thought I'd call and put
it up to you. I guess you people are all right. But a girl has
feelings, you know. I've heard one of you was a Southerner--I wonder
which one of you it is?"

She arose, smiled sweetly, and walked to the door. There, with a
flash of white teeth and a dip of the heavy plume, she disappeared.

Both of the cousins had forgotten Uncle Jake for the time. But now
they heard the shuffling of his shoes as he came across the rug toward
them from his seat in the corner.

"Young marster," he said, "take yo' watch." And without hesitation he
laid the ancient timepiece in the hand of its rightful owner.

Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait
establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer,
you are always his. I do not know his secret process, but every four
days your hat needs to be cleaned again.

Finch is a leathern, sallow, slowfooted man, between twenty and forty.
You would say he had been brought up a bushelman in Essex Street.
When business is slack he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned even
oftener than it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some of the
secrets of the sweatshops.

One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He began to anoint
my headpiece de Panama with his mysterious fluid that attracted dust
and dirt like a magnet.

"They say the Indians weave 'em under water," said I, for a leader.

"Don't you believe it," said Finch. "No Indian or white man could
stay under water that long. Say, do you pay much attention to
politics? I see in the paper something about a law they've passed
called 'the law of supply and demand.'"

I explained to him as well as I could that the reference was to a
politico-economical law, and not to a legal statute.

"I didn't know," said Finch. "I heard a good deal about it a year or
so ago, but in a one-sided way."

"Yes," said I, "political orators use it a great deal. In fact, they
never give it a rest. I suppose you heard some of those cart-tail
fellows spouting on the subject over here on the east side."

"I heard it from a king," said Finch--"the white king of a tribe of
Indians in South America."

I was interested but not surprised. The big city is like a mother's
knee to many who have strayed far and found the roads rough beneath
their uncertain feet. At dusk they come home and sit upon the door-
step. I know a piano player in a cheap cafe who has shot lions in
Africa, a bell-boy who fought in the British army against the Zulus,
an express-driver whose left arm had been cracked like a lobster's
claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian cannibals when the boat of his
rescuers hove in sight. So a hat-cleaner who had been a friend of a
king did not oppress me.

"A new band ?" asked Finch, with his dry, barren smile.

"Yes," said I, "and half an inch wider." I had had a new band five
days before.

"I meets a man one night," said Finch, beginning his story--"a man
brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in
Schlagel's. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for
No. 98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that
certain mountains in a country down South that he calls Gaudymala is
full of it. He says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural
quantities.

"'Oh, Geronimo!' says I. 'Indians! There's no Indians in the South,'
I tell him, 'except Elks, Maccabees, and the buyers for the fall dry-
goods trade. The Indians are all on the reservations,' says I.

"'I'm telling you this with reservations,' says he. 'They ain't
Buffalo Bill Indians; they're squattier and more pedigreed. They call
'em Inkers and Aspics, and they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was
King of Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain streams,' says
the brown man, 'and fill quills with it; and then they empty 'em into
red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks
of one arroba each--an arroba is twenty-five pounds--and store it in a
stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing
a flute, over the door.'

"'how do they work off this unearth increment?' I asks.

"'They don't,' says the man. 'It's a case of "Ill fares the land with
the great deal of velocity where wealth accumulates and there ain't
any reciprocity."'

"After this man and me got through our conversation, which left him
dry of information, I shook hands with him and told him I was sorry I
couldn't believe him. And a month afterward I landed on the coast of
this Gaudymala with $1,300 that I had been saving up for five years.
I thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself accordingly.
I loaded down four pack-mules with red woollen blankets, wrought-iron
pails, jewelled side-combs for the ladies, glass necklaces, and
safety-razors. I hired a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule-
driver and an interpreter too. It turned out that he could interpret
mules all right, but he drove the English language much too hard. His
name sounded like a Yale key when you push it in wrong side up, but I
called him McClintock, which was close to the noise.

"Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the mountains, and it
took us nine days to find it. But one afternoon McClintock led the
other mules and myself over a rawhide bridge stretched across a
precipice five thousand feet deep, it seemed to me. The hoofs of the
beasts drummed on it just like before George M. Cohan makes his first
entrance on the stage.

"This village was built of mud and stone, and had no streets. Some
few yellow-and-brown persons popped their heads out-of-doors, looking
about like Welsh rabbits with Worcester sauce on em. Out of the
biggest house, that had a kind of a porch around it, steps a big white
man, red as a beet in color, dressed in fine tanned deerskin clothes,
with a gold chain around his neck, smoking a cigar. I've seen United
States Senators of his style of features and build, also head-waiters
and cops.

"He walks up and takes a look at us, while McClintock disembarks and
begins to interpret to the lead mule while he smokes a cigarette.

"'Hello, Buttinsky,' says the fine man to me. 'How did you get in the
game? I didn't see you buy any chips. Who gave you the keys of the
city?'

"'I'm a poor traveller,' says I. 'Especially mule-back. You'll
excuse me. Do you run a hack line or only a bluff?'

"'Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine quadruped,' says he, 'and
come inside.'

"He raises a finger, and a villager runs up.

"'This man will take care of your outfit,' says he, 'and I'll take
care of you.'

"He leads me into the biggest house, and sets out the chairs and a
kind of a drink the color of milk. It was the finest room I ever saw.
The stone walls was hung all over with silk shawls, and there was red
and yellow rugs on the floor, and jars of red pottery and Angora goat
skins, and enough bamboo furniture to misfurnish half a dozen seaside
cottages.

"'In the first place,' says the man, 'you want to know who I am. I'm
sole lessee and proprietor of this tribe of Indians. They call me the
Grand Yacuma, which is to say King or Main Finger of the bunch. I've
got more power here than a charge d'affaires, a charge of dynamite,
and a charge account at Tiffany's combined. In fact, I'm the Big
Stick, with as many extra knots on it as there is on the record run of
the Lusitania. Oh, I read the papers now and then,' says he. 'Now,
let's hear your entitlements,' he goes on, 'and the meeting will be
open.'

"'Well,' says I, 'I am known as one W. D. Finch. Occupation,
capitalist. Address, 54' East Thirty-second--'

"'New York,' chips in the Noble Grand. 'I know,' says he, grinning.
'It ain't the first time you've seen it go down on the blotter. I can
tell by the way you hand it out. Well, explain "capitalist."'

"I tells this boss plain what I come for and how I come to came.

"'Gold-dust ?' says he, looking as puzzled as a baby that's got a
feather stuck on its molasses finger. 'That's funny. This ain't a
gold-mining country. And you invested all your capital on a
stranger's story? Well, well! These Indians of mine--they are the
last of the tribe of Peehes--are simple as children. They know
nothing of the purchasing power of gold. I'm afraid you've been
imposed on,' says he.

"'Maybe so,' says I, 'but it sounded pretty straight to me.'

"'W. D.,' says the King, all of a sudden, 'I'll give you a square
deal. It ain't often I get to talk to a white man, and I'll give you
a show for your money. It may be these constituents of mine have a
few grains of gold-dust hid away in their clothes. To-morrow you may
get out these goods you've brought up and see if you can make any
sales. Now, I'm going to introduce myself unofficially. My name is
Shane--Patrick Shane. I own this tribe of Peche Indians by right of
conquest--single handed and unafraid. I drifted up here four years
ago, and won 'em by my size and complexion and nerve. I learned their
language in six weeks-it's easy: you simply emit a string of
consonants as long as your breath holds out and then point at what
you're asking for.

"'I conquered 'em, spectacularly,' goes on King Shane, 'and then I
went at 'em with economical politics, law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind
of New England ethics and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I
can guess at it, I preach to 'em in the council-house (I'm the
council) on the law of supply and demand. I praise supply and knock
demand. I use the same text every time. You wouldn't think, W. D.,'
says Shane, 'that I had poetry in me, would you?'

"'Well,' says I, 'I wouldn't know whether to call it poetry or not.'

"'Tennyson,' says Shane, 'furnishes the poetic gospel I preach. I
always considered him the boss poet. Here's the way the text goes:


"For, not to admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like a Sultan of old in a garden of spice."


"'You see, I teach 'em to cut out demand--that supply is the main
thing. I teach 'em not to desire anything beyond their simplest
needs. A little mutton, a little cocoa, and a little fruit brought up
from the coast--that's all they want to make 'cm happy. I've got 'em
well trained. They make their own clothes and hats out of a vegetable
fibre and straw, and they're a contented lot. It's a great thing,'
winds up Shane, 'to have made a people happy by the incultivation of
such simple institutions.'

"Well, the next day, with the King's permission, I has the McClintock
open up a couple of sacks of my goods in the little plaza of the
village. The Indians swarmed around by the hundred and looked the
bargain-counter over. I shook red blankets at 'em, flashed finger-
rings and ear-bobs, tried pearl necklaces and sidecombs on the women,
and a line of red hosiery on the men. 'Twas no use. They looked on
like hungry graven images, but I never made a sale. I asked
McClintock what was the trouble. Mac yawned three or four times,
rolled a cigarette, made one or two confidential side remarks to a
mule, and then condescended to inform me that the people had no money.

"Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red 'and royal as usual,
with the gold chain over his chest and his cigar in front of him.

"'How's business, W. D.?' he asks.

"'Fine,' says I. 'It's a bargain-day rush. I've got one more line of
goods to offer before I shut up shop. I'll try 'em with safety-
razors. I've' got two gross that I bought at 'a fire sale.'

"Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private secretary he
carries with him has to hold him up.

"'0 my sainted Aunt Jerusha!' says he, 'ain't you one of the Babes in
the Goods, W. D.? Don't you know that no Indians ever shave? They
pull out their whiskers instead.'

"'Well,' says I, 'that's just what these razors would do for 'em--they
wouldn't have any kick coming if they used 'em once.'

"Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a block, if there had
been any block.

"'Tell 'em,' says I to McClintock, 'it ain't money I want--tell 'em
I'll take gold-dust. Tell 'em I'll allow 'em sixteen dollars an ounce
for it in trade. That's what I'm out for--the dust.'

"Mac interprets, and you'd have thought a squadron of cops had charged
the crowd to disperse it. Every uncle's nephew and aunt's niece of
'em faded away inside of two minutes.

"At the royal palace that night me and the King talked it over.

"'They've got the dust hid out somewhere,' says I, 'or they wouldn't
have been so sensitive about it.'

"'They haven't,' says Shane. 'What's this gag you've got about gold?
You been reading Edward Allen Poe? They ain't got any gold.'

"'They put it in quills,' says I, 'and then they empty it in jars, and
then into sacks of twenty-five pounds each. I got it straight.'

"'W. D.,' says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, 'I don't often
see a white man, and I feel like putting you on. I don't think you'll
get away from here alive, anyhow, so I'm going to tell you. Come over
here.'

''He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the room and
shows me a pile of buckskin sacks.

"'Forty of 'em,' says Shane. 'One arroba in each one. In round
numbers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It's all mine.
It belongs to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred
and twenty thousand dollars--think of that, you glass-bead peddler,'
says Shane--' and all mine.'

"'Little good it does you,' says I, contemptuously and hatefully.
'And so you are the government depository of this gang of money-less
money-makers? Don't you pay enough interest on it to enable one of
your depositors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond worth
$200 for $4.85 ?'

"'Listen,' says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow.
' I'm confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards.
Did you ever,' he says, 'feel the avoirdupois power of gold--not the
troy weight of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?'

"'Never,' says I. 'I never take in any bad money.'

"Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of
gold-dust.

"'I love it,, says he. 'I want to feel the touch of it day and night.
It's my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I'm a king and a
rich man. I'll be a millionaire in another year. The pile's getting
bigger every month. I've got the whole tribe washing out the sands in
the creeks. I'm the happiest man in the world, W. D. I just want to
be near this gold, and know it's mine and it's increasing every day.
Now, you know,' says he, 'why my Indians wouldn't buy your goods.
They can't. They bring all the dust to me. I'm their king. I've
taught 'em not to desire or admire. You might as well shut up shop.'

"'I'll tell you what you are,' says I. 'You're a plain, contemptible
miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,' I goes
on, 'is never anything but supply. On the contrary,' says I, 'demand
is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights
of our women and children, and charity and friendship, and even a
little begging on the street corners. They've both got to harmonize
equally. And I've got a few things up my commercial sleeve yet,' says
I, 'that may jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and economy.

"The next morning I had McClintock bring tip another mule-load of
goods to the plaza and open it up. The people gathered around the
same as before.

"I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and
earrings that I carried, and had the women put 'em on. And then I
played trumps.

"Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand-mirrors, with
solid tinfoil backs, and passed 'em around among the ladies. That was
the first introduction of looking-glasses among the Peche Indians.

"Shane walks by with his big laugh.

"'Business looking up any?' he asks.

"'It's looking at itself right now,' says I.

"By-and-by a kind of a murmur goes through the crowd. The women had
looked into the magic crystal and seen that they were beautiful, and
was confiding the secret to the men. The men seemed to be urging the
lack of money and the hard times just before the election, but their
excuses didn't go.

"Then was my time.

"I called McClintock away from an animated conversation with his mules
and told him to do some interpreting.

"'Tell 'em,' says I, 'that gold-dust will buy for them these befitting
ornaments for kings and queens of the earth. Tell 'em the yellow sand
they wash out of the waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop
Suey of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that will
make them beautiful and preserve and pickle them from evil spirits.
Tell 'em the Pittsburg banks are paying four per cent. interest on
deposits by mail, while this get-rich-frequently custodian of the
public funds ain't even paying attention. Keep telling 'em, Mac,'
says I, 'to let the gold-dust family do their work. Talk to 'em like
a born anti-Bryanite,' says I. 'Remind 'em that Tom Watson's gone
back to Georgia,' says I.

"McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of his mules, and
then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type at the mob of shoppers.

"A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on his arm, with three
strings of my fish-scale jewelry and imitation marble beads around her
neck, stands up on a block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like
a man shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes.

"'He says,' says McClintock, 'that the people not know that gold-dust
will buy their things. The women very mad. The Grand Yacuma tell
them it no good but for keep to make bad spirits keep away.'

"'You can't keep bad spirits away from money,' says I.

"'They say,' goes on McClintock, 'the Yacuma fool them. They raise
plenty row.'

"'Going! Going!' says I. 'Gold-dust or cash takes the entire stock.
The dust weighed before you, and taken at sixteen dollars the ounce--
the highest price on the Gaudymala coast.'

"Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don't know what's up.
Mac and me packs away the hand-mirrors and jewelry they had handed
back to us, and we had the mules back to the corral they had set apart
for our garage.

"While we was there we hear great noises of shouting, and down across
the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, with his clothes ripped half
off, and scratches on his face like a cat had fought him hard for
every one of its lives.

"'They're looting the treasury, W. D.,' he sings out. 'They're going
to kill me and you, too. Unlimber a couple of mules at once. We'll
have to make a get-away in a couple of minutes.'

"'They've found out,' says I,' the truth about the law of supply and
demand.'

"'It's the women, mostly,' says the King. 'And they used to admire me
so!'

"'They hadn't seen looking-glasses then,' says I.

"'They've got knives and hatchets,' says Shane; 'hurry !'

"'Take that roan mule,' says I. 'You and your law of supply! I'll
ride the dun, for he's two knots per hour the faster. The roan has a
stiff knee, but he may make it,' says I. 'If you'd included
reciprocity in your political platform I might have given you the
dun,' says I.

"Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across the
rawhide bridge just as the Peches reached the other side and began
firing stones and long knives at us. We cut the thongs that held up
our end of the bridge and headed for the coast."

A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch's
shop at that moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded
at him friendly.

"I heard down at Casey's," said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones,
"that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners' Union over
at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?"

"Sure," said Finch. "There'll be a dandy time."

"Gimme five tickets," said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the
showcase.

"Why,'' said Finch, "ain't you going it a little too--"

"Go to h--!" said the cop. "You got 'em to sell, ain't you?
Somebody's got to buy 'em. Wish I could go along."

I was glad to See Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood.

And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue
eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

"Mamma says," she recited shrilly, "that you must give me eighty cents
for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to
buy hokey-pokey with--but she didn't say that," the elf concluded,
with a hopeful but honest grin.

Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the
total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.

"That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch, as he carefully
broke some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly
come off within a few days--"the law of supply and demand. But
they've both got to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his
dry smile, "she'll get jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em.
What's supply if there's no demand for it?"

"What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously.
''Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in and
bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now."




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