The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 27, 1904, Page 9

Capyright, 1904, by Charles Dryden. OCIAL diversions other than be- ing & boarder in the home of my boss were open to me at Omaha during the merry winter season. I was & popular young fel- low in my set; so one Baturday night 1 out out the keg and shop stories to be among those present at a Polish wedding. Up to that time I never had withessed & merriage ceremony, but was more or less familiar with some of the dire results. Murder, failure to provide, suicide end alimony, I knew, often followed the golden chime of the wedding bell, but that was the fault of the newspa- pers. They had no advice to lovers, no department of health stunts for girls and how to manage husbands in those uncouth days. The high con- tending parties knew little of each other’s moods and temperaments and so rushed blindly into compacts pro- dugtive of much woe. Thanks to the benign ideas of modern journals and the industry of their matrimonial dope compllers we seldom hear of troubles in that line. All hands now live happily ever after. The gentleman who took the count in this instance was an honored mem- ber of our staff in the foundry and the only Pole in the bunch. With keen insight into the soclal requirements of his set Mr. _levitsky pulled off his nuptials on Saturday night. This }s an open date in the workaday world, leaving guests the whole of next day to sleep off the effects of weddings and other functions. Mr. Blevitsky was a nice but some- what unhealth looking young man. “SHE HAD GONB OUT AT 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING TO PICK COAL’™ THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. He had an abundant crop of pimples, a nose like & window awning and no chin to speak of. I often thought if Mr. Blevitsky would mobilige his pim- ples in the right place he could bufld himself a pretty respectable site for the knockout blow. ¥For days prior to the ceremony and while tolling in the shop he 4! nothing but laugh. What it was ahout I never did learn. No doubt Mr. Blevitsky knew his part. It behooved any man in his position to lay up laughs against & time when this form of diversion becomes naught but a melancho'» memory. My unfortunate shopmate perpetrat- ed his wedding in a saloon in the Pol- ish settlement. There was nothing to distinguish the seloon from places of similar resort which are bullt by .the mile and sewed off in sections to suit the needs of publicans, grocers, shoe dealers and haberdashers in new towns. Mr. Blevitsky chartered the place for & long term of hours and in- stalled a band consisting of two cor- nets and one slide trombone. .The happy man had served one wedding breakfast, dinner and supper and had set out sausages and ice cream for another breakfast Sunday morning when the police felt obliged to be among” those present. The nuptial feast raged all day Sat- urday and had sev.ral laps to go when I butted in at 10 o'clock that night. Yellow lights blinked dimly in the fog- gy atmosphere and the bridegroom'’s special band was tooting away on an independent scale. Everything In the saloon was free by courtesy of Mr. Blevitsky. Large numbers of married men were there, accompanied by their invalids, and scores of little children played among the sawdust and cigar butts on the floor. There were young people, too, but I didn't know any Poles or Polish. However, Mr. Blevit- sky pressed me to his white waistcoat and ireated to a bottle of pink pop in the presence of the multitude, which put me in right with the elite. The bridegroom was quite drunk and bleary, yet affable withal His bride was a small, swart maiden, with a little face and big hair, and she had on all the clothes she ever owned— a habit they acquire coming over in the steerage. When Mr. Blevitsky formal- ly presented me the bride arose, made a weary bow and sank limply into her geat. Mr. Blevitsky beamed with love, beer and tenderness. Placing one arm around my neck he drew me aside and told me about the bride in accents that left no doubt of his absorbing passion. She was very tired, he sald. Accord- ing to her wont and against his express order, she had gore out at § o'clock FABLES FOR T me of life; is is a discovery of my own and d in the United Btates Long Isl ch carries with it its t is & sad fact which any if he can do use berty tc rm of this d been isolated as yet, but e researches which are b ted ratory in our elaborately equipped lak for the investigation of v rious profound cares any 1ing about a ay are expected to pro- in this direction which News editors are the world. tified that our regular days g the world are Tues- A s and Sunda; on all oth- er days we are resting from our prodig- fous labors. Having thus warned the public that wwe are about to unfold a great and far- ng theory we shall proceed to our task. P. Rousseau Smithers was afflicted with this disease In its most violent form and his symptoms should be of great interest to any one who Is making a study of the manifestations of youth. The most important indica- tion of his mental state was the general g that any man who had passed age of 40 was a proper candidate He was not pre- reac for the scrap heap. pared to go the length of putting s old fogles out * their misery entirely but he would have them realize their general uselessness. As long as they behaved themselves and didn’t appear on the streets after dark he was per- fectly willing that they should be al- lowed to pay the bills contracted by the younger members of the community, but they were to have no voice in the expenditure of the world's visible sup- ply ot circulating medium beyond sign- ing checks and' indorsing promissory notes. Another symptom which should be noted carefully by dents was that the affalrs of the world Soclety was all inquiring etu- were all wrong end to. out of joint and until the young men of the country were given a free hand in reducing the fracture it would con- tinue to be lame, halt and blind. This is a bellef pecullar to youth all the world over ar - it is only because it was most pronounced In P. Rousseau that we take him as an example. The first thing that must be done, accord- ing to P. Rousseau, was to overturn the governments of the world and-es- tablish them on a new basis. He was not exactly an anarchist of the be- whiskered type, but he was of the opin- fon that every man should have the sort and amount of government that he wanted. If it was a monarchy, then he should be allowed to go off In a corner and monarch to his heart's con- tent. If a republic was the sort of government that his thirsty soul panted for, no one should be permitted to stand in the way. The principal consideration in the mind of P. Rous- seau was that the fact that an insti- tution was In existence was a suffi- clent reason for rolling it up and chucking it out of the window. Any- thing concocted by a lot of graybeards who never swore at a telephone girl or got themselves run over by an’ auto- mobile was sure to be worn out and generally N G. . Another of P. Rousseau's symptoms, and one that is pecullar to the disease from which he suffered, was that he believed that he was the first man to stumble on all these interesting the- ories. He d1d-'* realize that there are alw: a certain number of men, gen- erzlly young, who are agin the gov- ernment, no matter what it is, simply because it happens to be the govern- ment. If it were anything else they would still be agin it, even if they had constructed it themselves. By way of demonstrating his sympa- thy with all movements for the de- struction of everything in sight P. Rousseau allled himself with the # % 24 53 HUNDRED dollars: and her dog and her cat! I call that a shame—a burning shame,” Amy Watts said, holding out her hand to Jocelyn, os- tensibly sympathetic, but with a gleam of satisfaction in her eve. “I don’t Jocelyn sald stout'y; “Aunty Berintha never promised to make me her heir. She did all she said and - -e—~ave me my education —with a lot of frills in the way of ex- tras—dressed me well—and gave me also a chance of earning her money. I wouldn’t take it—" “Why, I—I don't understand—" Amy began. Jocelyn laughed softly. “The earning would have been easy—to some she said. “It only meant being ionary. You see Aunty felt that herself ought to have gone—she thought ghe had heard a call that way —but her terror of men and water was such that she never could venture to answer it. She wanted me to fill the gap which she thought she had left in the ranks. Then, too, the poor old dear knew I'd spend her money if I got it without the missionary career in having good times. And she did so hate good times! She simply couldn’t be happy unless she was very miser- able,” “Yo. stayed with her nine years,” Amy said in a voice of awe. Jocelyn smoothed out her black gown, and said cheerfully: “Yes—and I'm glad of it. Toward the last she clung to me pitifully—called me her comfort, and all that. But it broke me all up to have her ask my pardon for the will. As though I had a right to.be hurt over it. ‘I've lived so useless, child, I had to do a little good at the very last,’ she said. So her dear mis- sionarles got everything but the place and the family siiver—they went to a Challoner, down in Texas, the last of the name. She hoped he would come back to live on the place. Somehow, in spite of all her crankiness, she kept the feeling of race. I'm not real blood kin of hers, you know—only her step- mother’s grandchild—"" “When is he coming—this Texan?” Amy interrupted. Jocelyn laughed roguishly. “Not at all, I suspect Amy-Mamy, you'll have to put up with Frank Palmer after all. For even if Stephen Challoner ghould come, he is likely to bring a Mrs, Challoner along. Early and often is the Texas motto when it comes to matrimony—and he’s all of 35.” “Frank has no eyes now for any- body but you,” Amy sald, trying to mask spite with playfulness and suc- ceeding rather Il Jocelyn gave her a keen look. In- wardly she whistled—a favorite trick of hers In case of great surprise. “Un- less you take that back right straight, I'll bundle yéu out, neck and crop,” she sald severely, but with twinkling eyes. “I don’t deny grudging Frank to you—what woman could? But you have possession, which is nine points (6 girls,” that morning with & gunny sack to plck up coal on the railréad track. But what could a man do? Bhe had come back with more than a bushel and they were married at 10 o'clock. Moreover, he had secretly inspected the coal and there waan’t a single clinker among it. In a further burst of sloppy confidence Mr. Blevitsky opined his wife was a jewel—a woman of whom any man might be proud. Everybody danced, after a fashion, and then sidestepped to the bar the minute the band gave out. Mr. Ble- vitsky superintended the whole busi- ness and sopped up most of the loose liquid on the counter with the sleeves of his weddmg trousseau. Ha was the life of the party. Fo! ire, I rubbered and soaked up impressions that ¢ling to me still. Along toward midnight I became ab- sorbed in a bean-colored young woman —to her own notion the happiest one in all that glad throng. She sat mid- way at one side of the hall opposite the bar, wearing that expression of proud and deflant agony seen in plc- tures of Christian martyrs burned at the stake. Her symptoms had puzzled me for an hour or s0 when it dawned on me that she was the Lady with the High Insteps. Like a statue she posed —her slippered feet thrust forward 80 as to star the insteps. The tension in her limbs necessary to arch the feet was 8o great I could see the muscles bulging under the ball dress, and the loose hair about her temples was sub- merged |n moisture. Many a man has stumbled over the high instep to his everlasting sorrow, but instead of fall- ing in love with that malden I yearned to hand her a couple of swift kicks on the ankles. svature and cramps at_length called e halt in this exhibition of maidenly charms. The high-instep lady keeled over in a faint and the entire assem- blage of Poles, big and little, talked at the same time. In the confusi--~ in- cident to this divertiser-ent a furtive Swede, unbidden to the feast, drew from beneath his chair an immense accordion and started to drag there-" from a dismal tune. Somebody thr..v a cream =Y which hit the Swede in the eye. The pastry stuck just long enough for me to observe how much the Swede looked like a watch repairer at work; then hostilities became gen- eral and a fusillade of food and furni- ture put the pacifi to fli~ht. There wasn’'t much furniture avail- able for long range fighting, so the combatants drew on the larder. The three Polish musicians and the Swede mixed it hand to hand with their in- struments and the guests, hurling vic- IE FO Pumpkinsville branch of the Interna- tional Association of Allled Anarchists and Stein Investigators. They met every Saturday night and drank dam- nation to c.irch and state and suc- cess to the glorious cause of revolu- of the law, not to speak of vested in- terests—you two were betrothed in the cradle, I've always heard, by your respective fathers.” “Oh, that was all a joke!” Amy said —but blushed and bridled delightedly. Amy was a pretty enough girl, unless Jocelyn were by to put her out of court. Jocelyn was tall and twenty, light on her feet, lithely rounded, a figure of grace, vital everywhere, most of all in I peach-tinted fa and laughing eyes. In the three weeks since she had come home, she had subjugated half of Lynnville—w)men no less than men. What wonder that she had swept Frank Palmer off his feet? He was a rich man’s only child, spoiled of course, but a decent fellow enough, dutiful to his father, and ten- derly affectionate toward his invalid mother. He had intended to marry Amy on purpose to please his mother, who was fond of the girl and had grown to depend on her greatly. Now he had decided she would be much fonder of Jocelyn before six months were out—how could she help it? While the two girls talked of him he was say- ing this to the sick woman, who an- swered him with only silent choking sobs, and wringing of wasted hands. The silence irritated him to the point of action—he went out of the house far from gently, and swung along the tree- bordered street, eves down, so intent upon his errand he ran fairly into a tall, sunburned fellow who stood ir- resolute upon a corner. “No harm done—rather good,” the stranger said in answer to his apolo- gles. ‘‘At least I reckon so—it gives me a chance to speak to you, without seeming like a confldence man. I ought to be ashamed to say It, but the fact is—I'm lost. Lost in Lynnville—where 1 was born a long time ago. The Lynn. ville I remember was another sort of place. Used to be a public square, where the turnpike went down toward the river—with a market house, and courthouse—" “They've gone out to meet the rail- road,” Frank explained, smiling in spite of himself. The stranger sald: “H'm!” then plunged into the middle of things with: “Say—what sort of a proposition is this Craig girl—Miss Jocelyn? You're bound to know her if you live here.” " “She's most adorable,” Frank an- swered, smiling. The stranger looked at him, also smiling, but shrewdly. “It's plain she’s run her brand on you, young man,” he sald. “So you up and tell me who you are? And how you're fixed? No harm meant—I've got a good reason for ask- ing. My name's Challoner—I've come all the way from Texas up here to sort of even things. When I got the straight story of my great-aunt’s will, and {::ew how‘tlr:!clrn:«uly she h‘f’g _treated e Cralg girl, I said te m: i ‘Steve, it’s up to you m‘gnlh‘,mlr’:oor tr&c up there and marry that poor thing., “Suré you can do 1t?"* Frank asked, a stormy red flashing Into his face. Challoner wheeled upon him. “Lerd, ves,” he saild. “Even In Texas there aren’t many would turn down Steve tuals toward this common center, soon involved the whole company. Mr. Blevitsky, with a boiled ham in each hand, battled nobly for a cause shroud- ed In some doubt. It was time for trouble and solely on that account the bridegroom sailed in and did the best he could. When the lights were all knocked out, the fight shifted to the sidewalk and was still raging when the police got there and cracked a lot of skulls. The Swede escaped and the Polish or- chestra was among those locked up. It is ever thus. The man who butts in and makes trouble for others manages to slip out unhurt. Still, Mr. Blevit- sky’s wedding was a huge and unquall- fiéd success. They took nine stitches in his scalp. And the lady with the high Instep never knew she had put her feet in it, so to speak. Early next morning, Iimpelled by that morbid curlosity ever dominant in the student of human moods and passions, I strolled past the scene of the late nuptial disaster. There wasn’t much doing, yet I felt repaid by a glimpse of the saloon proprietor wrestling with the aftermath. Mount- ed on a stepladder and armed with a putty knife, he was scraping lemon meringue ple, layer cake and cheese from the building front, meanwhile discoursing to himself in quaint Po- lish accents. It may be fitting to observe here that while social gayeties epidemic in Omaha at that time were not so re- cherche as similar affairs at Newport and on Fifth avenue, they were not without interest to the police. At ore they batter heads; at the other the cops repel souvenir seekers who would rip the garments off the bride or bite chunks from the iron railings in front of the church. The only place a fellow can get wedded without police surveillance is in one of those spots untouched by the blight of civilization. Be he mil- lionaire or mutt, this getting married i§ a dangerous operation, which should only be attempted as a last extremity when {ll or out of work. In time I may lose my number and de- cide to pay some good woman a sal- ary to make trouble for me, but that possibility 1is too remote to worry about. After the wedding I applied myselt to molding with renewed Industry. One of my first plays was to pick out a preceptor—a sedate and finished mechanic of mature years, whose .mode a youngster might copy and thus become perfect. Mr. Spruce, champion all-around sand pounder, the man who made the large flywheels OLISH tion. They weren't gquite sure as to what they were going to revolve or In what direction: any old revolution was good enough for them so long as it kept turning. The first thing in order was for the secretary to read ‘"e list TWO PAIRS OF EYES i By Martha McCulloch Williams. 2005549 Challoner. Ever hear of the Tomahawk Ten ranc! Pretty complete outfit—if 1 do say it myself. It don’t really lack mich but a mistress—and that it's going to have, sure as this Miss Joce- lyn shows up as any sort of Texas timber. She ought to be that. This little old State of Tennessee raises about the best going. That's what made me wait so long—I've been knowing I needed a wife ever since the Tomahawk Ten gct to a fall draft of two thousand steers, but somehow I couldn’t fetch it to come up here after her. Now—well! I don’t think I'm going home by myself—not even it I find the wind blows the way I think it does.” “How is that?” Frank asked. Challoner laughed. “Why that you've gone and cut me out, before ever 1 was rightly cut in,”” he said. “Ain’t that about right?” “I dom’t know,” Frank interrupted, “but,” doggedly, “if you'll come along with me, we'll very soon find out.” “So! You're going to see her!” Chal- loner ejaculated with a whistle, then, rubbing his hands, “but you haven't told me a word about yourself.” Frank ran into a brief account of himself as they swung along the street. Challoner listened attentively, and at the close asked: “Now, one thing more—are you right sure you ain't mortgaged property? I don’t see how you can help being—living here where folks can’t do much but marry—spe- cially women. Oh, ho! I thought so!” noting Frank's frowning flush. “Now you speak up—the whole truth-—before e go a step further together.” “Would you ruin your life to please other people?” Frank demanded. Challoner looked at him narrowly. “No man ruins his life except by doing wrong,” he sald. “Tell me the whole tale—then 1 can judge.” “Gee! But you are in a sort of a box!” he said when he had heard the tale—then with a swift smile. “But it oughtn’t to be hard to get you out— with two men wanting to marry, and two women ready to be persuaded.” «“You don't mean,” Frank began, reaching for the other’s hand. Chal- loner returned the clasp, but said oracularly: ‘“Wait until I've seen 'em both—no buying pigs in a poke for vours truly.”” Then there was silence until they stood side by side upon the Craig plazza, shaking hands with the iwo young women, whose conclave they had Interrupted. Five minutes later Challoner managed to wink at Frank unseen. And when, after sup- per, they marched away arm in arm, he burst out: “It's all right—mighty right, old son! I'm with you t? the last cartridge. Jocelyn has got the looks, but somehow that Amy bunch of calico is just the size I want. We've got a whole month’s time to work in. Ought to be a. pair of weddings at the end of it.” There were a pair of weddings, al- though they waitéd until fall. When they came off, Amy was so happy that she made a beautiful Mrs. Challoner and Mrs. Palmer senior was nearly as much in love with Jocelyn as her bridegroom son. and dry sand cylinders, filled the bill to my notion, and I copled him. In two months I was a second edition of this Royal Arch molder in mechani- cal grace, style and execution. I even spat like Mr. Spruce. Anything he ald I 4id, and felt I couldn’t go wrong. Mr. Spruce saw he had scored a touchdown back of goal with a lobster, and the knowl- edge pleased him, for he hypnotized me with tales about an engine bed plate he once cast in Sacramento that welghed sixty-four tons. Helpers holsted him In and out of the sand mold with a derrick for a couple of weeks, he sald, and when the plate was cast they had to tear the shop down to get it outside. That job placed him in the front row of the peach class and I begged Mr. Spruce for his photograph. What Henry Irving 18 to the stage butler this master molder was to me and I fairly worshiped the sand he handled. One evening after work Mr. Spruce, being a fatherly man with a good heart and kindly impulses, asked me to his home to supper. As we left the shop on the outskirts of the town a freight train came along. We climbed to the top and rode half a mile or so to the place where Mr. Cpruce got off. In- stead of descending the iron ladder and swinging to the ground after the of remedles for social, economie, polit- ical, religious and Individual ills that had been put on the market durine the week. Then the association would de- clare its undying alleglance to the whole list, from the taxation of Thomas cat to the confiscation of all property that any one else happened to want. The fact that many of the propositions which they adopted were irreconcllably inconsistent was of no moment to them. For example, some long-haired stein investigator In Stuttgart would adver- tise the formation of a world-wida trust as a solution of all the economic problems on the board; then some gen- tleman from Oshkosh would bob up with a suggestion for smiting thefrust hip and thigh and in the middle of the surplus. To the ordinary mind unac- quainted with the subtleties of revolu- tion these two propositions would ap- pear to be more or less opposed to each other, but the International As- soclation could swallow them both without winking and ask for more. Religion, however, was P. Rousseau’s favorite fleld. He was young and he hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the subject, but he was gifted with a greater amount of pure and unadulter- ated intuition to the square inch than most men even suspect in the course of thelr whole lives, and he could settle the vexing problems of free will and predestination, could decide whether all children were damned or only the neighbor’s, and ‘could discourse with amazing fluency on the idea of the im- mortality of the soul as a product of evolution. To have heard him talk would have made vou feel sorry for St. Augustine, Erasmus, the late M. Luther, Andrew Lang and all the other gentlemen who thought they had some ideas about things in general. He knew it' all and he wasn’t a bit backward about telling the world, either. All the things which we have men- tioned happened when P. Rousseau was in the springtime of life referred to above, somewhere. We have described them with this wealth of detail simply to show the ravages of the baclllus of youth which we are investigating (see also above somewhere.) It must not be suppo:-d that he did any of the things which He contemplated. No doubt he belleved in his theories seriously enough at the time that he confided them to a cold and more or less unfeel. ing world, but tempora usually mutan- ters to a considerable extent. Observe how it mutantered with P. Rousseau. By the time he was 45 he had come into two or three inheritances that had been hanging over his head and had settled down with a wife and children and all the other appendages of respec- tability. To look at him now you would never suspect that he was the ‘hot-blooded youth who had got up early every morning to plot before breakfast and had pulled of a world- shaking revolution every other daw. and Off the Bread Wagdon Hard LudckTales and Doings of an AmateurHobo manner of brakemen, he moved that we spring to the roof of a lonely box car standing on a parallel track and descend at leisyre. I sald all right and he led the way. Anybody but a lobster in the can knows that a brisk run om leaping from & moving train is necessary to maintain a dignified equiiibrium, but I was In the clutch of a master mind. Two seconds after Mr. Spruce hit' the roof of the stationary car he was due to jump off at the far end,. going full speed. He arrived on scheduls time and so did I, one lap behind. The fall on the frozen tles below telescoped Mr. Spruce's spinal column and I broke my own nose and threé of his ribs plunging down on top of him. Thus did an lconoclastic box car, painted red, shatter my first and only idol. Mr. Spruce went to the hos- pital and when my nose subsided so I could see around it I pulled my freight for the warm belt in Dixle. We never met again. Since then I have traveled on the inside, outside and un- derneath box cars without a chaperon and never got hurt. This mention is made not as a proud boast, but as part of a mottled career. In the ensuing chapter another boy and myself eail as cargo from Mem- phis to New Orleans and are dis- covered. He is predisposed to an over-produe- tion of adipose tissue and nothing less than a steam derrick could drag him out of his Morris chair after dinner. He belleves firmly that the estadb- lished order of things is all to the good and that the man who suggests a change should be examined for signs of mental unsoundness. Then he should be gent to the penitentiary or sBot on the spot. It Is not that the world has changed materially since he was young; it is only that with the advance of years he has acquired an indisposi- tion to fo anything requiring unusual exertion. Younger men call it laziness, but he calls it conservatism. At any rate, we have demonstrated in our poor, weak way that radicallsm is not so much a condition of mind as of years, and that the moral that what- ever is is best was propounded by a man with money in the bank and plate glass windows to smash. (Copyright, 1904, by Albert Brittd \ i “ s L5SE 1N AT DERRICK COVLD BRAG HUT XL Q15 BT AL gy AFIER DIVINER., - -~ - —