The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 4, 1904, Page 8

(Copyright, 1204 by Charles Dryden.) WING to a hitch In the pro- . the good people of s, Tenn.,, were not qu e for when I arrived there on the inside of a train during a tour of the world in 1880. The Mayor had misiaid the key to the city, and the fron foun hoisted the cold wave flag. Not a single foreman wanted a boy to raise i before a week ended I sassed myself for sidestepping Oma- ba. There I had a job and friends, and entree to the whirlpeol of social gayety h weddings among s was chill and a8 portrayed by Poii the shop hands. Me: sloppy All hands d me down, and my sped swiftly, like th last car deserting a fat lady who is t excited to whistle. When the hope of becoming an em- ploye at Memphis brew up, I hung about the levee and looked at the river. Being too old and cowardly to turn pirate, I affected the stream for pas- e only. The season was late in win- ter and the unlaundered Mississippi rippled along replete with chunks of boneycombed ice, the soil of adjacent States in solution and an occasional streaky steamboat. Another boy, who said he had been bottling wine in Cal- ifornia, helped me look at the river and the ice, and shared the frosts that nip- ped us in the town. ‘We met by the river, he and I, and there was much that bound us together. Carl was but a detached unit in this great problem of ours involving 80,000,- 000 fatheads, and some that had sub- sided. I knew him little more than a week under adverse conditions, yet even now as I gaze upon the restless push, hustling and striving for the dollar and the quick, unsatisfying lunch, I often think of that sad, hun- gry boy alone on the bum until he met me. Carl was cne of eleven, he told me in our calmer moments. I, too, had sprung from poor but prolific parents. and an unconscious bond of misery linked the busted wine bottler to me in a sort of brother stunt. Each welcome to what the other didn’t have. Against his will, let us hope, Carl had costumed himself like a German comedian in a little fried egg stiff hat, trousers, low shoes and white Whenever we ranged about the was short socks. 'ANOTHER BOY HELPED ME TO LOOK AT THE RIVER." FABLES FOR THE FOOLISH F Poe had lived in these degenerate days he would not have been at all surprised at the knocking on his chamber door. In fact, the man is might lucky who doesn’t hear a knocking somewhere almost any hour ©f the day or night, and usually he is @oing his share of it. The only organi- gation to which practically sll the able-bodied men, most of the women and all of the girls under 20 belong is the International Association of Ham- mer-Wielders. If & man risks his life, not to mention the lives of two or three other men, in imminent deadly combat with the hated foe, at least half of the population of the United States rises up and announces that he @14 1t just to get his name in the pa- pers. Then when the hero’s article on “How It Feels to Die for One’s Coun- try” appears in the next number of the Getthere Magazine the entire population points the finger of scorn and says “There!” ‘When a retired manufacturer of steel rails and useful advice sets aside $40,000,000 or $50,000,000 for the erec- tion of public libraries, all the in- habitants of the towns that were left out of the deal and most of those who weren’t unite in ascribing his “mag- nificent generosity” to a desire to have his name appear on the front of the building in company with Homer, J. Caesar, Ibsen, Dithyram Dick and other literary beacons of history. As 2 rule the people who jump on a man for such innocent amusements are the very people who are tickled to death if they see their own names in the Bungville Clarion’ as among those present at the trial of Ike Smith be- fore Squire Applejack for horse-steal- ing. Men have been known to pick a pocket just to get their names in print. % The favorite target of the man with the hammer is the man who has hap- pened to be bousted or to get himself boosted into some kind of an office. The public officer in the United States is popularly known as the servant of the people, and from the way the peo- ple wipe their feet on sald official one would conclude that his wages had been paid in advance and that all the places in town were filled. It doesn’t do any good for a President, or a Gov- ernor, or & Mayor, or a road commis- sioner, to be honest because people will say that he had a second term up his sleeve. If he refuses to deny that he is a rascal, we all stand round and say, “Aha! He's afraid to say a word.” Then when he comes out with a sweep- ing denial of everything that we have said, we chuckle ghoulishly and call at- tention to the way we've got under his hide. All of which explains why s respecting gentlemen are so anxious to run for office in this land of the roor- back and home of the plain, unvar- nished campaign lie. The majority of people knock for the same reason that a small boy smokes his first cigarette and goes out behind the woodpile to swear his first swear— they think it a sign of intellectual ma- turity, When a man reaches the point where he can pick holes in the con- stitution and show up the delusions of which the Declaration of Independence is composed he thinks that he is the general manager of about the only fifteen-horsepower intellect in the town and that it has arrived to him, as our French friends would .say, to put in about ten hours a day demonstrat- ing that nothing amounts to anything and that the only free and unenviable privilege that other people possess is that of being wrong ten times out of nine. The only times they are ever right is "vhen they agree with the gen- tleman In question, and that is never. ‘We once knew a man who was con- % Hard THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. n and Off the Bread Wagon town Carl's socks awoke languid in- terest in our movements, and that was the best we got. Like myself he had abated his finances, quitting a good job for the excitement of hunting an- other in a strange place, and was then eager to starve to death In a warmer climate, provided he could reach one. 1 coincided in this view, and we pool- ed an issue. The German comedian roomed under a high sidewalk in the purlieus of the city, and took Window Board stand- ing in front of a restaurant that dis- played steaks, chops and delicacies of the season behind thick glass. I oc- cupled apartments in a river front hos- telry at 15 cents per day,p which did not include meals. These Southern cities know how to boom prices to the embarrassment of Northern tourists. My $2 bark trunk that had set out from Mudville with me was at the ho- tel, and I assayed about $1 40 in white metal—all that lay between us and the next town, which we agreed should be New Orleans. The only tip either of us had on that place was the distance, which is said to lend enchantment at a hLigh rate of interest. So Carl and I plotted to beat the river out of a pass to New Orleans, and herein is thgt scheme laid bare. For 90 cents I purchased a black tar- paper valise with tin hasps and trim- mings. In size, shape and general trimming this purchase lcoked more like a gas meter than anything I can now recall. Into that valise ave put a chunk of bologna sausage bigger than a bootleg, a bag of raw onions, and stuffed bread in the remaining space. My last cent went to victual the cruise of at least a week. The comedian voted the bologna intc the grip, and I pre- scribed the onions, having read in nau- tical tales that the onion is the best preventive of scurvy known to mari- ners. To properly dress for the part, I put on my shop clothes, including a blue flannel shirt, and stowed the rest of my outfit in the faithful bark trunk. With the help of Carl I carried the trunk to an express office and shipped it C. O. D. to New Orleans. An immense stern-wheel boat—the U.-P. Schenck, from Cincinnati—offered inviting exit to a warmer clime. She carried furniture on the hurricane deck, baled hay on the Yower or boiler deck, and nails In kegs in the hold. Carl and I thought the hay looked good to us, -so one evening at dusk, when no one was looking, we burrowed into the new mown. A row of stan- chions from the boilers forward car- rled a canvas-covered steam pipe to the engines aft, and the hay was piled over and around the pipe. We crawled into this steam heated flat, taking the food hamper along, and settled down for a nice, quiet voyage. Things went pretty well until the gentleman who chaperoned the hay sold us out. He had a vulgar habit of have indicated. The character of his occupation has slipped our mind, be- cause It didn’t really amount to any- thing. His real calling was knocking Copyright, 1904, by Virginia Lella Wentz. HEN his pretty little cousin from New Orleans had mar- ried one of his chums, Tom Chester had felt a bit dubious as to the outcome. Selwyn was a hand- some chap, a spolled child of fortune, who in all his life had scarcely felt a restraining finger upon his impulses, to say nothing of a restraining hand. He was the possessot of big capabilities either for good or evil. Would Doris de- velop the god or the devil in him? And for Selwyn’s part would he make the light in his young wife's laughing eyes still brighter, or would he deepen the already sensitive curves in her childish mouth? Two years had proved Chester's doubts to be not without justification. “What a pity, what a pity!” he thought as he sat in his office one morning and looked across the table at his fair client. “So, you've come to me, Doris, for advice?” He looked out of his window. How mockingly the skyscrapers loomed against the sky line! A monument of man’s greatness—and yet, at heart, so little was man! He turned searchingly upon Doris. “Do you really want me to speak as your lawyer?” She bent her pretty head “Well,” answered he, of a woman who dare not cry), “the facts are hideous enough, are they not?"” “Wait, that was your lawyer’'s advice. As your cousin; Doris, as his friend, as a man, God knows, who loves you both, I beg you to forgive him. Hasn't he re- pented, dear? Doesn’t he ask you to let him begin all over again on a clean slate? That's all a man can do; it's a woman's hand must wipe out all the old hideous markings.” _ She leaned wearily back in her chair. “Yes,” she said, “‘we women are sent into the world to pardon, aren’t we— like Governors and priests? Only we are not expected to give sentences and penances.” How beautiful she was, with that queenly poise of her young head, cop- trasting so oddly with the pathetic droop of her scarlet mouth! Chester's, eyes narrowed ”&:l' studied her. S EEe in affirmation. still meeting her eyes keenly, “divorce him.” “Yes,” she laughed (it was the laugh telegraphing ahead to riverside deal- ,ers, who purchased hay in bunches. Negro roustabouts with cargo hooks disturbed our privacy at all hours of the day and night, digging out con- signments of baled hay. Layer by layer the coons peeled our happy home away. Further and further aft we burrowed, until, at the end of the sec- ong day, we fetched up against the en- gine room bulkhead. There was no way to gnaw through that obstacle, so, rather than jump overboard, Carl and 1 admitted that we were discovered. A red-necked mate who had Killed a dozen stowaways, he sald, laughed at Carl's white socks, after which he took us before the purser, in the white and old gold eabin on the upper deck. In that gorgeous tribunal we heard our doom pronounced. It was either pay fare to New Orleans—$3 50 each, deck passage—or get off at the next landing. 1 glanced ahead at the next landing— a muddy, oozy stretch of Arkansan shore, clouded into a misty rain and sloping away into a swamp. Night was coming on. Here and there a live oak tree wearing long, gray whiskers—Spanish .Jss, I belleve, is the tonsorial name—stcod like a lost Rip Van Winkle in that moist and for- bidding wilderness. The only living be- ing in sight was a rickety Uncle Tom seated on a bale of cotton in a two- wheeled cart, waitigg for the steam- boat. His mule, ap}arpmly, had died standing in shafts. And that was the place for us to get off, not. My heart ceased to beat, and I could hear a funny clicking noise in the com- edian’s neck, llke a duck choking to death. “Mister,” I said to the purser, “we haven’t any money, but wealthy rela- tives will meet the boat at New Or- leans and pay all charges.” The purser peered out of his little box office, laughed brutally and said he couldn’t do it. Too many bums tried o work him on that gag. “Well, T'll put up my baggage for security,” 1 pleaded. “Let me see it,” said the purser, with- out looking up from his work. When I requested Carl to go below for the- valise, he seemed about to throw a fit. He was even more of a Dutchman than his costume would in- dicate, and the way our affairs were being dented all but paralyzed him. All the same, the valise was bought with my money. Carl held an honorary members] in the sausage and onions, but I had a right to Invest the gas *meter as I saw fit, and he knew it. Capital is mighty and will prevail. During the absence of Carl I gazed at the negro porter, who stood guard— gazed at him with an intense and over- whelming Rock-of-ages-cleft-for-me expression. If I did get by the purser with my little game, it was up to the porter to either make or break me, but if he saw or understood the black man made no sign. He kept me guéssing. Meanwhile the purser was busy writ- ing in his coop, which had & little win- holes in the illusions of other people. According to him, there was no truth, nor beauty, nor goodness, nor any- thing else worth while anywhere in the fic came up from the streets below. ‘““Where did the jasmine come from, Doris?” he asked abruptly. The pene- trating odor had suddenly made him hark back to the day of that pretty little Southern wedding in New Or- leans, when everything seemed crowd- ed with its perfume. A crimson flush surged into Doris’ cheeks, then spread to her broad, sweet temples and dimpled chin. ““The jasmine?” she echoed helplessly. “Yes, where did you get it?” Still flushing, but silent, she looked down at the white waxen petals and the shining leaves. “Will you give me a flower?” said Chester curiously. She wrenched the jasmine from her girdle-and impul- sively rose from her chair. k “Certainly,” she sald, “take all of it. Take it as a portion of your fee. You've told me what I can do; to- morrow FIl drop in and tell you what I want to do.” As her hand touched his for a sec- ond she nodded whimsically toward the jasmine: “I reckon this is the first time any one’s ever paid you in such a romantic fashion?” ‘When the elevator had taken her down Chester walked back to the table and lcoked at the blossoms lying there in all the stiff, white pride of their Southern fragrance. “And I'd never guessed it,” he com- mented slowly. “So, there’s another man in the case? And I was putting all the trouble down to Doris’ pride. However, this jasmine explains. Poor Selwyn—poor chap! She 'can’t care overmuch for the donor, ough,” he reflected logically, *“‘or ‘wouldn’t have left me this gift.” Just then the door opened. It was Doris, more ra- diantly lovely than he had \ever seen T. “What's that name children use for one another when they take back gifts, Tom? An Indian giver? Well, you can use that name for me, because I want these back.” As she pinned the jasmine into her girdle again her little gloved hand trembled perceptibly. - “Tell me, Doris,” he said to her com- mandingly as he arrested her a second time'at the door, “what is the meaning of this? As your cousin and friend I would wish to know, but as your law- yer I must know—I must.” dow ledge like a theater box office, opening into the main cabin. When my limp partner returned I took the valise, stood in the middle of the cabin and held up our only asset for the inspec- tion of the purser. It looked pretty brisk and shiny in the half light, and my soul was uplifted when the man in the coop said: “All right; give it to the porter.” Cari’'s eyes bulged, and he would have wept, only his mouth monopolized all the moisture in his head. He thought only of the sausage and cnions, without a spark of pity or com- passion for the nervous strain I had undergone, saving his life and mine up to that point, with the porter yet to hear from. “There's a little light lunch in the grip I would like to take out if you don’t care,” I ventured to remind the purser. “I don’t want your miserable lunch,” he gruffly replied, at tne same time handing over a couple of deck passage checks he had made out for us. Having so far succeeded as a strate- gist I circled about with the valise and placed it on the deck directly under the office ledge. The purser couldn’t see me unless he rose up and hung himself across the opening, and I saw no reason why he should do that, be- en ing, as 1 have said, a very busy per- son. When I opened up the meter the flow of gas choked the purser; at least 1 peard him cough and splutter. Quick- 1y passing what was left of the bolog- na, bread and onions to Carl, I mo- tioned him to sneak, and then, looking the negro porter firmly in the eyeballs, I handed him the empty 90-cent tar- paper valise and offered up a silent prayer. He took that hollow, scented mockery in his strong right hand and actually walked lopsided out of the cabin lest the purser might be looking. Noble negro—fairest of his sex! I never saw my n.eter any more. Neither did Carl. By the time this transaction ended we had taken on the bale of cotton and were steaming away from the sloppy Siberian. shore—from the whiskery live cak trees, Uncle Tom and his mor- ibund mule—$7 to the good in trade on a legitimate deal. Little did I think at Memphis about laying up a cheap valise against & rainy day—and the drizzle was fierce. Carl and I huddled together that night in a coil of rope on the dismal lower deck devoid of sheltering hay. Ever and anon Carl ate a slab of sau- sage, with a side of raw onions to ward off scurvy. My mind was too full for food. I thought of Abraham Lincoln LuckTales and Doings of an AmateurHobo By Charles and the great and lasting good the Great Emancipator had done for pos- terity on the pork. Next day I hunted up the negro porter and told him, with vast pride of voice and gesture, that 1 hailed from the same State—Mudville, 1ll. He didn't know what I was talking about. The rest of the route to New Orleans was fraught with hardship and hunger Long before our commissary exploded damp weather coaxed out on the bo logna a crop of soft blue whiskers & an_inch long, and which greatly hanced the appearance of the,menu However, beauty of that sort is only skin deep, and by peeling the bologna we got the true meat and flavor. When the last fragment was gone the mid- night lunch of hardtack set out for the negre rousters kept us allve. Like al- ley rats we sneaked from gloomy re- cesses to the table back of the boilers, grabbed some crackers and went away to nibble In the dark. Water is in- cluded in a deck passage, which is a good thing to know should you ever decide to take one. At New Orleans I went to the bad proper, and, single-footed and alone, pulled off a march to the sea that knocks General Sherman's little stroll silly. By all means, sit up and watch for the next chapter. en- “A RED-HEADED MATE WHO HAD KILLED A DOZEN STOWAWAYS." world. We were the worst governed country in the world, with the possible exceptions of the effete monarchies of Europe, the ¢orrupt despotisms of ) threw back at him over her shoulder. “I've made up my mind at last!” She ‘was gone, but not before he had caught a gledm of tears in her eyes. As Chester waited at the station on his way up town that afternoon some ome grabbed his arm and gave him a gay greeting. When he glanced at the fine bovish face he almost groaned. “The woman he loves will make him a god or a devil, I used to think,” reflectefl Chester as they made for a double seat in the car. “And when Doris is gone—not much doubt about the outcome.” “Walit a minute, old boy,” said Sel- wyn, as Tom, in uncertainty, was about to pull out an evening paper. “You've been a jolly stanch friend to me; when I deserved a right-down hard kick you didn’t even side-step. That's why I want to tell you"—his voice broke suspiciously and he fingered at his collar—"everything’s right, and I'm the very happiest man in all New York!"” & “Eh? What's that?” sald Chester blankly, dropping his papeér and squar- ing about. “'Twas like this,” explained Selwyn, a rapt smile on his handsome face. “You know, of course, we haven't been living together for three months? Well, this morning, as I was coming out of my club whom should I run right into but the dearest little woman God ever made. Old chap, 1 don’'t know how it happened, but actually she let me wa!k down the avenue with her, and when we came across a ragged urchin at a corner with little bunches of jasmine tied with twine, she actually half- turned for a second. Suddenly I saw e big tears well in her eyes—" The collar seemed to be troubling him again. ’ . ¢ “Her home in New Orleans '-as lit- erally thick with Cape jasmine, you know, Tom?” he went on. ‘“And, like a queen, she said, “Don't you want to get me a bunch of those blossoms? Did I want to, indeed! A by Jove, old chap, if she didn’t pin them in her girdle and wear | them! To-morrow she’s going to send for me and tell me whether I may enter paradise again.” Selwyn’s voice seemed to trail off iato a happy vagueness. “I don’t think,” said Chester, grave- 1y, the odor of the Jasmine still in h:: “ . 'uf;",'}"‘m llni going : x PSS-S A NS G P BY NICHOLAS By Virginia JASMINE Leila Wentz g £ AR e R e S 1 o B S I G BUSRSR S BN iy Ao e e Asia, and the savage hordes of Africa. All of our Senators and Congressmen were dishonest, except those who wern’t worth buying, and the probabili- ties were that they eked out thelr sal- aries by robbing banks on the side. ‘When Congress did by any chance pass a good bill it was all a mistake, or else they were only covering their tracks. We all know that kind of a man; per- haps we're something the same kind of a feline ourselves- It didn’t make any difference to the knocker what he was talking about, he was always ready to point out the blowholes and the rust specks. If he were looking at Daubem’s latest masterpiece he could find more faults with the perspective, or the composi- tion, or the coloring, or the technique, or something else, than the poor painter ever imagined could be crowd- ed into one sinall canvas. You see, the knocker had the idea, which a great many people share with him, that the proper way to criticize a plc- ture is to bend all your labors to con- vincing the artist that he might be a fair success as a plain and simple kalsominer. In literature the knock- er was also right on deck. According to him, the last great novelist died with Thackeray, and he didn’t think so much of Thackeray either. In fact, he doubted if there had ever been any great works of fiction, and he was very sure that there never would be again. The only great dramatist was Shakespeare, and he stole all his ideas and hired some one else to write his plays for him. Browning was the last of the poets, and people thought that he was great just because they couldn’t understand what he was talk- ing about. In music Wagner was without a peer, and even he dldn’t appear to be worth five dollars for an orchestra seat. A casual conclusion as to the knock- er’s status in society would have been that a man who knew so much about how things should be done, at least to the extent of knowing that they were always done wrong, would have been selected as the best man in the community for the most important post. That's right where you'd make the wildest guess possible. When It came time to elect a representative in Congress the district passed right by the knocker and hit on a young fel- low who didn’t know so much, but who believed a whole lot more: For ex- ample, he was sure that the United States was the greatest country in the world, bar none, and that while he would deplore the necessity, he was equally sure that she could whip any two of the other nations in a fair fight, pivot blow and strangle hold barred. He hadn't even heard that the coun- try was going to the demnition bow wows and he wouldn’t have believed it if he had, and he was willing to bet all he had that American girls were the prettiest and wittiest, American men the bravest, American horses the fast- est, American beet sugar the sweetest, and America the finest example extant of the Creator’s art. He aidn't have a monopoly of the knowledge of the world, but he was young and per- fectly willing to learn, and when he came out and announced himself as a believer in the good old dootrine that the best man wins sooner or later the voters threw up their hats and de- clared that he was the man for their money. It i1s demonstrated by these fow stm- ple words that there's a great Aiffer- ence between knocking and being knocked and that a manufacturer of cheerful hot air will sometifies produce enough to inflate his own balloom, while the knocker, as a rule, only in knocking the bottom out of his own craft and starting hot foot en the trail of the late lamentsd MoGinty. (Copyright, 1804, by Albert Britt)