THE PICAROONS

By the Same Author

❦

The Reign of Queen Isyl

THE
PICAROONS

BY GELETT BURGESS
AND WILL IRWIN

NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & COMPANY
MCMIV

Copyright, 1904, by
MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Published, April, 1904

Copyright, 1903, 1904, by Pearson Publishing Co.

To THE RED CYCLONE

G. B—— W. I.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PICAROONS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Page

A MIRACLE AT COFFEE JOHN’S 3 The Story of the Great Bauer Syndicate 15

CHAPTER II

JAMES WISWELL COFFIN 3d. 26 The Story of the Harvard Freshman 27

CHAPTER III

PROFESSOR VANGO 45 The Story of the Ex-Medium 46

CHAPTER IV

ADMEH DRAKE 60 The Story of the Hero of Pago Bridge 61

CHAPTER V

THE DIMES OF COFFEE JOHN 81 The Story of Big Becky 83

CHAPTER VI

THE HARVARD FRESHMAN’S ADVENTURE: THE FORTY PANATELAS 102 The Story of the Returned Klondyker 108 The Story of the Retired Car-Conductor 143

CHAPTER VII

THE EX-MEDIUM’S ADVENTURE: THE INVOLUNTARY SUICIDE 156 The Story of the Quadroon Woman 175

CHAPTER VIII

THE HERO’S ADVENTURE: THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMAM 192 The Story of the Minor Celebrity 199 The Mystery of the Hammam 209 The Story of the Dermograph Artist 217 The Story of the Deserter of the Philippines 236

CHAPTER IX

THE WARDS OF FORTUNE 258

NOTE

_Picaroon—a petty rascal; one who lives by his wits; an adventurer. The Picaresque Tales, in Spanish literature of the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, dealt with the fortunes of beggars, impostors, thieves, etc., and chronicled the Romance of Roguery. Such stories were the precursors of the modern novel. The San Francisco Night’s Entertainment is an attempt to render similar subjects with an essentially modern setting._

CHAPTER I
A MIRACLE AT COFFEE JOHN’S

The lad in the sweater yawned with abandon and glanced up at the clock which hung on the whitewashed wall between a lithograph of Admiral Dewey and a sign bearing the legend: “Doughnuts and Coffee, 5 cents.”

“I move we proceed,” he said, impatiently. “There’ll be nobody else here to-night; all the stew-bums have lined up at the bakeries for free bread. I say, old man, you pull the trigger and we’re off! I’ve got a two-days’ handicap on my appetite and I won’t do a thing but make an Asiatic ostrich of myself!”

“I’ll back my stomach against yours,” said the man with spectacles who sat opposite him. “I’ll bet I could eat a ton of sinkers and a barrel of this brown paint. I’m for rounding up the grub myself. I’ll be eating the oil-cloth off this table, pretty soon!”

The proprietor of the dingy little restaurant turned to them from the counter in front, where he had been arranging a pile of wet plates and an exhibit of pastry in preparation for the next morning’s breakfasts. Wiping his hands on his apron, he said with a Cockney accent which proclaimed his birth, hinted at by his florid countenance and mutton-chop whiskers, “I sye, gents, if yer don’t want to wyte, yer know bloomin’ well wot yer kin do, an’ that’s git art! Strike me pink if yer ain’t gort a gall! Yer a bit comin’ on, gents, if yer don’t mind me syin’ it. I told yer I’d give yer an A1 feed if yer’d on’y wyte for another bloke to show up, an’ he ain’t ’ere yet, is ’e? Leastwise, if ’e is, I don’t see ’im.”

He took off his apron, nevertheless, as if he, too, were anxiously expectant, and he cast repeated glances at the door, where, painted on the window in white letters, were the words, “Coffee John’s.” Then he left the range behind the counter and came across the sanded floor to the single oil-lamp that lighted the two men who were his last patrons for the day.

The younger, he with the red sweater, had a round, jocund face and a merry, rolling eye that misfortune was powerless to tame, though the lad had evidently discovered Vagabondia.

“Who’s your interesting but mysterious friend?” he asked. “You’re not expecting a lady, I hope!” and he glanced at his coat which, though it had the cut of a fashionable tailor, was an atrocious harlequin of spots and holes.

“I don’t know who’s a comin’ no more’n you do,” Coffee John replied. “But see ’ere!” and he pointed with a blunt red finger at an insurance calendar upon the wall. “D’yer cop that there numero? It’s the Thirteenth of October to-dye, an’ they’ll be comp’ny all right. They allus is, the Thirteenth of October!”

“Well, you rope him and we’ll brand him,” remarked the other at the table, a man of some twenty-two years, with a typically Western cast of countenance, high cheek-bones and an aquiline nose. His eyes were gray-blue behind rusty steel spectacles. “I hope that stranger will come pretty durn pronto,” he added.

“There’ll be somethink a-doin’ before nine, I give yer my word. I’ll eat this ’ere bloomin’ pile o’ plytes if they ain’t!” Coffee John asserted.

Scarcely had he made the remark when the clock rang out, ending his sentence like a string of exclamation points, and immediately the door burst open and a man sprang into the room as though he were a runaway from Hell.

In his long, thin, white face two black eyes, set near together, burned with terror. His mouth was open and quivering, his hands were fiercely clinched. Under a battered Derby hat his stringy black hair and ragged beard played over his paper collar in a fringe. He wore a cutaway suit, green and shiny with age, which, divorced at the waist, showed a ring of red flannel undershirt. He crept up to the counter like a kicked spaniel.

“For God’s sake, gimme a drink o’ coffee, will you?” he whined.

“Wot’s bitin’ yer?” Coffee John inquired without sentiment. “Don’t yer ask me to chynge a ’undred-dollar bill, fur I reelly can’t do it!”

“I lost my nerves, that’s all,” he said, looking over his shoulder apprehensively. Then, turning to the two at the table, he gazed at them over the top of a thick mug of coffee. “Lord! That’s good! I’m better now,” he went on, and wiped off his mustache with a curling tongue, finishing with his sleeve. “If I should narrate to you the experience which has just transpired, gents, you wouldn’t believe it. You’d regard myself as a imposition. But facts is authentic, nevertheless, and cannot be dissented from, however sceptical.”

“See here!” cried the lad in the sweater, not too unkindly, “suppose you tell us about it some other time! We’ve been waiting for you many mad-some moons, and the time is ripe for the harvest. If you are as hungry as we are, and want to be among those present at this function, sit down and you’ll get whatever is coming to you. You can ascend the rostrum afterward. We were just looking for one more, and you’re it.”

The vagabond looked inquiringly at Coffee John, who, in response, pointed to a chair. “Why cert’nly,” the new-comer said, removing his hat, “I must confess I ain’t yet engaged at dinner this evening, and if you gents are so obliged as to——”

“Rope it!” roared the man in spectacles, out of all patience. The voluble stranger seated himself hurriedly.

Coffee John now drew two tables together. “Jest excuse me for half a mo’, gents, w’ile I unfurl this ’ere rag,” he said, spreading the cloth.

The three strangers looked on in surprise, for the Cockney’s tone had changed. He wore an expectant smile as he seated himself in the fourth place and rapped loudly on the table, distributing, as he did so, a damask napkin to each of his guests.

“Gloriana peacock!” cried the man in spectacles, “I’m sorry I forgot to wear my dress-suit. I had no idea you put on so much dog for coffee and sinkers.”

“Get wise, old chap,” the man in the sweater said, warningly, “I have a hunch that this is to be no mere charity poke-out. This is the true chloroform. We’re up against a genuine square this trip, or I’m a Patagonian. How about that, Coffee John?”

The host tucked his napkin into his neck and replied, benignly, “Oh, I dunno, we’ll do wot we kin, an’ them as ain’t satisfied can order their kerridges.”

As he spoke, two Chinamen emerged from the back room and filed up the dusky rows of tables, bearing loaded trays. Swiftly and deftly they spread the board with cut glass, china, and silverware, aligning a delectable array of bottles in front of the proprietor. In a trice the table began to twinkle with the appointments of a veritable banquet, complete even to a huge centre-piece of California violets. In that shabby hole an entertainment began to blossom like a flower blooming in a dunghill, and the spectators were awed and spellbound at the sudden miracle of the transformation. The man in the red sweater loosened his belt three holes under the table, the black-eyed man pulled a pair of frayed cuffs from his sleeves, and the other wiped his glasses and smiled for the first time. When all was ready, Coffee John arose, and, filling the glasses, cried jubilantly:

“Gents, I give yer the good ’elth of Solomon Bauer, Esquire, an’ the Thirteenth of October, an’ drink ’earty!”

The toast was drunk with wonder, for the men were visibly impressed, but, at the entry of oysters, each began to eat as if he were afraid it were all a dream and he might awake before it was over. The lad with the merry eye alone showed any restraint; his manners were those of a gentleman. The one with the spectacles drank like a thirsty horse, and the thin, black-haired individual watched the kitchen-door to see what was coming next. Following the oysters came soup, savoury with cheese.

“Potage au fromage, a la Cafe Martin, or I’ve never been in New York!” cried the youngster.

“Correck. I perceive yer by wye of bein’ an epicoor,” Coffee John remarked, highly pleased at the appreciation.

“I didn’t think they could do it in San Francisco,” the youth went on.

The Cockney turned his pop-eyes at the lad, and, with the bigotry of a proselyte, broached his favourite topic. “Young man, we kin do anythink they kin do in New York, not to speak of a trick or two blokes go to Paris to see done; an’ occysionally we kin go ’em one better. Yer don’t know this tarn yet. It’s a bloomin’ prize puzzle, that’s wot it is; they’s a bit o’ everythink ’ere!”

The fish followed, barracuda as none but Tortoni can broil; then terrapin, teal, venison, and so, with Western prodigality, to the dessert. The guests, having met and subdued the vanguard of hunger, did hilarious battle with the dinner, stabbing and slashing gallantly. No one dared to put his good fortune to the hazard of the inquiry, though each was curious, until at last the lad in the sweater could resist wonder no longer. The demands of nature satisfied, his mind sought for diversion. He laid his fork down, and pushed back his plate.

“It’s too good to be true,” he said. “I want to know what we’re in for, anyway! What’s your little game? It may be bad manners to be inquisitive, but I’ve slept in a wagon, washed in a horse-trough and combed my hair with tenpenny nails for so long that I’m not responsible. The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things! and I balk right here until I know what’s up your sleeve. No bum gets a Delmonico dinner at a coffee-joint on the Barbary Coast for nothing, I don’t think; and by John Harvard, I want to be put next to whether this is charity, insanity, a bet, or are you trying to fix us for something shady?”

“What d’you want to stampede the show for?” interrupted the man in spectacles. “We haven’t been asked to pay in advance, have we? We’ve signed no contract! You were keen to begin as a heifer is for salt, and when we draw a prize you want to look a gift-horse in the jaw! Get onto yourself!”

“Gents,” the unctuous voice of the third man broke in, “they’s champagne a-comin’!”

Coffee John had been looking from one to the other in some amusement. “Easy, gents,” he remarked. “I ain’t offended at this ’ere youngster’s expreshings, though I don’t sye as wot I mightn’t be, if ’e wa’n’t a gentleman, as I can see by the wye ’e ’andles ’is knife, an’ the suspicious fack of ’is neck bein’ clean, if he do wear a Jarsey. Nar, all I gort to sye is, thet this ’ere feast is on the squyre an’ no questions arsked. As soon as we gits to the corffee, I’ll explyne.”

“I accept your apology,” the lad cried, gayly, and he rose, bubbling with impudence. “Gentlemen-adventurers, knights of the empty pocket, comrades of the order of the flying brake-beam and what-not, I drink your very good health. Here’s to the jade whose game we played, not once afraid of losing, ah! It is passing many wintry days since I fed on funny-water and burned cologne in my petit noir, but there was a time—! My name, brothers of the pave, is James Wiswell Coffin 3d. Eight Mayflower ancestors, double-barrelled in-and-in stock, Puritans of Plymouth. Wrestling Coffin landed at Salem in the Blessing of the Bay, 1630, and——”

“Whoa, there!” the man in spectacles cried. “You ain’t so all-fired numerous! I left a happy mountain-home myself, but the biographical contest don’t come till the show is over in the big tent!”

“Cert’nly not, after you vetoed at my remarks,” said the third. “Let’s testify after the dishes is emptier and we begin to feel more like a repletion!”

In such wise the guests proceeded with badinage till the fruit appeared. Then, as a plate containing oranges and bananas was placed on the table, the young man of the party suddenly arose with a look of disgust, and turned from the sight.

“See here, Coffee John,” he said, pacifically, “would you mind, as a grand transcontinental favour, removing those bananas? I’m very much afraid I’ll have to part with my dinner if you don’t.”

“Wot’s up?” was the reply.

“Nothing, yet,” said the youth. “But I’ll explain later. We’ll have to work out all these puzzles and word-squares together.”

The bananas were taken away, while the others looked on curiously. Then the man with glasses grew serious, and said, “As long as objections have been raised, and the whole bunch is a bit loco, I don’t mind saying I’ve a request to make, myself.”

“Speak up, an’ if they’s anythink wrong, I’ll try to myke it correck,” said Coffee John. “’Evving knows it ain’t ’ardly usual for the likes o’ me to tyke orders from the likes o’ you, but this dinner is gave to please, if possible, an’ I don’t want no complyntes to be neglected. Wot’s the matter nar?”

“I’ve been sitting with my back to the wall, as you may have noticed, but there’s that over my head that makes me feel pretty sick when I catch myself thinking,” said the objector. “It’s that picture of Dewey. He’s all right, and a hero for sure; but if you don’t mind, would you turn him face to the wall, so I can look up?”

“Don’t menshing it,” said Coffee John, rising to gratify this eccentric request. “Nar wot’s your private an’ partickler farncy?” he asked, turning to the thin, dark man.

“Nothin’ at all, only proceed with the exercises, and if you’d be magnanimous enough to allow me to smoke, they being no females present——”

A box of Carolina perfectos was brought in, with a coffee-urn, cognac, and liqueurs, and the three men, now calm, genial, and satisfied, gave themselves up to the comforts of tobacco. Even the youngest allowed himself to draw up a chair for his feet, and sighed in content. Coffee John finished the last drop in his glass, drew out his brier pipe, and lighted it. Then, producing a folded paper from his pocket, he raised his finger for silence and said:

“If yer wants to know the w’y and the w’erfore of this ’ere reparst, gents, I am nar ready to give yer satisfaction o’ sorts. It ain’t me yer obligyted to, at all; it’s a newspyper Johnnie nymed Sol Bauer who’s put up for it, him as I arsked yer for to drink a ’elth to. It’s a proper queer story ’ow ’e come to myke and bryke in this ’ere very shop o’ mine, an’ if yer stogies is all drawin’ easy, I’ll read the tyle as ’e wrote it art for me, skippin’ the interduction, w’ich is personal, ’e bein’ of the belief that it wos me wot brought ’im luck.

“So ’ere goes, from w’ere ’e come darn to this plyce of a Hoctober night five years ago.” And so saying, he opened the paper. The narrative, deleted of Coffee John’s dialect, was as follows:

THE STORY OF THE GREAT BAUER SYNDICATE

Ten years I had been a newspaper man, and had filled almost every position from club reporter to managing editor, when just a year ago I found myself outside Coffee John’s restaurant, friendless, hungry, and without a cent to my name. Although I had a reputation for knowing journalism from A to Z, I had been discharged from every paper in the city. The reason was good enough; I was habitually intemperate, and therefore habitually unreliable. I did not drink, as many journalists do, to stimulate my forces, but for love of the game. It was physically impossible for me to remain sober for more than two weeks at a time.

I had, that day, been discharged from the Tribune for cause. The new president of the Southern Pacific Company was on his way to San Francisco, and it was necessary for our paper to get ahead of its contemporaries and obtain the first interview. I was told to meet the magnate at Los Angeles. I loitered at a saloon till I was too late for the train, and then decided I would meet my man down the line at Fresno. The next train south left while I was still drinking. I had time, however, to catch the victim on the other side of the bay, and interview him on the ferry, but he got in before I roused myself from my dalliance with the grape. Then, trusting to sheer bluff, I hurried into the office, called up two stenographers, dictated a fake interview containing important news, and rushed the thing on the press.

The next day the president of the railway repudiated the whole thing, and I was summarily given the sack. Nevertheless, it so happened that almost the whole of what I had predicted came true within the year.

I celebrated the bad luck in my characteristic manner, and finished with just sense enough to wish to clear my head with black coffee. So, trusting to my slight acquaintance with Coffee John, and more to his well-known generosity, I entered his place, and for the first time in my life requested what I could not pay for. I was not disappointed. A cup of coffee and a plate of doughnuts were handed me without comment or advice.

As I was making my meal in the back part of the little restaurant, three men, one after the other, came and sat down at my table. In the general conversation that ensued I found that one was a tramp printer, whose boast it was to have worked and jumped his board-bill in nearly every State in the Union; one was a book-agent, who had been attempting to dispose of “The Life of U. S. Grant,” and the third was an insurance solicitor, who had failed to make good the trade’s reputation for acumen.

A little talk developed the fact that all four of us were out of funds, and ready for anything that promised to keep the wolf from the door. Then, with a journalist’s instinct for putting three and one together, an idea came to me by which we could all find a way out of the dilemma.

For it so happened that one of the Herald’s periodical upheavals had occurred that very day, and a general clean-up was being effected in the office. The city editor, after a stormy interview with his chief, had resigned, and had carried with him four of the best men on the staff. Other reporters who had taken his part had also been let go, and the city room of the Herald was badly in need of assistance. It was very likely that any man who could put up any kind of a pretence to knowing the ropes would stand a fair chance of obtaining a situation without any trouble.

My plan was this: Each of the three men was to apply for a situation as reporter on the Herald, and, if accepted, was to report the next day for his assignment, and then come immediately to me for instructions. I was to give them all the necessary information as to obtaining the material, and, when they had brought me the facts, write out the story for them to hand in.

The three men agreed enthusiastically to the venture, and I spent the evening in coaching them in the shop-talk and professional terms they would need. You cannot teach a man what “news” is in one sitting—a man has to have a nose trained to smell it, and a special gift for determining its value, but I described the technical meaning of “a story” and “covering” a detail. I told them to keep their eyes open, and gave many examples of how it often happened that a reporter, when sent out on a little “single-head” story, would, if he were sharp, get a hint that could be worked up into a front page “seven-column scare-head.”

There is, of course, no royal road to journalism, but there are short-cuts that can be learned. I gave them points on the idiosyncrasies of the new man at the city desk, for I knew him well, and I provided each of them with a yarn about his supposed previous place. One, I believe, was to have worked on the St. Louis Globe-Herald, under George Comstock; one had done special writing on the Minneapolis Argus, and so on; for I knew a lot about all the papers in the East, and I fixed my men so they couldn’t easily be tripped up on their autobiographies.

They went down to the Herald office that night, and after I had waited an hour or so, I had the satisfaction of hearing that all three of my pupils had been accepted. It was agreed that each of them was to give me half his salary, and so I had a fair show of earning a man and a half’s wages as President of the Great Bauer Syndicate.

At one o’clock the next afternoon I sat down in Coffee John’s and waited for my subordinates to report. As each man came in I gave him minute instructions as to the best possible way of obtaining his information. There was not a trick in the trade I didn’t know, and I had never been beaten by any paper in town. I had succeeded in obtaining interviews at two in the morning from persons avowedly hostile to my sheet, I had got photographs nobody else could get, and I had made railroad officials talk after an accident. Without conceit, I may claim to be a practical psychologist, and where most men know only one way of getting what they want, I know four. My men had little excuse for failing to obtain their stories, and they walked out of Coffee John’s like automata that I had wound up for three hours.

They returned between four and five o’clock, gave me the information they had secured, and, while they reported to the city editor, received instructions as to writing the story, and got their evening’s assignment, I wrote the articles at railroad speed. I could tell as well as any city editor how much space the stories were worth, and wrote the head-lines accordingly—for in the Herald office every reporter was his own head-line writer.

If by any chance the editor’s judgment were not the same as mine, it took but a few minutes to cut the thing down or pad it to any length, and my men took the copy back before they went out on the next detail. Meanwhile, I had given them their new directions, and, when they turned up, toward ten and eleven at night, I had the whole batch of writing to do again. It was a terrific pace for any one man to keep up, and I doubt if anyone else in San Francisco could have kept three busy and turned out first-class work.

This went on for fifteen days, during which time I made Coffee John’s joint my headquarters. That was the only place where I could hope to keep sober, working at such high pressure, for I didn’t dare trust myself in a saloon, and I couldn’t afford to hire an office. The amount of black coffee I consumed made me yellow for a year. Whether Coffee John wondered what I was up to or not I never knew; at any rate he asked no questions and made no objections.

The Great Bauer Syndicate went merrily, and the members, with the exception of the president, earned their salaries easily enough. If the job was especially difficult or delicate, I went out and got the story myself. At the end of the first week we drew our pay and divided it according to the agreement, but there were indications that my men thought they were getting clever enough to handle the work alone. If it hadn’t been that while I was waiting for them to come in I managed to write several columns of “space,” faked and otherwise, that they could turn in and get paid for without any work at all, I would have had trouble in holding them down to their contracts. Except for this, the prospects were bright for the prettiest little news syndicate that ever fooled a city editor. We made a record for two weeks, and then came the crash.

I had been as sober as a parson for fifteen long, weary days, beating my record by twenty-four hours. I had drenched myself in black coffee, and turned out copy like a linotype machine, keyed up to a tension so tight that something had to give way. You can easily imagine what happened. One Monday night, after the last batch of copy had been delivered, and I had drawn down my second week’s pay, I relapsed into barbarism and cast care to the winds for the nonce.

I started down the line, headed for Pete Dunn’s saloon at 1 A.M., with thirty dollars in my pocket, and I found myself on Wednesday morning at the Cliff House, with an unresponsive female, whom I was imploring to call me “Sollie.” What had happened to me in the interim I never cared to investigate. But the Great Bauer Syndicate was out of business.

It seems that my three subordinates showed up as usual on Tuesday afternoon, and after waiting for me a while they attempted to cover their assignments without my help. The insurance solicitor got all twisted up, and never came back; the printer threw up his job when he failed to find me on his return. But the book-agent had grown a bit conceited by this time, and he thought he was as good as anybody in the business. So he sat down and wrote out his story, and by what they say about it, it must have been something rich enough to frame.

He had picked up a good many stock newspaper phrases, like “repaired to the scene of the disaster,” and “a catastrophe was imminent,” and “the last sad offices were rendered,” and “a life hung in the balance,” and such rot, and he had a literary ambition that would have put the valedictorian of a female seminary to the blush. He had an idea that my work was crude and jerky, so he melted down a lot of ineffable poetical bosh into paragraphs hot enough to set the columns afire. As for the story, you couldn’t find it for the adjectives. He may have been a wonder at selling “The Life of U. S. Grant,” but he couldn’t write English for publication in a daily paper.

When he turned the stuff in, the city editor gave a look at it, put about three swift questions to him, and the cat was out of the bag. It took no time at all to sweat the story out of him, and they sent that book-agent downstairs so quickly that he never came back.

The whole office went roaring over the way I’d done the paper, and the first thing I knew I was sent for, and the managing editor told me that if I’d take the Keeley cure for four months he’d give me the Sunday editor’s place and forget the episode.

The time I put in at Los Gatos taking chloride of gold was the darkness that preceded my financial dawn. When I graduated I hated the smell of whiskey so much that I couldn’t eat an ordinary baker’s mince-pie. Six months after that I was sent for by the New York Gazette, where I am now drawing a salary that makes my life in San Francisco seem insipid.

* * * * *

Coffee John folded the document carefully and restored it to his pocket with consideration. “Thet’s the wye ’e wrote it darn for me, an’ I’ve read it every year since. Yer see, gents, Sol. Bauer ’avin’ gort the idea I was, in a wye, the means of his restorashing to respeckability, an’ by wye of memorisink them three bums, ’as myde a practice o’ sendin’ me a cheque an a small gift every year, with instrucshings to celebryte the ’appy event by givin’ the best dinner money can buy to the fust three blokes as turns up here after 8.30 on the thirteenth dye of October, an’ I sye it’s ’andsome of ’im. Nar, I propose thet we all drink ’is very good ’ealth again, after w’ich, them as is agreeable will tell ’is own story for the mutual pleasure of the assembled company ’ere present.”

The three men agreed, and filled their glasses to the grateful memory of Solomon Bauer of the Great Bauer Syndicate.

CHAPTER II
JAMES WISWELL COFFIN 3D

“Nar, young man,” said Coffee John, pointing the stem of his pipe at the lad in the red sweater, “seein’ we’ve all agreed to testify, s’pose yer perceed to open the ball. You come in fust, an’ you talk fust. I ain’t no fly cop, but it strikes me you’re a bit different from the rest of us, though we’re all different enough, the Lord knows. Yer jacket fits yer, an’ thet alone is enough to myke yer conspicus in this ’ere shop. I see a good many men parss in an’ art from be’ind the carnter, but I don’t see none too many o’ the likes o’ you. If I ain’t mistook, you’ll be by wye o’ bein’ wot I might call a amatoor at this ’ere sort o’ livin’, an’ one as would find a joke w’erever ’e went. You’d larff at a bloomin’ corpse, you would, and flirt with Queen Victoria. You’ll never grow up, young fellar; I give yer thet stryte, before yer even open yer marth.”

“But wot I cawn’t figger art,” he continued, “is w’y yer jumped at the sight of a bunch o’ ord’n’ry yeller bananas. I’ve seen ’em eat with their bloomin’ knives, an’ comb their w’iskers with their bloomin’ forks, but this ’ere is a new one on me, an’ it gets my gyme. I’m nar ready to listen.”

“Even so!” said the youth. “Then I shall now proceed to let the procession of thought wriggle, the band play, and the bug hop. The suspense, I know, is something terrible, so I spare your anxiety.” And with this fanfare he began to relate

THE STORY OF THE HARVARD FRESHMAN

When I received a cordial invitation from the Dean to leave Harvard the second time—on that occasion it was for setting off ten alarm-clocks at two-minute intervals in chapel—the governor flew off the handle. My fool kid brother, that was to side-track the letter from the faculty, got mixed on his signals, and the telegram that the old man sent back nearly put the Cambridge office out of business. He said that I had foozled my last drive, and, although a good cane is sometimes made out of a crooked stick, he washed his hands of me, and would I please take notice that the remittances were herewith discontinued.

I noticed. After I’d settled up and given my farewell dinner to the Institute, where they were sorry to lose me because I was playing a cyclone game on the Freshman Eleven, I had ninety-eight dollars, and twelve hours to leave the college yard. Thinking it over, it struck me that the keenest way for me to get my money’s worth was to go out and take a sub-graduate course as a hobo—do the Wyckoff act, minus the worker and the prayer-meetings. I wasn’t going to beg my meals—there was where the pride of the Coffins stuck out—but I was willing to stand for the rest—dust, rust, and cinders. As a dead-head tourist, ninety-eight bones would feed me and sleep me for quite a space. I swung on at South Boston for my first lesson in brake-beams, and, tumbled off mighty sick at Worcester.

It’s a long tale, with hungry intervals, until I found myself in the pound, at Peru, Illinois, for smashing a fresh brakeman and running up against the constabulary. The police judge of that hustling little Western centre is paid out of the fines that he collects. It is a strange coincidence that when I was searched I had forty-seven, twenty, on my person, and my fine for vagrancy and assault came to forty dollars, with seven-twenty costs. The judge was a hard-shell deacon.

Next week, after I crawled out of the underground Pullman, at Louisville, I was watching Senator Burke’s racing stables come in, and I was hungry enough to digest a sand-car. It being work or beg, I says, “Here’s where I break the ethics of my chosen profession and strike for a job.” There was nothing doing until one of the hands mentioned, for a joke, that a waiter was wanted for the dining-room where the nigger jockeys ate. “It is only a matter of sentiment,” said I to myself, “and my Massachusetts ancestors fit and bled and died to make freedmen out of the sons of Ham. Here goes for a feed.” I took the place, collecting a breakfast in advance, and threw chow for three meals at coloured gentlemen who buried it with their knives. “If I am the prodigal son,” says I to myself, “these are the swine, all right.”

There was a black exercise-boy in the bunch who played the prize Berkshire hog. He was rather big for a man about the stables. Superstition held that he could lick everything of his weight on earth, and he acted as though he was a front-page feature in the Police Gazette. During the fourth meal he got gay over my frank, untrammelled way of passing soup. By way of repartee, I dropped the tray, tucked up my apron, and cleared for action.

First, I wiped off one end of the table with him, the way the hired girl handles crumbs. Then I hauled him out into the light of day, so as not to muss the dining-room, and stood him up against the pump, and gave him the Countercheck Quarrelsome. He was long on life and muscle, but short on science, and he swung miles wide. After I’d ducked and countered two attempts, he dropped his head all of a sudden. I saw what was coming. I got out of range and let him butt, and when he came into my zone of fire I gave him the knee good and proper. His face faded into a gaudy ruin.

The superintendent came down to restore order, and saw how merrily I jousted. He was a bit strict, but he was a true Peruvian in some ways, and he loved a scrapper. That night I got a hurry call to the office, and walked away James Wiswell Coffin 3d, anointed assistant rubber. After the season was over at Louisville, we pulled up stakes and hiked on to Chicago, following the circuit. When we moved I was raised to night-watchman—forty and found. Nothing happened until close to the end of the season at Chicago, except that I ate regularly. Money was easy in that part. Whenever I picked up any of it I looked around for good things in the betting. Without springing myself any, I cleaned up a little now and then, and when the big chance came I was $200 to the good.

This is the way that Fate laid herself open, so that I could get in one short-armed jab ere she countered hard. It was the night before a big race, really more important to us than the Derby. Everyone around the stables was bughouse with it. Before I went out on watch, the superintendent—his name was Tatum, please remember that—lined me up and told me that he’d have me garrotted, electrocuted, and crucified if there was a hair so much as crossed on either of our entries. We had two of them, Maduro and Maltese. The pair sold at six to five. Outside and in, it looked as though the old man hadn’t had a cup nailed so hard for years. The trainers were sleeping beside the ponies, but I was supposed to look in every half hour to see how things were coming on. At midnight Tatum came round and repeated his remarks, which riled me a bit, and Maduro’s trainer said he would turn in for a little sleep.

The next call, for Heaven knows what nutty reason, I got back to Maduro’s stall a quarter ahead of the hour. There was about a teaspoonful of light coming through the cracks. I got an eye to a knot-hole, and saw things happening. There was Maduro trussed like a rib-roast, and trying to jump, and there was the trainer—“Honest Bob” they used to call him—poking a lead-pencil up her nose. He said a swear word and began to feel around in the mare’s nostril, and pulled out a sponge. He squeezed it up tight and stuffed it back, and began to poke again. That was the cue for my grand entry.

“Good-morning,” I said through the hole; “you’re sleeping bully.” I was cutting and sarcastic, because I knew what was up. The sponge-game—stuff it up a horse’s nose, and he can walk and get around the same as ever, but when he tries to run, he’s a grampus.

He was too paralysed even to chuck the pencil. He stood there with his hands down and his mouth open.

“Oh, hello,” he said, when his wind blew back. “I was just doctoring the mare to make her sleep.” All this time I’d been opening the latch of the door, and I slid into the corner.

“Oh, sure,” said I, displaying my gun so that it would be conspicuous, but not obtrusive. “I suppose you’d like to have me send for Mr. Tatum. He’d like to hold her little hoof and bend above her dreams,” says I.

“Oh, there’s no necessity for bothering him,” said “Honest Bob,” in a kind of conciliatory way, and edging nearer to me all the time. I might have been caught if I hadn’t noticed that his right hand was lifted just a bit with the two first fingers spread. I learned that game with the alphabet. You slide in on your man, telling him all the time that he is your lootsy-toots, until you get your right in close, and then you shoot that fork into both his lamps. He can neither see nor shoot nor hit until his eyes clear out, which gives you time to do him properly. “Honest Bob” was taking a long chance.

I guarded my eyes and shoved the gun in his face. I felt like Old Nick Carter.

“How much do you want?” said he, all of a sudden.

“The honour of the Coffins never stoops to bribery,” said I; “but if you’ll tell me what’s going to win to-morrow, I’ll talk business. If the tip’s straight, I forget all about this job.”

“Early Rose,” he said.

“The devil you say!” said I. Early Rose was selling at twenty-five to one. I gave it to him oblique and perpendicular that if his tip was crooked I would peach and put him out of business for life. He swore that he was in the know. For the rest of that night I omitted Maduro’s stall and did some long-distance thinking.

I could see only one way out of it. Maduro loses sure, thinks I, and whether it’s to be Early Rose or not, there’s an investigation coming that involves little Jimmy 3d. What’s the matter with winning a pot of money and then disappearing in a self-sacrificing spirit, so that “Honest Bob” can lay it all to me? I was sick of the job, anyway.

What happened next day has passed into the history of the turf, but the thing that wasn’t put into the papers was the fact that I was in on Early Rose with one hundred and ninety plunks at twenty-five to one. He staggered home at the head of a groggy bunch that wilted at the three-quarters. I sloped for the ring and drew down $4,940. Just what happened, and whether the nags were all doped or not, I don’t know to this day, but there must be more in this horse-racing business than doth appear to the casual débutante.

Two minutes after I left the bookies I was headed for the overland train. Just as we pulled out, I looked back, proud like a lion, for a last gloat at Chicago. There, on the platform, was that man Tatum, with a gang from the stables, acting as though he were looking for someone. In the front of the mob, shaking his fist and doing the virtuous in a manner that shocked and wounded, was “Honest Bob.” I took the tip, dropped off two stations down the line, doubled back on a local to a child’s size Illinois town, and rusticated there three days.

I’d had time to think, and this was the way it looked: Where the broad Pacific blends with the land of freedom and railway prospecti, the Mistress of the Pacific dreams among her hills. Beneath her shades lie two universities with building plans and endowments. It occurred to me that I’d better make two packages of my money. One of nine hundred was to get me out to San Francisco and show me the town in a manner befitting my birth and station. The other was to transport me like a dream through one of the aforesaid universities on a thousand a year, showing the co-eds what football was like. With my diplomas and press notices tucked under my arm, I would then report at the residence of James Wiswell Coffin 2d, at South Framingham, and receive a father’s blessing.

By the time I’d landed at this Midway Plaisance and bought a few rags, the small package looked something like four hundred dollars. It was at this stage of the game that I met the woman starring as the villainess in this weird tale. We went out to the Emeryville track together. All of my four hundred that I didn’t pay for incidentals I lost the first day out.

But that makes no never mind, says I to myself; it’s easy to go through a California university on seven-fifty per, and besides, a college course ought to be three years instead of four. So I dipped into the big pile. Let us drop the quick curtain. When it rises I am centre stage in the Palace Hotel, ninety-dollar overcoats and pin-checked cutaways to right and left, katzenjammer R. U. E., a week’s board-bill hovering in the flies above me—and strapped. I gets up, puts my dress-suit into its case, tucks in a sweater and a bunch of ties, tells the clerk that I am going away for a day or so, and will leave my baggage until I can come back and settle, and walks into the cold, wet world.

The dress-suit brought eight dollars. That fed me and slept me in a little room on Third Street for a week. After dragging the ties through every pawn-shop from Tar Flat to the Iron Works, I got a dollar for them. They cost twenty. Next was the suit-case—two and a half. The third day after that I had dropped the last cent, and was leaving my lodgings two jumps ahead of the landlord, a great coarse Swede.

I hadn’t a thing but the clothes on my back. In a vacant basement of a house on Folsom Street I found a front step invisible to the naked eye of the cop on the beat. There I took lodgings. I got two meals by trading my trousers for a cheaper pair and twenty cents to boot from the Yiddish man in the shop above. When that was gone I roamed this grand old city for four days and three nights, and never did such a vulgar thing as eat. That’s no Child’s Dream of a Star.

The fourth day was a study in starvation. Dead serious, joshing aside, that was about as happy a time as I ever put in. I forgot that I was hungry, and up against the real thing. I saw myself like some other guy that I had a line on, chasing about ’Frisco in that fix. I myself was warm and comfortable, and having a dreamy sort of a time wandering about.

I was strolling down Kearney Street, listening to the birds singing through the haze, when something that wore scrambled whiskers and an ash-barrel hat advised me to go down to Broadway wharf and take a chance with the fruit bums. He steered me the proper course, and I smoked the pipe along Broadway. There was the wharf all right, and there was a whole cargo of bananas being lifted on a derrick and let down. Once in a while one would drop. The crowd underneath would make a jump and fight for it. I stood there wondering if I really wanted any bananas, or if it was worth while to eat, seeing that I’d have to do it again, and was now pretty well broken of the habit, when a big, scaly bunch got loose from the stem and began to shake and shiver. I got under it and made a fair catch, and went through the centre with it the way I used to go through the Yale Freshmen line. There were seventeen bananas, and I ate them all.

Next thing, I began to feel thirsty. So I marched up to that Coggswell joke on Ben Franklin, somewhere in the dance-hall district, and foundered myself with water. After that I crawled into a packing-box back of a wood-yard, and for two days I was as sick as Ham, Shem, and Japhet the second day out on the Ark.

When I got better I was hungry again. It was bananas or nothing. I found them carting off the cargo, and managed to pick up quite a load in one way or another. After dark I took up two piles and salted them down back of my packing-box. Next day, pretty weak yet, I stayed at home and ate bananas. When the new moon shone like a ripe banana-peel in the heavens of the next night, I never wanted to see a banana as long as I lived. Nathless, me lieges, they were all that I had. After breakfast next morning, I shook my clothes out, hid the sweater, and put on my collar to go downtown. On the way I couldn’t look at the bananas on the fruit-stands. At the end of the line I bumped into a big yellow building with arches on its front and a sign out:

“Football players please see Secretary.” I looked and saw that it was the Y. M. C. A. “Aha,” says I, “maybe I dine.”

I sang a good spiel to the Secretary. They were getting up a light-weight team and wanted talent. Thanking the gods that I was an end instead of a centre, I spun him some dream about the Harlem Y. M. C. A. He said report that afternoon. I went back, choked down ten bananas for strength, and got out on the field in a borrowed suit. They lined up for only five minutes, but that was time enough for me to show what I could do.

I waited after the game to hear someone say training-table, and no one peeped. I stood around, making myself agreeable, and they said come around to the Wednesday socials, but no one asked me to say grace at his humble board. By the time I had washed up and got back home to the packing-box, I was the owner of such a fifty-horse-power hunger that I simply had to eat more bananas. I swore then and there that it was my finish. Why, the taste of them was so strong that my tongue felt like a banana-peel!

After dinner I piked back to the Y. M. C. A., seeing that it was my only opening, and began to study the Christian Advocate in the reading-room. And the first thing that I saw was a tailor-made that looked as though it had been ironed on her, and a pair of coffee-coloured eyes as big as doughnuts.

As I rubbered at her over the paper I saw her try to open one of the cases where they kept the silver cups. That was my cue. It wasn’t two minutes before I was showing her around like a director. I taught her some new facts about the Y. M. C. A., all right, all right. She was a Tribune woman doing a write-up, and she caught my game proper. We’d got to the gym, and I was giving the place all the world’s indoor athletic records, when she turned those lamps on me and said:

“You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t?” says I. “Don’t I strike you for as good a little Y. M. C. A.’ser as there is in the business?”

She looked me over as though she were wondering if I was somebody’s darling, and said in a serious way:

“My mother and I have supper at home. My brother’s just come on from the East, and I’d like to have you meet him. Could you join us this evening?”

Realising the transparency of that excuse for a lady-like poke-out, I tried to get haughty and plead a previous engagement, but the taste of bananas rose up in my mouth and made me half-witted. When we parted she had me dated and doddering over the prospects. Then I raised my hand to my chin and felt the stubble. “A shave is next in order,” says I. So I stood at the door and scanned the horizon. Along comes the football captain. If he was in the habit of shaving himself, I gambled that I would dine with a clean face. I made myself as pleasant as possible. Pretty soon he began to shift feet.

“Going down the street?” said I. “Well, I’ll walk along.” We got to his lodgings. “Going in?” said I. “Well, I’d like to see your quarters,” and I walked in. “Pretty rooms. That’s a nice safety razor you have there. How do you strop it?” He showed me, kind of wondering, and I said, “How’s your shaving-soap?” He brought it. “Looks good,” said I, heading for the washstand. I jerked in a jet of cold water, mixed it up, lathered my face, and began to shave, handing out chin-music all the time about Social Settlement work. He said never a word. It was a case of complete paralysis. When I had finished I begged to be excused. He hadn’t even the strength to see me to the door.

Oh, the joy of walking to Jones Street, realising with every step that I was going to have something to take the taste of bananas out of my mouth! I got to playing wish with myself. I had just decided on a tenderloin rare-to-medium, and Bass ale, when I bumped on her house and the cordial welcome. It was one of those little box flats where the dining-room opens by a folding-door off the living-room.

“Can you wait here just a minute?” said the girl with the doughnut orbs, “I want you to meet my brother.”

She was gone longer than I expected. She was a thoroughbred to leave such a hobo as me alone with the silver. It got so that I just had to look at the scene of the festivities. It was here, all right, a genuine Flemish quarter-sawed oak dining-table, all set, and me going to have my first square meal for ten days. About that time I heard two voices in the back of the house. One was the girl’s; the other was a baritone that sounded mighty familiar. I explored farther, and the next clew was a photograph on the mantel that lifted my hair out of its socket.

It was signed “Your loving brother, John,” and it was the picture of John Tatum, the manager of Burke’s stables!

I saw my dinner dwindling in the distance. I saw myself breakfasting on bananas, and says I, “Not on your hard luck.” I wouldn’t swipe the silver, but, by all the gods of hunger, if there was a scrap to eat in that dining-room I was going to have it. I ran through the sideboard; nothing but salt, pepper, vinegar, and mustard. China closet; nothing but dishes. There was only one more place in the whole room where grub could be kept. That was a sort of ticket-window arrangement in the far corner. Footsteps coming; “Last chance,” says I, and breaks for it like a shot. I grabbed the handle and tore it open.

And there was a large, fine plate of rich, golden, mealy bananas!

CHAPTER III
PROFESSOR VANGO

“Yer was mixed up in a narsty piece o’ business,” said Coffee John, after the Freshman had concluded his tale, “an’ it strikes me as yer gort wot yer bloomin’ well desarved. I don’t rightly know w’ether yer expect us to larff or to cry, but I’m inclined to fyver a grin w’erever possible, as ’elpin’ the appetite an’ thereby bringin’ in tryde. So I move we accept the kid’s apology for bein’ farnd in me shop, an’ perceed with the festivities o’ the evenink. I see our friend ’ere with the long finger-nails is itchin’ to enliven the debyte, an’ I’m afryde if we don’t let ’im ’ave ’is sye art, ’e’ll bloomin’ well bust with it.”

He looked the thin, black-eyed stranger over calmly and judicially. “You’ll be one as lives by ’is wits, an’ yet more from the lack of ’em in other people, especially femyles,” the proprietor declared. “Yer one o’ ten tharsand in this tarn as picks up easy money, if so be they’s no questions arsked. But if I ain’t mistook, yer’ve come a cropper, an’ yer ain’t much used to sweatin’ for yer salary. But that don’t explyne w’y yer ’ad to tumble into this plyce like the devil was drivin’ yer, an’ put darn a swig o’ ’ot coffee to drarn yer conscience, like. Clay Street wa’n’t afire, nor yet in no dynger o’ bein’ flooded, so I’m switched if I twig yer gyme!”

“Well, I have got a conscience,” began the stranger, “though I’m no worse than many what make simulations to be better, and I never give nobody nothin’ they didn’t want, and wasn’t willin’ to pay for, and why shouldn’t I get it as well as any other party? Seein’ you don’t know any of the parties, and with the understandin’ that all I say is in confidence between friends, professional like, I’ll tell you the misfortunes that have overcame me.” So he began

THE STORY OF THE EX-MEDIUM

I am Professor Vango, trance, test, business, materialisin’, sympathetic, harmonic, inspirational, and developin’ medium, and independent slate-writer. Before I withdrew from the profession, them as I had comforted and reunited said that I was by far the best in existence. My tests was of the sort that gives satisfaction and convinces even the most sceptical. My front parlor was thronged every Sunday and Tuesday evenin’ with ladies, the most genteel and elegant, and gentlemen.

When I really learned my powers, I was a palm and card reader. Madame August, the psychic card-reader and Reno Seeress, give me the advice that put me in communication. She done it after a joint readin’ we give for the benefit of the Astral Seers’ Protective Union.

“Vango,” she says—I was usin’ the name “Vango” already; it struck me as real tasty—“Vango,” she says, “you’re wastin’ your talents. These is the days when men speak by inspiration. You got genius; but you ain’t no palmist.”

“Why ain’t I?” I says, knowin’ all the time that they was somethin’ wrong; “don’t I talk as good as any?”

“You’re a genius,” says she, “and you lead where others follow; your idea of tellin’ every woman that she can write stories if she tries is one of the best ever conceived, but if you don’t mind me sayin’ it, as one professional to another, it’s your face that’s wrong.”

“My face?” says I.

“Your face and your hands and your shape and the balance of your physicality,” says she. “They want big eyes—brown is best, but blue will do—and lots of looks and easy love-makin’ ways that you can hang a past to, and I’m frank to say that you ain’t got ’em. You have got platform talents, and you’ll be a phenomena where you can’t get near enough to ’em to hold hands. Test seances is the future of this business. Take a few developin’ sittin’s and you’ll see.”

For the time, disappointment and chagrin overcome me. Often and often since, I have said that sorrow is a means of development for a party. That’s where I learnt it. Next year I was holdin’ test seances in my own room and makin’ spirit photographs with my pardner for ample renumeration. Of course, I made my mistakes, but I can assert without fear of successful contradiction that I brought true communication as often as any of ’em.

Once I sized up a woman that wore black before I had asked the usual questions—which is a risky thing to do, and no medium that values a reputation will attempt it—and told her about her husband that had passed out and give a message, and she led me on and wrote me up for them very papers that I was advertisin’ in and almost ruined my prospecks. You get such scoffers all the time, only later on you learn to look out and give ’em rebukes from the spirits. It ain’t no use tryin’ to get ahead of us, as I used to tell the people at my seances that thought I was a collusion, because they’ve only got theirselves; but we’ve got ourselves and the spirits besides.

It wasn’t long in the course of eventualities before I was ordained by the Spirit Psychic Truth Society, and elected secretary of the union, and gettin’ my percentages from test and trance meetin’s at Pythian Hall. I was popular with the professionals, which pays, because mediums as a class is a little nervous, and—not to speak slanderous of a profession that contains some of the most gifted scientists—a set of knockers.

Only I wasn’t satisfied. I was ambitious in them days, and I wanted to make my debut in materialisin’, which takes a hall of your own and a apparatus and a special circle for the front row, but pays heavy on the investment. Try every way I could, with developin’ circles and private readin’s and palms extra, I could never amass the funds for one first-class spirit and a cabinet, which ought to be enough to start on. Then one night—it was a grand psychic reunion and reception to our visitin’ brothers from Portland—She come to the circle.

Our publication—I united with my other functionaries that of assistant editor of Unseen Hands—stigmatised it afterward as the grandest demonstration of hidden forces ever seen on this hemisphere. It was the climax to my career. I was communicatin’ beautiful, and fortune favoured my endeavours. When I pumped ’em, they let me see that which they had concealed, and when I guessed I guessed with amazin’ accuracy. I told a Swede all about his sweetheart on the other plane, and the colour of her hair, and how happy she was, and how it was comin’ out all right, and hazarded that her name was Tina, and guessed right the first trial. I recollect I was tellin’ him he was a physie, and didn’t he sometimes feel a influence he couldn’t account for, and hadn’t he ever tried to establish communication with them on the spirit plane, and all he needed was a few developin’ sittin’s—doin’ it neat an’ professional, you know, and all of the other mediums on the platform acquiescin’—when a woman spoke up from the back of the room. That was the first time that ever I seen her.