Gullible’s Travels quotes

“Gullible’s Travels,” the story from which this book takes its name, has to do with a trip to Palm Beach and was written in 1916.

Readers who have never been to Palm Beach and who contemplate going there are warned not to base their budget on figures quoted in the story.

In those days you could get a double room with bath at one of the two big hotels for a niggling $17.00 per day. That sum now is just a fair diurnal tip for the house detective.

But it seems impossible. I just asked the madam, I said, “Do you remember the other stories in this book?” and I read her the titles and she said yes. “Well, then,” I said, “tell me what they’re about.”

“About!” she drooped. “I didn’t think they were about anything.”

“No,” I says, “not and beat you.

I can run two blocks w’ile you’re stoopin’ over to start, but if we was runnin’ a foot race between each other, and suppose I was leadin’ by eighty yards, a flivver’d prob’ly come up and hit you in the back and bump you over the finishin’ line ahead o’ me.

”

“It don’t seem fair for us to have all the luck.”

“Sure it’s fair!” I says. “If you didn’t have the luck, what would you have?”

“I know,” she says; “but I don’t never feel right winnin’ money at cards.”

Well,

Hatch didn’t have no more evenin’ dress suit on than a kewpie.

I could see his pants under his overcoat and they was the same old bay pants he’d wore the day he got mad at his kid and christened him Kenneth.

Hatch hadn’t no idear if the show was comical or dry. My Missus hadn’t, neither, till we got home and I told her the plot.

Carmen ain’t no regular musical show where a couple o’ Yids comes out and pulls a few lines o’ dialogue and then a girl and a he-flirt sings a song that ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

Carmen’s a regular play, only instead o’ them sayin’ the lines, they sing them, and in for’n languages so’s the actors can pick up some loose change offen the sale o’ the liberettos. The music was wrote by George S.

He misses her as far as from here to Des Moines. But she don’t know he’s kiddin’ and she’s scared to death. Yes, sir, she topples over as dead as the Federal League.

It was prob’ly her heart.

So now the whole crowd comes dashin’ out because they’s been a report that the place is infested with the hoof and mouth disease. They tell Don about it, but he’s all excited over Carmen dyin’.

“What do you think o’ Farr’r’s costumes?” says Mrs. Hatch.

“Heavenly!” says my Missus. “Specially the one in the second act. It was all colors o’ the rainbow.”

“Hatch is right in style then,” I says.

“I liked her actin’ better,” says Mrs. H.

“I thought her voice yodeled in the upstairs registers.”

“What do you suppose killed her?” I says.

“Splendid!” says Mrs. Hatch. “His actin’ and singin’ was both grand.”

“I preferred his actin’,” I says. “I thought his voice hissed in the downstairs radiators.”

This give them a good laugh, but they was soon at it again.

“What do you mean?” says the Missus. “I guess if we go, Bess’ll go with us.”

“You’d starve to death if you guessed for a livin’,” I says.

“Never mind that kind o’ talk,” says the Missus. “When we got a visitor we’re not goin’ out places nights and leave her here alone.”

“I ain’t goin’ to force myself on to you,” says Bessie. “You don’t have to take me nowheres if you don’t want to.”

“I wisht you’d put that in writin’ in case of a lawsuit,” I says.

“Listen here,” says the Frau. “Get this straight: Either Bess goes or I don’t go.”

“You don’t have to bulge out to be a man,” says the Missus. “He’s smart and he’s rich and he’s a swell dresser and I don’t think we could find a better match for Bess.”

“Match just describes him,” says I.

“You’re too cute to live,” says the Wife. “But no matter what you say, him and Bess is goin’ to hit it off. They’re just suited to each other. They’re a ideal pair.”

“You win that argument,” I says.

“They’re a pair all right, and they’d make a great hand if you was playin’ deuces wild.”

Well, we walked round till our feet was froze and then we went home, and Bishop says he would have to go, but the Missus ast him to stay to supper, and when he made the remark about havin’ to go, he was referrin’ to …

“He looks like he’d been a long time with the road,” I says.

Then up went the curtain and the thermometer.

The scene’s laid in Little Italy, but you can’t see nothin’ when it starts off because it’s supposed to be just before mornin’. Pretty soon one o’ the three kings comes in with a grouch.

“Never mind,” says the Missus. “If he wants to be alone with her it’s a good sign.”

“I can’t eat a sign,” says I.

“We’ll stop at The Ideal and have a little supper of our own,” she says.

“Bess was home, but I didn’t know it. And when I was comin’ back from the kitchen I happened to glance in the livin’ room. And I seen Bishop kiss her! Isn’t it great!”

“Yes,” I says. “But I wisht she’d of had Archibald fix up her lips.”

“One dollar a suit,” he says.

“Are you on parole or haven’t you never been caught?” says I.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and smiled like it was a joke.

Somewheres near nine dollars a day, not countin’ no hotel bill, and over two weeks of it yet to come!

Oh, you rummy game at home, at half a cent a point!

When our clo’es come back I woke her up and give her the figures.

First, we went to St. George Street and visited the oldest house in the United States. Then we went to Hospital Street and seen the oldest house in the United States.

Then we turned the corner and went down St. Francis Street and inspected the oldest house in the United States.

Then we dropped into a soda fountain and I had an egg phosphate, made from the oldest egg in the Western Hemisphere.

He felt it was only fair to give his customers a good time when he was chargin’ a dollar an hour, and he had his gags rehearsed so’s he could tell the same one a thousand times and never change a word.

And the horse knowed where the point come in every one and stopped to laugh.

We done our packin’ before supper, and by the time we got to our table Jake and the mourners was through and gone. We didn’t have to ask the waiter if they’d been there. He was perspirin’ like an evangelist.

“Yes,” says she, so low you couldn’t hardly hear her.

“Please see that they’s some towels put in 559,” says the Mrs. Potter from Chicago.

About five o’clock the Wife quieted down and I thought it was safe to talk to her. “I’ve been readin’ in the guide about a pretty river trip,” I says. “We can start from here on the boat tomorrow mornin’.

“Yes,” I says; “and the tuition wasn’t only a matter o’ close to seven hundred bucks!”

“Oh,” says she, “we’ll get that back easy!”

“How?” I ast her. “Do you expect some tips on the market from Mrs. Potter and the rest o’ your new friends?”

“I’m the government checker,” he says.

“Chess?” says I. “And you count all the people that gets on?”

“How many’s on now?” I ast him.

Besides, you don’t want to never overlook a chance to meet high-class people.”

“When I get desperately anxious to meet high-class people,” she says, “I’ll be sure and pick out the Saturday afternoon boat from Chicago to St. Joe.”

“You can’t judge people by their looks,” says I. “You haven’t heard ’em talk.”

“I haven’t got it figured out yet. Bess swears they didn’t have no quarrel; but I’ll take an oath they was in love with each other. What could of happened?”

“I know what happened,” I says. “They got acquainted!”

Why don’t you call up Mrs. Messenger and suggest that the San Susies switches to pedro or five hundred or rummy, or somethin’ that you don’t need to take no college course in?”

“You’re full o’ brilliant idears,” says the Missus. “They’s only just the one game that Society plays, and that’s bridge. Them other games is jokes.”

“I’ve noticed you always treated ’em that way,” I says. “But they wasn’t so funny to me when it come time to settle.”

I was glad that we didn’t have to go far to our buildin’.

The Missus was pleasant company, just like a bloodhound with the rabies.

I left her in the vestibule and went down to help Mike close up. He likes to be amongst friends at a sad hour like that.

If men seen their wives play poker previous to the nuptial bonds they’d be a large fallin’ off in marryin’ and givin’ in marriage.

Speakin’ for myself personally, the Missus would still be livin’ in her parental mansion o’ concrete buildin’ blocks at Wabash if I’d knew in advance that her and George W. Hoyle was such perfect strangers.

The best female poker player I know is Mrs. Hatch.

She don’t never come into a pot and she never antes without a court order.

Say she buys two dollars’ worth o’ dime chips at the beginnin’ o’ the evenin’. Our game generally ’most always runs about four hours.

“Well,” I says, “

I’d rather have a dummy wife that costs me forty cents an evenin’ than a female philanthropist that thinks every night is Christmas and the rest o’ the people round the table is the slums.

”

“

Who expects to have fun for forty cents?

” I ask her.

The billiard experts never think o’ stickin’ three more object balls on the table so’s it’ll be easier to score. The colleges ain’t never considered supplyin’ the halfbacks with motorcycles to increase their speed.

When you put wild cards in a poker game you blow the brains out of it.

It’s an insult to the man that got it up. You might as well add the story o’ the two Irishmen to the Declaration of Independence, to make it funny.”

The colleges ain’t never considered supplyin’ the halfbacks with motorcycles to increase their speed. When you put wild cards in a poker game you blow the brains out of it. It’s an insult to the man that got it up.

You might as well add the story o’ the two Irishmen to the Declaration of Independence, to make it funny.

”

After that, the two couples that don’t live where the pastime was at goes home separate, so’s each couple can quarrel without the other overhearin’ it. The scrappin’ lasts till the party o’ the second part opens up the tear ducks.

Then you have to pretend like you didn’t mean none of it.

But I was goin’ to tell you about Harry Quinn. He’s a boy about twenty-three or twenty-four years old and he’s been down to the office about a year and a half.

“Could a man and wife live on sixteen a week?” he says.

“Live!” says I. “You could wallow in luxury.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so,” he says. “Marion’s father and mother was afraid that maybe I wasn’t gettin’ enough to support her.”

“Busy with what?” I ast him.

“Bein’ in love,” he says, blushin’ prettily.

“But do you know of any inexpensive trip we might take?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says I. “

Just because you’ve made one girl happy is no reason all the rest o’ them should be miserable.

”

For over seventy days, altogether, on an average o’ five times a day, I received the straight inside information that Mrs. Quinn was the best little wife a man ever had. It looked like he’d never get over thinkin’ it was news.

I’m not a nervous guy, as a rule. I take life easier than pretty near anybody I know.

But I leave it to you if the calmest fella in the world wouldn’t be affected by a thing like that if it went on long enough.

In the first place, she’s got a voice just like one o’ them air whistles that the flagman keeps pullin’ when they’re backin’ the Limited in.

In the second place, all her conversation’s so sweet that when she winds up a sentence you feel like you got to eat a pickle.

And besides that, she’s in the last and worst stage o’ giggleitis.