Short Fiction quotes

John and me talked it over and I’ll sign as soon as they send me a contract. All I told him was that he’d have to let me pick my own roommate after this and not sic no wild man on to me.

You know I didn’t hit much the last two months o’ the season. Some o’ the boys, I notice, wrote some stuff about me gettin’ old and losin’ my battin’ eye. That’s all bunk! The reason I didn’t hit was because I wasn’t gettin’ enough sleep. And the reason for that was Mr. Elliott.

He wasn’t with us after the last part o’ May, but I roomed with him long enough to get the insomny. I was the only guy in the club game enough to stand for him;

That stopped me and I didn’t say nothin’.

What could you say to a guy who hated himself like that?

The “accident” happened in St. Louis the first day. We needed two runs in the eighth and Saier and Brid was on, with two out. John tells Elliott to go up in Pierce’s place.

“Why didn’t you bust it, then?” says John.

“I was afraid I’d kill somebody,” says Elliott, and laughed like a big boob.

John was pretty near chokin’.

“

Pay day wouldn’t do me no good,

” he says. “When I’m all squared up with the club and begin to have a pay day I’ll only get a hundred bucks at a time, and I’ll owe that to some o’ you fellers.

“Well,” I says, “you didn’t show me no hittin’ today.”

“I couldn’t hit because I was laughin’ too hard,” says Elliott.

“What was it you was laughin’ at?” I says.

“

It’s a diff’rent climate here,

” I says, too disgusted to argue with him.

Maybe he’d pitch hard to one guy in a innin’, but then he’d quit workin’ and just float ’em up there like a balloon. Red told him one day to cut loose and see if he could go the route.

He might just as well of told him to shave himself with a dish o’ prunes.

He went right along the way he’d been doin’, pitchin’ like a bear cat oncet in a while and sloppin’ ’em over the rest o’ the time. We was playin’ the Richmond Club and they scored eleven runs, but Red wouldn’t take him out.

They give you a salary for playin’ ball, but they pinch a man for stealin’ a loaf o’ bread! If you’re the best pitcher in the Central League the rest o’ them is paralytics.

If we’d spent five thousand for the middle of a doughnut we’d have a better chancet o’ realizin’ on our investment.

If pepper was worth a million dollars a ounce you’d be rated at ten cents!”

If you’re the best pitcher in the Central League the rest o’ them is paralytics. If we’d spent five thousand for the middle of a doughnut we’d have a better chancet o’ realizin’ on our investment.

If pepper was worth a million dollars a ounce you’d be rated at ten cents!

”

“Girls is the same everywheres,” says Fogarty. “You can’t never make me believe that they’d chase him, unless it’s out o’ curiosity.

You’ll often see a crowd round a monkey cage, but it ain’t ’cause the monkeys is handsome.

”

“Some girls likes them big, dark fellers,” I says.

“Yes,” he says, “and some people likes the smell o’ garlic.”

“I s’pose we’ll get a lickin’ tomorrow,” I says. “Red ain’t got nobody left to work, outside of a few bushers.”

Pat quit when he seen he had competition. Everybody stopped talkin’ and listened.

I wisht you could of heard it! It was like as though all the ferryboats in East River had got into trouble at once.

Their idea o’ singin’ was to see how many sour notes they could hit and how loud they could hit ’em.

I had met Grimes one day during the spring he was with the Cubs, but I knew he wouldn’t remember me.

A ball player never recalls a reporter’s face on less than six introductions or his name on less than twenty.

However, I resolved to speak to him, and had just mustered sufficient courage to open a conversation when he saved me the trouble.

“Shut up, you lucky stiff!” I says.

“If you wasn’t so dam’ lucky you’d be sweepin’ the streets.”

Then I walks on out.

I’m not boastin’ about my first experience with Johnson though. They can’t never tell me he throws them balls with his arm.

He’s got a gun concealed about his person and he shoots ’em up there.

I was leadin’ off in Murphy’s place and the game was a little delayed in startin’, because I’d watched the big guy warm up and wasn’t in no hurry to get to that plate. Before I left the bench Connie says:

I couldn’t be no worse off than I was up there.

Managin’ a club may be all OK if the directors is all bachelors and has all o’ them tooken a oath not to never get married.

But when a man’s got a wife, they ain’t no tellin’ when he’s goin’ to die, and when he dies and she gets a hold o’ the ball club, good night.

I says: “It wouldn’t hurt my feelin’s if he never pitched nowheres.”

“Well,” she says, “I hope you’ll see to it, because my doctor tells me the spitball ain’t sanitary.”

Then, one day, she ast me what made Hub’s cheek bulge out so when he worked. I told her he had a ulcer on his teeth.

“Don’t never pay no attention to what them Philly guys tells you.

If I want you to steal a base, I’ll send you a night letter.

”

“No.” says I. “He didn’t never go through no Yale college.

If they was any college that he went through, it was this here Wellesley college.

”

The man was going to move out of town and

I supose he dident want to stick it in his sutecase for the fear he would get some grease on his other shirt.

So she called the man up and says I would be over to see him that p.m.

per gal. and I says give us ½ a pt. but he says he dident sell nothing less then a gal. so we had to buy a gal. off him.

I guess he must have thot we was going to frisco or some wheres.

But I figgured may be we would meet an other moterist that was shy and we could sell him back what we dident need. But thats been a wk. a go and wear still carrying all that extra bessides the bottle I bought.

Any way we will keep you posted & may be bring back a present for you & Kate.

Well Ed. take good care of your self and go home nights.

your Bro. Larry M. Burns.

they is & they dont go near where them ice bgs. is at so they is not much danger of nothing going wrong & I am not worring because it dont get a man nothing to worry.

Be good Ed. & dont take no bad money.

on the prinzessin Katrina. July. 25.19.14.

His right name was Frank X. Farrell, and I guess the X stood for “Excuse me.” Because he never pulled a play, good or bad, on or off the field, without apologizin’ for it.

“Alibi Ike” was the name Carey wished on him the first day he reported down South. O’ course we all cut out the “Alibi” part of it right away for the fear he would overhear it and bust somebody.

“He looks like he could hit,” I says.

“Yes,” says Carey, “but he can’t hit near as good as he can apologize.”

Then Carey went on to tell me what Ike had been pullin’ out there.

“I had malaria most o’ the season,” says Ike. “I wound up with .356.”

“Where would I have to go to get malaria?” says Carey, but Ike didn’t wise up.

I and Carey and him set at the same table together for supper. It took him half an hour longer’n us to eat because he had to excuse himself every time he lifted his fork.

I and Carey and him set at the same table together for supper.

It took him half an hour longer’n us to eat because he had to excuse himself every time he lifted his fork.

“Doctor told me I needed starch,” he’d say, and then toss a shoveful o’ potatoes into him. Or, “They ain’t much meat on one o’ these chops,” he’d tell us, and grab another one. Or he’d say:

We knowed he hadn’t never left the hotel since we’d came in from the grounds and changed our clo’es. So Carey says:

“I should think they’d take them gravel pits out o’ the billiard room.”

But Ike was already on his way to the elevator, limpin’.

“And at that,” says Jack, “he’s goin’ to make us a good man.”

“Yes,” says Carey, “unless rheumatism keeps his battin’ average down to .400.”

Well, sir, Ike kept whalin’ away at the ball all through the trip till everybody knowed he’d won a job.

“You’re there, kid,” says Carey to Ike, the night Cap made the ’nnouncement. “They ain’t many boys that wins a big league berth their third year out.”

“I’d of been up here a year ago,” says Ike, “only I was bent over all season with lumbago.”

It rained down in Cincinnati one day and somebody organized a little game o’ cards. They was shy two men to make six and ast I and Carey to play.

“Then how does he keep posted about your sick uncle?” ast Carey.

“He don’t,” says Ike. “He don’t even know my other uncle’s sick. That’s why I ought to wire and tell him.”

“What town in Idaho is your old man at?” I says.

“I ain’t lookin’ for no good time,” says Ike. “I says I was goin’ scoutin’.”

“Well, then,” says Carey, “I hope you see somebody you like.”

“And you better have a drink before you go,” I says.

“And probably the strangest part of the story,” I added, “is that Art doesn’t seem to regret it. He and the kid appear to be the best of friends.”

“Anybody who can sing is Art’s friend,” said Ryan.

I left him and went back to my seat to tear off my seven hundred words before we reached Springfield.

For in spite of Waldron’s wonderful work, and he is at his best right now, the club hasn’t done nearly as well as when Art and Bill and Lefty were still with us.

There seems to be a lack of harmony.

I read the other day where some doctor says everybody should ought to have their appendixes and their tonsils and their adenoids cut out when they’re still a baby yet. Well, them things didn’t never give me no trouble. But

I wisht I’d of had my brains removed before I ever learned to use ’em. They’re the worst handicap a man can have in this business.

The less a guy knows, so much the sooner he can retire and live on his income.

Well, them things didn’t never give me no trouble. But I wisht I’d of had my brains removed before I ever learned to use ’em. They’re the worst handicap a man can have in this business.

The less a guy knows, so much the sooner he can retire and live on his income.

You think I’m just talkin’ against time? No, sir; you’re listenin’ to the truth now. And if you don’t believe me ask Carey. Ask him to tell you about Skull Scoville. Or if you ain’t too sleepy I’ll tell you about him myself.

“I ain’t sure myself,” says Dode, “but I and Bobby was talkin’ it over and we figured that Pat just plain got sick o’ hearin’ him talk.”

“Feed that to the goldfish,” I says. “If Pat couldn’t stand conversation he wouldn’t of never lasted this long.”

“Conversation, yes,” Dode says; “but it’s a different thing when a bird makes an argument out of everything that’s said. They wasn’t a day passed but what Hawley just as good as called everybody on the club a liar.

“I lost my head,” said Joe.

“Impossible!” said I. “You couldn’t lose what you never had.”

Pretty soon Bixby came to. He asked for the score and we told him. We told him what had happened, and he lit into Joe pretty near as hard as I had.

“No, I guess not!” says Cahill. “Us burglars stick together.” And then, on the way back to the bench, he turned to Bull and says:

“You’re so crooked you could sleep in a French horn.”

Bull was just puttin’ on his mask, but he throwed it on the ground and tore after Cahill. He nailed him right on the edge o’ the dugout, and what a beatin’ he give him!

“You’re a fine umpire!” he says.

“I can’t be right all the time,” says Bull. “Even the best of us misses ’em sometimes. But I’ll have to miss the next two in succession to tie your score.”

We was one run ahead when the ninth begin. We got two o’ them out and then Hank Douglas made a base hit and stole second.

“I’m learnin’ fast,” says Bull.

“I just found out why they call your club the Naps.”

He didn’t put nobody out of a game till along in the middle o’ that season. We was playin’ Washin’ton and Kennedy was in a battin’ slump. He was sore at the world and tryin’ to take it out on the umps.

“Hasn’t nobody told you?” says Bull. “You been out of it pretty near two weeks.”

“You’re about as funny as choppin’ down trees,” says Kennedy.

“Go in and dress,” Bull told him. “Maybe you’ll find your battin’ eye in your street clo’es.”

Kennedy didn’t get suspended, and when he come to bat in the first innin’ and seen that Bull had switched, he yelled to him: “Congratulations! You ought to do better out there. It’s a cinch you couldn’t do worse.”

“Walter,” says Bull to Johnson, who was pitchin’, “give Kennedy a base on balls. I want to talk to him.”

In the last game o’ the series Kennedy finally did get a hold o’ one and hit it for two bases.

“Fine work, umps! You ought to go to an oculist and get the dust took out o’ your eyes.”

“Yes,” says Bull, “and you ought to go to a surgeon and have the bat removed from your shoulder.”

One afternoon Jennin’s started a kid named Sawyer against us. He was hog wild and he throwed ten balls without gettin’ a strike.

“What was the matter with that one?” says Sawyer.

“You pitched it,” says Bull.

He was base umpire once when Walsh caught Carney flatfooted off o’ third base. It was in the ninth innin’ and they was only the one run behind us, so Carney begin to whine.

“Why, Bull!” I says. “He was wastin’ that ball.”

“Sure he was,” says Bull. “All the good balls is wasted on you.”

And once in Washin’ton, we was two runs to the good in the ninth and had two men out and it looked all over. The next man—Milan, I think it was—hit a fly ball straight up and I hollered I was goin’ to take it.

“You blind owl!” I says to Bull. “Who told you you could umpire?”

“Who recommended you to Griffith?” says Bull.

That’s the way he was. You could set up all night and figure out what you was goin’ to say to him next day, and then when you said it, he’d come back with somethin’ that made you wish you hadn’t.

Midge Kelly scored his first knockout when he was seventeen. The knockee was his brother Connie, three years his junior and a cripple.

The purse was a half dollar given to the younger Kelly by a lady whose electric had just missed bumping his soul from his frail little body.

“I didn’t steal it. It’s mine. A lady give it to me after she pretty near hit me with a car.”

“It’s a crime she missed you,” said Midge.

Midge started for the front door. The cripple picked up his crutch, rose from his chair with difficulty, and, still sobbing, came toward Midge. The latter heard him and stopped.

“What ain’t too much?” asked Tommy.

“Well, Haley, I might as well give it to you straight. They ain’t nothin’ that ain’t too much.”

“You mean you don’t want me at no figger?”

“Don’t be no grouch, hon. You don’t look pretty when you’re grouchy.”

“It ain’t my business to look pretty,” Midge replied.

“Wait till you see how I look with the stuff I bought this mornin’!”

But a story built on their evidence would never have passed the sporting editor.

“Suppose you can prove it,” that gentleman would have said, “It wouldn’t get us anything but abuse to print it. The people don’t want to see him knocked. He’s champion.”

I picked those three to stop Kirby, and they went into the game with orders to watch him and pay no attention to anyone else. Say, I’ll give you a hundred dollars for every yard Kirby gained, either passing or running.

“I’m tickled to death when I hear there’s one big, individual star on a team we’ve got to play. That’s my favorite dish, a one-man team.”

“Well, then,” said Harris, “you’ll enjoy a hearty meal when we play Doane.”

The band started another tune. Someone had introduced the Coach’s parody to the crowd.

“Hang Doane’s Davis on a sour-apple tree,” sang the Blue and White rooters, and the Doane section smiled its appreciation.

But now the song was drowned in a flood of riotous cheers. Davis had arrived, Davis and the ten men who were to help him stage a fitting climax for his career of glory.

Billy was somewhere between his fourteenth and twenty-first highball; in other words, at his best, from the audience’s standpoint. His dialogue was simply screaming and his dancing just heavenly.

He was Frank Tinney doubling as Vernon Castle.

On the floor he tried and accomplished twinkles that would have spelled catastrophe if attempted under the fourteen mark, or over the twenty-one. And he said the cutest things—one right after the other.

He was Frank Tinney doubling as Vernon Castle. On the floor he tried and accomplished twinkles that would have spelled catastrophe if attempted under the fourteen mark, or over the twenty-one. And he said the cutest things—one right after the other.

You can be charmed by a man’s dancing, but you can’t fall in love with his funniness.

If you’re going to fall in love with him at all, you’ll do it when you catch him in a serious mood.

Coles and Mr. Lester, and left us. I watched both of the men’s faces when they were introduced to Kate, and was glad to see that they were gentlemanly enough to receive her as politely as they had received me.

“Well, girlie,” said Kate after Mr. Garrett left, “I am half starved and the other half hungry. What have you ordered for us to eat?”

Then I realized that I had forgotten all about ordering our breakfast, and I am afraid I blushed furiously. I stammered something about not having seen a bill-of-fare and no waiter having been at our table since my arrival. Mr. Lester came to my rescue.

We were going through Wyoming, and most of it is just nothing but desert; but once in a while there is a small town; and right after we had passed through one of these little towns, Mr. Coles asked what town it was.

“I could not see the town,” was Mr. Lester’s reply. “There was a boxcar in front of it.”

“How are you enjoying the trip?” Mr. Coles asked me.

“Did you see all that corn in Nebraska yesterday?” he inquired.

“Aren’t you glad you did not have it all on your feet?” he said, and I thought I would simply fall out of my chair.

When the waiter came in with the men’s order they insisted on sharing it with us till the waiter could fill our own.

“My girlfriend, Miss Hayes, is tired out and does not feel well,” was my reply.

“Probably she got a good look at herself in the glass,” said Mr. Lester, and though I bit my lips till they almost bled, I could not help from laughing.

But when I had controlled myself again, I said:

“We certainly do,” was my reply.

“It’s always the way,” said Mr. Lester. “A pippin and a prune are always coupled in the betting.”

“I don’t understand your slang expressions, Mr. Lester,” I said. “But I assure you you can look a long ways before you will find Kate Hayes’s equal.”

“But what are you going to do?” I asked her.

“I am going for a walk,” was her reply. “I am going over to see the Sleeping Giant. I think it is about time he woke up.”

Of course she was joking but imagine a girl like Kate going out for a walk alone after dark. I do believe she is getting sentimental. Poor old Kate.

My only alibi is that I left my feelin’s get the best o’ me, and that excuse wouldn’t be worth a dime with him; they’s no excuse that would be, where his pocketbook’s concerned, like in this case.

He just simply hates money!

The worst of it is that Hagedorn didn’t deserve no consideration. I like to see a fella get all that’s comin’ to him, provided he goes after it in the right way and puts up a real fight.

“You’ve been playin’ long enough to know better’n that,” says I. “

If you think any ball player’s goin’ without his prunes to help out some other ball player, you got even less brains than I figured.

”

But it ain’t our fault, is it, if they’d rather have us and ask Mac to let them? Fellas that does as much for the club as them, they’ve got a right to have the caddies they like.

Well, if they were all Mr. Joyces nobody’d have a kick coming.

But, believe me, there’s a few guys in the club that’s so tight you could play on them with a drumstick!

Well, they decided Mr. Perkins should have the honor, and he started off with a twenty-yard drive, right down the middle.

Mr. Conklin put his hand over his whiskers so’s Mr. Perkins couldn’t see him smile

, and then teed his Whizz. He took his stance with his kneecaps kissing each other and stood there wiggling his toes and elbows till he had all four of us nervous. Finally he swang, and away she went.

Mr. Perkins made a holler.

“Halved it nothing!” he said.

“Even if I give you that putt you didn’t make, I got you beat a stroke, 6 and 7.”

Well, I’ve found a lucrative profession that you can go into without payin’ for lessons or wastin’ time on ’em. Anybody in the world can be a mechanic in a garage. You don’t have to know nothin’.

All you got to do is give your conscience a sleepin’ potion and borrow a pair of overalls.

The reason I got a car lives out in Hyde Park, but she’s thinkin’ about leavin’ there. Her name’s Alice. I ain’t alone in considerin’ her the greatest girl that ever lived; at least, they’s been others.

“You certainly pull some original remarks,” says I. “Now, get busy! Because I’m comin’ back here at eleven o’clock, and if you ain’t ready for me they’ll be trouble.”

“If they wasn’t no trouble,” he says, “they wouldn’t be no garages.”

“Good!” says I. “You can pull cute ones when you try.”

I didn’t tell you to kill my batteries or take out my floor board or monkey with my clutch or gum up my cylinders or put my starter on the hummer or douse my lights.

I just wanted gas and oil and air, them three.

”

It was simply tough luck that he had to sit, on his way gameward this blizzardy June day, beside one of those born genials to whom proximity is a formal introduction and an excuse for opening up.

“Looks,” said this fluent soul, “like as if we’d soon be bone dry.”

“Oh, I guess not for ten or a dozen years,” said Mr. Arnold.

“I don’t want no service.”

“I’m sick, but it ain’t incurable. It ain’t even going to cost me anything to get well⁠—that is, no money.”

“What is it going to cost you?”

“The engine’s a little stiff,” said Cross.

“The driver’s a big one,” I said to the Missus.

“They call this car the Clubby Roadster,” said Cross. “It’s a roadster, but most of them only have the driver’s seat, where this one’s got the extra seat for two more passengers.

“If it wasn’t for straining the engine,” he said, “I’d start right out on high.”

“Anyway,” said I, “that’s where we’ll probably finish.”

We hadn’t been out of bed more than two hours, but that didn’t stop my Missus from going to sleep before we struck South Chicago.

“Maybe we’re not on the right road,” said Nan.

“Whose fault is it if we ain’t?” said Cross, and his tone was not that of a passionate lover.

I whispered to the Missus. “This may not be such a rotten trip after all,” I said.

“You’ve got some vocabulary! Six words and a bark!”

I’d been through New Buffalo on the train, but never knew before why they call it that. It’s because the sensation of motoring through the streets is like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

A mile or so the other side we stopped dead, all spraddled out over a railroad track.

“I’ve killed my engine,” said Cross.

“That has nothing to do with theirs,” said I, and I got out to stretch.

We’d been pulling through sand in second speed, and at the time of the engine’s demise our host had neglected to shift into neuter. So when his foot pressed the self-starter, the Champion was off the track in one jump.

“If you don’t like the way I drive, you know what you can do,” said Cross.

“Yes sir,” said I, “and I’m going to do it.”

And while we were breezing along the beautiful road to Three Oaks at a nineteen-mile gait, I confided my plans to the Missus.

As you say, it is a great deal of trouble for me to write. Yet I am going to take that trouble once or twice more before my pen and I are too hopelessly rusted.

Your confidence that you will be able to live on your salary pleases me beyond measure and leaves me free to dispose of my modest means as I see fit.

I presume that should you, in some daredevil undertaking in behalf of your government, lose sight of discretion in patriotism and perish of, say, poisoned shoe-blacking, your widow would always be well provided for by said government.

… you forward me the name and address of the poor sucker who enlisted in the infantry right after we declared war, won only a corporal’s stripes though he fought in France a year and is now lying in a French hospital, through as a soldier.

Third, that the letter providing me with the information regarding him be the last you write me, for though it is a great deal of trouble for me to write, it is even more to read.

Your grandfather (God help him), Henry R. Barnes.

Otherwise the story is presented to the reader exactly as it was first set down.

My parents are both married and ½ of them are very good looking.

The balance is tall and skiny and has a swarty complexion with moles but you hardily ever notice them on account of your gaze being rapped up in his feet which would be funny if brevvity wasnt the soul of wit.

I did say that but I thorght I would surprise you by comeing into Ann Arbor replid my father with a corse jesture.

Personly I think the suprise was unanimous.

Well now we are here said my mother we might as well look up Bill.

Thanks very much said my father with a slite sneeze but you see what I have got on my hands besides witch I have been driveing all day and half to start out again erly in the morning so I guess not.

Between you and I dear reader my old man has been oposed to pugilisms since the 4 of July holycost.

Who is that man arsked my mother when that man had gone away.

How did you know where he lived quired my mother barshfully.

I used the brains god gave me was my fathers posthumous reply.

Soon we rumpled into Rhinebeck and as it was now day light and the rain had siezed we puled up in front of the Beekman arms for brekfus.

Take the Boston post replid the policeman.

I have all ready subscribed to one out of town paper said my father and steped on the gas

so we will leave the flat foot gaping after us like a prune fed calf and end this chapter.

Well, the war wound up in the fall of 1918. The only member of my family that was killed in it was my wife’s stepfather. He died of grief when it ended with him two hundred thousand dollars ahead.

I immediately had a black bandage sewed round my left funny bone, but when they read us the will I felt all right again and tore it off.

Our share was seventy-five thousand dollars. This was after we had paid for the inheritance tax and the amusement stamps on a horseless funeral.

“I don’t know how they do it,” he would say. “Other leather men is getting rich on contracts with the Allies, but I can’t land a one.”

I guess he was trying to sell razor strops to Russia.

Even after we got into it and he begin to clean up, with the factory running day and night, all as we knew was that he had contracts with the U.S. Government, but he never confided in us what special stuff he was turning out.

“You ought to of seen the way he looked at her in the diner,” said the Mrs. “He looked like he wanted to eat her up.”

“Everybody gets desperate in a diner these days,” I said.

“Did you and Kate go fifty-fifty with him? Did you tell him how much money we got?”

“Trumbull,” said the Mrs. “He said he was keeping bachelor quarters, but I don’t know if he’s really a bachelor or a widower. Anyway, he’s a dandy fella and must have lots of money. Just imagine living alone in one of these apartments!”

“Imagine living in one of them whether you’re a bachelor or a Mormon,” I says.

“Who said he lived alone?” asked Katie.

“If you think this is hot,” says our friend, “just wait till the summer comes.

The Old Town certainly steams up in the Old Summer Time.

”

Once in a wile one of them cracks that it looks like they was bound to be a panic pretty soon and a big drop in prices, and so forth. This shows they’re broad-minded and are giving a good deal of thought to up-to-date topics.

Every so often one of them’ll say: “The present situation can’t keep up.” The hell it can’t!

By one o’clock their appetites is whetted so keen from brain exercise that they make a bum out of a plate of soup and an order of Long Island duckling, which they figure is caught fresh every day, and they wind up with salad and …

The gals worked fast wile I was gone and when I come back it was arranged that Daley was to take us to the track next afternoon in his small car.

His small car was a toy that only had enough room for the people that finds fault with Wilson.

I suppose he had to leave his big car in New York on account of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge being so frail.

“Whisky’s a terrible thing,” says Ella.

A woman’ll sometimes pretend for a long wile like she’s stupid and all of a sudden pull a wise crack that proves she’s a thinker.

“Well,” says Daley, “when Bradley give him the air, I took him, and he’s been all right. I guess maybe I know how to handle men.”

“Men and horses,” said Daley. “I ain’t never tried to handle the fair sex and I don’t know if I could or not. But I’ve just met one that I think could handle me.”

And he give her a look that you could pour on a waffle.

Daley had a table saved for him in the clubhouse and we eat our lunch. The gals had clubhouse sandwiches, probably figuring they was caught fresh there.

I and the boy acted as pall bearers and got him to his “suite,” where we performed the last sad rites. Before I come away I noticed that the “suite” was a ringer for Ella’s and mine—a dinky little room with a bath.

The “study” was prettily furnished with coat hangers.

When I got back to my room Katie’d ducked and the Mrs. was asleep, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to them till we was in the restaurant at noon.

I suppose you could call it a frame. But it wasn’t like no frame that was ever pulled before.

They’s been plenty where one guy was paid to lay down. This is the first I heard of where a guy had to be bribed to win.

And it’s the first where a bird was bribed and didn’t know it.

Bill Brennan was in Kid Howard’s gymnasium in Chi, working out, and they was a gang looking on. Howard seen one boy in the crowd that you couldn’t help from noticing. He was made up for one of the hicks in Way Down East.

He’d bought his collar in Akron and his coat sleeves died just south of his elbow.

From his pants to his vest was a toll call. He hadn’t never shaved and his w’iskers was just the right number and len’th to string a violin. Thinks Howard to himself:

She was up on the porch of a big house and they was a dude there, trying to make love to her.

So she didn’t like him and that’s why she screamed.

So this young fella went in and grabbed the dude and knocked him for a long trip. So the gal got stuck on this young fella, the boxer, and married him and she turned out to be a millionaire.”

Believe me, if we do get a break like that, I’ll demand a purse that’ll knock their eye out. Because fights is going to be few and far between for my little ward.

His trouble is that he’s too good. He’d be better if he was worse.

Right now they’s no man in sight that it wouldn’t be a joke to match him with.

It would be doing everybody such a big favor and make them all happy. But how could I go about it? If the guy was big and had a real haymaker I could take one and flop.

But I can’t play dead from a kiss.

”

on the chin too. Because I ain’t no defensive fighter. I go in there to get my man and in order to get him I’m willing to take what he’s got. And listen: I’ve been hit on the chin before, and not by children, neither.

But I hardly ever lay down unless it’s bedtime.

”

“How’s that?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, “the way I’ve got it figured out, he wasn’t big enough.”

“By gosh!” I said. “I believe you’ve hit the nail right on the head!”

… it is just the opp and I try to keep in the back ground when the fair sex appears on the seen as cadding for ladies means you will get just so much money and no more as theys no chance of them loosning up.

As Joe says the rule against tipping is the only rule the woman folks keeps.

Theys one lady how ever who I like to caddy for as she looks like Lillian Gish and it is a pleasure to just look at her and I would caddy for her for nothing tho it is hard to keep your eye on the …

Well Mr Thomas got a 7 on the 3rd and he said well it is no wonder I am off of my game today as I was up ½ the night with my teeth.

Well said Mr Carter if I had your money why on the night before a big tournament like this I would hire somebody else to set up with my teeth.

Well I wished I could remember all that was said and done but any way Mr Thomas kept getting sore and sore and we got to the 7th tee and he had not made a decent tee shot all day so Mr Blake said to …

Mother says that when I start talking I never know when to stop. But I tell her the only time I get a chance is when she ain’t around, so I have to make the most of it.

I guess the fact is neither one of us would be welcome in a Quaker meeting, but as I tell Mother, what did God give us tongues for if He didn’t want we should use them?

Only she says He didn’t give them to us to say the same thing over and over again, like I do, and repeat myself. But I say:

But it may be new to others, as they ain’t nobody else lived with me as long as you have.”

“You can bet they ain’t, as they couldn’t nobody else stand you that long.”

“Well,” I tell her, “you look pretty healthy.”

“Well,” I tell her, “you look pretty healthy.”

“Maybe I do,” she will say, “but I looked even healthier before I married you.”

You can’t get ahead of Mother.

“Maybe I do,” she will say, “but I looked even healthier before I married you.”

You can’t get ahead of Mother.

Yes, sir, we was married just fifty years ago the seventeenth day of last December and my daughter and son-in-law was over from Trenton to help us celebrate the Golden Wedding. My son-in-law is John H. Kramer, the real estate man.

I said to Mother: “Well,” I said, “I guess it’s a good thing every day ain’t your birthday or we would be in the poorhouse.”

“No,” says Mother, “because if every day was my birthday, I would be old enough by this time to of been in my grave long ago.”

You can’t get ahead of Mother.

Hartsell took her over to where they was pitching horseshoes and there was old Frank, waiting his turn. And he knowed Mother as soon as he seen her, though it was over fifty years.

He said he knowed her by her eyes.

“Why, it’s Lucy Frost!” he says, and he throwed down his shoes and quit the game.

Mother laughed and said I sounded like I was jealous.

Jealous of a cow doctor!

Anyway we had to drag them along to the social and I will say that we give them a much better entertainment than they had given us.

“Well,” I said, “why didn’t you marry him?”

“Well,” said Mother, “I almost wished I had!”

“And I wished so, too!” I said.

“Now Princess,” they said to her in a friendly way, “if you can tell us the name of the bird which you are sleeping on under all these condiments, why then we will know you are a true princess and worthy to marry the prince.”

“Prince!” she said. “Is that the name of a dog?”

They all laughed at her in a friendly way.

… Pat and Mike started for Webster Hall in a bonded taxi and they hadn’t much sooner than went when a little bit of an old dame stepped out of the kitchen sink and stood in front of Cinderella and says she was her fairy godmother.

“Listen,” says Cinderella: “don’t mention mother to me! I’ve tried two different kinds and they’ve both been a flop!”

“Yes, but listen yourself,” says the godmother: “wouldn’t you like to go to this here dance?”

Like for instance they was one occasion when he looked at her feet and asked her what was her shoes made of.

“Don’t you feel no pane?” asked the Prince.

Other guests heard this one and the laughter was general.

“Well, grandmother,” she says, “you must of hit the old hair tonic last night. Your arms looks like Luis Firpo.”

“I will Firpo you in a minute,” says the dog.

“But listen grandmother,” says Red, “don’t you think you ought to have your ears bobbed?”

… her 2 brothers and the guys that was stuck on her showed up and stuck a safety razor into Bluebeard’s whiskers and the shock of getting shaved killed him and the little woman and her relatives divided the spoils and believe me spoils is right.

The moral of this story is if your husband don’t get shaved for 3 days, somebody should ought to step in and do their duty.

“That,” I said, “sounds like a steal on Kipling.”

“Kipling yourself!” said the poet, and I loped over the nearest hedge.

“But listen,” he said: “Have you heard my ‘Gooseflesh,’ after the style of Alfred Geese?”

“That,” said Mr. Splew, “is the verse I have worked on all winter.”

“It’s been a hard winter,” I said. “We didn’t have enough coal either.”

With that, he climbed up on top of the pigeon house.

“Listen. This is pretty important—”

“I’m sorry, but it’s against the rules to disturb any of the officers in conference.”

“How long will the conference last?”

All the boys would roar at this and Milt himself would force a smile, though the joke was on him.

Jim certainly was a card!

There’s his shavin’ mug, settin’ on the shelf, right next to Charley Vail’s. “Charles M. Vail.” That’s the druggist. He comes in regular for his shave, three times a week. And Jim’s is the cup next to Charley’s. “James H. Kendall.”

He told it all round town, how he had outfoxed his Missus. He certainly was a caution!

But he wasn’t satisfied with just outwittin’ her.

He was sore the way she had acted, tryin’ to grab off his pay. And he made up his mind he’d get even. Well, he waited till Evans’s Circus was advertised to come to town.

that is, he don’t soak him, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don’t mind much shavin’ a dead person.

They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don’t feel like talkin’ to them and you get kind of lonesome.

Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w’ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman’s voice and she said she was Mrs.

So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself!

He wasn’t no more dead than, well, than a rabbit.

It didn’t take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!

Anyway, it begin to seem like us and the Stevenses was livin’ together and all one family, with them at the head of it. I never in my life seen anybody as crazy to run other people’s business.

Honest to heavens, it’s a wonder they let us brush our own teeth!

Ada made the remark one night that she wished the ski jumper who was doin’ our cookin’ would get married and quit so’s she wouldn’t have to can her. Mrs.

So the next thing was where should we go, and we finally decided on Miami. And we said we wouldn’t mention nothin’ about it to Tom and Belle till the day we was goin’. We’d pretend we was doin’ it out of a clear sky.

But a secret is just as safe with Ada as a police dog tethered with dental floss.

It wasn’t more than a day or two after we’d had our talk when Tom and Belle sprang the news that they was leavin’ for California right after New Year’s. And why didn’t we go with them.

“Great!” I said, and I went back and broke it to Ada. For a minute I thought she was goin’ to faint. And all night long she moaned and groaned and had hysterics.

So that’s how we happened to come to Biloxi.

And only three letters. That couldn’t be right. So I said if they put things wrong like that, what’s the use? Life’s too short. And we only live once.

When you’re dead, you stay a long time dead.

“That’s what a B.F. of mine used to say. He was a caution! But he was crazy about me. I might of married him only for a G.F. telling him lies about me. And called herself my friend! Charley Pierce.”

“I like a man to respect me.

Most fellas wants to kiss you before they know your name.

“Golly! I’m sleepy this morning! And got a right to be, too. Do you know what time I got home last night, or this morning, rather? Well, it was half past three. What would mama say if she could see her little girl now!

“But say—did you ever hear of J. P. Morgan and Company? That’s where my B.F. works, and he don’t claim to own it neither. George Morse.

“Haven’t you finished that book yet?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Young Jake. “I didn’t get along so bad with them dames down South.”

“Down South ain’t here!” replied Lefty.

“Those dames in some of those swamps, they lose their head when they see a man with shoes on. But up here you’ve got to have something.

There! She asked me who you was when you was out there coachin’. So I told her, and she give me that note. She said you could answer yes or no.”

“Make it ‘yes,’ ” said Healy, and Trude went away.

Healy threw the crumpled note under the water bottle and addressed Young Jake.

“What I want you to get through your head, boy—”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, shut up!” said Young Jake.

Her cheeks, her mouth, her eyes, and lashes had been, he guessed, far above the average in beauty before she had begun experimenting with them. And her experiments had been clumsy.

She was handsome in spite of her efforts to be handsomer.

“Listen, sweetheart,” said her husband. “One of the servants has been helping himself to this Bourbon. I mean it was a full bottle last night and I only had one little drink out of it. And now it’s less than half full.

Conrad Green woke up depressed and, for a moment, could not think why.

Then he remembered. Herman Plant was dead; Herman Plant, who had been his confidential secretary ever since he had begun producing;

“Read it to me, will you? I’ve overstrained my eyes lately.”

The dead Herman Plant had first heard of that recent eye strain twenty years ago. It amounted to almost total blindness where words of over two syllables were concerned.

“So far,” Lewis read, “Ettelson has not had a book worthy of his imaginative, whimsical music. How we would revel in an Ettelson score with a Barrie libretto and a Conrad Green production.”

She said that during the week of his illness he talked of you nearly all the time and expressed confidence that if he died you would attend his funeral. So she wished you had been there.”

“Good God! So do I!” said Conrad Green.

“Not at all,” was Hazel’s reply to his polite query. “

I’m so used to trains that I believe I could ride on top of them and not be uncomfortable.

”

We tried to get a compartment or drawing-room, but they were all gone. Sis and I had a compartment the time we went to New Orleans. I slept in the upper.”

Mildred wished she had gone places so she could take part in the conversation.

Mr. Chapman must think she was terribly dumb.

Still it would be a heavenly place under different conditions, for instance if Walter were here, too. It would be heavenly if he were here, the very thought of it makes my heart stop.

I can’t stand it. I won’t think about it.

This is our first separation since we have been engaged, nearly 17 days. It will be 17 days tomorrow.

… feeling his best when I do tell him, but whether he is all right or not I simply must tell him tomorrow because he is actually planning to leave here on the same train with us Saturday night and I can’t let him do that.

Life is so hopeless and it could be so wonderful.

For instance how heavenly it would be if I could marry Frank first and stay married to him five years and he would be the one who would take me to Hollywood and maybe we could go on parties with Norman Kerry and Jack Barrymore …

“Well, we’ll give you fifty thousand dollars cash,” he said.

Wallace fainted and when he came to, his scruples were all gone.

L. N. and Wolf had put another one over on Supreme and they spent the rest of the morning holding hands and slapping each other on the back. L. N.

“I beg your pardon,” replied the writer.

“Je ne parle pas le Wop.”

I forget what else happened.

“Well, Mrs. Madison,” I said, “you look kind of peaked. You look like you was suffering from the grip.”

“Anybody that battles with Young Stribling suffers from the grip,” was the reply of Old Hickory’s madam.

Before the second encore, I was calling my partner “Dolly” and she was calling me “Lard” and that night marked the beginning of a friendship that soon ripened into apathy.

So all that the Langtry and I could find to do was walk up and down, walk up and down. I noticed that she grew more and more uninterested and one day she yawned several times and then uttered an exclamation of tedium.

“No wonder,” she said, “they call this the Bored Walk.”

All this happened in the summer of my seventeenth year and in the fall I made up my mind to go to college.

“Lardy,” he said, “I’d give anything to get Bera married off.”

“All you have to do,” I replied, “is get her married. She is already off.”

“The trouble is,” he continued, when the laughter had died down to a certain extent, “that she is tiger mad. She won’t look at a human.”

“Did he win?” I inquired.

“He lost his shirt,” said Mrs. Stevens (Lydia).

“Sis-boom-ah! Tiger!” This from Bera.

Q. Where is your appendix located? A. In Washington Park Hospital, Chicago, unless the cleaning woman has been in.

Q. How does the stomach act when you eat regularly? A. Surprised.

Q. What has been your hospital experience? A. Terrible.

Q. What would you do in a case of an epileptic fit? A. Call a doctor.

Q. What would you do if somebody had a stroke? A. See that they counted it.

Most young doctors make the mistake of hanging out their shingles in large or small cities where there are already more medicos than can earn a comfortable living.

The potato salad which I served with the cold cuts was covered with a sort of ether dressing and from each patron I managed to remove at least his tonsils without his being any the wiser.

A certified public accountant once estimated that if all the tonsils I cut out during lunch hours were laid end to end, it would be a nuisance.

I was now nineteen years of age and thinking of getting married. I consulted a friend of mine, Dr. Flip.

After endless experimenting by the wealthy nimrods of Beacon Street, Brookline and South Boston, it was found that a straw would reek havioc with his vertebrae, and Mr. Whelton’s fortune was made.

The other invention of that year was the telephone. They are still trying to find the guy.

The first telephone exchange had only one number, Central 1. All the subscribers had to take that for their number and when you called up, there was no telling whom you would get.

“But, Miss Bayes,” I remonstrated, “if you are only going to Albany, why do you want a berth to Syracuse?”

“Because I always sleep past my station,” was her reply.

This struck me as so comical that I hurried up to the athletic field of the University of Columbia and watched some of the men practice broad jumping.

… wife, a tall, gangling Swiss girl named Emma Geezle, whose father had made his money in Alpine stock, said she had lived all her life in a little haunch at the corner of Broadway and Forty-second street and she was sick of the bright lights.

“Take me,” she said, “to some town where we won’t be dazzled by the lights.”

So I asked a prominent realtor to recommend a town where there would be no danger of being blinded by electricity.

got a foundry there or something—the two of us went up in his room and polished off a bottle of Scotch and then it was time to dress for dinner.

That’s all I done about dinner the whole month I was in Miami⁠—I dressed for it, but I never got it.

Hargrave said he knew a swell jernt out near Hialeah and we hired a car and drove out there and it was a place where you dined and danced, but we wasn’t hungry and we didn’t have nobody to dance with.

One of the funniest things about him was his walk and I’ll never forget the first time we seen him go out to take his turn pitching to the batters.

He acted like he was barefooted and afraid of stepping on burrs.

He’d lift one dog and hold it in the air a minute till he could locate a safe place to put it down.

He said he did not see how I ever sat through a dinner party as he would think the waves in the finger bowl would upset me.

Bob just loves to tease me.

When we went in the dining room for lunch today the same head waiter was there as the last time and he remembered us after three years and gave us the same corner table we had the last time.

It is so heavenly here and such a wonderful place and we could be having such a heavenly time if it wasn’t for the Griffins.

Isn’t it a darn shame that a man can’t get away from business even on his vacation when he hasn’t had one in three years?

You will probably be surprised at me writing to you from this place. I arrived here by boat from Nassau this morning and was sick all the way and now I am waiting for train time.

They’s just as many red numbers as they is black numbers, so the red is bound to come as often as the black, and if you keep doubling up every time the red don’t come, why, you’re bound to be ahead at the finish.

I guess it was Columbus that played this system first and that’s why he didn’t have money enough to pay his own way over here.

Personally I’ve seen the black come nineteen times in succession and with people playing it most of the time, too.

“You know I do,” said Jess.

“Well, then,” said the gal, “I know you’ll keep picking them right. You see you can’t fool me.”

Jess said he didn’t realize then what she meant; he was too far gone to really think.

“The big bum,” Henry Goetz by name, was shy at first.

He was not accustomed to being wanted by anybody and it seemed unlikely that the little visitor boded well.

However, Sandy managed to coax him to a thinly disguised saloon and there to warm him into a less diffident mood.

“But if you had, I was going to warn you to keep away from them and not let them know where you’re at or what you’re doing. From now on you’re a Russian, your name is Ivan Ivanovitch and your nickname is ‘

The Venomous Viper of the Volga

.’ ”

“I haven’t told you,” said Lemp, “that when I was through with my story, he gave me the gun and ordered me to use it on myself.”

“Oh, Ben was always a generous boy,” said Runyon. “It surprises me that he didn’t offer to take you out on deck, shoot you and throw you off the ship.”

“Listen,” said Lemp: “I need one more drink for courage and then I’ve got to find my wife and take my scolding.

It was enough to keep the childless Taylors in comfort; in comparative luxury, even. Couples with smaller incomes owned cars, took trips to nearby lake resorts and to Harper City, where a stock company presented worthwhile plays.

But Louis was saving for a rainy day and his wife had long ago given up praying for rain.

Mrs. Taylor was winning her fourth successive victory over solitaire by the simple expedient of pretending that a black queen was red.

Couples with smaller incomes owned cars, took trips to nearby lake resorts and to Harper City, where a stock company presented worthwhile plays. But Louis was saving for a rainy day and his wife had long ago given up praying for rain.

Mrs. Taylor was winning her fourth successive victory over solitaire by the simple expedient of pretending that a black queen was red.

“It says here,” stated her husband, “that there are 27,650,267 automobiles in the world, according to a census just completed.”

“Listen to this: ‘The Netherlands’ unemployed now include 26,000 skilled and 24,000 unskilled workers.’ And listen: ‘A large proportion of Belgium’s population still wear wooden shoes.’ You wouldn’t think that was possible in this day and age!”

“I imagine,” said Mrs. Taylor, “that there are some places in the United States where people don’t wear any shoes at all.”

“Oh, sure, but not a large proportion; probably a few of those backwoods Tennessee mountaineers. And of course the colored people in the small towns in Georgia and South Carolina.

“I don’t want any flowers. But there is something I would like you to give me. And you don’t have to wait till tomorrow.”

“A punch in the eye,” said Mrs. Taylor.

“You’re feeling kind of funny, aren’t you? Did Florence have a shot of their homemade gin in her bag?”

“I’m afraid you aren’t,” said Mrs. Thayer.

“Lock the door,” said Ben, “before she comes in and feels our feet.”

All through breakfast next morning we waited in vain for the telephone call that would yield Irene’s message. The phone rang once and Mrs. Thayer answered, but we couldn’t hear what she said.

“You haven’t any excuse,” I reminded him.

“I’m a genius,” he said, “and geniuses are notoriously eccentric.”

“Geniuses’ wives sometimes get eccentric, too,” said I, and began to pack up.

She smiled at him again. “What time are you through?”

“Well,” said the girl, “some afternoon I may be going home about then⁠—”

“I told you I wasn’t ready to die.”

After supper he tried to read, but couldn’t. He listened awhile to the Ohman and Arden record which his wife couldn’t get enough of. He went to bed, wishing he could sleep and dream, wishing he could sleep two weeks.

He was up early, early enough to look at the paper before breakfast.

“Woman Motorist Killed By Streetcar in Bronx.” His eyes felt funny as he read:

Out of the house, alone, he talked aloud to himself for the first time since he was a kid.

“I can’t feel as bad as I think I do. I only seen her four or five times. I can’t really feel this bad.”

Well, on an afternoon two or three weeks later, a man named Hughes from White Plains, driving a Studebaker, started across Forty-sixth Street out of turn and obeyed a stern order to pull over to the curb.

“I mean, would you mind telling us about how much it cost? I’m not up in jewelry when it gets beyond Ingersoll watches.”

“I’m funny,” Jimmy said, “but not funny enough to tell what I spend on presents for my wife.”

“We’ll have to guess then. Is ten thousand close?”

“I imagine every day must be pretty hard for you men in the Street,” said Miss Rell.

“I’m not in any street,” said Harry. “Not even a path.”

“I know how secretive you Wall Street men are,” said Miss Rell, “but I wonder if you would do me a favor.

At the door he said:

“Remember, old girl, I’ve left your schoolmates just as I found them. They’re still free.”

Most always when a man leaves his wife, there’s no excuse in the world for him.

She may have made whoop-whoop-whoopee with the whole ten commandments, but if he shows his disapproval to the extent of walking out on her, he will thereafter be a total stranger to all his friends excepting the two or three bums who will tour the …

But the last day of March, two weeks before the date of our wedding, I ran into Jeff Cooper and he told me his news, that the Standard Oil was sending him to China in some big job that looked permanent.

“I’m perfectly willing to go,” he said.

“So is Bess. It’s a lot more money and we think it will be an interesting experience.

“If you make jokes like that in front of the Dwans,” she said, “I’ll never speak to you again.”

“I’d forgotten you ever did,” said I.

I was expecting a hostler to let us in, but Mrs. Dwan came in person.

“Don’t you see,” said Florence, “that a mahogany upright piano would be a perfect horror in here? Mildred wouldn’t have it as a gift, let alone buy it. It isn’t in the period.”

“She could get it tuned,” I said.

The answer to this was, “I’ll show you the upstairs now and we can look at the dining-room later on.”

“Put it on,” said her father.

“Not now. We haven’t time.”

“Then look at this!” said Grace, and opened the case of jewels.

“Of course I will.

People, and especially strangers, have no more right to criticise your bridge playing than your clothes or your complexion.

”

“You are in doubles. However, criticism in bridge is not confined to partners. I’ve made bonehead plays in bridge (I’ll admit it), and been laughed at and scolded for them by opponents who ought to have kissed me.

It’s a conviction of most bridge players, and some golf players, that God sent them into the world to teach.

At that, what they tell you isn’t intended for your edification and future good. It’s just a way of announcing ‘I’m smart and you’re a lunkhead.’ And to my mind it’s a revelation of bad manners and bad sportsmanship.

“Deaf! What makes you think I’m deaf?”

“I understood your sister to say you played the piano by ear.”

Knowing his wife would have taken something to make her sleep, and therefore not afraid of disturbing her, Shelton went home, got out a bottle of Linden Scotch and put the finishing touches on his bender. In the morning Mrs.

“Last time I saw Peggy, she said why didn’t we come out there this summer and at least rent, but of course then I knew it was impossible. Now, though—Well, I can’t imagine anything more ideal.”

Walter had been married ten years and his record of arguments was, total⁠—3,650; won, 0; lost, 3,650.

So it was only half-heartedly that he pointed out the objections to his wife’s plan: That Hampton Dunes was one of the “swellest” and most expensive places on Long Island;

The prices were terrific. She resolved not to tell Walter the facts and to economize thereafter. She wrote checks and sent them to the grocer and butcher, who, in their turn, fainted dead away when they received them.

They were not used to clients who settled their June and July bills before the following April.

Walter arrived home in time for dinner Friday nights. It was nice to get away from the stuffy, dirty, hot city and he made the most of his weekends by golfing, swimming and just lolling on the beach.

Walter, riding in on the train with Jack Bowen, said: “Did these people really get college degrees?”

“The faculty was sick of them,” said Bowen.

Jack admitted freely that neither Hart nor Parker was an intellectual giant, but he had a tremendous admiration for their courage, their willingness to risk, against odds, amounts that would seem like fortunes to most men, and the unruffled manner in which they took their …