Part 2

"Not till six o'clock?" He was asked when she had departed.

"Eight o'clock, eight o'clock this morning," he said. He then furnished the information that Quarterly Meeting lasted several days, and that Mrs. Woolen was on deck, to put it so, throughout.

From this point Mr. Woolen drifted into personal reminiscence of the surrender at Appomattox, in proof of his having been present at which, without his assertion having been questioned, he rather defiantly offered to exhibit "the papers," as he called them, which he said were "right there framed in the parlor." Though Mr. Woolen had been on the conquering side at the historic surrender, he rather suggested the idea of his having surrendered, in a more personal and figurative sense, at about that time also; that is to say, he did not impress one as having, for an able-bodied man, put up a very good fight since.

He was recalled to the matter of the washing, and, rising, led the way into the house to procure it. But directly the party had entered, Mr. Woolen fell back, obviously in amazement, upon the toes of those following him. He cried that it was "gone!"

"It was right there on that chair," he said, "in the corner. There's where she left it this morning. There's where she left it. Done up it was in newspaper. She said to me, 'There it is; now don't you let that go out of the house until you get your money for it.' That's what she said."

He was prevailed on to make a search through the house, though he contended obstinately that it was right there in the corner, and no other place, that that which they were seeking had been "left." He almost offered the presence there of the chair as evidence. A search of the house, however, was not exhausting nor impracticable, as there were but two rooms to it, these very snug, no closets, and an economy of furniture behind which the bundle might be.

Mr. Woolen's perturbation was too genuine for suspicion of his having made away with the package. But this very honesty of emotion, in conjunction with the circumstance of the absence of the washing, and divers indications in breath and manner, noticeable from the first, aided in making out a case against him. A jury would reasonably have inferred that Mr. Woolen had a frailty, known and provided against by his wife, that, specifically, he had a weakness which, though not uncommonly associated with the most amiable characters, is not compatible with being left to receive money for washing.

Mr. Woolen was decidedly provoked at the situation. "I can do a man's work," he said, stumbling restlessly about the room, "but not a woman's. I can lay brick, lay brick; that's my work, that's what I do, but I can't keep the house in order." It was not to be expected of him. Coming, in his movements, plump upon the door of the kitchen, he disappeared through it, and could be heard going about out of view, ostensibly still at the search, testily kicking the furniture and mumbling concerning "her being away with a lot of her cronies."

VI

WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN

[Illustration]

A busy railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is, that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous picture-books. Other picture-books, such as church, theater, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, political meeting, ball game, and so forth, have, of course, many funny pictures. But, whether it is that almost all absurd people constantly travel, and those with no touch of the motley do but seldom, or whether, as here, nothing else goes forward seriously to occupy the attention, one's mind is left more free to be struck by the ridiculousness of all mankind, so it is that perhaps as humorous a place as one may find is a busy railroad station. And one must be very blase who no longer feels an enjoyable stimulation at the approach of an expected train at the station.

The psychology of the arrival of a railroad train at the station belongs to the proper study of mankind, and could be made into an interesting little monograph. As the train becomes due one feels but half a mind on the conversation, supposing one to be conversing; the other half is waiting for the train. One has, too, a feeling, faint at first, looming stronger within one, against continuing to sit quietly inside (supposing one to have gone within), where one is. An impelling to go see if the train is not coming numbs one's brain. A like contagious restlessness breathes through the waiting-room. People begin to stand up by their grips. Some go without on the search. They can be seen through the doors and windows, pacing the platform; they return, some of them, and one scans their expressions eagerly--they are discouragingly blank. After a bit, they go out again, or others do, and return as before; wholly unfitted now, one can see, for any concentration of thought.

The train is late. There is an alarm or two. At last, an unmistakable elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high as one moves into the press toward the doorway. The whistle is heard much nearer. Then again and again! Then with a whirl that turns one a somersault inside, a long dark, heavy mass rushes across the light before one. When one comes again on one's feet, speaking figuratively, the train is standing there, and one hurries aboard to get a seat. But, first, one is stopped until arriving passengers get off.

VII

AN OLD FOGY

[Illustration]

Mr. Deats, senior, is an old fogy. There is no doubt about that. In early life Mr. Deats, sr., had a pretty hard time. He was denied the advantages of any particular schooling. In consequence of this, Mr. Deats now occasionally uses very mortifying English. At an early age--somewhere about the age of ten--he entered trade. A ridiculous combination of adverse circumstances made it impossible for Mr. Deats to go much into polite society. In consequence of this, he unfortunately lacks polish. For a great number of years the world was not kind to him. It may have been trouble that destroyed his beauty. At any rate, Mr. Deats is not a handsome man. Not being able to do anything better, he confined his attention to doing his duty; that is not a very brilliant employment, it is true, but it was good enough for Mr. Deats.

In the course of time, Mr. Deats took to himself a wife; and, in the course of time again, this wife bore Mr. Deats a son--and died simultaneously. Well, Mr. Deats was left with a boy, and this boy must have something to start him on in life. "How can a boy start life with nothing?" thought Mr. Deats; and very rightly, too. One can't feed, clothe, and educate a boy on nothing. So Mr. Deats did his duty harder than ever; and he built up a business. Building up a business doesn't require culture or intelligence; but it does take some time. Mr. Deats has grown a trifle old in the building; but it is a good business. It has been said that Mr. Deats' business is one of the best in the city. And Mr. Deats has a fine son. After the manner of his class, Mr. Deats believed that all the things that were denied him were the very best things for his son. His son should not have to work as his father did--and he doesn't.

Mr. Deats, jr., has had advantages; he is a college graduate, a member of clubs, and one of the prominent young men of the city socially. Of course, being much cleverer, young Deats sees many of the mistakes his father made in life. He sees, for one thing, what an old fogy is Mr. Deats, sr. He sees how much better the business could be run. Mr. Deats, sr., does not know how to run a business; he is not modern enough. Still, he thinks he knows it all--that is the way with these bull-headed old codgers--and won't let young Deats conduct the business as it should be conducted. This, naturally, is very irritating to young Deats. No man enjoys seeing his own business go to rack and ruin. But the old man can't be kicked plump out into the street. He has no home but with young Deats. And, in a way, he is useful about the office; though even were he not, he must be humored. After all, he is the father of young Deats, and blood is thicker than water.

VIII

HAIR THAT IS SCENERY

[Illustration]

Mr. Wigger, Mrs. Wigger's husband (the writer boards with Mrs. Wigger), is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight upward to the crown of his head (from the three-quarters view of him studied here only one full ear is visible, and just barely the tip of the other one) an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black, undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. Wigger's mustache, a great, glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big, with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated. In this man romance lives on. A prosaic age has not marred him. You can readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. He is a man not tonsorially decadent.

[Illustration]

IX

A NICE MAN

[Illustration]

The clerk of the store (dry goods and gentlemen's furnishings) is what is known as a nice man. He is known as such among his neighbors. He is known as such by his customers. People, wives sometimes to their husbands, refer to him as a nice man. Motherly old ladies say, "He is such a nice man!" Younger ladies exclaim, "What a nice man!" You cannot look at him and fail to know that he is a nice man. You cannot look at him and fail to know that his life has been blameless. He is very clean, tidy, and very, fresh-faced. His cheeks are round and rosy; his eyes are bright; his mustache is silken. He is in perfect health; his expression is pleasant; his disposition agreeable; and his manners are perfect. His name is Will (certainly).

The nice man has a little wife, who is almost as nice as he. She is interested in Sunday schools. The nice man and his wife have a little baby that looks just like its father. On Sundays they walk in the park, pushing the baby-cab before them. On great days of celebration they go together into the country, on picnics; and return home at night tired out. On these trips to the country the little wife brings home chestnut burrs to hang from the chandelier in the parlor. She made some pussy-willow buds to look like little cats on a stick. These are on the mantel. When Will got the job he now has his wife turned to the store's advertisement the first thing in the newspaper every evening to read it. She had always known that Will had it in him to be something, and so she had always told him. When the nice men gets a raise in salary he and his wife will put away so much a week and soon have a home of their own somewhere in the suburbs. Already, the baby has a savings-bank account of its own, and by the time it has developed into the grown image of the nice man, its father, it will have a sum of money.

X

NO SNOB

[Illustration]

Let us walk down the street with Muldoon.

Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it. There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but had landed it insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment, decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off without giving the slightest thought to the matter.

Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion "mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable. Still he is spoken of among his confrerie as "a good man," and is never without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been editor--sporting editor, we believe he says--though in his own city--we should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back again--he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.

Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and "Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and the odd circumstance that most of the lady characters were named Flossie, and which was a failure financially.

[Illustration]

We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi, Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi, Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.

We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance (of Muldoon's). "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" (or Dick, or Harry, as the case may be), cries Muldoon, then, as if in afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a moment--we had got quite past the acquaintance--goes back and engages him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says (we hear), "I would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right," cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.

We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat, jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang! Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging, staggering, now on two wheels, now on one, now on none at all--on and on and on, around corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.

A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in (we follow). He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman (who has addressed him as "Pat"), and recounts to him the details of his late illness, which are most astonishing.

When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who predicted that he (Muldoon) would come to a bad end. On the occasion of his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles, and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk about. It will be a fine revenge.

XI

EVERY INCH A MAN

[Illustration]

If there is a finer fellow in the world than Chester Kirk we have never seen him. As he himself so often says, the finest things are done up in small packages. (There was Napoleon, for instance, as we have heard him say, and General Grant, and, at the moment, we do not remember who all.)

When in eyeshot of ladies, especially when he is unknown to them, he is grand. He takes his gloves from his pocket and holds them in his left hand. He searches himself for a cigar, which, when found, he holds before him, unlighted, in his right hand, on a level with his chest, his elbow crooked. He stands very firmly, with one leg bending backward in a line of virile, graceful curve. His back is taut. His other knee is bent forward, relaxed. Or he strides up and down, with something of a fine strut, like a fighting cock. So, he reminds us of Alan Breck.

When, in this stimulating position, he has on a long coat, he swings its skirt from side to side. He feels, undoubtedly so brave and strong. He laughs, when there is opportunity for it, in a deep, manly voice, and often. He sometimes pulls back his head so that he has a double chin. He is every inch a man.

As is quite fitting and proper, he is one of the most photographed of men. This is a family trait. He has ever just had a new photograph taken to send to his people, or his people have just sent some new ones to him, which he shows about with great gusto to his friends. His room is littered with likenesses of the Kirks, a very remarkable family. Here is a photograph of his brother.

"Notice that chest," says Kirk. "He's got an expansion on him like the front of a house. Why, in his freshman year he had the biggest expansion in his class. Athlete! That boy's a boxer." Kirk points the stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest man in Seattle (and there are no huskier men than in Seattle), a big brute of a fireman, a regular giant, with a reputation as a whirlwind slugger. Yes. Why, it's all I can do to hold that boy myself. This," exhibiting another picture, "is my father. See that pair of shoulders? He is a little under the medium height, but the way he carries himself he doesn't look it. He looks to be a rather big man. He has an air. He came West a poor man, but one that could see chances, take them, and hold on to them. He took them and hung on. He built up that business, I think I have a right to say that it's the biggest on the Pacific Slope, in an incredibly short time. Business he was from the word go. He could handle men! An entertainer he is, too; he makes friends wherever he goes; everybody likes him. Here's my sister. 'Sis' is the society woman of the younger set at home. That's my other brother. He's a hunter."

Next to pictures of himself and family, and their pets and live stock, there is nothing Kirk revels in so much as snapshots of his native country, "greatest country in the world." He has these pasted into several volumes: each print is labeled, as "Mt. Ranier, looking north," "Puget Sound, low tide," and so forth. Each new acquaintance Kirk takes through the lot and explains the circumstances under which each picture was taken.

As Kirk himself remarks, his handwriting is very strong. It is that strong that it has only about three, sometimes four, short words to a line, with good strong spaces in between. The descending loops of letters on one line often come down and lariat small letters on the line below. The sense goes at a splendid break-neck speed, and takes pauses and stops as though they were hurdles. The whole is penned in somewhat that fashion in which express clerks make out receipts.