Danny's Own Story

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The doctor, he reads it over careful and says she orter drum up trade, all right. Looey tells us that mebby, if he can get that town educated up to it, he will put in a creamatory, where he will burn them, too, but will go slow, fur that there sollum and beautiful way of returning ash to ashes might make some prejudice in such a religious town.

The last we seen of Looey was a couple of days later when we told him good-bye in his shop. Old Mr. Wilcox was explaining to him the science of them last looks he was so famous at when he was a younger man. Young Mr. Wilcox was laying on a table fur Looey to practise on, and Looey was learning fast. But he nearly broke down when he said good-bye, fur he liked the doctor.

"Doc," he says, "you've been a good friend, and I won't never forget you. They ain't much I can do, and in this deceitful world words is less than actions. But if you ever was to die within a hundred miles of me, I'd go," he says, "and no other hands but mine should lay you out. And it wouldn't cost you a cent, either. Nor you neither, Danny."

We thanked him kindly fur the offer, and went.

The next town we come to there was a county fair, and the doctor run acrost an old pal of his'n who had a show on the grounds and wanted to hire him fur what he called a ballyhoo man. Which was the first I ever hearn them called that, but I got better acquainted with them since. They are the fellers that stands out in front and gets you all excited about the Siamese twins or the bearded lady or the snake-charmer or the Circassian beauties or whatever it is inside the tent, as represented upon the canvas. The doctor says he will do it fur a week, jest fur fun, and mebby pick up another feller to take Looey's place out there.

This feller's name is Watty Sanders, and his wife is a fat lady in his own show and very good-natured when not intoxicated nor mad at Watty. She was billed on the curtains outside fur five hundred and fifty pounds, and Watty says she really does weigh nigh on to four hundred. But being a fat lady's husband ain't no bed of rosy ease at that, Watty tells the doctor. It's like every other trade—it has its own pertic'ler responsibilities and troubles. She is a turrible expense to Watty on account of eating so much. The tales that feller told of how hard he has to hustle showing her off in order to support her appetite would of drawed tears from a pawnbroker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says. Which he found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and sleep in the tent, and we done likewise.

Well, I got a job with that show myself. Watty had a wild man canvas but no wild man, so he made me an offer and I took him up. I was from Borneo, where they're all supposed to be captured. Jest as Doctor Kirby would get to his talk about how the wild man had been ketched after great struggle and expense, with four men killed and another crippled, there would be an awful rumpus on the inside of the tent, with wild howlings and the sound of revolvers shot off and a woman screaming. Then I would come busting out all blacked up from head to heel with no more clothes on than the law pervided fur, yipping loud and shaking a big spear and rolling my eyes, and Watty would come rushing after me firing his revolver. I would make fur the doctor and draw my spear back to jab it clean through him, and Watty would grab my arm. And the doctor would whirl round and they would wrastle me to the ground and I would be handcuffed and dragged back into the tent, still howling and struggling to break loose. On the inside my part of the show was to be wild in a cage. I would be chained to the floor, and every now and then I would get wilder and rattle my chains and shake the bars and make jumps at the crowd and carry on, and make believe I was too mad to eat the pieces of raw meat Watty throwed into the cage.

Watty had a snake-charmer woman, with an awful long, bony kind of neck, working fur him, and another feller that was her husband and eat glass. The show opened up with them two doing what they said was a comic turn. Then the fat lady come on. Whilst everybody was admiring her size, and looking at the number of pounds on them big cheat scales Watty weighed her on, the long-necked one would be changing to her snake clothes. Which she only had one snake, and he had been in the business so long, and was so kind of worn out and tired with being charmed so much, it always seemed like a pity to me the way she would take and twist him around. I guess they never was a snake was worked harder fur the little bit he got to eat, nor got no sicker of a woman's society than poor old Reginald did. After Reginald had been charmed a while, it would be the glass eater's turn. Which he really eat it, and the doctor says that kind always dies before they is fifty. I never knowed his right name, but what he went by was The Human Ostrich.

Watty's wife was awful jealous of Mrs. Ostrich, fur she got the idea she was carrying on with Watty. One night I hearn an argument from the fenced-off part of the tent Watty and his wife slept in. She was setting on Watty's chest and he was gasping fur mercy.

"You know it ain't true," says Watty, kind of smothered-like.

"It is," says she, "you own up it is!" And she give him a jounce.

"No, darling," he gets out of him, "you know I never could bear them thin, scrawny kind of women." And he begins to call her pet names of all kinds and beg her please, if she won't get off complete, to set somewheres else a minute, fur his chest he can feel giving way, and his ribs caving in. He called her his plump little woman three or four times and she must of softened up some, fur she moved and his voice come stronger, but not less meek and lowly. And he follers it up:

"Dolly, darling," he says, "I bet I know something my little woman don't know."

"What is it?" the fat lady asts him.

"You don't know what a cruel, weak stomach your hubby has got," Watty says, awful coaxing like, "or you wouldn't bear down quite so hard onto it—please, Dolly!"

She begins to blubber and say he is making fun of her big size, and if he is mean to her any more or ever looks at another woman agin she will take anti-fat and fade away to nothing and ruin his show, and it is awful hard to be made a joke of all her life and not have no steady home nor nothing like other women does.

"You know I worship every pound of you, little woman," says Watty, still coaxing. "Why can't you trust me? You know, Dolly, darling, I wouldn't take your weight in gold for you." And he tells her they never was but once in all his life he has so much as turned his head to look at another woman, and that was by way of a plutonic admiration, and no flirting intended, he says. And even then it was before he had met his own little woman. And that other woman, he says, was plump too, fur he wouldn't never look at none but a plump woman.

"What did she weigh?" asts Watty's wife. He tells her a measly little three hundred pound.

"But she wasn't refined like my little woman," says Watty, "and when I seen that I passed her up." And inch by inch Watty coaxed her clean off of him.

But the next day she hearn him and Mrs. Ostrich giggling about something, and she has a reg'lar tantrum, and jest fur meanness goes out and falls down on the race track, pertending she has fainted, and they can't move her no ways, not even roll her. But finally they rousted her out of that by one of these here sprinkling carts backing up agin her and turning loose.

But aside from them occasional mean streaks Dolly was real nice, and I kind of got to liking her. She tells me that because she is so fat no one won't take her serious like a human being, and she wisht she was like other women and had a fambly. That woman wanted a baby, too, and I bet she would of been good to it, fur she was awful good to animals. She had been big from a little girl, and never got no sympathy when sick, nor nothing, and even whilst she played with dolls as a kid she knowed she looked ridiculous, and was laughed at. And by jings!—they was the funniest thing come to light before we left that crowd. That poor, derned, old, fat fool HAD a doll yet, all hid away, and when she was alone she used to take it out and cuddle it. Well, Dolly never had many friends, and you couldn't blame her much if she did drink a little too much now and then, or get mad at Watty fur his goings-on and kneel down on him whilst he was asleep. Them was her only faults and I liked the old girl. Yet I could see Watty had his troubles too.

That show busted up before the fair closed. Fur one day Watty's wife gets mad at Mrs. Ostrich and tries to set on her. And then Mrs. Ostrich gets mad too, and sicks Reginald onto her. Watty's wife is awful scared of Reginald, who don't really have ambition enough to bite no one, let alone a lady built so round everywhere he couldn't of got a grip on her. And as fur as wrapping himself around her and squashing her to death, Reginald never seen the day he could reach that fur. Reginald's feelings is plumb friendly toward Dolly when he is turned loose, but she don't know that, and she has some hysterics and faints in earnest this time. Well, they was an awful hullaballo when she come to, and fur the sake of peace in the fambly Watty has to fire Mr. and Mrs. Ostrich and poor old Reginald out of their jobs, and the show is busted. So Doctor Kirby and me lit out fur other parts agin.

CHAPTER IX

We was jogging along one afternoon not fur from a good-sized town at the top of Ohio, right on the lake, when we run acrost some remainders of a busted circus riding in a stake and chain wagon. They was two fellers—both jugglers, acrobats, and tumblers—and a balloon. The circus had busted without paying them nothing but promises fur months and months, and they had took the team and wagon and balloon by attachment, they said. They was carting her from the little burg the show busted in to that good-sized town on the lake. They would sell the team and wagon there and get money enough to put an advertisement in the Billboard, which is like a Bible to them showmen, that they had a balloon to sell and was at liberty.

One of them was the slimmest, lightest-footed, quickest feller you ever seen, with a big nose and dark complected, and his name was Tobias. The other was heavier and blonde complected. His name was Dobbs, he said, and they was the Blanchet Brothers. Doctor Kirby and them got real well acquainted in about three minutes. We drove on ahead and got into the town first.

The doctor says that balloon is jest wasted on them fellers. They can't go up in her, not knowing that trade, but still they ought to be some way fur them to make a little stake out of it before it was sold.

The next evening we run acrost them fellers on the street, and they was feeling purty blue. They hadn't been able to sell that team and wagon, which it was eating its meals reg'lar in a livery stable, and they had been doing stunts in the street that day and passing around the hat, but not getting enough fur to pay expenses.

"Where's the balloon?" asts the doctor. And I seen he was sicking his intellects onto the job of making her pay.

"In the livery stable with the wagon," they tells him.

He says he is going to figger out a way to help them boys. They is like all circus performers, he says—they jest knows their own acts, and talks about 'em all the time, and studies up ways to make 'em better, and has got no more idea of business outside of that than a rabbit. We all went to the livery stable and overhauled that balloon. It was an awful job, too. But they wasn't a rip in her, and the parachute was jest as good as new.

"There's no reason why we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds, and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to fill her up.

What the Doctor didn't know about starting shows wasn't worth knowing. He had even went in for the real drama in his younger days now and then.

"One of my theatrical productions came very near succeeding, too," he says.

It was a play he says, in which the hero falls in love with a pair of Siamese twins and commits suicide because he can't make a choice between them.

"We played it as comedy in the big towns and tragedy in the little ones," he says. "But like a fool I booked it for two weeks of middle-sized towns and it broke us."

The next day he finds a lot that will do jest fine. It has been used fur a school playgrounds, but the school has been moved and the old building is to be tore down. He hired the place cheap. And he goes and talks the gas company into giving him credit to fill that balloon. Which I kept wondering what was the use of filling her, fur none of the four of us had ever went up in one. And when I seen the handbills he had had printed I wondered all the more. They read as follers:

Kirby's Komedy Kompany and Open Air Circus

Presenting a Peerless Personnel of Artistic Attractions

Greatest in the Galaxy of Gaiety, is

Hartley L. Kirby

Monologuist and minstrel, dancer and vaudevillian in his terpsichorean travesties, buoyant burlesques, inimitable imitations, screaming impersonations, refined comedy sketches and popular song hits of the day.

The Blanchet Brothers

Daring, Dazzling, Danger-Loving, Death-Defying Demons

Joyous jugglers, acrobatic artists, constrictorial contortionists, exquisite equilibrists, in their marvellous, mysterious, unparalleled performances.

Umslopogus The Patagonian Chieftain

The lowest type of human intellect

This formerly ferocious fiend has so far succumbed to the softer wiles of civilization that he is no longer a cannibal, and it is now safe to put him on exhibition. But to prevent accidents he is heavily manacled, and the public is warned not to come too near.

Well, fur a writer he certainly laid over Looey, Doctor Kirby did—more cheerful-like, you might say. I seen right off I was to be the Patagonian Chieftain. I was getting more and more of an actor right along—first an Injun, then a wild Borneo, and now a Patagonian.

"But who is this Alonzo Ackerman?" I asts him.

"Celebrated balloonist," says he, "and the man that invented parachutes. They eat out of his hand."

"Where is he?" asts I.

"How should I know?" he says.

"How is he going up, then?" I asts.

The doctor chuckles and says it is a good bill, a better bill than he thought; that it is getting in its work already. He says to me to read it careful and see if it says Alonzo Ackerman is going up. Well, it don't. But any one would of thought so the first look. I reckon that bill was some of a liar herself, not lying outright, but jest hinting a lie. They is a lot of mean, stingy-souled kind of people wouldn't never lie to help a friend, but Doctor Kirby wasn't one of 'em.

"But," I says, "when that crowd finds out Alonzo ain't going up they will be purty mad."

"Oh," says he, "I don't think so. The American public are a good-natured set of chuckle-heads, mostly. If they get sore I'll talk 'em out of it."

If he had any faults at all—and mind you, I ain't saying Doctor Kirby had any—the one he had hardest was the belief he could talk any crowd into any notion, or out of it, either. And he loved to do it jest fur the fun of it. He'd rather have the feeling he was doing that than the money any day. He was powerful vain about that gab of his'n, Doctor Kirby was.

The four of us took around about five thousand bills. The doctor says they is nothing like giving yourself a chancet. And Saturday morning we got the balloon filled up so she showed handsome, tugging away there at her ropes. But we had a dern mean time with that balloon, too.

The doctor says if we have good luck there may be as many as three, four hundred people.

But Jerusalem! They was two, three times that many. By the time the show started I reckon they was nigh a thousand there. The doctor and the Blanchet Brothers was tickled. When they quit coming fast the doctor left the gate and made a little speech, telling all about the wonderful show, and the great expense it was to get it together, and all that.

They was a rope stretched between the crowd and us. Back of that was the Blanchet Brothers' wagon and our wagon, and our little tent. I was jest inside the tent with chains on. Back of everything else was the balloon.

Well, the doctor he done a lot of songs and things as advertised. Then the Blanchet Brothers done some of their acts. They was really fine acts, too. Then come some more of Doctor Kirby's refined comedy, as advertised. Next, more Blanchet. Then a lecture about me by the doctor. All in all it takes up about an hour and a half. Then the doctor makes a mighty nice little talk, and wishes them all good afternoon, thanking them fur their kind intentions and liberal patronage, one and all.

"But when will the balloon go up?" asts half a dozen at oncet.

"The balloon?" asts Doctor Kirby, surprised.

"Balloon! Balloon!" yells a kid. And the hull crowd took it up and yelled: "Balloon! Balloon! Balloon!" And they crowded up closte to that rope.

Doctor Kirby has been getting off the wagon, but he gets back on her, and stretches his arms wide, and motions of 'em all to come close.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "please to gather near—up here, good people—and listen! Listen to what I have to say—harken to the utterings of my voice! There has been a misunderstanding here! There has been a misconstruction! There has been, ladies and gentlemen, a woeful lack of comprehension here!"

It looked to me like they was beginning to understand more than he meant them to. I was wondering how it would all come out, but he never lost his nerve.

"Listen," he says, very earnest, "listen to me. Somehow the idea seems to have gone forth that there would be a balloon ascension here this afternoon. How, I do not know, for what we advertised, ladies and gentlemen, was that the balloon used by Prof. Alonzo Ackerman, the illustrious aeronaut, would be UPON EXHIBITION. And there she is, ladies and gentlemen, there she is, for every eye to see and gladden with the sight of—right before you, ladies and gentlemen—the balloon of Alonzo Ackerman, the wonderful voyager of the air, exactly as represented. During their long career Kirby and Company have never deceived the public. Others may, but Kirby and Company are like Caesar's wife—Kirby and Company are above suspicion. It is the province of Kirby's Komedy Kompany, ladies and gentlemen, to spread the glad tidings of innocent amusement throughout the length and breadth of this fair land of ours. And there she is before you, the balloon as advertised, the gallant ship of the air in which the illustrious Ackerman made so many voyages before he sailed at last into the Great Beyond! You can see her, ladies and gentlemen, straining at her cords, anxious to mount into the heavens and be gone! It is an education in itself, ladies and gentlemen, a moral education, and well worth coming miles to see. Think of it—think of it—the Ackerman balloon—and then think that the illustrious Ackerman himself—he was my personal friend, ladies and gentlemen, and a true friend sticketh closer than a brother—the illustrious Ackerman is dead. The balloon, ladies and gentlemen, is there, but Ackerman is gone to his reward. Look at that balloon, ladies and gentlemen, and tell me if you can, why should the spirit of mortals be proud? For the man that rode her like a master and tamed her like she was a dove lies cold and dead in a western graveyard, ladies and gentlemen, and she is here, a useless and an idle vanity without the mind that made her go!"

Well, he went on and he told a funny story about Alonzo, which I don't believe they ever was no Alonzo Ackerman, and a lot of 'em laughed; and he told a pitiful story, and they got sollum agin, and then another funny story. Well, he had 'em listening, and purty soon most of the crowd is feeling in a good humour toward him, and one feller yells out:

"Go it—you're a hull show yourself!" And some joshes him, but they don't seem to be no trouble in the air. When they all look to be in a good humour he holds up a bill and asts how many has them. Many has. He says that is well, and then he starts to telling another story. But in the middle of the story that hull dern crowd is took with a fit of laughing. They has looked at the bill closet, and seen they is sold, and is taking it good-natured. And still shouting and laughing most of them begins to start along off. And I thought all chancet of trouble was over with. But it wasn't.

Fur they is always a natcheral born kicker everywhere, and they was one here, too.

He was a lean feller with a sticking out jaw, and one of his eyes was in a kind of a black pocket, and he was jest natcherally laying it off to about a dozen fellers that was in a little knot around him.

The doctor sees the main part of the crowd going and climbs down off'n the wagon. As he does so that hull bunch of about a dozen moves in under the rope, and some more that was going out seen it, and stopped and come back.

"Perfessor," says the man with the patch over his eye to Doctor Kirby, "you say this man Ackerman is dead?"

"Yes," says the doctor, eying him over, "he's dead."

"How did he die?" asts the feller.

"He died hard, I understand," says the doctor, careless-like.

"Fell out of his balloon?"

"Yes."

"This aeronaut trade is a dangerous trade, I hear," says the feller with the patch on his eye.

"They say so," says Doctor Kirby, easy-like.

"Was you ever an aeronaut yourself?" asts the feller.

"No," says the doctor.

"Never been up in a balloon?"

"No."

"Well, you're going up in one this afternoon!"

"What do you mean?" asts Doctor Kirby.

"We've come out to see a balloon ascension—and we're going to see it, too."

And with that the hull crowd made a rush at the doctor.

Well, I been in fights before that, and I been in fights since then. But I never been in no harder one. The doctor and the two Blanchet brothers and me managed to get backed up agin the fence in a row when the rush come. I guess I done my share, and I guess the Blanchet brothers done theirn, too. But they was too many of 'em for us—too dern many. It wouldn't of ended as quick as it did if Doctor Kirby hadn't gone clean crazy. His back was to the fence, and he cleaned out everything in front of him, and then he give a wild roar jest like a bull and rushed that hull gang—twenty men, they was—with his head down. He caught two fellers, one in each hand, and he cracked their heads together, and he caught two more, and done the same. But he orter never took his back away from that fence. The hull gang closed in on him, and down he went at the bottom of a pile. I was awful busy myself, but I seen that pile moving and churning. Then I made a big mistake myself. I kicked a feller in the stomach, and another feller caught my leg, and down I went. Fur a half a minute I never knowed nothing. And when I come to I was all mashed about the face, and two fellers was sitting on me.

The crowd was tying Doctor Kirby to that parachute. They straddled legs over the parachute bar, and tied his feet below it. He was still fighting, but they was too many fur him. They left his arms untied, but they held 'em, and then—

Then they cut her loose. She went up like she was shot from a gun, and as she did Doctor Kirby took a grip on a feller's arm that hadn't let loose quick enough and lifted him plumb off'n the ground. He slewed around on the trapeze bar with the feller's weight, and slipped head downward. And as he slipped he give that feller a swing and let loose of him, and then ketched himself by the crook of one knee. The feller turned over twicet in the air and landed in a little crumpled-up pile on the ground, and never made a sound.

The fellers that had holt of me forgot me and stood up, and I stood up too, and looked. The balloon was rising fast. Doctor Kirby was trying to pull himself up to the trapeze bar, twisting and squirming and having a hard time of it, and shooting higher every second. I reckoned he couldn't fall complete, fur where his feet was tied would likely hold even if his knee come straight—but he would die mebby with his head filling up with blood. But finally he made a squirm and raised himself a lot and grabbed the rope at one side of the bar. And then he reached and got the rope on the other side, and set straddle of her. And jest as he done that the wind ketched the balloon good and hard, and she turned out toward Lake Erie. It was too late fur him to pull the rope that sets the parachute loose then, and drop onto the land.

I rushed out of that schoolhouse yard and down the street toward the lake front, and run, stumbling along and looking up. She was getting smaller every minute. And with my head in the air looking up I was running plumb to the edge of the water before I knowed it.

She was away out over the lake now, and awful high, and going fast before the wind, and the doctor was only a speck. And as I stared at that speck away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world to live in. Fur there was the only real friend I ever had, and no way fur me to help him. He had learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes, and made me know they was things in the world worth travelling around to see, and made me feel like I was something more than jest Old Hank Walters's dog. And I guessed he would be drownded and I would never see him agin now. And all of a sudden something busted loose inside of me, and I sunk down there at the edge of the water, sick at my stomach, and weak and shivering.

CHAPTER X

I didn't exactly faint there, but things got all mixed fur me, and when they was straightened out agin I was in a hospital. It seems I had been considerable stepped on in that fight, and three ribs was broke. I knowed I was hurting, but I was so interested in what was happening to the doctor the hull hurt never come to me till the balloon was way out over the lake.

But now I was in a plaster cast, and before I got out of that I was in a fever. I was some weeks getting out of there.

I tried to get some word of Doctor Kirby, but couldn't. Nothing had been heard of him or the balloon. The newspapers had had stuff about it fur a day or two, and they guessed the body might come to light sometime. But that was all. And I didn't know where to hunt nor how.

The hosses and wagon and tent and things worried me some, too. They wasn't mine, and so I couldn't sell 'em. And they wasn't no good to me without Doctor Kirby. So I tells the man that owns the livery stable to use the team fur its board and keep it till Doctor Kirby calls fur it, and if he never does mebby I will sometime.

I didn't want to stay in that town or I could of got a job in the livery stable. They offered me one, but I hated that town. I wanted to light out. I didn't much care where to.

Them Blanchet Brothers had left a good share of the money we took in at the balloon ascension with the hospital people fur me before they cleared out. But before I left that there town I seen they was one thing I had to do to make myself easy in my mind. So I done her.

That was to hunt up that feller with his eye in the patch. It took me a week to find him. He lived down near some railroad yards. I might of soaked him with a coupling link and felt a hull lot better. But I didn't guess it would do to pet and pamper my feelings too much. So I does it with my fists in a quiet place, and does it very complete, and leaves that town in a cattle car, feeling a hull lot more contented in my mind.

Then they was a hull dern year I didn't stay nowhere very long, nor work at any one job too long, neither. I jest worked from place to place seeing things—big towns and rivers and mountains. Working here and there, and loafing and riding blind baggages and freight trains between jobs, I covered a lot of ground that year, and made some purty big jumps, and got acquainted with some awful queer folks, first and last.

But the worst of that is lots of people gets to thinking I am a hobo. Even one or two judges in police courts I got acquainted with had that there idea of me. I always explains that I am not one, and am jest travelling around to see things, and working when I feels like it, and ain't no bum. But frequent I am not believed. And two, three different times I gets to the place where I couldn't hardly of told myself from a hobo, if I hadn't of knowed I wasn't one.

I got right well acquainted with some of them hobos, too. As fur as I can see, they is as much difference in them as in other humans. Some travels because they likes to see things, and some because they hates to work, and some because they is in the habit and can't stop it. Well, I know myself it's purty hard after while to stop it, fur where would you stop at? What excuse is they to stop one place more'n another? I met all kinds of 'em, and oncet I got in fur a week with a couple of real Johnny Yeggs that is both in the pen now. I hearn a feller say one time there is some good in every man. I went the same way as them two yeggmen a hull dern week to try and find out where the good in 'em was. I guess they must be some mistake somewheres, fur I looked hard and I watched closet and I never found it. They is many kinds of hobos and tramps, perfessional and amachure, and lots of kinds of bums, and lots of young fellers working their way around to see things, like I was, and lots of working men in hard luck going from place to place, and all them kinds is humans. But the real yeggman ain't even a dog.

And oncet I went all the way from Chicago to Baltimore with a serious, dern fool that said he was a soshyologest, whatever them is, and was going to put her all into a book about the criminal classes. He worked hard trying to get at the reason I was a hobo. Which they wasn't no reason, fur I wasn't no hobo. But I didn't want to disappoint that feller and spoil his book fur him. So I tells him things. Things not overly truthful, but very full of crime. About a year afterward I was into one of these here Andrew Carnegie lib'aries with the names of the old-time presidents all chiselled along the top and I seen the hull dern thing in print. He said of me the same thing I have said about them yeggmen. If all he met joshed that feller the same as me, that book must of been what you might call misleading in spots.

One morning I woke up in a good-sized town in Illinoise, not a hundred miles from where I was raised, without no money, and my clothes not much to look at, and no job. I had been with a railroad show fur about two weeks, driving stakes and other rough work, and it had went off and left me sleeping on the ground. Circuses never waits fur nothing nor cares a dern fur no one. I tried all day around town fur to get some kind of a job. But I was looking purty rough and I couldn't land nothing. Along in the afternoon I was awful hungry.

I was feeling purty low down to have to ast fur a meal, but finally I done it.

I dunno how I ever come to pick out such a swell-looking house, but I makes a little talk at the back door and the Irish girl she says, "Come in," and into the kitchen I goes.

"It's Minnesota you're working toward?" asts she, pouring me out a cup of coffee.

She is thinking of the wheat harvest where they is thousands makes fur every fall. But none of 'em fur me. That there country is full of them Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians, and they gets into the field before daylight and stays there so long the hired man's got to milk the cows by moonlight.

"I been acrost the river into I'way," I says, "a-working at my trade, and now I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more."

"What might your trade be?" she asts, sizing me up careful; and I thinks I'll hand her one to chew on she ain't never hearn tell of before.

"I'm a agnostic by trade," I says. I spotted that there word in a religious book one time, and that's the first chancet I ever has to try it on any one. You can't never tell what them reg'lar sockdologers is going to do till you tries them.

"I see," says she. But I seen she didn't see. And I didn't help her none. She would of ruther died than to let on she didn't see. The Irish is like that. Purty soon she says:

"Ain't that the dangerous kind o' work, though!"

"It is," I says. And says nothing further.

She sets down and folds her arms, like she was thinking of it, watching my hands closet all the time I was eating, like she's looking fur scars where something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Purty soon she says:

"Me brother Michael was kilt at it in the old country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!"

"Did it fly up and hit him?" I asts her. I was wondering w'ether she is making fun of me or am I making fun of her. Them Irish is like that, you can never tell which.

"No," says she, "he fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what it is yourself." And the next thing I know I'm eased out o' the back door and she's grinning at me scornful through the crack of it.

So I was walking slow around toward the front of the house thinking how the Irish was a great nation, and what shall I do now, anyhow? And I says to myself: "Danny, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep in this here town with nothing over you but a barbed wire fence this morning. Fur what ARE you going to do next? First thing you know, you WILL be a reg'lar tramp, which some folks can't be made to see you ain't now." And jest when I was thinking that, a feller comes down the front steps of that house on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar.

"Did you come out of this house?" he asts.

"I did," I says, wondering what next.

"Back in you go, then," he says, marching me forward toward them front steps, "they've got smallpox in there."

I like to of jumped loose when he says that.

"Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, mister," I tells him. But he twisted my coat collar tight and dug his thumbs into my neck, all the time helping me onward with his knee from behind, and I seen they wasn't no use pulling back. I could probable of licked that man, but they's no system in mixing up with them well-dressed men in towns where they think you are a tramp. The judge will give you the worst of it.

He rung the door bell and the girl that opened the door she looked kind o' surprised when she seen me, and in we went.

"Tell Professor Booth that Doctor Wilkins wants to see him again," says the man a-holt o' me, not letting loose none. And we says nothing further till the perfessor comes, which he does, slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he took off his glasses so's he could see me better, and he says:

"What is that you have there, Doctor Wilkins?"

"A guest for you," says Doctor Wilkins, grinning all over hisself. "I found him leaving your house. And you being under quarantine, and me being secretary to the board of health, and the city pest-house being crowded too full already, I'll have to ask you to keep him here till we get Miss Margery onto her feet again," he says. Or they was words to that effect, as the lawyers asts you.

"Dear me," says Perfesser Booth, kind o' helpless like. And he comes over closet to me and looks me all over like I was one of them amphimissourian lizards in a free museum. And then he goes to the foot of the stairs and sings out in a voice that was so bleached-out and flat-chested it would of looked jest like him himself if you could of saw it—"Estelle," he sings out, "oh, Estelle!"

Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver, while the doctor and the perfessor jaws about whose fault it is the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory." And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.

"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asts her.

"What would YOU suggest, William, Dear?" asts his aunt. I ain't feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready jest to natcherally bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. Fur I had riccolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsive medical advice, me being fur a while doing some work on the city pavements through a mistake about me in the police court.

William Dear looks at me like it was the day of judgment and his job was to keep the fatted calves separate from the goats and prodigals, and he says:

"If I were you, Aunt Estelle, the first thing would be to get his hair cut and his face washed and then get him some clothes."

"William Dear is my friend," thinks I.

She calls James, which was a butler. James, he buttles me into a bathroom the like o' which I never seen afore, and then he buttles me into a suit o' somebody's clothes and into a room at the top o' the house next to his'n, and then he comes back and buttles a comb and brush at me. James was the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he says that account of me not being respectable I will have my meals alone in the kitchen after the servants has eat.

The first thing I knowed I been in that house more'n a week. I eat and I slept and I smoked and I kind of enjoyed not worrying about things fur a while. The only oncomfortable thing about being the perfessor's guest was Miss Estelle. Soon's she found out I was a agnostic she took charge o' my intellectuals and what went into 'em, and she makes me read things and asts me about 'em, and she says she is going fur to reform me. And whatever brand o' disgrace them there agnostics really is I ain't found out to this day, having come acrost the word accidental.

Biddy Malone, which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor's wife's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on, and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little kid that's sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs. Booth and a musician feller around that there town. But Biddy, she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was true, which it ain't Biddy says, who could of blamed her? Fur things ain't joyous around that house the last year, since Miss Estelle's come there to live. The perfessor, he's so full of scientifics he don't know nothing with no sense to it, Biddy says. He's got more money'n you can shake a stick at, and he don't have to do no work, nor never has, and his scientifics gets worse and worse every year. But while scientifics is worrying to the nerves of a fambly, and while his labertory often makes the house smell like a sick drug store has crawled into it and died there, they wouldn't of been no serious row on between the perfessor and his wife, not ALL the time, if it hadn't of been fur Miss Estelle. She has jest natcherally made herself boss of that there house, Biddy says, and she's a she-devil. Between all them scientifics and Miss Estelle things has got where Mrs. Booth can't stand 'em much longer.

I didn't blame her none fur getting sore on her job, neither. You can't expect a woman that's purty, and knows it, and ain't no more'n thirty-two or three, and don't look it, to be serious intrusted in mummies and pickled snakes and chemical perfusions, not ALL the time. Mebby when Mrs. Booth would ast him if he was going to take her to the opery that night the perfessor would look up in an absent-minded sort of way and ast her did she know them Germans had invented a new germ? It wouldn't of been so bad if the perfessor had picked out jest one brand of scientifics and stuck to that reg'lar. Mrs. Booth could of got use to any ONE kind. But mebby this week the perfessor would be took hard with ornithography and he'd go chasing humming-birds all over the front yard, and the next he'd be putting gastronomy into William's breakfast feed.

They was always a row on over them kids, which they hadn't been till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth, she said they could kill their own selves, if they wanted to, him and Miss Estelle, but she had more right than any one else to say what went into William's and Margery's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want 'em brung up scientific nohow, but jest human. But Miss Estelle's got so she runs that hull house now, and the perfessor too, but he don't know it, Biddy says, and her a-saying every now and then it was too bad Frederick couldn't of married a noble woman who would of took a serious intrust in his work. The kids don't hardly dare to kiss their ma in front of Miss Estelle no more, on account of germs and things. And with Miss Estelle taking care of their religious organs and their intellectuals and the things like that, and the perfessor filling them up on new invented feeds, I guess they never was two kids got more education to the square inch, outside and in. It hadn't worked none on Miss Margery yet, her being younger, but William Dear he took it hard and serious, and it made bumps all over his head, and he was kind o' pale and spindly. Every time that kid cut his finger he jest natcherally bled scientifics. One day I says to Miss Estelle, says I:

"It looks to me like William Dear is kind of peaked." She looks worried and she looks mad fur me lipping in, and then she says mebby it is true, but she don't see why, because he is being brung up like he orter be in every way and no expense nor trouble spared.

"Well," says I, "what a kid about that size wants to do is to get out and roll around in the dirt some, and yell and holler."

She sniffs like I wasn't worth taking no notice of. But it kind o' soaked in, too. She and the perfessor must of talked it over. Fur the next day I seen her spreading a oilcloth on the hall floor. And then James comes a buttling in with a lot of sand what the perfessor has baked and made all scientific down in his labertory. James, he pours all that nice, clean dirt onto the oilcloth and then Miss Estelle sends fur William Dear.

"William Dear," she says, "we have decided, your papa and I, that what you need is more romping around and playing along with your studies. You ought to get closer to the soil and to nature, as is more healthy for a youth of your age. So for an hour each day, between your studies, you will romp and play in this sand. You may begin to frolic now, William Dear, and then James will sweep up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic."

But William didn't frolic none. He jest looked at that dirt in a sad kind o' way, and he says very serious but very decided:

"Aunt Estelle, I shall NOT frolic." And they had to let it go at that, fur he never would frolic none, neither. And all that nice clean dirt was throwed out in the back yard along with the unscientific dirt.