Chapter XVIII. Thropper Unfolds
Something Better than
Canned Foods. A Lesson with
the Flat Iron. Thropper Proposes
that I Chaperone Horses
“HOW are you going to get back to Massachusetts, Priddy?” asked Thropper when I was shuffling some photographs which I had taken down from a wire rack on the wall.
“Oh, I’ll have to try to get work in a factory or on a farm about here,” I answered, “until I earn my fare!”
“Have you any definite work planned for, yet?”
“No, but I thought I’d go out this afternoon and see what I might pick up. I could keep this room and board myself, Thropper.”
He made a wry face, and blurted out:
“Warmed over canned beans, ugh!”
“What do you mean, old fellow?”
“Boarding yourself—canned soups, canned meats, canned everything—ugh!”
“That’s what your wife will feed you on—at first, while she learns to cook, Thropper,” I laughed. “Perhaps you’ll prefer canned things!”
“Is that so?” he retorted, with some show of heat. “Well, that’s all you know about things. She can cook already: you just wait till you taste some of her cooking. Canned things—ugh!”
“Well,” I sighed, “I’ve little choice!”
“How would you like to spend the summer at a neat little hotel in Michigan?”
“Thropper!”
“And room in a little cottage in the midst of a little grove of pines, near little sandhills, among a little group of the finest fellows in the world—college students?” continued Thropper, with a smile.
“A little bit too much imagination in your little talk, my dear little fellow!” I retorted.
“And go down to the beach every day for a bath among the big waves, and go boating and fishing; seeing the great crowds of excursionists and vacationists!”
“Go on,” I gasped, “have it out, Thropper, if you particularly enjoy the stunt!”
“Food,” continued my roommate, “well, let me see: strawberry shortcake à la much, mutton chops with bacon à la juicy, calves’ brains on toast à la delicious, hashed browned potatoes à la second helping, and for desserts: cream and jellies, sherberts and pies—”
“—À la imagination, eh, Thropper,” I interrupted.
My roommate’s rugged face was overspread with a grin. He clapped me over the shoulder and said, continuing his whim:
“To enjoy many beautiful, moon-lit hours, watching the glint of the phosphorescent waves as they twinkle like fairy lights over the broad expanse of Lake Michigan; to—”
“Look out, Thropper,” I exclaimed at this poetic outburst, “or you’ll be crowding the spring poets out of a job!”
“To roam at will through the shady groves, over the sand dunes, to hear the orchestral music, the light plash of the waves against the pier while you hold a fish-line in the water; to loll on the fragrant pine needles and read, muse, rest, and be inspired: what do you think of that for a program for the next three months, Priddy?”
“Ask a Mohammedan what he thinks of Paradise or an exiled Prince what he thinks of a Kingdom, Thropper?”
“Then,” continued Thropper, “the whole experience not to cost you a cent: rather you are to be paid at the rate of four dollars a week: wages for a treat like that, Priddy: what do you think of that?”
“It is impossible for me to think about such a prospect, Thropper, my imagination is intoxicated!”
“Then you will go!”
I looked at Thropper as if he had parted with his senses.
“What an actor you are, Thropper. One would imagine you serious in all this!”
“Of course I’m serious!” he announced. “I am merely offering you the chance to go with Brook and myself to Macatawa, Michigan, to wait on table at one of the hotels there.”
“Oh!”
“But all the things I have enumerated, Priddy, are facts and not dreams. The work is very easy: six hours a day; two hours a meal, with the interims filled with all sorts of good times. What do you say? Our railway fares and steamer passages will be sent and later will be deducted from our wages. Will you go?”
“Do they let the waiters eat calves’ brains on toast, Thropper?” I asked, seriously.
“Extra orders which are not taken,” he responded.
“Of course I’ll go, old fellow. It will be a wonderful chance, won’t it?”
“It will give you a good chance to get a rest, Priddy,” he averred, solemnly. “Your poor, pinched body needs it!”
“When do we leave?”
“In two days; soon as Brock gets word to the hotel that we are coming. I can lend you some collars and things till we get there.”
“The first month’s wages are to go for clothes,” I announced. “All aboard for Ma-cat-a-wa: last call for dinner!” I cried, and then Thropper and I, sharers of confidences and of dreams, linked arms and waltzed crazily around the room—for sheer joy.
One week after having waltzed with Thropper over the creaky boards of the dormitory, I found myself adjusted to a new phase of existence, delicious and inspiring in its every aspect. After a lifetime spent in the midst of places where toil and only toil held the boards: after twenty years’ vision of strenuous tasks done by those about me, in mills, shops, and on the street, at last I found myself in the midst of a place set apart to idleness: where the indolent were given the palm branch, and where work, for a wonder, found itself, even by honorable people, spurned as a thing out of place.
The six hours’ work a day put at my command all the recreational advantages of the resort: the shapely sand dunes, the boardwalks through cool, shaded pine groves, the smooth, sandy, slippery beach down which one walked past artists’ studios, soap box shanties, and pretentious pillared cottages. And the water! We bathed by day and by night. In it we fished and raced. Over it we rowed in boats that were tossed like light corks from engulfing wave to engulfing waves, while the life-boat man from the pier kept a sharp eye on our adventure. By its edge on a moon-light night we built a chain of fires and in the flames of them we roasted marshmallows, sang songs, and passed all sorts of banter.
In the dining-hall I met my fellow waiters and waitresses: college students, all of them, from different parts of the country. The orchestra, at dinner, played complimentary college tunes in our honor: our guests broke down all perfunctory relations and intimately entered into our ambitions. While waiting for the arrival of guests at breakfast the waiters stood under a wooden canopy in the hotel yard and ironed napkins and towels. Of course neither Thropper nor I were very expert in the laundry, but that did not excuse us from it. One day the Irishwoman, who was proprietor of the hotel, came and investigated the laundry. She paid particular attention to the manner in which I conducted the flat-iron over the towels. After watching me for some moments, during which, for a woman, she maintained a severe and terrible silence, during which perspiration poured down my face, she suddenly exploded with laughter and said:
“Ah, ah! You should see Mister Priddy use his iron. It’s a rale treat. He is that gentle on the cloths! I want you all to come around and take a lesson. You girls now,” she indicated some of the college girls, “have been doing it wrong all the time!” She laughed loudly, as they gathered about my board.
Taking the iron gingerly in her massive, red, and scarred hand, the Irishwoman very gently tipped the back edge of it on a towel and deliberately, though exactly, drew the iron backward several times, lifting it from the board to carry it forward.
“That’s the way Mr. Priddy says you ought to iron!” she shouted, her burly face reddening with merriment, as she noticed my chagrin. “It’s backwards and not forwards that you should iron, all of ye!” and then she sat down on a bench in the midst of a most industrious crowd of laughing boys and girls. After the fun, she took the iron in hand in an endeavor to show me the true, laundry method of using a flat-iron.
All the tricks, the horse-plays, the trivial but welcome expressions of fun that crowd themselves into a college life, were indulged at the hotel by the waiters and waitresses. A group of Michigan students lived in a long, loosely-built shanty in the yard, on the doors of which they had painted its name: “Lover’s Roost,” and the better to carry out the fancy of its being a roost, the boys were in the habit of receiving expected visitors, who came to inspect their quarters, perched on the upper beams, above the partitions, flapping their hands and crowing like lusty, gigantic roosters!
The season rushed past in its merry whirl. Tired muscles relaxed, taut nerves slacked, weary bodies gained repose, there on the sand dunes, amid parties, fêtes, musicales, and picnics. The first chill winds from the lake wafted hordes of people back to work, and soon left the hotel nearly unpeopled.
As the day approached when I should have to leave, I found that I had saved but a trifle out of my earnings: the money had gone for a much-needed, but not expensive, ward-robe. I counted over my change and found that I did not have enough money left with which to purchase a ticket for so far away a place as Massachusetts. I mentioned the matter to Thropper. He, in turn, in that generous way of his, began to plan for me. One day he came and said:
“Priddy, you know Gloomer, the fellow from Indiana State University; well, if you go down to Indianapolis with him, he’ll see that you get a chance to go on a freight train as far as New York; from there you’ll have enough to get home, won’t you?”
“Yes. A freight train, you say? As a tramp, riding on the axles?” I gasped, with an inward shudder at the thought of such a desperate ride.
“Of course not!” declared Thropper. “You’d go in the caboose. We’d send you with a load of horses, you know. You’d be the man in charge; to feed them.”
“But I don’t know anything about horses, Thropper.”
“You don’t have to know anything about them,” he said, with a smile. “It’s just a technical way of expressing it. You see, when the horse-dealers send a carload of horses East, they are entitled to a representative to go along and take care of them. You’d be the representative. Gloomer could give you a line to an Indianapolis sales stable. They’d do the rest—as far as New York. What do you say!”
In a wild moment of incautious self-confidence, I responded:
“Anything to get to New York, Thropper.”
“It’s settled, then,” he responded. “Albert Priddy, horse chaperone, I salute thee,” and he gravely saluted me. “When will his lordship occupy his caboose?” he went on in good-humored raillery.
“As soon as I can get it!” I replied.