Part 2

E. Van Tenner took it forth and gave it air. Now in our amiable and easy-going bachelor there was a definite streak of obstinacy. He had undertaken to see Gertie’s Green Garters and see it he would, always assuming that the magic receptacle would permit. He retraced his steps to the theater, retired to a corner of the lobby and drew forth the chancellor of his exchequer.

“What’s the good?” it questioned. But the effect was that of inquiry, not of challenge.

“The good is that I’ve done a day’s work and am entitled to some amusement. What’s the harm?”

The beggar’s purse appeared to accept this view complaisantly. Back to the ticket window stepped E. Van Tenner.

“What is the best seat you have for tonight?” he asked the duke of the diagram. “Tenth row in the balcony; one sixty-five.”

“Can you see the stage from it?”

“Oh, yes,” replied the duke wearily. “You can see the stage.” His tone, aimed at the inquirer’s vanity, commented: “If you’re the kind of cheap person who goes into the balcony.” But E. Van Tenner’s vanity was now armored like the tropic ant-eater.

“I’ll take it,” he said; and the beggars purse opened automatically.

Rather to his surprise he found that his view of the play was just as unobstructed as in the orchestra seats to which he had been accustomed; and his hearing was much less interrupted--not to mention the fact that he had saved one dollar and sixty-five cents at one fell swoop. Thus he felt justified at the close of the performance in stopping for a bite of supper. A flaring light directed him to a place where, all too late, the frantic dissonances of a jazz band burst upon his shocked ears. Before he could retreat a coat-room attendant had his garments in pawn. Perforce he must go forward. As he dropped into a gilded and fragile chair a pair of ample ladies, wearing carefully greased evening gowns, appeared upon the stage and burst into metallic shrieks, supported by the musical spasm of the orchestra. E. Van Tenner essayed to forget his sufferings in contemplation of the menu--and got a fresh shock. He had seen prices before, but never such prices as these. Even without the magic purse he was sure that they would have given him pause. As for the purse, he did not dare bring it out in sight of that array of figures. Something light, a bit of fish and some stuffed green peppers, he had thought to order. The fish were evidently goldfish; solid gold at that. As for the peppers, his eyes encountered this legend:

Green peppers (1) stuffed with rice and tomato--80 cents.

At first he thought it a misprint; it must be thirty cents; or possibly fifty. Consideration of the other vegetables dispelled that hope. They were on an equal scale. But--eighty cents for one green pepper! Was there, then, a fatal shortage in the green-pepper market? Or a crop failure in the rice or tomatoes whereof the stuffing was compounded?

“Cut it short! Be a sport! Buy a quart!”

shrieked the songsters, coyly adjusting their shoulder straps.

Enlightenment burst upon E. Van Tenner. The prices of the menu, suggesting the daily stock market report before the depression, became clear. Somehow that awful vocality and the hardly less agonizing accompaniment had to be paid for. His green pepper at eighty cents was to pay for it. It was stuffed, that green pepper, not with rice and tomato but with ragtime jazzeries and syncopated shrieks. E. Van Tenner laid the menu on the table and would have risen and escaped, but there hovered over him, portentous and awful, the head waiter himself.

“You haf ordered?” he inquired.

“I--that is--no; I think I won’t order this evening,” quavered the patron.

“There is a table charch of one dollar,” said the official severely.

E. Van Tenner, overawed, reached for the beggar’s purse. It flatly refused to open. As the owner strove with it there was instilled into his veins a calm and chill determination, born of a discovery that he had made--or had the purse magically indicated it?--regarding the menu.

“I shall not pay it,” he said quietly.

“You shouldt haf to pay it.” The head waiter’s threatening tone took on a little more pronounced accent.

“You’re a German, aren’t you?” inquired E. Van Tenner blandly.

“Dot is my bisaness,” retorted the other excitedly. “You pay dot table charch!”

“No; I shall not pay the table charge. But I will do this: I will pay you one dollar for that menu card, which, I observe, has on it two, four, seven, eleven--eleven different kinds of meat, on a Meatless Tuesday! Come; what do you say?”

The head waiter said nothing. His jaw dropped. He put his hand to his chin undecidedly, then turned and fled, taking the card with him. Glowing with virtue--which, after all, was the purse’s, not his--E. Van Tenner departed, not even tipping the coat-room attendant, to such heights was his courage inspired, and found a chop-house where he supped excellently on a strict Hoover basis, and entered an estimated saving of eighty-five cents, and ten cents extra for the defrauded hat boy.

All that night he slept the deep, sweet sleep of one justified of good deeds. The beggar’s purse, at least equally justified, slept equally well under his pillow. In the morning it started work for him again. It saved him the usual coat-room charge, and rudely checked his mildly emotional impulse to drop a quarter in the tin cup of a pitiable and shivering mendicant cripple who owns two tenement houses on the East Side and has amassed a small fortune by distraining on tenants’ furniture. He hardly knew whether to repeat the entry on the morning’s taxi or not, since he felt it already a habit not to hire a cab when he could conveniently take a car. But he was clearly to the good on one item of a quarter, when in carrying his grip from the elevator he was charged upon by a livered youth. Horror was writ large in that youth’s face; horror that a guest of the golden Von Gorder should carry a grip weighing almost four pounds across ten yards of floor alone and unaided. As Christian strove with Apollyon so strove E. Van Tenner with the liveried youth for that grip, which he finally delivered safe out of the enemy’s hands, and himself bore, triumphant, to the street car.

In the returning train, where he won to the day coach through the stricken hopes of the embattled Red-Caps, he figured out his day’s savings to date as follows:

Station porter............................................$0.15 Parlor car...................................................55 Pullman porter...............................................25 Red-Cap......................................................15 Cable car vs. taxi...........................................35 Chauffeur’s blackmail........................................15 Pride of hotel room that went before a fall in price.......1.00 Washroom hold-up.............................................10 Coat check...................................................10 2d Chauffeur’s supertax......................................25 Cocktail forgone.............................................25 3 Check-room petty larcenies.................................30 1 Theater-ticket-agency grand larceny......................1.65 Cabaret highway robbery......................................85 Victory in wrestling match with hall boy.....................25 Cripple’s curse..............................................25 Cable car vs. taxi [he decided to put it in, including tip] .50 Triumph in footrace with Red-Caps............................15 Parlor-car fare and tip......................................80

Making a grand, impressive, but insufficient total of.....$8.05

Insufficient, because two of the beggar’s War Savings Stamps would cost $8.28. At the Philadelphia terminus he would save fifteen cents more of his accustomed expenditure by dispensing with the porter’s service. Still he would be eight cents short of the total. Suddenly E. Van Tenner felt himself bitterly disappointed. The zest of the game had got into his veins. Had he braved hotel clerks, striven with bell boys, bearded head waiters and outfooted the fleet and determined Red-Cap only to fail in sight of the goal?

Perish the----“Evening papers! All the magazines! Here y’are before the train starts.”

“Evening Sentinel and Sat--” began E. Van Tenner, and dropped his voice and the beggar’s purse simultaneously. “Never mind. Don’t want--I mean need--’em.” For here was his eight cents saved! With a triumphing heart he retrieved the wallet, took out the pencil and entered upon the celluloid tablet the final and victorious eight cents--that is, he thought he had entered it. But lo! the line upon which he had written remained blank. He examined the pencil.

Its point was perfect. The celluloid surface invited it. Again he essayed to set down the consummating eight cents. It was as if he had written with a wand upon water.

“This is not white but black magic,” said E. Van Tenner, appalled.

In response there came back to him again the words of the beggar: “What you save on current expenses without giving up anything that you need or want or aren’t better off without.” Obviously, then, the beggar’s purse was backing up the beggar’s undertaking. It considered that he was better off with than without his favorite reading. E. Van Tenner pursued the boy and spent the eight cents.

All the way back to Philadelphia, however, his mind reverted painfully to the problem. In vain did he pass up a subsequent train boy’s blandishments on the subject of chocolate; he never ate chocolate. The sensitive tablet refused to be gulled into accepting an entry on any such pretext. Equally idle was it to pretend that he might have given a quarter instead of fifteen cents to the porter at Philadelphia. Fifteen cents was his un erringly methodical tip. To make matters worse the train was nearly an hour late. Consequently there would be no opportunity of further saving; not even eight cents.

Heavy-hearted he disembarked. The beggar had asked to be informed about the experiment. Well; he’d tell him. Too bad! Might as well get it over with. And there was only ten minutes’ leeway. He’d phone from that hotel opposite. Possibly the beggar could, of his magic, evolve some last-moment plan. So approaching the telephone girl he began: “Broad, Four-four----” and gasped.

The beggar’s purse had stirred. It had more than stirred. It had flopped. It was now doing more than flopping. It was turning frantic handsprings in his pocket.

“Never mind that call,” said the perturbed E. Van Tenner. “I’ll--I’ll write.”

The beggar’s purse settled down and went to sleep.

“How--how much would that call have been?” asked E. Van Tenner breathlessly.

“Local. Ten cents.”

“And a letter--no, a postal card--is two cents. That’s eight cents saved. The exact amount! Gimme a postal card. No; I don’t need to write. I’ll save the whole ten cents and be two cents to the good. I’ve done it! I’ve done it! Whoopee!” said E. Van Tenner, dancing upon the marble floor.

“Police!” said the telephone girl.

With the purpose of calling up the beggar on his own phone, free of charge, E. Van Tenner hurried joyously to his office. The beggar was there awaiting him.

“Well?” said he.

“Yes,” said E. Van Tenner.

“Two stamps?”

“And two cents over for a third. The magic worked.”

“What about the price of the lessons?”

“Lessons?”

“Haven’t you learned anything in the last twenty-four hours?”

E. Van Tenner considered. “I’ve learned that every time I spend a dollar I spend an extra quarter for vanity and a dime for timidity. I’ve learned how to go without things I don’t want, and to stop doing things I dislike myself for doing. I’ve learned the difference between parsimony and thrift.”

“Is it worth anything to you?” insinuated the worker of white magic.

“How many stamps can I take?”

“One hundred and ninety-eight more. That’ll make your total investment $828 and it’ll bring you in $1000 at maturity.”

“I’ll buy.” Thus did E. Van Tenner, exwaster, join the Take-the-Limit Club.