Part 4

“Brother!” yelled Hank, “don't ye brother me, you snifflin', psalm-singin', yaller-faced, pigeon-toed hyp-percrit, you! Get me a ladder, gol dern ye, and I'll mount out o'here and learn ye to brother me, I will!” Only that wasn't anything to what Hank really said; no more like than a little yellow fluffy canary is like a turkey buzzard.

“Brother Walters,” said the preacher, calm but firm, “we have all decided that you aren't going to get out of that cistern until you sign the pledge.”

Then Hank told him what he thought of him and pledges and church doings, and it wasn't pretty. He said if he was as deep in the eternal fire of hell as he was in rain water, and every fish that nibbled at his toes was a devil with a red-hot pitchfork sicked on by a preacher, they could jab at him until the whole hereafter turned into icicles before he'd sign anything that a man like Mr. Cartwright gave him to sign. Hank was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes on to, and proud of being that stubborn. That town was a most awful religious town, and Hank knew he was called the most unreligious man in it, and he was proud of that, too; and if any one called him a heathen it just plumb tickled him all over.

“Brother Walters,” says the preacher, “we are going to pray for you.”

And they did it. They brought all the chairs close up around the cistern door, in a ring, and they all knelt down there with their heads on the chairs and prayed for Hank's salvation. They did it up in style, too, one at a time, and the others singing out, “Amen!” every now and then, and they shed tears down on to Hank.

The front yard was crowded with men, all laughing and talking and chawing and spitting tobacco, and betting how long Hank would hold out. Si Emery, that was the city marshal, and always wore a big nickel-plated star, was out there with them. Si was in a sweat, because Bill Nolan, who ran the saloon, and some more of Hank's friends were out by the front fence trying to get Si to arrest the preacher. For they said that Hank was being gradually murdered in that water and would die if he was held there too long, and it would be a crime. Only they didn't come into the house amongst us religious folks to say it. But Si, he says he don't dare to arrest anybody, because Hank's house is just outside the village corporation line; he's considerable worried about what his duty is, not liking to displease Bill Nolan.

Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright had rounded up at the prayer meeting came stringing along in. They had brought their hymn books with them, and they sung. The whole town was there then, and they all sung. They sung revival hymns over Hank. And Hank, he would just cuss and cuss. Every time he busted out into another cussing spell they would start another hymn. Finally the men out in the front yard began to warm up and sing, too, all but Nolan's crowd, and they gave Hank up for lost and went back to the barroom.

The first thing they knew they had a regular old-fashioned revival meeting going there, and that preacher was preaching a regular revival sermon. I've been to more than one camp meeting, but for just naturally taking hold of the whole human race by the slack of the pants and dangling of it over hell fire, I never heard that sermon equalled. Two or three old backsliders in the crowd came right up and repented all over again. The whole kit-and-biling of them got the power, good and hard, and sung and shouted till the joints of the house cracked and it shook and swayed on its foundations. But Hank, he only cussed. He was obstinate, Hank was, and his pride and dander had risen up.

“Darn your ornery religious hides,” he says, “you're takin' a low-down advantage of me, you are! Let me out on to dry land, and I'll show you who'll stick it out the longest, I will!”

Most of the folks there hadn't had any suppers, so after all the sinners but Hank had either got converted or sneaked away, some of the women said why not make a kind of a love feast of it, and bring some victuals, like they do at church sociables. Because it seemed that Satan was going to wrestle there all night, like he did with the angel Jacob, and they ought to be prepared. So they did it. They went and they came back with things to eat and they made hot coffee and they feasted that preacher and themselves and Elmira and me, right in Hank's hearing.

And Hank was getting pretty hungry himself. And he was cold in that water. And the fish were nibbling at him. And he was getting cussed out and weak and soaked full of despair. There wasn't any way for him to sit down and rest. He was scared of getting cramps in his legs and sinking down with his head under water and being drowned.

He said afterward he would have done the last with pleasure if there had been any way of starting a lawsuit for murder against that gang. So along between ten and eleven o'clock that night he sings out:

“I give in, gosh dern ye, I give in! Let me out and I'll sign your pesky pledge!”

Brother Cartwright was for getting a ladder and letting him climb out right away. But Elmira said: “You don't know him like I do! If he gets out before he's signed the pledge, he'll never do it.”

So Brother Cartwright wrote out a pledge on the inside leaf of the Bible, and tied it on to a string, and a pencil on to another string, and let them down, and held a lantern down, too, and Hank made his mark, for he couldn't write. But just as Hank was making his mark that preacher spoke some words over Hank, and then he said:

“Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you are a member of the church.”

You might have thought that Hank would have broken out into profanity again at that, for he hadn't agreed to anything but signing the pledge. But he didn't cuss. When they got the ladder and he climbed up into the kitchen, shivering and dripping, he said serious and solemn to Mr. Cartwright:

“Did I hear you baptizing me in that water?”

Mr. Cartwright said he had.

“That was a low-down trick,” said Hank. “You knowed I always made my brags that I'd never jined a church and never would. You knowed I was proud of that. You knowed it was my glory to tell it, and that I set a heap of store by it, in every way. And now you've gone and took that away from me! You've gone and jined me to the church! You never fought it out fair and square, man strivin' to outlast man, like we done with the pledge, but you sneaked it on to me when I wasn't lookin'!”

And Hank always thought he had been baptized binding and regular. And he sorrowed and grieved over it, and got grouchier and meaner and drunkener. No pledge nor no Prohibition could hold Hank. He was a worse man in every way after that night in the cistern, and took to licking me harder and harder.

ACCURSED HAT

I request of you a razor, and you present me with this implement! A safety razor! One cannot gash oneself with your invention. Do you think I rush to your apartment with the desire to barber myself? No, _milles diables_, no! I 'ave embrace you for my friend, and you mock at my despair. This tool may safely abolish the 'air from the lip of the drummer when the train 'ave to wiggle, but it will not gash the jugular; it will not release the bluest blood of France that courses through one's veins.

_Oui,_ I will restrain myself. I will 'ave a drink. _Merci!_ I will make myself of a calmness. I will explain.

Yes, it is a woman. What else? At the insides of all despair it is a woman ever. That is always the--the--w'at you call 'im?--the one best bet.

Listen. I love 'er. She own the 'ouse of which I am one of the lodgers, in'abiting the chamber beneath the skylight. She is a widow, and I love 'er. Of such a roundness is she!--and she 'ave the restaurant beyond the street. Of such a beauty!--and 'er 'usband, who was a Monsieur Flanagan, 'e leave 'er w'at you call well fix with life-insurance. So well fix, so large, so brilliant of the complexion, so merry of the smile, so competent of the ménage, of such a plumpness! 'Ow should it be that one did not love 'er?

But she? Does she smile on the 'andsome Frenchman who in'abit 'er skylight chamber and paint and paint and paint all day long, and sell, oh, so little of 'is paintings? _Hélas!_ She scarcely know that 'e exist! She 'ave scarcely notice 'im. 'Ow is genius of avail? W'at is wit, w'at is gallantry, w'at is manner--w'at is all these things w'en one does not possess the--the--w'at you call 'im?--the front? _Hélas!_ I love, but I 'ave not the front! My trousers are all of a fringe at the bottom, and my collars are all of a frowsiness at the top. My sleeves are of such a shine! And my 'at----

Ten thousand curses for the man that invented 'ats! You are my friend--'ave you a pistol? Yes, I will be calm. I will 'ave a drink. I will restrain myself. _Merci_, monsieur.

My sleeves are of a sleekness; and my 'at----My 'at, I look at 'im. 'E is--w'at you call 'im?--on the boom! I contemplate 'im sadly. I regard 'im with reproach. 'E is ridiculous. 'E look like 'e been kicked. With such a 'at, who can enact the lover? With such a 'at, who can win 'imself a widow? I fly into a rage. I tear from my 'air. I shake my fist at the nose of fate. I become terrible. I dash my 'at upon the floor, and jump upon 'im with fury. Then I look at 'im with 'atred. 'E look back at me with sorrow in 'is wrinkles. And, _Voilà!_--as I look at 'im I 'ave a thought. The 'at, 'e straighten out from my jump. W'en my feet is off, 'e rise a little way from 'is wrinkles where I crush 'im. 'E lift 'imself slowly like a jack-in-the-box up from 'is disgrace. And I 'ave an idea.

Monsieur, we Frenchmen are a people of resource!

I take my thought to an agent of the advertising profession. I say I 'ave come to the place where I am willing to degrade my genius for gold. I wish to eat more often. I wish to marry the widow I love. I will forget my art; I will make some dollars; I will degrade myself temporarily. The agent of advertising 'e say 'e 'ave no need of any degradation, to take 'im somewhere else. But I explain, and behold! I am engaged to go to work. They furnish me with clothes of a design the most fashionable, and with a 'at of which I am myself the architect, and I go to work. I 'ate it, but I go to work.

The manner of my work is this. The 'at, 'e does it all. (_Accursed 'at!_) 'E is so built that on the outside 'e look like any other silk 'at. But 'e 'ave 'is secrets. 'E 'ave 'is surprises. On 'is inside there is a clockwork and a spring. At intervals 'e separate 'imself in two in the middle, and the top part of 'im go up in the air, slowly, one inch, two inch, three inch, four inch, five inch, six inch--like a telescope that open 'imself out. And w'at 'ave we then? _Voila!_ We 'ave a white silk place, and on it is printed in grand letters:

YOU ARE TOO FAT!

DR. BLINN

WILL MAKE YOU THIN

You see, my friend? It is now my profession, every afternoon for three hours, to join the promenade; to display my 'at; to make fast in the minds of the people 'ow fortunate a discovery is the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn.

Monsieur, I am always the gentleman. Am I forced into a vulgar role? Well, then, there is something about me that redeems it from vulgarity. I am a movable advertisement, but none the less I am an advertisement of dignity. Those clothes they furnish, I 'ave made under my own direction. I adorn my foot in the most poetical of boots. Only a Frenchman might 'ave created my coat. My trousers are poems. I am dressed with that inspiration of elegance which only a man of my imagination might devise.

Monsieur, I am always the artist. That 'at, I nevaire let 'im go up with a pop like a jacking-jump. 'E is not to startle the most sensitive of ladies. W'en 'e arise, 'e arise slowly. 'E is majestic in 'is movement. 'E ascend with gravity. 'E go up with dignity.

For three hours each day, I thus set aside my finer emotions. And all the town smile; and many 'undreds rush to buy the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn. 'Ow is it that the Widow Flanagan----

Curses upon the perfidy of woman! Do not 'old me, I say! Let me go! I will leap from your window to the stones below! Well, I will restrain myself. Yes, I will 'ave a drink. _Merci!_

'Ow is it that the Widow Flanagan does not perceive that I thus make of my 'ead a billboard three hours each day? Monsieur, all Frenchmen are of an originality w'en driven to it by fate, and not the least of them am I! To 'er I am still the poor but 'andsome artist. It is in the parlours of the agent of advertising that I dress myself, I don the 'at, each day. I wear before my eyes a thick spectacles; I 'ide my black 'air beneath a gray wig; I 'ave shave my own beard and each day put on moustache and royal of a colour the same with the wig. There is no danger that the grave foreigner, so courteous, so elegant, so much the statesman, who condescend to advertise the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn, shall be--shall be--w'at you call 'im?--spotted by the Widow Flanagan. She does not connect 'im with the 'andsome artist who in'abit 'er skylight chamber. To do so would be to kill my 'opes. For love is not to be made ridiculous.

I prosper. I 'ave money each week. I eat. I acquire me some clothes which are not the same with those worn by the employee of Monsieur Blinn. I buy me a silk 'at which 'ave no clockwork in 'is inside. I acquire the--w'at you call 'im?--the front. I dine at the café of the Widow Flanagan beyond the street. I chat with the Widow Flanagan w'en I pay my check. Monsieur, the Widow Flanagan at las' know the 'andsome Frenchman exist! The front, 'e work like a charm. 'E give the genius beneath 'im the chance to show w'at 'e can do. The front, 'e make--'ow you call 'im?--'e make good.

'Ave I said enough? You are my friend; you see me, w'at I am. Is it possible that the Widow Flanagan should look upon me and not be of a flutter throughout? I 'ave said enough. She see me; she love me. With women, it is always so!

The day is name; we will marry. Already I look forward to the time that I am no longer compelled to the service of the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn. Already I indulge my fancy in my 'appiness with the beautiful Widow Flanagan, whose 'usband 'ave fortunately die and leave 'er so ver' well fix. But, _hélas!_

Grasp me! Restrain me! Again my grief 'ave overpower! 'Ave you a rough-on-rats in the 'ouse? 'Ave you a poison? Yes, you are my friend. Yes, I will restrain myself. Yes, I will 'ave a drink. _Merci!_

The day is name. The day arrive. I 'ave shave. I 'ave bathe. I am 'appy. I skip; I dance; I am exalt; all the morning I 'urn a little tune--O love, love, love! And such a widow--so plump and so well fix!

The wedding is at the 'ome of Madame Flanagan. Meantime, I am with a friend. The hour approach. The guests are there; the priest is there; the mother of the Widow Flanagan, come from afar, is there. We arrive, my friend and me. It is at the door that we are met by the mother of the Widow Flanagan. It is at the door she grasp my 'and; she smile, and then, before I 'ave time to remove my 'at----

Accursed 'at! Restrain me! I will do myself a mischief! Well, yes, I will be calm. I will 'ave a drink. _Merci_, my friend.

I see 'er face grow red. She scream. She lift 'er and as if to strike me. She scream again. I know not w'at I must think. The Widow Flanagan she 'ear 'er mother scream. She rush downstairs. I turn to the Widow Flanagan, but she 'as no eyes for me. She is gazing on my 'at. Monsieur, then I know. I 'ave got the wrong one in dressing; and I feel that accursed thing are lifting itself up to say to my bride and her mother:

YOU ARE TOO FAT!

DR. BLINN

WILL MAKE YOU THIN

And be'ind the Widow Flanagan and 'er mother come crowding fifty guests, and everyone 'as seen my 'at make those remarks! Accursed widow! The door is slam in my face! I am jilted!

Ah, laugh, you pigs of guests, laugh, till you shake down the dwelling of the Widow Flanagan! Were it not that I remember that I once loved you, Madame Flanagan, that 'ouse would now be ashes.

Monsieur, I 'ave done. I 'ave spoken. Now I will die. 'Ave you a rope? Well, I will calm myself. _Oui_, I will 'ave a drink. _Merci,_ monsieur!

ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN

Football,” said Big Joe, the friendly waiter, laying down the sporting page of my paper with a reminiscent sigh, “ain't what it was twenty years ago. When I played the game it was some different from wood-tag and pump-pump-pull-away. It's went to the dogs.”

“Used to be a star, huh?” said I. “What college did you play with, Joe?”

“No college,” said Joe, “can claim me for its alma meter.”

He seated himself comfortably across the table from me, as the more sociably inclined waiters will do in that particular place. “I don't know that I ever was a star. But I had the punch, and I was as tough as that piece of cow you're trying to stick your fork into. And I played in one game the like of which has never been pulled off before or since.”

“Tell me about it,” said I, handing him a cigar. Joe sniffed and tasted it suspiciously, and having made sure that it wasn't any brand sold on the premises, lighted it. There was only one other customer, and it was near closing time.

“No, sir,” he said, “it wasn't any kissing game in my day. Ever hear of a place called Kingstown, Illinois? Well, some has and some hasn't. It's a burg of about five thousand souls and it's on the Burlington. Along about the time of the Spanish war it turned out a football team that used to eat all them little colleges through there alive.

“The way I joined was right unexpected to me. I happened into the place on a freight train, looking for a job, and got pinched for a hobo. When they started to take me to the lock-up I licked the chief of police and the first deputy chief of police, and the second deputy, but the other member of the force made four, and four was too many for me. I hadn't been incarcerated ten minutes before a pleasant looking young fellow who had seen the rumpus comes up to the cell door with the chief, and says through the bars:

“'How much do you weigh?'

“'Enough,' says I, still feeling sore, 'to lick six longhaired dudes like you.'

“'Mebby,' says he, very amiable, 'mebby you do. And if you do, I've got a job for you.'

“He was so nice about it that he made me ashamed of my grouch...

“'No offence meant,' says I. 'I only weigh 230 pounds now. But when I'm getting the eats regular I soon muscles up to 250 stripped.'

“'I guess you'll do,' says he, 'judging by the fight you put up. We need strength and carelessness in the line.'

“'What line is that?' says I, suspicious.

“'From now on,' says he, 'you're right tackle on the Kingstown Football Team. I'm going to get you a job with a friend of mine that runs a livery stable, but your main duty will be playing football. Are you on?'

“'Lead me to the training table,”' says I. And he paid me loose and done it.

“This fellow was Jimmy Dolan, and he had once played an end on Yale, and couldn't forget it. He and a couple of others that had been off to colleges had started the Kingstown Team. One was an old Michigan star, and the other had been a half-back at Cornell. The rest of us wasn't college men at all, but as I remarked before, we were there with the punch.

“There was Tom Sharp, for instance. Tom was thought out and planned and preforedestinated for a centre rush by Nature long before mankind ever discovered football. Tom was about seventeen hands high, and his style of architecture was mostly round about. I've seen many taller men, but none more circumferous as to width and thickness. Tom's chest was the size and shape of a barrel of railroad spikes, but a good deal harder. You couldn't knock him off his feet, but if you could have, it wouldn't have done you any good, for he was just as high one way as he was another--and none of it idle fat. Tom was a blacksmith during his leisure hours, and every horse and mule for miles around knowed him and trembled at his name. He had never got hold of nothing yet that was solid enough to show him how strong he was.

“But the best player was a big teamster by the name of Jerry Coakley. Jerry was between six and eight feet high, and to the naked eye he was seemingly all bone. He weighed in at 260 pounds _ad valorem_, and he was the only long bony man like that I ever seen who could get himself together and start quick. Tom Sharp would roll down the field calm and thoughtful and philosophic, with the enemy clinging to him and dripping off of him and crumpling up under him, with no haste and no temper, like an absent-minded battleship coming up the bay; but this here Jerry Coakley was sudden and nefarious and red-headed like a train-wreck. And the more nefarious he was, the more he grinned and chuckled to himself. 'For two years that team had been making a reputation for itself, and all the pride and affection and patriotism in the town was centred on to it. I joined on early in the season, but already the talk was about the Thanksgiving game with Lincoln College. This Lincoln College was a right sizable school. Kingstown had licked it the year before, and there were many complaints of rough play on both sides. But this year Lincoln had a corking team. They had beat the state university, and early in the season they had played Chicago off her feet, and they were simply yearning to wipe out the last year's disgrace by devastating the Kingstown Athletic Association, which is what we called ourselves. And in the meantime both sides goes along feeding themselves on small-sized colleges and athletic associations, hearing more and more about each other, and getting hungrier and hungrier.

“Things looked mighty good for us up to about a week before Thanksgiving. Then one day Jerry Coakley turned up missing. We put in 48 hours hunting him, and at the end of that time there was a meeting of the whole chivalry and citizenry of Kingstown in the opery hall to consider ways and means of facing the public calamity. For the whole town was stirred up. The mayor himself makes a speech, which is printed in full in the Kingstown _Record_ the next day along with a piece that says: 'Whither are we drifting?'

“Next day, after practice, Jimmy Dolan is looking pretty blue.

“'Cheer up,' says I, 'Jerry wasn't the whole team.'

“'He was about a fifth of it,' says Captain Dolan, very sober.

“'But the worst was yet to come. The very next day, at practice, a big Swede butcher by the name of Lars Olsen, who played right guard, managed to break his ankle. This here indignity hit the town so hard that it looked for a while like Lars would be mobbed. Some says Lars has sold out to the enemy and broke it on purpose, and the Kingstown _Record_ has another piece headed: 'Have we a serpent in our midst?'

“That night Dolan puts the team in charge of Berty Jones, the Cornell man, with orders to take no risks on anything more injurious than signal practice, and leaves town. He gets back on Wednesday night, and two guys with him. They are hustled from the train to a cab and from the cab to the American House, and into their rooms, so fast no one gets a square look at them.

“But after dinner, which both of the strangers takes in their rooms, Dolan says to come up to Mr. Breittmann's room and get acquainted with him, which the team done. This here Breittmann is a kind of Austro-Hungarian Dutchman looking sort of a great big feller, with a foreign cast of face, like he might be a German baron or a Switzer waiter, and he speaks his language with an accent. Mr. Rooney, which is the other one's name, ain't mentioned at first. But after we talk with the Breittmann person a while Jimmy Dolan says:

“'Boys, Mr. Rooney has asked to be excused from meeting any one to-night, but you'll all have an opportunity to meet him to-morrow--after the game.'

“'But,' says I, 'Cap, won't he go through signal practice with us?'