But I have purchased a white elephant.
You shall hear.
While prowling around in the auction room I ran across a little antique chest.
It struck my eye as the very thing to keep my papers in, and I thought I might squander a dollar or so for it when the time came to bid.
When I turned back the lid I found the box half-filled with packages of papers, some of which looked like deeds.
Of course I was foolish to think of treasure-trove, for who could say what valuable document a fellow might not unearth among these bundles!
A seedy-looking chap touched me on the arm.
"I beg pardon," said he, "but I hope you won't bid against me on this here chest."
"And why?" I asked, getting my back up at once.
"Because, you see, I used to be a coachman for the family, and when they busted up they owed me a part of my wages."
"Oh, yes, and now you think there may be a bonanza for you here. Well, I guess the track's free to all, and I've taken a fancy to that chest myself," I said, firmly.
He shook his head and looked angry.
The box was put up the next thing.
I've often thought that queer.
That fellow hung on like a bulldog, to the extent of his little pile, but my fighting blood was up, and if I'd been a Vanderbilt I guess I'd have gone a thousand.
I got it, though.
Locking the chest up I left it while I went to the bank and borrowed the money, some fifty-two dollars.
Yes, that was an expensive box.
It seemed so precious that I squandered another dollar and a half hiring a cab to carry it home.
My wife thought I had been to a funeral.
A little later I was of the same opinion myself.
Those stocks and bonds just brought me twenty-two cents for old paper.
Of course it was a set-up game, and they say a sucker is born every minute.
That was my minute, probably.
But I am not always such an easy mark.
I dropped into a wholesale shoe house the other day to see a friend.
Several of the salesmen were perched on boxes, taking it easy, for business had slackened.
"Hello," I remarked, "all pulled for the jury, I see."
"How's that?" asked one.
"Why, sitting on cases," I said.
Out in front I ran across two excited Hebrews.
"You called me a dead beat," said one, angrily. "You must take dot pack, sir, or suffer dose consequences."
"I never dakes anydings pack," declared the other, firmly.
"You don't dake noddings pack?"
"Never. So help me shiminy gracious."
"All right. You vas der man I've been looking for. Lend me a haluf a tollar."
I hope he got it.
I had no time just then to wait and see, for I had an errand to do downtown, a very particular one, too, for Gwendoline.
That's my niece, who runs our flat just now.
You see, my brother left his little girl with us while he ran across to London.
She's a dear little thing, but utterly spoiled.
Once in a while it is up to me to punish her, for I promised Henry to be a father to his little pet while he was gone.
The other night she was pouting and headstrong, so I set about depriving her of something she particularly desired.
Result, of course, a deluge of tears.
"It hurts me to see you cry, Gwendoline," I said, in a mournful voice, "but you understand you can't always have your own way, and do as you like."
"Oh, uncle," she sobbed, "how can you be so obstinate?"
They're all alike, these women, and bound to gain their ends by hook or by crook.
And yet sometimes they do have the most remarkable ideas about things.
I was at a reception, and having wandered in the conservatory thought myself alone, until I heard low voices behind some shrubbery.
Of course a pair of turtledoves had secreted themselves there to bill and coo – the cooing would end at the altar, but every married man knows the billing keeps right along.
Pretty soon I heard the happy youth say:
"Dearest, how do you know that you truly love me?"
And then she answered innocently:
"Why, George, don't you see, ever since I met you I've grown to admire ears that stand out."
When that girl gets married I don't think she'll need any assistance in her household work.
We changed help the other day.
I hardly know what to make of the new girl.
Sometimes I labor under the impression that she can be as dense as they make them across the water.
Then again she makes some remarks that stagger me, and on my life I'm unable to decide whether she's a fool, or takes me for one.
Her breaks are numerous.
Of course being newly landed she had never tasted ice cream, and as the first spoonful went into her mouth it came out again with violence, and tears coming into her eyes, she gasped:
"Howly mither, it do burn!"
Why, it was only this morning I wanted to consult my wife about something or other.
Of course she could not be found.
It's always thus.
But I am not the man to complain.
With the determination that has always distinguished my noble line of ancestry, I started in to search from one end of the flat to the other.
This brought me to the kitchen, where lovely Nora was diligently bending her back over the washtubs.
"Can you tell me of my wife's whereabouts?" I asked.
She looked puzzled, but only for a moment, and then smiling broadly, said:
"Faith, to till yees the truth, I do belave they're in the wash, sur."
However, I've run across some things that won't wash.
We had a regular seance one night last week at the house of a great friend of mine called Harper. It was very interesting.
The professor who conducted the exercises was a genius, and he came mighty near converting some of the ladies to his extraordinary way of thinking.
I think Harper's wife was anxious to be a convert.
At any rate I heard her eagerly saying to the gentleman with the long hair and the occult eye:
"I have always believed in dreams, professor."
"Ah!" said he, delighted, "then perhaps you too have had some psychological experience?"
"Indeed, I did – a most remarkable one in particular," she gushed.
"Prophetic?"
"Yes."
"I should greatly like to hear it."
"One night I dreamed that the sky suddenly blazed with light; the heavens were filled with a thronging host, a trumpet sounded, the dead arose from their graves, and then a voice shouted: 'Something terrible is going to happen!'"
"Well?" he asked, "and it came to pass?"
"Why, the very next day our cook left."
I felt very sorry for the professor – he laughed, of course, but during the rest of the evening I noticed he fought shy of Mrs. Harper's company.
And the best of it was that lady actually believed in the realization of her prophecy.
I know Harper thought it a dire calamity when he had to subsist for a whole week on provender fashioned after the methods in vogue among cooking-school graduates.
When he was a little younger Harper used to be quite a clubman.
Habits of his bachelor days were hard to shake off.
I had often wondered how he came to suddenly reform, and when my wife told me recently, as a great secret, I have come to feel a new respect for the fertility of resource as shown in the gentler sex.
Mrs. Harper used strategy, where another little woman, less wise, might have tried expostulation and entreaty without effect, for most men dislike the tyranny of tears.
I'll tell you what she did.
Before going to bed she drew two easy chairs close together by the parlor fire.
Then she took one of Dick's cigars and held a match to it, until the room got a faint odor of smoke.
Harper casually asked the next morning who had dropped in and looked at her in a funny way when she said no one.
But he never went out another evening without Mrs. Harper.
Now, I call that as smart a bit of diplomacy as Napoleon ever exhibited in his campaigns, don't you?
Harper lives in Brooklyn.
This gives him the privileges of a landed proprietor.
Why, think of it, the nabob even owns a reel of garden hose, and when he comes home weary, in the evening of a hot, dusty day, he can find relaxation to body and mind by sprinkling the streets in front of his house.
The first time I was over there, I found him taking a turn at this thing.
There is a fascination about it, you know.
At first I joked him unmercifully about it, but wound up by offering to show him a few stunts in that line which proved how I had graduated as a past master in the art.
While we were chatting his little boy came along.
He seemed to be in tears about something.
"What's wrong, my son? I thought you had gone with your mother on an errand," said Harper.
"She sent me home to change my stockings," he blubbered.
"Why, what's the matter with them?"
"They's put on wrong side out."
"Hold on," I exclaimed, "that's easily remedied, if you will permit me," and I turned the hose on him.
That little event brought to my mind the narrow escape I had recently.
Through the carelessness on the part of a gentleman who was demonstrating the wonderful abilities of his patent liquid fire extinguisher, my clothes caught fire.
Well, that, you know, is no joke.
Many a poor chap has burned up before he could collect his wits and roll himself up in a rug.
But I must confess, the fellow who was to blame kept his head, and knew just what to do.
He slapped a little stream of his magic mixture on me, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I was saved.
Of course he apologized.
I felt like thrashing him, but, as he was a brother of my best friend, the pawnbroker, I forbore.
"I'm awful sorry, old boy," he said, "but no great damage is done, and I hope you're not angry with me."
"No, but to tell you the truth, I feel awfully put out," I replied.
Harper has another boy, about the age of my youngest, and like all Brooklyn lads he is precocious.
He came in while I was there, crying for keeps.
"Hello, what's happened?" asked his father.
"Been fightin' again."
"With that Irish boy, I suppose."
"Yep, I'm bound to lick him yet."
"Well, you seem to have come out second best this time. But what's the use crying – tears do no good," said Harper, thinking to make him more manly.
"All right," spluttered the boy as well as his cut lip would allow him, "but I guess if you'd gone and got whaled you'd blubber, too."
Harper was telling me about Jerry's experience at school. Jerry is the little chap who put his stockings wrong side out that afternoon.
I thought it was rather a joke on Harper, though he refuses to look at it that way.
Well, the teacher gave each of the little kids a good, big healthy word to write down.
Then they were expected to look up the definition in the dictionary, and write out a complete sentence containing it.
Jerry, he was given the word "anonymous," without a name, and when the teacher read what he had written on his strip of paper, she thought it was worth the while to send it to Mr. Harper for denial.
This was Jerry's sentence:
"The new baby at our house is anonymous."
Still that was unintentional humor.
Nothing delights me more than to accompany a friend on some afternoon excursion to the country.
This is especially true if he chances to be thinking of finding a house in the suburbs.
Recently I performed this sad rite with Hollingsworth, a legal friend of mine.
Among other places where he took me was a town in Jersey which I dare not name for fear of being lynched.
At any rate it was a dead herring.
Once a boom had set in, and streets were laid off in the most extravagant fashion, but for years the place had been going to the bad.
The real estate man had exhausted his resources, and as a last card he said, desperately:
"But you certainly must admit that the town is well laid out."
"Oh! we agree you've done the proper thing," I remarked. "When a town is dead it's only right to have it well laid out."
That real estate man was offended.
But then levity at a funeral is, I suppose, out of place.
There was a dentist in the town who seemed to have a little ambition, for he planted a sign in front of his office bearing the legend:
"Teeth inserted for five dollars."
"I call that dear," I remarked.
"How so?" asked Hollingsworth.
"Why, I've got a brindle dog out in the country that I'll guarantee to do the job every time for nothing."
While that real estate man was showing us the beauties of the broad fields we made an unfortunate acquaintance with a gentleman cow.
Run – well, we did that everlastingly.
But the bull caught up with poor Hollingsworth.
I expected to see him gored to death.
That was when I forgot he was a lawyer, and used to holding every charge.
He clutched Mr. Bull by the horns, and I hardly knew whether to laugh or be frightened when I actually saw him riding the beast.
Finally he was assisted over the fence.
We hurried to him, anxious to learn whether he had been injured seriously.
Beyond a few scratches, and a tear or so in his garments, he seemed to be all right.
Of course I warmly congratulated him on his abilities as a prize bull-baiter.
He was a little dazed – I guess you would have been, too, after such a warm experience.
"Say, am I awake – was this thing the genuine article or did it only exist in my imagination?" he asked.
I thought of how he rode that all bovine like a Centaur, and hastened to reply:
"Well, if it wasn't real, it's certainly a striking example of a man being carried away by his imagination, that's all."
On the way home after that trip, Hollingsworth was quite gay.
I've often wondered whether it came from his being so well shaken up by the bull, or because he had successfully evaded the snares of that smart real estate agent.
"Did you notice it was a colored man who gave our friend Joblots his letters at the post office?" he asked.
I replied that I had been surprised to see that the residents of a town in Jersey had a negro postmaster.
"Oh! he's only an assistant. But you'd be surprised still more if you realized his real character."
"Would I?"
"Because everyone knows he's a blackmailer."
"That's serious, isn't it?"
"And it isn't the worst, either."
"Why, he must be a hard citizen – what else does he do?"
"Joblots says his wife takes hush money."
"Bribery, eh?"
"You see, she's one of the nurses at the orphan asylum."
By the way, before I forget, I want to tell you about a man I met this morning. He followed the funniest profession you ever heard of.
He appealed to me for help, saying times were hard and he could find no employment at his profession.
"What are you?" I asked him.
"An oculist," he replied.
He looked so seedy that I was surprised.
"An oculist, eh? How do you make that out?" I asked.
"I take the eyes out of potatoes," he said.
Well, I got him a job as scullion in a beanery.
He had the whitest hair and mustache you ever saw, and told me it had come in a night through a scare, that he nearly died from fright – now do you believe that?
Of course you do.
Why, more than once you've seen an old widower's hair suddenly turn from gray to black about five months after he buried the partner of his joys and woes, and he didn't dye from fright, either.
Say, did any of you people ever strike a prohibition town?
Any of you that have done so will sympathize with me, for I had a terrible experience of that sort when on a tour last winter.