H. C. Witwer

“ Joe looked surprised. I guess it was the first time anybody had asked for more!
"Well—no!" he starts off again briskly. "Of course, I am—"
"Wait!" says Gladys, grabbin' his arm. "Don't tell me any more lies! They are not featuring you in this or any other picture! You are not the leading man, you are only a super! Your father is not a millionaire and you cannot get me a job with the Maudlin Moving Picture Company! You're simply a big four-flusher and that lets you out!"
Say! On the level, I thought Joe was gonna pass away on his feet! ”

“ I, Alex Hanley, agree to hire one handsome, tall and perfectly built stevedore, longshoreman, truck driver or some one engaged in a equally honest profession, one who has never appeared before a camera or upon any stage and who has no knowledge of theatricals, and within six months from date to make him a full fledged, acknowledged star of the moving pictures. ”

“ I don't mind a four-flusher if his stuff is good, know what I mean? A guy that makes the world think he's there forty ways when as a matter of fact, he's shy about sixty, deserves credit. Usually, them birds get it too! They know more about credit than the guy that wrote it, and any butcher, grocer, tailor or the like who figures on 'em settlin' the old account has no right to be in business. The only time a four-flusher pays off is when he hits a new town. ”

“ This here combination that opens the door to success is a funny thing—everybody's lookin' for it and everybody's got it! Some guys knows just where to put their hands on it when they get the big chance to crack the safe of fame and as a result they become boss bankers or boss bricklayers—either of which is a trick and hard to do. Other guys forget the first three numbers or somethin' and never get better than John Smiths in the telephone book of life. ”

“ She claims that no beautiful girl with more money than the U. S. Mint would fall for the handsome lumberjack, and that no guy who couldn't do nothin' better than punch cows would become boss of the ranch through love of the owner's daughter. All that stuff's the bunk, she says. Her dope is that a real man would boost himself to the top, girl or no girl, and the woman never lived which could put a man over, if he didn't have the pep himself. As a finish, she tells me that no healthy, intelligent girl would stand for the typical movie hero. ”

“ I have already talked with Mister Wilkinson, which is a nice little innocent fellow and not a brute like you which battles night and day with his wife, and he will have a raincoat up here for you to-morrow."
I throwed up my hands!
"How much is it?" I says.
"Practically nothin'," says the wife. "Forty-five dollars."
Oh, boy!
"Listen!" I says, openin' the door. "Unless that bird has give you his age in mistake for the price of the raincoat, you can tell him that if I had forty-five bucks to hurl away like that I wouldn't wear no raincoat. I wouldn't care if it rained or not!" ”

“ Even old Chris himself was looked on as Kid Stupid, because he claimed the earth was round. The gang he trailed with had it figured as bein' square like their heads.
The guy that invented the airship was doped out as a boob until the thing begin to fly, the bird that turned out the first steamboat was called a potterin' old simp and let him alone and he'd kill himself—and that's the way it goes.
The sucker is the boy that keeps the wise guys alive. He'll try anything once, and it don't make no difference to him whether it's three-card monte or a new kind of submarine. ”

“ Yep, Alex, you can't learn that stuff out of no book, you gotta be born with it."
"You're all crazy!" announces Alex, with another snort. "I can go out right now and dig up a dozen fellers which never seen a camera in their life and they'll duplicate anything Carrington De Vire ever did on a screen. Where does he get off to be wonderful? Some feller with brains writes a play, another feller with money puts it on and then another feller with technical knowledge tells De Vire, which ain't got none of them things, where to stand and the like while he acts it. ”

“ Oh, boy! I ain't no hard loser but—
Well, it wasn't no trick at all to get big Arthur to box with the Kid. He took to it like a chorus girl does to a telephone and what puzzled me was why none of them fifty dollar doctors hadn't thought of it before. I guess it was because they was nobody there husky enough to handle him by themselves, because Arthur packed a wallop in each hand that meant curtains, if it landed. Behind that was six-foot-two of bone and about two hundred and forty pounds of muscle. ”

“ At this critical moment, the mechanic gets down on his hands and knees in the street and begins to worry the car like a dog with a bone. Then all of a sudden he crawls underneath it and disappears from the public eye. A lot of shippin' clerks, bookkeepers, salesgirls, brokers, lawyers and the like, on their way downtown to their jobs, figures that you can go to work any day, but an auto bein' fixed calls for immediate attention and gets around us in a circle. This seemed to get Alex's goat, but it was huckleberry pie to the mechanic. ”

“ A big man like you would probably tear the card up, leave the office in a, now, rage and never return! You'd be insulted, your, now, dignity would be hurt, eh? You might be from out of town and comin' here to leave a big order and that little thing—prob'ly invented by one of your New York efficiency stars—would make you so mad you'd go away and order where they wasn't so efficient, but a little more courteous! ”

“ A four-flusher is a hick that admits bein' a better singer than Caruso, a better ball-player than Ty Cobb, a better real estate judge than Columbus and more of a chance taker than Napoleon.
The first time he starts at any one of them things, he's a odds-on favorite for last and finishes ten lengths behind the rest of the field. That's a four-flusher.
A guy can be taught paintin', pinochle, politics and prohibition, but a first-class four-flusher is born that way! ”

“ And then he went back to the trucking business, because he wasn't born an artist and the whole thing seemed silly to him. He couldn't stand the make-believe any longer, because he had no imagination, no art—nothing but the stupid ability to make money! ”

“ His dashin', smashin', soft hat was yanked down over his home-breakin' face, and his dimpled chin was buried in his lily white hands. He looked like a guy that has worked twenty-seven years inventin' a new steamboat and then seen it sink the first time he tried it out.
The Kid runs over and slaps him on the back just hard enough to make his hat fall off.
"Cheer up, Cutey!" pipes Scanlan. "They can't hang a guy for tryin'!"
Harold retrieves his hat, smoothes it out carefully and lets loose the gloomiest sigh I ever heard in my life.
"Have you a cigarette?" he asks sadly. ”

“ If you ever wake up some mornin' with an idea for something new—whether it's a soup, a vaudeville act or a religion—and you expect to cash on it, go to the nearest hardware store and ask the guy behind the counter how much he'll take for all the locks in the joint. Take 'em at any price and fasten 'em on the door of the safe where you keep the idea—the same bein' your mouth—and then throw the keys in any good, deep river! ”

“ They are to wit: the guy that discovered the only absolute cure for rheumatism, the one that invented the dope book on the female race and the bird that holds a patent on the complete understandin' of human nature. I guess the reason I never seen their names is because the thing ain't really been decided yet—there seems to be some difference of opinion. But if you wanna find out how many guys there are that swear they invented all them things, look up the population of the world. ”

“ He's afraid to ask for more money for fear the boss will find out he's on the pay roll and fire him. They's one ounce more brains in a billiard ball than they is in his head. He—"
"Wait!" interrupts Alex. "This here sounds interestin' to me. In the first place, they ain't a doubt in my mind but what you got that feller figured all wrong! Like all the rest of you simple minded and innocent New Yorkers, you get brains and imagination mixed. They is a big difference! Brains is what puts a man over, and imagination is what keeps him back. The ideal combination is all brains and no imagination! ”

“ He begin to spend money like a vice-investigating committee, knock around with bartenders and give in to all the strange desires that hits a guy with his health and a bankroll. I stood by and cheered for a while until he crashes in love with this movie queen, Miss Vincent, that got more money a start than the Kid did in a season and more letters from well wishin' males than a newly elected mayor. ”

“ I says, when nature could stand no more, "I realize that New York is nothin' but a flag station and that we're all Reubens and chew hay, but we have, amongst other things, six million merry villagers, the biggest buildings in the world, the subway, gunmen, cabarets, Broadway, and—well, a lot of things that you gotta admit ain't hit dear old Vermont as yet!" ”

“ We walk along a little further and run into a private conversation. Some guy in a new dress suit is makin' love to a dame, while another fellow stands in front of them and says at the top of his voice, "Remember now, you're madly in love with her, but father detests the sight of your face. Ready—hey, camera—all right—wait a minute, wait a minute, don't wrestle with her, embrace her, will you, embrace her!"
Kid Scanlan takes this all in with his eyes poppin' out of his head and his mouth as open as a stuss game. ”

“ I says. "Hector don't know whether whiskey and beer is drinks, or the battery for to-day's game. He couldn't tell you offhand whether tobacco was a thing to chew and smoke or the latest fox trot. The only woman he ever met twice was his mother, and he thinks sayin' 'Darnation!' in earnest is the same as homocide. His only love is baseball and his only weakness is his stomach!"
"Aha!" says Alex. "I knew we'd get at it! He's fond of food, eh?"
"Fond of it?" I says. "Why, this guy can do more things with a steak than Edison can do with a pint of electricity! ”

“ I'll bet they's many a bank president, brigadier-general and what not, that would part with their right eye if they could only force themselves to let down for five minutes, can this dignity thing and give a imitation of what a movie comedian thinks is humor. ”

“ The big guy drops the pig iron and looks from Alex to me.
"What kinda stuff is this?" he growls. "What d'ye mean I'm a peach?"
"You are the luckiest man in New York," says Alex. "I have come to make you famous and rich!"
The big guy grins.
"Listen!" he says. "They're awful tough on hop fiends in this burg now and they'll be a copper along in a minute, so you better duck. I know you guys is no less than J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, if not more, and you'll gimme a million dollars in nickels if I'll tell you where to get a layout. ”

“ You'll generally find one wherever there's two people—men or women. A four-flusher is a guy who claims he can lick Jack Dempsey in a loud and annoyin' voice, and then runs seven blocks in five minutes flat when some hick in the back room arises to remark that he's willin' to take a beatin' for Jack. A four-flusher is the bird that breezes down Main street in a set of scenery that would make John Drew look like one of the boys in the gas main trenches somewheres in Broadway, and yet couldn't purchase an eraser, if rubber was sellin' at three cents a ton. ”

“ Every time a guy goes over a cliff or dives off of a bridge and all the salesladies and bankers sittin' around us gasps out loud, he speaks up and says it's all faked with a trick camera and they ain't none of them really doin' nothin' at all. He claims he's got a friend which used to sell tickets for a movie theatre and he told him all about it. The more stunts the hero of this picture does, the worse the lovely Wilkinson gets, and it ain't long before he has captured the goat of friend Alex, which is champion moving picture fan of the United States and Coney Island. ”

“ He's the guy that built all the fancy bridges, the big buildin's, fought and won the wars that the wise guys started, and fixed things generally so that to-day you can push a little trick electric button and get anything from a piece of pie to a divorce. He's the simp that falls for the new minin' company stock, grins when the wise guys explain to him just how many kinds of a sucker he is, and then clips coupons while they're gettin' up early to read the want ads. He's the baby that's done everything that couldn't be did. ”

“ Did you ever stop to think that the tryers which never get nowhere is responsible for the other guys' success? They're the babies that make a race or a fight out of it, and if it wasn't for them dubs there'd be no successes at all. In order to have winners, we got to have losers, don't we? And don't forget that yesterday's losers are to-morrow's winners and vice-president or vice versa, whatever it is. ”

“ They think the vaudeville or movie cut-up that does the funny falls is a vulgar lunatic who ought to be in jail, and their idea of the height of humor is the way a iceman pronounces décolleté, or somethin' like that.
I like my own comedy straight! I want it to wallop me right on the laugher, so's I can get it the first time and giggle myself sick. I'm extry strong for the loud and common guffaw, and I claim that because I go into hysterics over the fat-man-on-the-banana-peel stuff, it don't prove that I'm a heavy drinker, beat my wife and will probably wind up in jail. ”

“ His hair is that black, wavy kind that the cabaret hounds wish they had and he's got a skin like a week old baby. He must of painted his teeth with enamel twice a day and he's there with a pair of eyelashes that would make a chorus girl take carbolic. On the level, he's so handsome he don't look real—and that with all the signs of honest toil at the truck on him, too! Alex taps him on the shoulder and he swings around.
"What's yours?" he growls. ”

“ The statues and pictures was nearly all devoted to one subject, and that was why should people wear clothes—especially women? The victims is all lollin' around on them plush sofas, drinkin' tea and lookin' like a ten-year-old kid at church or a guy waitin' in the doctor's office to find out if he's got consumption or chilblains. It was as quiet as a Sunday in Philadelphia and they was also a very strong smell of burnin' glue, which Honest Dan said was sacred incense that always had to be used by the professor before he could work. ”

“ If he wasn't the original old Kid Kill-Joy, he was the bird that rehearsed him, believe me! Y'know just from lookin' at this guy, a man would get to thinkin' about his past life, the time he throwed the baby down the well when but a playful child, how old his parents was gettin' and the time Shorty Ellison run off with the red-headed dame that lived over the butcher's. You wished you had saved your money or somebody else's, suddenly findin' out that it was a tough world where a poor man didn't have a Chinaman's chance, and you wondered if death by drownin' was painful or not. ”

“ New York looked as cold and hard to me as it does to any rube that slinks in from the outlands, crazy with the desire to capture it. But instead of drivin' me back to the dear old farm, the tough conditions here attracted me. That is, takin' for granted your statement that they are tough, which I don't believe. I know that a man with the genuine goods can deliver them here at top price quicker than any other place on earth."
"But wait!" interrupts Jared, seemin' to catch some of Alex's pep. ”

“ On general principles I'm infatuated with the bird that can make me laugh, and I don't care how he does it as long as he makes good. I care not whether he laughs with me or for me, as long as they's a snicker in there somewheres. I can even stand him laughin' at me, because, if his stuff is funny enough—I'll laugh too!
No guy who can look around him, no matter how things is breakin' for him and see somethin' to laugh at as the mob goes by, is beat. ”

“ For every dollar you make, your boob boss is makin' a thousand. Ever figure them statistics along with the other stuff?"
Jared registers embarrassment. "Look here!" he says. "I really don't see the reason of all this. I consider myself quite successful. I may not be making a million a week, but I'm always sure of my job, and that's quite a lot!"
"You're always sure of your job, hey?" bawls Alex. "That's the slogan of the quitter! 'I'm gettin' my little old salary fifty-two weeks a year, and that's good enough for me.' That's the motto of the loser." ”

“ Daughter reaches up and grabs the Kid's hand.
"I—I—want to thank you," she says, "for saving my mother. I—I don't know what might have happened, if you hadn't been here!"
"That's all right!" pipes the Kid. "D'ye want us to do anything else?"
"Yes," she says. "Will you tell me where you heard that—that description of the—the million lovely loaves?"
"Sure," answers the Kid. "When we was comin' East, we stopped off at a hick burg somewheres and a guy took us over a bakery—"
Daughter claps her hands and laughs.
"Poetic justice!" she says. "That explains everything. ”