Arthur Train

“ Yes, A. T. W. Listen. Can a notary commit a person to jail simply because that person refuses to be questioned about a real-estate transaction?”
“Notary—send—a person—to jail!” ejaculated Mr. Vanderpoel. “Of course not! Who ever heard of such a thing? Nobody except a judge can send anybody to jail.”
“Well, there’s a notary trying to send me,” answered Todhunter.
“You? You! That’s a good one!” laughed the learned Vanderpoel. “Tell him to go to the devil.”
The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank hung up the receiver. ”

“ Then one morning the farmer appeared with his money in his hand and the proprietor called his wife over, showed her where to write her name, and signed his own as witness. Carter counted out the purchase price in soiled and crumpled bills, Wiltbank stuffed them in his pocket, and the deed was done—or, rather, delivered. The young farmer brought his wife to the farm; a child was born, a boy; and just as he had got the place in shape to make an honest living, Carter died. ”

“ Have you ever noticed how there is a tide in the affairs of men which reaches at the flood up around the chin, when there seems—to speak vulgarly—to be a rush of flesh to the face? There is. Pink flesh. And some of the surplus is deflected lower down—Johnny Bullish. It is the flush of fortune, rose-tinting the summits of success. A thin magnate is no magnate at all.
The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank was a regular fellow, as most magnates have been. This was shown by the fact that he did not call himself A. Todhunter Wiltbank, which he had a legal right to do. ”

“ On the beautiful spring morning when our story opens, the Honorable Amos Todhunter Wiltbank was sitting in his office on the thirty-seventh floor of the building, with his feet on six hundred dollars’ worth of fumed oak, with a fifty-five-cent—five for war tax—cigar in his mouth, while twenty-seven stories below him Mr. Ephraim Tutt reclined in the same position before an ancient rickety affair knocked down in a Liberty Street auction room for $3.70—and smoking a Wheeling stogy costing $.009 by the thousand. But the higher you are the bigger the bump. ”

“ It would have been one thing for the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank to shroud himself in his furs and motor at sixty miles an hour to New York, call up his lawyer on the telephone, and get an affidavit on any subject, executed by almost anybody, from the mayor himself up or down, in half an hour; it was quite another for Mrs. Carter to lock her house and barn, arrange for transportation for herself and baby seven miles to the railroad station, and, once in New York, to secure an audience with the great man and get from him the paper that she needed to make her record title to the farm complete. ”

“ Tutt!” remarked Miss Minerva Wiggin, appearing in the doorway.
“Yes, my dear!” returned the old lawyer, smiling at her through the blue smoke of his stogy.
“You are always ready to help people.”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Well, I wish you’d help my friend Miss Haggerty. She’s the notary across the hall, you know—with Moses Icklebaum.” ”

“ A cat may look at a king, but a common human animal couldn’t get even a look at A. T. W. No insurance or book agent, no bill collector, missionary, or bond broker could get over the threshold of the outer office—the first-line trenches. For a lynx-eyed intelligence officer sat at an advance observation post, and the minute an enemy appeared let him have it pointblank:
“Who do you wish to see? Have you an appointment? No? Mr. Wiltbank never sees anybody except by appointment. ”

“ Carter’s all alone with her baby—nowhere to stay—has to get back to look after her cow and chickens—and unable to communicate with this man, who is right in this very building! First she goes up there and they won’t let her cross the threshold; and then I go up and they shoo me out like a tramp.”
“Did you explain what you wished to see Mr. Wiltbank about?” asked Mr. Tutt quietly.
“Why, of course! But they didn’t half listen! They’re so smooth and oily you can’t get anywhere. They wouldn’t even say whether he was in or not. And I had the affidavit all ready too. ”

“ Those who have the habit of success are prone to imagine themselves immune to nature’s laws, and exceptions to all ordinary rules. They fall because they are unwilling to recognize the possibilities latent in the apparently insignificant. ”

“ I command you, that all and singular business and excuses being laid aside, you appear and attend before me, Margaret Haggerty, a notary public, duly qualified and appointed under the laws of the State of New York, in Room 1012 of the building known as —— Broadway, Borough of Manhattan, New York City, forthwith, on this the 29th day of April, to testify under oath before me concerning the execution of a deed, in which Sarah M. Wiltbank appears as grantor and Emily P. Carter as grantee, and to the execution of which you were a subscribing witness. ”

“ You know the way. Miss Madden, just tell Mr. Wiltbank that Officer O’Leary is here and wants to speak to him a minute.”
The Honorable Amos T. was in the very act of bending over to remove a fresh box of cigars from the bottom drawer of his desk when Denny appeared at the doorway in answer to the permission extended through Miss Madden.
“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Wiltbank with an affectation of delight at seeing his visitor, “how are you, old man? What can I do for you? Have a cigar?” ”

“ That is all this humble tale amounts to—the desperate situation in which she found herself simply by virtue of another human being’s selfish pomposity, and the fall that a plucky little Maggie Haggerty took out of the pride-swollen Amos T., whereby he became a better-mannered man.
So let us take our stand on the sidewalk in front of a Broadway office building and watch our characters one by one as they emerge from the Subway and pass inside the revolving doors to play their parts. First Moses Icklebaum, thin, bald, nervous, hurrying along with a bundle of fire-insurance policies in his hand ”

“ A person who, on being duly served with such a subpœna, without reasonable cause refuses or neglects to attend or refuses to answer under oath concerning the execution of such conveyance, forfeits to the person injured one hundred dollars, and may also be committed to prison by the officer who issued the subpœna, there to remain without bail and without the liberties of the jail until he answers under oath as required by this section. ”