Gelett Burgess

“ Just as he reached the bib the bridge was drawn up, the hawsers cast off, and with a deep roaring whistle the vessel started, gathered way, and, urged by the jingle-bell, shot out of the slip into the waters of the Bay.
The crowds went forward, upstairs, to the protection of the cabin, but Professor Vango stayed by the after-rail alone, where a chain was stretched across the open stern. A ragged mist lay upon the harbour, hanging to the surface of the water like a blanket, torn open sometimes by a passing gust of wind and closing up to a thicker fog beyond. ”

“ Coffin slapped him on the back in sympathy, for even the irrepressible Freshman seemed for the moment to be touched by the admonitory legend. But he was not one to be serious for long, and after that one swift glance into his soul, his customary spirit asserted itself.
“See here,” he said, “this is the way I look at it. You can’t have good luck with your conscience all the time, any more’n you can with your purse. Moral: cultivate your forgettery! ”

“ Now the main Gulf Stream of San Francisco life sets down Kearney and up Market Street; this is the Rialto, the promenade of cheap actors, rounders and men about town. It is the route of the amatory ogler and the grand tour of the demi-monde. Of a Saturday afternoon the course is given over to human peacocks and popinjays, fresh from the matinees, airing “the latest” in garb and finery; but there is a late guard abroad after the theatres close in the evening, when the relieving prospect of an idle morrow gives a merry license for late hours and convivial comradeship. ”

“ While he hesitated, an attendant showed him into a dressing-room. He saw naked men passing with towels twisted about their loins.
For the first time in many days, he took off his wrinkled, creased clothes. Pausing on the balcony without the door, he surveyed the carpeted, gaudily decorated apartment below. It was midnight, the busiest hour of the twenty-four in the baths. Heavier than the atmosphere of steam and steamed humanity rose the fumes of liquor. Few there are sober in a Hammam at that elbow of the night. ”

“ There wasn’t a man on the whole island, nigger or white, who wasn’t my enemy, and I didn’t expect I’d ever escape. But there was a woman. She wasn’t exactly the kind you’d ever suspect of having a heart, but she saved my life. She hid me in a shed outside of the town, and fed me and nursed me till I was able to get away on a blockade runner and come to San Francisco. I owe that woman something, and if I’m ever flush again, she’ll get it back.
So it was a woman who sent me to the Philippines, it was a woman who got my promotion, a woman who tortured me like a fiend, and a woman who saved me. ”

“ I was strolling down Kearney Street, listening to the birds singing through the haze, when something that wore scrambled whiskers and an ash-barrel hat advised me to go down to Broadway wharf and take a chance with the fruit bums. He steered me the proper course, and I smoked the pipe along Broadway. There was the wharf all right, and there was a whole cargo of bananas being lifted on a derrick and let down. Once in a while one would drop. The crowd underneath would make a jump and fight for it. ”

“ In an instant the tickets, pellets, and books were swept into a sack, and the men scattered in all directions, sweeping down tables and over chairs to escape arrest.
“Run for your life, or we’ll get pulled!” Coffin called out to the Klondyker, who still held the ticket in his hand, and he made a break for one of the blue doors. It was slammed in his face by a retreating scout. “Over here!” the Klondyker cried, setting his foot to another door and forcing it open. ”

“ When they got to the house, Flora jumped out and loped up the steps, blazing, and slammed the door. Kate tried to follow, but her tight dress and tight shoes were too much for her, and she fell down. That got Kate’s mad up, and when Kate’s good and mad she’s a mule. She banged at the door, but no one opened. So she sat down on the front doorstep to wait till Flora came out. You know what Indians are. She was ready to wait all night. She was used to nights six months long, and a few hours in a San Francisco fog didn’t worry her a bit. ”

“ More than once, in the early morning, he had to snatch hastily at a biscuit and swallow it to keep his gorge from rising at his foolhardy intemperance; but he manfully proceeded with a courage induced by the firm belief that if he failed, and attempted to evade payment of his bet, this gentle, green-eyed Klondyker would make him pay through the nose. It is not safe, in the West, for a man to wager high stakes with no assets. ”

“ He always has plenty of money on him. He’s nutty. Crazy as a hatter, ain’t you, Eli?” He laughed again and passed on.
“Did you hear that?” cried the little man, angrily. “He pretends I ain’t up for felony, but I am, though they can’t prove it. It’s persecution, that’s what it is. I don’t mind the fine for vagrancy, but I’m afraid if I have to go to jail I’ll lose my car.”
“Lose your car!” said Coffin, amused at the little old man’s vagaries. “You don’t think a street-car will wait for you while you’re bailed out, do you?” ”

“ Feeling in his pockets, as a man will, he found a gold watch and chain, a gold cigarette case, a corkscrew mounted in rubies and three hundred and forty-two dollars in bills and coin. Every one in the deal had been too busy to touch him while he was drugged.
Long before he got his senses his arm began to feel funny. After he’d investigated the costume, he took off the Willy-boy coat and stripped up his shirt sleeve. There was a tattoo mark, smarting like sin, with the name “DOTTY” in beautiful capital letters! ”

“ Except for the Freshman’s broken rest at the Tanks, not one of them had slept since their meeting the 275previous evening; not one of them had eaten. Their eyes were glassy, but not yet sleepy; they were like dead men who could still walk and speak. A dull fever burned in their veins. Talk, then, grew faint, and even thought flickered but dimly. There was nothing positive to look forward to but Coffee John’s invitation to supper at nine o’clock, so they waited listlessly for the hour. Finally, a proposal from the indefatigable Coffin to wander through the Chinese quarter lured them out. ”

“ Coffin cried, with a burst of his old fervor, “I feel like the chairman of a woman’s club after an annual election. Where you going to feed your visage, old man?” he added tentatively. He was out of funds, hungry and weary. The hundred dollars won from the Klondyker in the smoking wager, deposited for bail, had, in fact, completely exhausted his resources. ”

“ He was pacing up and down the stone arcade of the Ferry Building, dismally anticipating the prospect of walking the city streets alone with his curse, when it occurred to him that he might possibly make his way to Oakland. Oakland was less strenuous; it was calm, sober, respectable, free from the distressing torments of San Francisco. 158Many a time he had met Mrs. Higgins upon the dock behind the waiting-room, and he knew the way well. He dodged slyly up the wagon-track, round the corner of the baggage-room, to the slip where the steamer Piedmont was waiting to set out on her last trip. ”

“ By this time the dilapidated laundry wagon had threaded the Mission, crossed Market Street, and was rolling along the asphalt of Golden Gate Avenue on its way to the Chinese Quarter. The quadroon woman’s eyes were afire with hate, and Vango watched her in apprehension, mingled with a shrewd desire to work further upon her excitement.
“You see I was able to be of assistance, even when conditions was unfavorable,” he ventured. “The spirits is unfallible to instruct when a party approaches ’em right. ”

“ So, for some time, the launch, carrying its two wretched passengers, and what more Vango dared 163not guess, plunged on insanely through the fog. The medium knew nothing of practical affairs; psychology was his art, and chicanery his science; but even had he been mechanic enough to stop and reverse the engine in the dark, it would have taken a considerable acquaintance with the Bay of San Francisco to have set and kept any logical course in such a night. ”

“ A fellow that I knew from the PL outfit loaned me a story-book once by “The Duchess,” that said something like this, only in story-book language:
“A woman is the start and finish of all our troubles.”
I always remembered that. It was a right nice idea. Many and many’s the time that, thinking over my troubles and what brought me to this elegant feed—say, I could drink a washtub full of that new-fangled coffee—I’ve remembered those sentiments. Susie Latham, that is the finest lady in the White River country, she was the start and finish of my troubles. ”

“ THE HARVARD FRESHMAN’S ADVENTURE: THE FORTY PANATELAS James Wiswell Coffin, 3d, was the first of the three adventurers to leave the restaurant, and as he turned up Kearney Street he had a new but fully fledged philosophy buzzing in his brain. Enlightenment had come in a hint dropped by Coffee John himself. It took a Harvard man and a Bostonian of Puritan stock to hatch that chick of thought, but, by the time the coffee was finished, the mental egg broke and an idea burst upon him. It was this:
“Facts show that good luck is stable for a while and is then followed by a run of misfortune. ”

“ A Chinese doctor in big spectacles and a long white mustache came in to see him, and mixed him up some black, horrid, smelly stuff, made of sea-horses and lizards, and Moy Kip burned punks in the joss-house upstairs, but he didn’t get any better. He was always worrying about something when he was delirious, and I couldn’t make out quite what it was about till one day, just before the end, when his mind cleared and he told me. Moy Kip wanted to marry me! ”

“ Of course, once in a while some swells from Nob Hill would come in for a design or two. I used to do my best work for them, because, I thought, you never can tell when these society people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a mile on a painting. Why, the other day I read in the papers that a Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for a little, dinky canvas painting. The highest pay I ever knew a dermograph artist to get was five hundred for doing the Wells Brothers’ tattooed woman. ”

“ I can never endure the smell of tobacco again without being as sea-sick as a cat in a swing. Much obliged for your charity, but I’ll call it square for the good omen.”
Irrationally cheered by the portent, James Wiswell Coffin, 3d, wandered out aimlessly and floated with the throng down towards the cheaper end of Kearney Street. The cool, green, grassy square at the Old Plaza attracted him, and he entered the little park.
Meanwhile, the plot hatched by the Hero of Pago Bridge and the deserter of the Philippines had gone forward without a hitch. ”

“ You cannot teach a man what “news” is in one sitting—a man has to have a nose trained to smell it, and a special gift for determining its value, but I described the technical meaning of “a story” and “covering” a detail. I told them to keep their eyes open, and gave many examples of how it often happened that a reporter, when sent out on a little “single-head” story, would, if he were sharp, get a hint that could be worked up into a front page “seven-column scare-head.” ”

“ The tattoo mark was his only clue. I was the only one he knew in the business, so he came down to me and wanted to know how, and when, and where, and why, and what-the-devil.
“Look here, my son,” says I, “what are you kicking about, anyway? You go to sleep with eight dollars on your back and two bits in your jeans. You wake up with about a seven hundred and fifty dollar rig on, and a wad in your pocket, more than you ever had in your life. The thing for you to do,” I says, “is to lose yourself before you’re called for, and to stay lost, good and hard! ”

“ THE STORY OF THE QUADROON WOMAN I reckon you don’t guess a coloured person can hate white folks as much as white folks hate niggers, but they do, sometimes, and I despise a white man more than if I were a sure-enough black woman. ”

“ So he decided to play both ends. He would steal the wrong man, and hold on to the right one.
He ran his eye around the place and saw Harry Maidslow, a scene-shifter in the old Baldwin Theatre, who used to drop in, now and then, on his nights off. Man for man, Maidslow and Letterblair were modelled on the same lines—Maidslow wore a moustache, but that would come off easy enough—yellow hair, blue eyes, big and strong build. Maidslow hadn’t a relative this side of the Rockies; no one would miss him. Crigg knew that.
Spotty Crigg went so far in his mind before he thought of the tattoo mark. ”

“ I walked over a bigger patch of hell than any man ever did alone. But the regiment’s come and gone and never found me, and I don’t know why I ain’t dead along with my insides.
And they mustered out at Denver, and the boys split up and went home. Company N went back to Range City—cottonwoods shedding along the creeks, ranges all white on top, sagey smell off the foot-hills, people riding and driving in from the 81ranches by hundreds to see them and cheer them and feed them and hug them—but there wasn’t any hero for Striped Rock, because he had bad eyes and was a darn fool—a darn fool! ”