H. C. Bunner

“ She was a wren-like little thing, with soft brown hair, rather pretty, and yet the sort of girl whom men never notice. To address this male stranger was an agony to her. But she knew that her French had been bought at a fashionable boarding-school, and bought for show, and her mother had a right to demand its exhibition. She asked M. Quinlan how he portrayed himself, and M. Quinlan, with no more expression on his face than a Chinese idol, but with a fluency checked only by his drawl and his stutter, poured forth what sounded to Mrs. Copernicus like a small oration. ”

“ And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.
Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting. ”

“ From dawn till dusk people came from miles around to stare a quarter’s worth at the burnt elephant. Once in a while, as a rare treat, the keeper lifted a corner of her bandages, and revealed the seared flesh. The show went off in a day or two, leaving Zenobia to recover at leisure; and as it wandered westward, it did an increased business simply because it had had a burnt trick elephant. Such, dear friends, is the human mind.
The Doctor fared even better. The fame of his new case spread far and wide. People seemed to think that if he could cure an elephant he could cure any thing. ”

“ Mr. Morpeth, wearing a grave expression, was paddling Miss Flossy toward the hotel. He had said nothing whatever, and it was a noticeable silence that Miss Flossy finally broke.
“You’ve done pretty much everything that I wanted you to do, Muffets,” she said; “but you haven’t saved my life yet, and I’m going to give you a chance.”
It is not difficult to overturn a canoe. One twist of Flossie’s supple body did it, and before he knew just what had happened, Morpeth was swimming toward the shore, holding up Flossy Belton with one arm, and fighting for life in the icy water of a Maine lake. ”

“ On the beach near this hotel, where the canoes were drawn up in line, there stood one Summer morning a curly-haired, fair young man—not so very young, either—whose cheeks were uncomfortably red as he looked first at his own canoe, high and dry, loaded with rods and landing-net and luncheon-basket, and then at another canoe, fast disappearing down the lake, wherein sat a young man and a young woman. ”

“ Brant looked at the name on the door-plate.
“Zozo’s only my name in the Science,” the astrologer explained. “My real name—my born name—is Simmons. But I took Zozo for my business name. ‘Zs’ seem to kinder go with the astrology business, somehow—I don’t know why. There’s Zadkiel, and Zoroaster, and—oh, I don’t know—they’re ‘Zs’ or ‘Xs’, most of ’em; and it goes with the populace. I don’t no more like humoring their superstition than you would; but a man’s got to live; and the world ain’t up to the Science yet. ”

“ Zenobia saw him first, blew a shrill blast on her trumpet, close to the Doctor’s ear, bolted through a snake fence, lumbered across a turnip-field, and disappeared in a patch of woods, leaving the Doctor to quiet his excited horse and to face the keeper, who advanced with rage in his eye.
“What do you mean, you cuss,” he began, “weaning a man’s elephant’s affections away from him? You ain’t got no more morals than a Turk, you ain’t. That elephant an’ me has been side-partners for fourteen years, an’ here you come between us.” ”

“ Women in robust health imagined ailments, so as to send for him and ask him shuddering questions about “that wretched animal.” The trustees of the orphan-asylum made him staff-physician—in this case the Doctor thought he could trace a connection of ideas, in which children and a circus were naturally associated. And the local newspaper called him a savant.
He called every day upon Zenobia, who greeted him with trumpetings of joyful welcome. She also desired to shake hands with him, and her keeper had to sit on her head and hold her trunk to repress the familiarity. ”

“ And yet, on the further side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—a little world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.
“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said: “there is such a thing as getting so far above our fellow-men that we see only one side of them.”
Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.
“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn,” Mr. Brede began. ”

“ So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.
The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. ”

“ Opportunity is never lacking to a man in this mood. Some scientific idiot was getting up an Antarctic expedition, to start in the coming June. Brant applied for a berth.
“That settles it,” he said.
Of course, it didn’t settle it. He moped as much as ever and found it just as hard as ever to occupy his mind. If it had not been for the astrologer, he would hardly have known what to do.
It amused him to interest himself in Zozo and his affairs. He watched the building of the new “orfice”, and discussed with Zozo the color of the paint and the style of the signs. ”

“ Her groans had ceased.
“I’ll call to-morrow at noon,” said the Doctor—“good gracious, what’s that?” Zenobia’s trunk was playing around his waistband.
“She wants to shake hands with you,” her keeper explained. “She’s a lady, she is, and she knows you done her good.”
“I’d rather not have any thing of the sort,” said the Doctor, decisively.
When Dr. Tibbitt called at twelve on the morrow, he found Zenobia’s tent neatly roped in, an amphitheatre of circus-benches constructed around her, and this amphitheatre packed with people. ”

“ Zozo would have died for Brant.
So it came about that Zozo found out all about the blonde lady in Brant’s case. How? Well, one is not an astrologer for nothing. Brant’s coachman and Mme. de Renette’s maid were among Zozo’s clients. No society gossip knew so much about the Brant-Renette affair as Zozo knew, inside of two months.
“It’s perfectly ridiculous, Annette! I can’t see the man!”
“Madame knows best,” said Annette, wiping away a ready tear. “It is only that I love Madame. And it is not well to anger those who have the power of magic. If they can bring good luck, they can bring bad. ”

“ Zenobia was sick, but intoxication dominated her sickness. Even sulphide of calcium withdrew courteously before the might of beer and gin. Rocking from side to side, reeling across the road and back, trumpeting in imbecile inexpressive tones, Zenobia advanced.
The Doctor looked forward. Tom Matson sat in his dog-cart, with Miss Bunker by his side. His horse had caught sight of Zenobia, and he was rearing high in air, and whinnying in terror. Before Tom could pull him down, he made a sudden break, overturned the dog-cart, and flung Tom and Miss Minetta Bunker on a bank by the side of the road. ”

“ I’m Zozo—the astrologer. Why—don’t you know?—on Rapelyea Street?”
Brant dimly remembered that there was a Rapelyea Street, through which he sometimes passed on his way to the railroad station, and he had some faint memory of a gaudily painted shanty decked out with the signs of the zodiac in gilt papier maché.
“My orfice got a-fire this evening,” explained Zozo, “from the bakery next door. And I had to light out over the back fence. Them people in that neighborhood is kinder superstitious. They ain’t no idea of astrology. They don’t know it’s a Science. They think it’s some kind of magic. ”

“ As they walked along the half-built street, Zozo told his tale. He had been in the astrology business for thirty years, and it had barely yielded him a living. Yet he had been able, by rigorous economy, to save up enough money to build himself a house—“elegant house, sir,” he said; “‘tain’t what you may call large; but it’s an elegant house. I got the design out of a book that cost a dollar, sir, a dollar. There ain’t no use in trying to do things cheap when you’re going to build a house.”
But his joy in his house was counterbalanced by his grief for the loss of his “orfice.” ”

“ If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. ”

“ Copernicus told Mr. Mitts about Quinlan. Mr. Mitts was interested. He knew a Professor at a fresh-water college who would put Quinlan through his studies during the vacation.
“Well, that’s settled,” Mr. Copernicus said, and he beamed with satisfaction. “I knew you’d help me out, Mitts. Only it’s so hard ever to get a sight of you—you are always traveling about.”
“We don’t often meet,” Mr. Mitts assented. “And it is curious that this visit should have been the means of giving me sight of a man in whom I want to interest you. His name is Chester—Dudley Winthrop Chester. ”

“ Then she came to Bumgardner’s, where a dozen kegs of lager-beer and a keg of what passed at Bumgardner’s for gin stood on the sidewalk. Zenobia’s circus experience had taught her what a water-barrel meant. She applied her knowledge. With her forefoot she deftly staved in the head of one keg after another, and with her trunk she drew up the beer and the gin, and delivered them to her stomach. If you think her taste at fault, remember the bolus. ”

“ Hector Pellicoe’s card was nailed to a slat. It was Hector, the six-months-old pup, for whose diminutive proportions the small door in the dog-house had been devised; Hector, for whom a saucer of lukewarm milk was even then waiting by the kitchen range.
“Oh, Sister!” cried Miss Angela, “we never can get him out! You’ll have to send for a man!”
“I certainly shall not send for a man at this hour of the evening,” said Miss Pellicoe, white, but firm; “and I shall not leave the poor creature imprisoned during the night.” Here Hector yawped madly. ”

“ Now you, you always everlastingly knew girls. What’s that place you lived at in New York State—where there were so many girls?”
“Tusculum,” replied Mr. Cutter, in a tone of complacent reminiscence. “Nice old town, plastered so thick with mortgages that you can’t grow flowers in the front yard. All the fellows strike for New York as soon as they begin to shave. The crop of girls remains, and they wither on the stem. Why, one Winter they had a hump-backed man for their sole society star in the male line. Nice girls, too. Old families. ”

“ From the June day when Rhodora came, to the Ash Wednesday of the next year when her engagement was announced, there was one grand battle, a dozen girls with wealth and social position and knowledge of the ground to help them, all pitted against one garrison girl, with not so much as a mother to back her—Mrs. Pennington being hopelessly and permanently on the sick-list.
Trega girls who had never thought of doing more than wait at their leisure for the local young men to marry them at their leisure now went in for accomplishments of every sort. ”

“ Copernicus, between the tuition you do for yourself and the tuition that you receive from a competent teacher as there is between the carpentering you do for yourself and the carpentering a regular carpenter does for you. I can see the marks of self-tuition all over this young man’s conversation. He has never met a competent instructor in his life. But he has done very well for himself—wonderfully well. He in entitled to great credit. Try to remember, Quinlan, what I told you about the use of the ablative absolute.”
Quinlan said he would, and made his exit by the basement door. ”

“ Richard Brant disturbed her peace of mind by falling in love with her, and what was worse, asking her to marry him. That, she said, she could not do. He was her best, her dearest friend: she admired and esteemed him more than any man in the world. If she ever could marry a man, she would marry him. ”

“ And, you know, I can remember how Papa and Mama lived together, and sometimes it seems cruelly hard that those dear girls should lose all that happiness—I’m sure it’s the best happiness in the world. And it can never be, here. Now, if I could get occupation—you know that I’m teaching school, I suppose—and if the rest of the girls could keep up their work for the New York people—why—don’t you know, if I didn’t tell—if I put it on business grounds, you know—I think they would feel that it was best, after all, to leave Tusculum.... ”

“ Cutter,” said Miss Euphrosyne, firmly, “we have made a mistake.”
“It looks that way,” replied Dick, feebly; “but may be it’s only the—the ulsters.”
“No,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “The ulsters are a part of it; but the whole thing is wrong, Mr. Cutter; and I see it all now. I didn’t realize what it meant. But my eyes have been opened. Nine young unmarried women can not go West with a young man—if you had heard what people were saying all around us in the cars—you don’t know. We’ve got to give up the idea. ”

“ MR. COPERNICUS AND THE PROLETARIAT. The old publishing house of T. Copernicus & Son was just recovering from the rush of holiday business—a rush of perhaps a dozen purchasers. Christmas shoppers rarely sought out the dingy building just around the corner from Astor Place, and T. C. & Son had done no great business since young T. C., the “Son,” died, fifteen years before. The house lived on two or three valuable copyrights; and old Mr. Copernicus kept it alive just for occupation’s sake, now that Tom was dead. ”

“ However, there is a financial manœuvre known as “kiting checks,” whereby A exchanges a check with B and B swaps with A again, playing an imaginary balance against Time and the Clearing House; and by a similar scheme, which an acute student of social ethics has called “kiting calls,” the girls found that they could make Saturday afternoon their own, without one glance from the watchful eyes of Esther’s mother or Louise’s aunt—Louise had only an aunt to reckon with. ”

“ Chester waved a much-worn tooth-brush in the air.
“Man wants but lil-lil-little here below,” he remarked.
“You see,” explained Mr. Dudley Winthrop Chester, formerly Quinlan, as he stepped out into the night air with Mr. Mitts, “the scheme is bib-bib-busted here, but I’ve got confidence in it. It’s good—it’ll gig-gig-go. Chicago’s the pip-pip-place for me. I suppose if you flash up ‘amo, amas’ to a Chicago man, he thinks you’re Elihu Burritt, the learned bib-bib-blacksmith.” ”