H. C. Witwer

“ 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!" ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But the wife begins bein' pleasant to gaze upon and a delight to the naked eye where Eve leaves off. Why, she's got a movie contract which she holds over my head every time I stay out till ten o'clock and the like. Them two dames in the one room is more than the average guy can stand and how they ever come to fall for a coupla guys like me and Alex is a subject for bigger brains than mine. They say women is peculiar, hey? Well, it's a good thing for the average guy that they are! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I says.
"You'll never get nowhere!" he answers, lookin' at me like how can a guy live and be so thick behind the ears. "You'll never be nothin' but an average citizen, because you never get a new idea! No, I ain't gonna make Sampson think I know more about automobiles than anybody in the world—that's what has queered many a sale. I'm gonna make him think he does, and that him buyin' our roadster proves it!"
"I'll bet you could make Rockefeller think they wasn't a nickel in oil!" says the wife admirin'ly.
Alex gets up and reaches for his hat. ”

“ I'll bet right now I can go down to the docks or some place and get a handsome stevedore and make him as big a star as Carrington De Vire in six months!"
"Don't be idiotic," laughs Eve. "Imagine a stevedore as a moving picture star!"
"Why not?" demands Alex, lookin' like the idea had made a hit with him. "Ain't a stevedore as good as anybody else? I'll bet a thousand dollars even that I can catch one or somebody like him and make him a movie star. What d'ye say?" ”

“ I never seen nobody in my life who could talk as fast and frequent as this dame and if her husband had hung that trick lock on her tongue he would of made himself solid with me!
"That's that lovely Mrs. Simmons," says the wife, when they had went. "It's too bad her husband ain't a live one."
"Gettin' married has buried many a good man!" I says.
"It didn't change you none," she says. "You was a dead one when I got you!"
"Here!" butts in Alex. "Don't you people get started again! I wanna finish my supper in peace. What's wrong with Mister Simmons?"
"He ain't got no pep," says the wife. ”

“ High class automobile salesman for the Gaflooey light delivery wagon. We have no time for experiments and successful applicant must make good at once. We don't want an order taker, but an order maker—a real, live, simon-pure hustler who will start delivering the goods the morning he goes on the payroll. This job pays ten thousand a year, if you show us you're worth it. ”

“ Our car—the Gaflooey—is not the best on the market. There are others just as good and some of the higher priced ones are, naturally, better. You can't expect the best on the market for the price we sell at—750. A man of your intelligence knows that and when a salesman tells you his five hundred dollar car is better than a standard make at five thousand, he's insulting your intelligence. We make a good, honest car—that's all. I ain't gonna take up your time tellin' you about the—eh—ah—the—eh, magneto and so forth. Unless you're a mechanic, you wouldn't understand about 'em anyways. ”

“ The bunch in back glares at us and says somethin' about what a crime it is to let drunken men come into a theatre.
Outside on the pavement, Alex lets forth a snort and whiffs the fresh air like it was wine.
"Think of my wife sittin' in there and worshippin' that big stiff," he snarls. "And yours, too!"
"We all have our faults," I says. "I knowed a guy once which was crazy over fried parsnips."
"They ain't nothin' to laugh at in this," he says, slappin' his hands together. "I ain't a jealous man, but no movie hero is gonna be no god to my wife!" ”

“ Delancey, a handsome and accomplished young giant, is tired of the "sham and deceit" of his own "exalted social set" and it's his ambition to wed a girl of the common people and let her enjoy some of the millions his hard-fisted uncle wrung from their toil. He also has another aim in life and that is to accomplish a sweepin' reform of the movie game. He's always been a great fan himself, but he's sick of the impossible plays which has been foisted on a innocent and nickel spendin' public. ”

“ Out in my town five of us fellers formed a little club. Each of us has swore to come to New York one after the other and make good in six months to a year, just to show you folks how easy it is. For one thing, we all got our own private little plans for winnin' out here and every one of us is goin' to go at the proposition from a brand new angle. I was elected to be the first one, and that's why I'm here."
"Alex," I says, "you're an ambitious feller, and I gotta hand it to you. I don't doubt you'll go a long ways at that, if you don't get pinched for speedin'. ”

“ If you can make a movie star out of a stevedore, I can make a watch outa a hard boiled egg!"
They is some people behind us which can't see the picture on account of us talkin' and they begin to hiss at us. It bothers Alex the same as rain worries a duck.
"Is they steam escapin' somewheres?" he remarks, turnin' his head. "Why, brakemen have became railroad presidents," he goes on, "bootblacks have became bankers, prize fighters have turned evangelists and the United States has went dry. Why shouldn't a stevedore become a movie star?" ”

“ He thinks the average movie hero is sickenin', and he wants to show the world how a real hero would act. He will appear in twelve pictures only. Each will be a episode in the greatest mystery story ever written entitled, "What was Hector's Choice?" Every single female in the country is invited to see this picture and send in their solution of the mystery. The one that comes nearest to the correct answer will become the bride of Delancy Calhoun and his twenty million bucks.
Oh, boy!!!
"Alex," I says, "I'll tell the world this is great stuff! It must be gonna cost you a bunch of money. ”