H. C. Witwer

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Both him and the Kid glares at me, and the Kid pushes me aside.
"Lay off!" he says. "I know just what you're gonna say. There's no use of you tryin' to discourage me, because I'm gonna buy a car. Here I am makin' all kinds of money and I might as well be a bum!—no automobile or nothin'. I should have had a car long ago; all the big leaguers own their own tourin' cars. There's no class to you any more, if you don't flit from place to place in your own bus!" ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The men works eight easy hours a delightful day, six days a week and they are happy, hardy and healthy! Promotion is regular, rapid and regardless! Our employees is all loyal, likable and Lithuanians! They own their own cottages, clothes and chickens, bein' thrifty, temperate and—"
"Tasty!" I yells. I couldn't, keep it in no longer!
"What?" snaps the little guy, kinda sore.
"Lay off, Stupid!" says the Kid to me, with a openly admirin' glance at the runt. "Go on with your story," he nods to him. "Never mind Senseless, here, I'm gettin' every word of it!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Kid and me stood watchin' him the first time he worked, with our eyes and mouths as open as a mobile crap tourney.
"Ain't he a bear?" asks Eddie Duke, comin' up. "That's all two-dollar stuff he's pullin' there, bo! Y' don't see actin' like that every day, eh?"
"Oh, I don't know!" says the Kid, takin' a fresh slant at Van Ness. "I bet I could give him a battle in Shakespeare, at that! I was a riot in 'Richard the Third,' wasn't I?"
"Cease!" sneers Duke. "This bird has got them classics layin' down and rollin' over when he snaps his fingers. ”

“ But at two o'clock, when the Kid is leavin' for his daily maulin' bee with big Arthur, she comes along in her racin' car and asks him to go to Los Angeles with her. The Kid stalls and says he's just about got time to get over and give the South American entry a workout, although he'd rather take the ride with her than defend his title against a one-armed blind man. She frowns for a minute, and then she smiles and says hop in with her and she'll drive him over to the sanitarium. ”

“ And then Scanlan, poppin' up from somewheres, jumps in front of Arthur, his face the color of that busted table, but his body as steady as the Rockies, as he plants himself there before the big guy, swingin' his head back easily before that tremblin' iron pole. The Kid throws his hands up in a fightin' position and dances from one foot to the other lookin' for a openin', like a guy with a pail of water tryin' to put out hell! Arthur hesitates, starin' wildly at the Kid, and then his face begins to change till it's almost human. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I ain't met nobody yet which didn't admit they had the only correct dope on women, rheumatism and human nature, but I'm still waitin' to be introduced to the guy which really knows anything at all about any of 'em, when it gets right down to the box score!
The nearest I ever come to knowin' the original patentee to two of 'em was Eddie Duke. Eddie is one of the best men in the movable picture game, accordin' to everybody but himself. He concedes he's the best. He's a little, aggressive guy which would of prob'ly been a lightweight champion, for instance, if it hadn't been for his parents. ”

“ I shook it and Scanlan kissed it—a trick he stole from Van Ness.
The dinner and dance that night was a knockout! Film City is lit up like a plumber used to be on Saturday night, and the inhabitants is dressed like the people that poses for the ads of any cigarette over fifteen cents a pack. As usual, Miss Vincent had the rest of the dames lookin' like sellin' platers in stake race and, believe me, some of them society girls would have worried Venus. The Kid was so swelled up because she kept within easy call all night that he forgot his promise to fix up G. Herbert with Helen Dear. ”