Irvin S. Cobb

“ But the stick of dynamite is dangling from his neck and the fuse is spitting little sparks.
Good Sam swings around and yells at the animal to go away and he grabs up a chunk of wood and heaves it at him. But the dog thinks that’s only play and he keeps right on coming, with his tail wagging in innocent amusement and his tongue hanging out like a pink plush necktie and his eyes shining with gratefulness for the kind gentleman who’s gone to all the trouble of thinking up this new kind of game especially on his account. ”

“ Was ever a man strung between the horns of a worse dilemma? Warden Riddle had been right. To open the prison doors for so infamous a creature as Wyeth was, would be damnation for all his ambitions. And Governor Blankenship was as ambitious as he was godly. And probably no more godly man ever lived. On the other hand, he had given his pledge to Wyeth.
There was this about Governor Blankenship: he had been named for the father of his country—that man who could not tell a lie. And, wittingly, Governor Blankenship had never in all his blameless life told a lie either. ”

“ Instinctively he slid off the stone and splashed down on the loose shale in the edge of the creek bed. As he half crouched there, up to his shanks in water and suddenly apprehensive, he felt through his boot soles a progressive rippling movement that grew swift and more violent. It was as though the world were flindering its skin on the haunches of these mountains precisely as a pestered horse does to get rid of a horse-fly. ”

“ The sashes opened quite down to the floor and immediately outside, and from the same level, just as he remembered having noted it following his arrival, the roof of the veranda sloped away with a gentle slant. The light behind him showed its flat tin covering glistening and smooth, with a myriad of soft warm drops splashing and stippling upon it. Beyond was cloaking impenetrable blackness, a deep and Stygian gloom; the most confirmed Styg could have desired none deeper.
So Mr. Boyce-Upchurch walked back and entered the bathroom. ”

“ Miss Gatling stood up, a slim, trim figure in her riding-boots and well-tailored breeches and with a gay little sweater drawn snugly down inside her waistband and held there by a broad brilliant girdle of squaw’s [228] beadwork. She settled a white sombrero on her bobbed hair and stepped away from them over the pine-needles and thence down toward the roaring creek. The morning sunlight came slanting through the lower tree boughs and picked out and made shiny glitters of the heavy Mexican silver spurs at her heels and the wide Navaho silver bracelet that was set on her right wrist. ”

“ It was a club with just one by-law—which was entertaining a profound distrust for Samson Goodhue, Esquire—but there were quite a good many strong rich cuss-words in the ritual.
Still, any man who devotes himself to the public welfare is bound to accumulate a few detractors as he goes along. Good Sam went booming ahead like as if there wasn’t a private enemy on his list or a cloud in his sky. ”

“ We are forever assuming that nature gets up her principal effects either for our benefit or for our undoing.
Anyhow, that was how it was with Chaney. There he squatted with his pleasant sins all heavy upon him, and the front of Scalded Peak was fetching away from its foundation to coast down and totally abolish Chaney. His bodily reflexes synchronized with his mind’s. As his brain recorded the thought his legs bent to jump and set him running off to the left along the shore. But before he could take ten long leaps the slide was finished and over with. ”

“ It was very much like this—a gorgeous social event, the whole South participating; with sentiment for its half-erased background, with the memories of a war that ended nearly sixty years before for its fainting, fading excuse; with the splendid promise of balls and parties and receptions and flirting and love-making and match-making for its assembly call to the campaigning rampaging young of the species.
Only over by the river at the big yellow pine auditorium did the puny veteran element yet hold its own against the dominant attendant tides of the newer generations of its descendants. ”

“ We’re not a couple of tourists out for winter sports and chilblains on our toes. We’re pioneers. We’re going forth to rediscover the old Christmas spirit that’s sane and simple and friendly. If there is a neighborhood left anywhere in this country where the children still believe in Santa Claus we’re going to find it. And we’ll bring the word back when we come home and next year thousands of others will follow our examples, and generations yet unborn will rise up and bless us as benefactors of the human race. ”

“ So they pitched the [236] tents and coupled up the collapsible stove there in a sheltered small cove in the Park’s back yard and watched the sun go down in his glory. When the moon rose it was too good to believe. You almost could reach up and jingle the tambourines of little circling stars; anyhow, you almost thought you could. It was a magic hour, an ideal place for love-making among the young of the species. Realizing the which, Mrs. Gatling had a severe sinking and apprehensive sensation directly behind the harness buckle on the ample belt which girthed her weary form amidships. ”

“ Inside the cabin Boots and Babe hear the contestants drawing nearer. Mixed in with much happy frolicsome barking is a large volume of praying and yelling and calls for help, and along with all this a noise like a steam snow-plow being driven at a high rate of speed. Boots jumps for the door but before he can jerk it open, Good Sam busts in with his little playmate streaking along not ten feet behind him, and at [295] that instant the blast goes off and the pup loses second money, as you might say, by about two lengths. ”

“ Why should a man trifle with his luck? With Scarra wiped out—and certainly Scarra deserved wiping out, if ever a red-handed brute did—the ends of justice would be satisfied and the case might serve as a warning to other criminals. But if that governor should turn mush-headed and withhold from Scarra his just punishment, where would Scarra’s lawyer be? He’d be missing a delectable chunk of jack by a hair—that’s where he would be. ”

“ When most of the crew knocked off late last night, seeing she was under control, one idiot builds a fire to heat himself up a pot of coffee. Would you believe it?—with the timber all just so much punk and tinder after this long dry spell, he kindles up a rousing big blaze right among the down-stuff and then drops off to sleep? I don’t much blame him for wanting to sleep—I’m dead on my own feet this minute—but to make a fire that size in such a place! He’s the kind that would call out the standing army to kill a cockroach! ”

“ Good Sam hadn’t been there much longer than we had. He blew in from somewhere back East and to look at him you’d have said offhand that here was just an average pilgrim, size sixteen-and-a-half collar, three-dollar pants, addicted to five-cent cigars and a drooping mustache; otherwise no distinguishing marks. He didn’t look a thing in the world like a genius. ”

“ She twisted in her place, turning her back on him, the more forcibly to administer the reproof and with her eyes agleam behind her glasses and her lips making little attentive sucked-in gasping sounds, she harkened while Mr. Boyce-Upchurch discoursed to her of English letters with frequent references to his own contributions in that great field.
As the traveled observer in his own time may have noted, there is a type of cultured Britisher who regards it as stupid to appear smart in strange company, and yet another type who regards it as smart to appear stupid. ”

“ Bugbee.
The lady’s fascinated eyes were fixed for the moment upon the horrifying steeliness of those glinting cuffs, and spasmodically she thrust her hands wrist deep in her ulster pockets. It was evident that, be this daunting intruder’s purposes what they might, Mrs. Bugbee did not mean to be manacled without a struggle. But Mr. Bugbee stood unresistingly and blinked like a man coming out of a distressful trance and not sure yet that he is out.
“You’re both under arrest,” expounded Mr. Sisson. “Fur endeavorin’ to ply a third party with alcoholic stimilents.” ”

“ Good Sam
From the foot of the lake where most of the camps were, everybody had been driven out by the forest-fire. Among those who fled up to our end and took temporary quarters on the hotel reservation was my friend, the Native Genius.
My friend, the Native Genius, was a cowboy before he became a painter. He became a great man and was regarded in our Eastern art circles, but in his feelings and his language he remained a cowboy. He also was an historian of the folk-lore of the Old West that has ridden over the ultimate hill of the last free grazing and vanished forever and ever, alas! ”

“ The way it’s going to be is the battle gets going good before you join in. One gang—one army, I mean—is behind that fence and the other army comes running up towards ’em from down at the foot of that hill yonder, whooping and yelling and shooting and all. And with that, you cut in right between ’em, all by your lonesome, and take a hand. That brings you out prominent because you’re the only guy in sight that’s dressed different from everybody else. ”

“ That flexible mimetic quality which enabled her to slip easily into any given rôle lent itself to the putting on of a passable semblance to a full-flowered creation which might never have existed at all excepting in Captain Teal’s fancy, and one which we know probably doesn’t exist at all nowadays but which all the same was to him very real, as being the typical well-bred Southern woman of all days and all times—a sprigged-muslin, long-ringletted, soft-voiced, ultra-maidenly vision. ”

“ Do you think we’d let [54] an American, no matter how talented he might be, come over to England to snub us in our own homes and patronize us and preach to us on our shortcomings and make unfair comparisons between his institutions and ours and find fault with our fashion of doing things? We’d jolly well soon put him in his place. But you Americans let him and others like him do it. You bow down and worship before them. You hang on their words. You flock to hear them. You pay them money, lots of it. You stuff them up with food, and they stuff you with insults. ”

“ Boyce-Upchurch to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street from the University Club where he had been a guest of someone since finishing his New England swing the week before—were with the visiting celebrity. They surrendered him over to Miss Titworthy, who made him run the gantlet of the double receiving line and introduced him to all the ladies. Of these a bolder one would seek to detain him a minute while she told him how much she admired his books and which one of them she admired most, but an awed and timider one would merely say she was so glad to meet him, having heard of him so often. ”

“ So then Good Sam lights out, running for the cabin, and the dog, still entering heartily into the sport, takes after him and begins gaining at every jump. It’s a close race and getting closer all the time and no matter which one of ’em finishes first it looks like a mortal cinch that neither winner nor loser is going to be here to enjoy his little triumph afterwards. ”

“ Along toward the shank of the evening Good Sam took the floor.
“Gents,” he said, “I craves your attention. There’s just one sure way of boosting a town and that’s by advertising it. Get its name in print on all the front pages over the country. Get it talked about; stir up curiosity; arouse public interest. That brings new people in and they bring their loose coinage with ’em and next thing you know you’ve got prosperity by the tail with a down-hill pull. ”

“ Handing out money on all sides to people who hate you because it’s not more and you hating them right back because you’re being held up this way. Everybody and everything going stark raving crazy on Christmas Eve. ”

“ Inspired by an affection which the holiday spirit had quickened, various persons back in New York chose to disregard the advertised views of the Bugbees touching on the overworked custom of exchanging gifts. Their hiding-place was known too, as now developed. By express and by parcel-post came packages done up in gay wrappings and bearing cards and sprigs of holly and inevitably containing the conventional remembrances, the customary loving messages. The opening of each box served to enhance an atmosphere of homesickness which was beginning to fill the Rousseau bungalow. ”

“ Gridley. “And I hope and pray Norah doesn’t fly off into one of her tantrums. I wonder does Mr. Boyce-Upchurch like Thousand Islands dressing or the Russian better? What were you just saying, Ollie?”
Mr. Braid tapped his skull with his forefinger.
“Ah, the family failing,” he murmured, “that dread curse which afflicts our line! With some of the inmates it day by day grows worse. And there’s nothing to be done—it’s congenital.”
“I expect the best thing to do is just to take a chance on the Russian,” said Mrs. Gridley. ”

“ The same taxicab driver who drove him on this day came again on the third day to take Miss Sissie’s venerable house guest to his train. It would appear that her car still was out of commission.
She did not accompany him to the station. Domestic cares would hold her, she told him. She did not go to the front of the house to see him off, either. Indeed a more observant person than Mr. Braswell might have marveled that so constantly she had secluded herself indoors during his visit; and not only indoors, but behind windows curtained against the bright, warm Southern sunshine. ”

“ I don’t suppose there ever was a man who really loved his daughter but what he figured that, taking one thing with another, she was too good for any man on earth. No matter who the lucky candidate is he says to himself: ‘Well, if I have to have a son-in-law I suppose maybe you’ll do, but alongside of her you’re a total loss.’ That’s what any father who’s worth his salt is bound to think. ”

“ Herzog. With a jovial thumb he harpooned the Captain in the ribs. “What do you mean, you old rascal, hooking up with a skirt at your age?”
“Sir,” said Captain Teal, in an awful, withering voice, “it pleases you to be offensive. The young lady in question not only is my protégée, in a way of speaking, but I have the very great honor to be distantly related to her family. Do I make myself sufficiently plain to your understanding? And kindly remember also that my name to you, sir, and all your ilk is Teal, Captain Rodney Teal, sir.” ”