Joseph Crosby Lincoln

“ The Eureka people wrote you that they had given me the agency, didn't they?"
I rubbed my forehead.
"They wrote my partner and me," I stammered, "that they'd given it to—to a feller named George—er—that is—"
"Not George—Georgianna. Oh, I see! They abbreviated the name and so you thought—Of course you did. How odd!"
She laughed. I'd have laughed too, maybe, if I'd had sense enough to think of it; but I hadn't, just then.
"You the agent!" says I. "A—a woman!"
"Yes."
"But—but a woman!"
"Well?" pretty crisp. "I admit I am a woman; but is that any reason why I should not sell window screens?" ”

“ Incidentally he announced that Abubus was to run the new auto.
"Abubus!" says I. "Why, he don't know a gas engine from a coffee mill! He wouldn't know what the craft's for."
"That's all right," he says. "He's been takin' lessons at the garage in Hyannis and he can run it like a bird. He knows what it's for. He! he! so do I. By the way, Snow, are you ready to give up the post-office to my candidate yet?"
"Give up?" says I. "Tut! tut! tut! I hate to hear a supposed sane man talk so. Mary Blaisdell handles the mail in the Ostable post-office for the next three years—longer, if she wants to." ”

“ To be beat in a business deal by Roses is one thing—but by Rosensteins is another. You can't beat the Rosensteins in business."
"Not in the secondhand and by-productin' business you can't," says I. "Them lines belong to 'em. We hadn't any right to butt in."
And we both laughed, good and hearty.
"But," says I, after a little, "what'll we do with that curio room, anyway? Give it up?"
"Not much!" says he, emphatic. "I guess we'll have to give up the antiques; but we've got the winter ahead of us, Skipper, and the Ostable County embroidery crop flourishes best in cold weather. ”

“ The boys used to grin and say they didn't know. Neither did I—then; but I was learnin' the answer that very minute. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object it's a matter of principle, and the result is liable to be 'most anything. That was the answer, and I was learnin' it by observation and experience, same as the barefooted boy learned where the snappin'-turtle's mouth was.
Now the force and the object was in the same house with me, and the minute the doctor, or Jim Henry Jacobs, or anybody else with a horse and team, come to that house, they could take me away with 'em. ”

“ Do you cal'late as good a church woman as Aunt Hannah Watson would sell or let her place for a billiard room? She needs the money bad enough, land knows; but she's as down on those ha'nts of sin as your dad is, Rat Taylor. She'd never sell to Phi Foster in this world."
"She mightn't, I give in," answered Rat. "But her nephew up to Wareham is a diff'rent breed of cats. And since she moved over there to live along with him, he's got the handlin' of her property. ”

“ A man, 'cordin' to my notion, has a right to look like a horse jockey, if he wants to; and he's got a right to look like an undertaker. But when he looks like a combination of the two, I—well, I get skittish and begin to shy, that's all. It's too much as if he was baited to trap you dead or alive."
Then Jim Henry come in and when, an hour or so later, he got me one side and asked me if I'd made up my mind about investin' in Frank's road-house, I answered prompt that my mind was made up and the answer was still no. ”

“ Georgianna was blushin', and her eyes were damp, but shinin' like masthead lights on a rainy night. As for Jim Henry Jacobs, he was one broad grin.
"Well," says I, after I'd said all the joyful things I could think of, "one point ain't settled even yet—who's goin' to get that screen contract? There ain't any love in business, you know." ”

“ He bit the end off his cigar, lit it, and slammed out of that kitchen, puffin' like a soft-coal tug. Shelton shook his head at me and I shook mine back.
"Do you s'pose he will die?" he asked. "He's eaten enough to kill anybody. And with his stomach! And to smoke!"
"The dear land knows," says I. To tell you the truth I was a little conscience-struck and worried. My idea had been to play a joke on Clark—tantalize him by eatin' a square meal that he couldn't touch—and get even for some of the names he'd called me. But now I wa'n't sure that my fun wouldn't turn out serious. ”

“ Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Jim Jacobs?"
"Oh, cut it out!" he snaps, savage. "You make me tired, Skipper. You and your backwoods scruples give me a pain. I've lived where people aren't so narrow and bigoted and I don't consider a billiard room an annex to the hot place. If, by a business deal, I can get that buildin' next door to add to our establishment, I'm goin' to do it, if I have to use my own money and not a cent of yours. Yes, I am goin' to look at that Watson property. ”

“ Turn out in the mornin', eat and listen to gossip, go out and take a walk, smoke, talk with folks I met—more gossip—come back and eat again, go over and watch the carpenters on the latest summer cottage, smoke some more, eat some more, and then go down to the Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, or to the post-office, and set around with the gang till bedtime. ”

“ When I said good night to him he was chipper as could be; but next day he was blue as a whetstone—and the blueness seemed to strike in, so to speak. He didn't take any interest in anything—moped round, glum and ugly; and I couldn't get him to talk at all. ”

“ She turned to me. "Cap'n Snow," she says, "speakin' as one who has learned to rise above their baser self, and perfectly calm and good-tempered, I advise you to mind your own business. I don't care nothin' about the tea itself; it's the principle I'm strivin' for, I tell you. Do you s'pose I'll let that little withered-up, sassy, benighted scoffer—"
"There! there!" says I. Then I bent down to the keyhole. "Lemuel," I says, "be a man and not prize inmate in a feeble-minded home. You're not an idiot. ”

“ I was turnin' to go, but he stepped for'ard and stopped me.
"Zeb," he says, his face workin', "don't go away mad. I've been a chump. You ought to hate me, but I—I hope you won't. I was a fool. I thought because you was country that you hadn't any head for business, and when you wouldn't invest in that Windmill proposition I was sore and went into it myself. My conscience has plagued me ever since. I'm a low-down chump. I deserve to lose the fifteen hundred and I'm glad I did. By the Lord Harry! you've got more real business instinct than I ever dreamed of." ”

“ I wish to be treated in this matter exactly as if I were a man. I wish I were one!"
"I doubt if you'd get most men to agree with you in that wish," I says. "However, never mind. I'll do my best to get Mr. Jacobs, my partner, to say 'Yes' to your proposal. And I hope you'll do fust-rate, even if we are what you call rivals. Drop in any time, Miss Georg—Georgianna, I mean."
We shook hands and she went away. I went as fur as the platform with her. When I turned to go in again I noticed 'Dolph Cahoon starin' after her, with his eyes and mouth open. ”

“ Congressman Shelton, our district Representative at Washin'ton, came to Ostable to look the post-office situation over and, lo and behold you, he comes as Major Cobden Clark's guest, to stay at his house.
When Jim Henry Jacobs learned that, he took me to one side to give me some brotherly advice.
"It's all up for Mary now," he says. "She can't win. Clark and Shelton are old chums in politics. There's only one chance to beat Payne and that's to bring forward a compromise candidate—a dark horse." ”

“ So long as somebody has got somethin' there'll always be somebody else to want to get it away from him. That's human nature, and there's as much human nature in Ostable, size considered, as there was in the Land of Canaan.
I'd been postmaster at Ostable for quite a spell. I didn't try for the position, I was mad when 'twas given to me, there wa'n't much of anything in it but a lot of fuss and trouble, and I'd said forty times over that I wished I didn't have it. ”

“ You see, Henry Blaisdell was one of the few Ostable folks that I'd known as a boy and who was livin' there yet when I came back. He was younger than I, and Mary, his sister, was younger still. I liked Henry and his death was a sort of personal loss to me, as you might say. I liked Mary, too. She was always so quiet and common-sense and comfortable. She didn't gossip, and the way she helped her brother in the post-office was a treat to see. She wa'n't exactly what you'd call young, and the world hadn't been all fair winds and smooth water for her, by a whole lot ”

“ He's sharp as a steel trap; that much I can tell with one eye shut. And he's run dinin'-rooms and hotels; that I'll bet my hat on. That's all we need to know. A road-house in this town is a twenty per cent proposition durin' the summer months. It's the chance of a lifetime, I tell you."
"Maybe so. But how do you know the feller's honest?"
"I don't care whether he's honest or not. It doesn't make any difference. If I wa'n't here to keep my eye peeled, it might be; but I'll be here and if he gets ahead of me, he'll be movin' to some extent. Someone else'll grab the chance if we don't. ”

“ Finally Jim Henry says, without lookin' at me:
"Well, Skipper," he says, "that chap's sharp all right, ain't he?"
"Seems to be," says I, not too enthusiastic.
"Yes, he is. If I'm any judge of human nature—and I hand myself that bouquet any day in the week—he knows his business. Don't you think so?"
"Maybe," I says. "But what business of ours his business is I don't see—yet. If you do, bein' as you and me are supposed to be partners, perhaps you wouldn't mind soundin' the fog whistle for my benefit. I seem to have lost my reckonin' on this v'yage. ”

“ At last they give it up; nothin' but a team of horses could haul that machine out of that sand. So Abubus starts to walk the ten or eleven miles back to civilization and livery stables and the Major and Shelton waited for him. And the more they waited the hungrier and madder Clark got. 'Twas all Abubus's fault, of course. He ought to have had more sense than to run that way on that road, anyhow. He ought to have known better than to get into that sand, a feller that had lived in sand all his life. ”

“ Cap'n, your business instinct is all right in some things, like—like—well, I can't think what just now, but never mind. You're a good feller, but you're too apt to cal'late by last year's almanac. You ain't as up to date as you might be. Do you suppose Her Majesty Burke Smythe, and the rest of the Royal Family we're settin' this trap for, will take the trouble to hunt up that back room, and fall over egg cases and kerosene barrels to find the ladder to that loft? ”

“ He's a gentleman and a scholar, if he is poor. She's rich, but if there's one thing she isn't, it's a scholar."
"Humph! fur's that goes," says I, "she ain't a gentleman, either—though she's next door to it."
"That's all right. Skipper, there's some things money can't buy. Pullet's got book learnin' and treed ancestors and she ain't. She's got money and he ain't. Both want what t'other's best fixed in. If old Beanblossom had any sand, I should believe 'twas a sure thing. ”

“ At any rate we'd better clear out of this kitchen and leave that chef and the rest to get the dinner. I know it's our stuff that'll go to make that dinner, but I don't see's we can help it. A few dollars more won't break us more'n we're cracked already."
But he waved his hand for me to stop. "No question of a few dollars is in it. It's no use," he says, solemn; "you're too late. The Frenchman's quit."
"Quit?" says I.
"Um-hm," says he. "Bill Bangs told him that we fellers had took charge of this road-house and he and the rest of the kitchen help quit right then and there. ”

“ But Jim Henry Jacobs wa'n't worryin' about come-downs. He never let dead dignity interfere with live business. He didn't shed a tear over the old place, or lay a wreath on Judge Higgins's tomb. No, sir! he got down to the keelson of things in a jiffy.
"Skipper," he says, sweet and plausible as a dose of sugared soothin'-syrup. "Skipper," he says, "Mr. Frank's proposition is to open, not a hotel exactly, but a first-class, up-to-date road-house and restaurant. ”

“ I was too astonished to speak at all, but Jim Henry was cool as usual.
"Yes, yes, son," he says. "It's all right. You trot right along home afore you catch cold in your freckles." Then, after the youngster'd gone, he turns to me quick. "Open it, Skipper," he orders. "Somethin's happened. Open it."
I opened the envelope. Inside was a sheet of foolscap covered from top to bottom with mighty shaky handwritin'. I read it out loud.
"Captain Zebulon Snow,
"Dear Sir:
"Polite as ever, ain't he?" I says. "He'd been genteel if he was writin' his will."
"Go on!" snaps Jacobs. "Hurry up." ”