Meredith Nicholson

“ My interest in the widow Stansifer is purely Platonic and neighborly. The dear lady has honored me by asking my advice about her investments. Flattering? Decidedly so. She manifests the deepest interest in our beautiful work and has heartily approved of all our literature.”
“Saw ye walkin' with 'er yistiddy,” said Bangs doggedly.
“In the bright joyous spring afternoons,” cried Briggs, rocking himself on his toes, “as the first tremulous green appears in the trees, how delightful to walk abroad with a congenial woman spirit!” ”

“ Bangsy, you and I have lived the life of pure and upright men. A new generation has arisen of bulls, cops, and Bertillon experts, and our records are dim in the archives of countless courts of a criminal jurisdiction. ”

“ He lets Bangs carry the day's receipts to the safety-vault—the only chance the old boy ever gets to see them. We'll not only have the good money I'm getting for the fake kale, but we'll take all that Bangsy can lug away from the bank, all wrapped up in thousand-dollar bundles, and quite a tidy sum could be got into a suit-case”
“But you needn't think my fond parent will just sit down and cry when he finds we've stung him. He'll run us down if it takes the rest of his natural life.”
“Not with great speed will he follow us,” exclaimed Hawkins. ”

“ I suggest that you invest your fees as a juror in a small dinner- and theater-party. Irene and I would enjoy it enormously. Your employment as a juror adds to the atmosphere of respectability in which we live, Bangsy, and lifts our social tone.”
“See here, Tip,” said Bangs, one evening after Irene had departed for her French-literature class. He drew the back of his hand across his nose, a distressing habit for which Briggs had frequently reprimanded him. “What ye doin' runnin' round with that woman on the first floor? Ye can't tell but she's a spotter fer some bull. ”

“ Cleansed of our sins by honest labor, we shall sin no more. When I pass a policeman on the street, my heart swells to reflect that he is not my enemy but my friend, sworn to protect honest citizens like you and me. ”

“ Bangs beamed with delight. “Nipped 'im! Nipped ol' Tip!” he chortled. Then, becoming serious: “Ye reckon Tip'll squeal on us?”
“Let him squeal!” Ragsdale replied. “Stopping as we do in modest hotels, dressing plainly but in good taste, and registering from Nagatooskook, Maine we invite the closest scrutiny. Once established on the potato-ranch, we shall live quietly, making no vulgar display of our wealth. The impression will leak out that I married money, which is undoubtedly true, and that Uncle Elias has generously endowed us.” ”

“ Out of all these hard-luck letters asking Aunt Mary's advice, about half are from people who are broke. They want to know how to get some dough without working. By studying the letters more carefully, we can pick out sufferers of this class who are not satisfied with our silly booklet on “Honest Earn; Patient Save” We can do better for them, Irene.”
“Your moral nature is skidding,” said Irene. “You go to monkeying with the system, and we all get pinched.”
“Not all,” replied Hawkins. ”

“ It hurts me, Bangsy, to find that men are still weak enough to imagine themselves capable of frustrating, not to say thwarting, the laws enacted for the protection of the mails from misuse by the lawless. ”

“ I slip out the envelopes from towns I'm working when he sees the bag. I got a thousand dollars in one bill, (illegible text) from a wealthy farmer, for five thousand of the G. G. There'll be five or six thousand more by Saturday, if only half the prospects come through!”
“When do you expect to travel?” asked Irene.
“We'll get married next Saturday, and beat it on the evening limited for New York. Your suggestion about letting old Bangs into the sketch offers a new hope. On Saturdays your esteemed parent's been going to the country with that widow to view beauties of nature. ”

“ The prisoner was beyond question guilty of slaughtering a fellow-human, and if you had persisted in hanging the jury, you would surely have attracted attention to yourself as a quixotic philanthropist. ”

“ Apart from these minor duties your work will be almost entirely literary in character. While your experience in this field is so slight as to be negligible, you will develop; yes, I am confident that you will develop the true literary touch.”
Opening the mail and shaking out dollar-bills had begun to bore Bangs, and he was relieved when Hawkins was permitted to sit with Briggs at the long table in the back office and slip a paper-cutter through the envelopes. The sight of so many dollar-bills evidently awoke no covetousness in Hawkins, who expressed no surprise and asked no questions. ”

“ Bangs protested. “But I got eyes, aint I? Irene aint no fool, I tell ye!”
Briggs shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“You don't take enough exercise, Bangsy. You haven't been used to sedentary occupations. You ought to frequent the tranquil parks and walk a few miles daily and Sunday to quiet your nerves. The way business is going, we can buy an orange-farm in Florida pretty soon and have nothing to do for the rest of our lives but sit under the trees and watch the ripening of the > golden fruit.” ”

“ If there's any violation of the acts of Congress in writing letters of advice to people in trouble, my most thorough researches have failed to find it. We can't lose, Bangsy; the law and the prophets, to say nothing of the philosophers, are all on our side.”
Bangs had submitted meekly to the investment of his balance in the Tell Me Your Troubles scheme by the sanguine Briggs. Bangs, having long since burned all the bridges that linked him to respectability, was lonesome, and the voluble Briggs satisfied his social cravings. Briggs was his only friend. ”

“ Not so, Irene! He will have permanent engagements that will detain him for a considerable period.”
“Jack,” she said as he perched on the desk beside her typewriter and caressed her hand, “I don't want to appear fussy, but you know I'm just a simple-hearted little girl with a crook for a father, and I don't really know a thing about you. Before I give my life into your keeping—"
“Dearest,” he replied, “it is only right that my past be revealed to you. I was born at Nagatooskook, Maine, exactly twenty-five years ago, and my true name is Ragsdale. ”

“ We're a mail-order house strictly. Our net profit is eighty-five cents a shot. In five short months the gross receipts have jumped from fifty to two thousand letters a month. That pile of uplift literature at the office is shrinking so fast I'm thinking of placing a contract for a million more books.”
It was the imperative need of additional help in the office that had caused the always doubting Bangs to urge a greater consideration for Irene, Briggs' twenty-year-old daughter. ”

“ Indiana is famous as a literary center, and that gives tone to the advertisement, to say nothing of the fact that we're honoring with our presence almost the only state in the Union where we've never been indicted. ”

“ Our literature alone is worth the small fee of one dollar we charge for this unusual service. All communications strictly confidential. If reply and literature are not satisfactory: money refunded. Address:
TELL ME YOUR TROUBLES COMPANY
P. O. Box Z. O. 4876 MARIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
“There's a scheme that's absolutely grand-jury proof!” declared Briggs, pinning the result of his labors on the wall of the sitting-room of the small apartment which he and his daughter Irene shared with Bangs. “'Cross-cuts to Happiness' is a book worth a dollar of anybody's money. ”

“ I've got to consider Irene in adding to our office staff, and there's a man no living girl would contemplate without disdain.”
Irene came home at this juncture. In addition to her duties at the office, she was ostensibly the housekeeper, though Bangs, who had once done service in a prison refectory, assisted in the kitchen. It was Briggs' theory of their new existence that they should attract as little attention as possible, and he encouraged the idea among the neighbors in the flat that he was a retired minister. Irene served him well. She was capable ”

“ You're the only one of the twelve that looks like a philosopher.”
Bangs confided to Briggs afterward that he voted for acquittal in the first ballot out of fellow-feeling, but finding that his conduct was viewed with strong disapproval by his fellow-jurors he hastened to join with them in a unanimous verdict of guilty. ”

“ While they were enjoying a late breakfast at their hotel on the third morning, Irene read the following:
Indianapolis, June 15.—The federal authorities to-day arrested E. T. Briggs, alias Windy Bill Thompson, alias Tip Trescott, a veteran confidence man with a long criminal record. The police had lost track of him since his last imprisonment, but he had been operating as the publisher of uplift literature under the name of the Tell Me Your Troubles Company, through which he distributed large quantities of green goods. The secret service operatives found his desk filled with spurious bills. ”