Robert Cortes Holliday

“ Nothing but a crying need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and they spring, as one man, each to the head of his chair, and stand at attention. ”

“ The villagers come in ones and twos to get their mail. One, a fair, freckled milk-maid, as it would seem, from some old story, stands on the sidewalk path, waiting for the mail to be "sorted." A willowy lass, one would say a "summer boarder," pokes her parasol musingly through a knot-hole in the porch floor. The shop next door is a "dry goods and notions" store; butter and peaches and cherries and roses and cream in the shape of a feminine clerk leans beneath the low lintel, and, one can guess, like the old dog, dreams. ”

“ A cash register could not have been born a toy balloon, spent its youth as a bicycle, been educated as a pulpit, have imprudently married a footlight, been forced to obtain employment as a cash register, but cherishes a secret ambition to be a typewriter and solace itself in turn as a violin, a mug of ale, and a tobacco pipe. A lodger does not say that Mr. Fife is no better in any way than a cash register. A mother nursed him at her breast, watched him as he slept; he was somebody's baby. A grown man was strangely moved, probably, when he was born. ”

“ Upon leaving, you are tempted to invite the tailor out to have a cigar with you. He is so droll, such a felicitous chap, such a funny dog, that forgetful tailor.
In the morning those trousers have not shown up. You pass the tailor shop on your way downtown. The tailor is standing in his doorway, smoking a cigar and looking altogether very bright and cheerful. When he sees you his face becomes still brighter; he apparently becomes brighter all over, in fact; and his eyes twinkle merrily. "Well! well!" he laughs, and slaps his thighs. He is the most forgetful man. ”

“ No one alive, of course, has not in his head a picture of another that in the still hours sought solace in and loved a flute, Mr. Richard Swiveler propped up in bed, his nightcap raked, fluting out the sad thoughts in his bosom. So in the night and the storm, does another bizarre soul, Caroline, speak with the elements. ”

“ A BUSY railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is, that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous picture-books. ”

“ The chickens scatter from the road, making for picketless gaps in the picket fence; the old dog opens an eye and limply raises a limb; and the rapid, confident "traveling man" (it can be none but he) , resplendent in the very latest "gent's furnishing," with a neat grip and a bundle of what apparently are rolled calendars, springs nimbly upon the porch of the Chappaqua general store. Genial, pushing, the hurrying "good fellow," though sociability is his bent as well as business, he has not much time. ”

“ There is no retreat for you; you cannot turn around and go out. You choose the nearest man, as the only solution: and the others show their displeasure by returning to their seats. A fiend is in this man whom you have chosen; his suavity was a diabolical mask. He gloats in publicly humiliating you. He forces you to confess there before his "gang" that you do not want anything but a shave. You have brought this man from his newspaper simply to shave you! Now the number of things the barber manages to do to you against your desire is a measure of the resistant force of your character. ”

“ At last, an unmistakable elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high as one moves into the press toward the doorway. ”

“ He is the politest and most obliging of men. He will send those trousers up by a boy directly. He is such a cheerful man.
After the time for those trousers to appear has long gone by and no boy has arrived, it is possible that you may work yourself into a passion. You clap your hat upon your head, storm out of the house, and stride toward that tailor shop. You become a little cooled by the evening air, and you begin to wonder if you have not been a trifle hasty. ”

“ Other picture-books, such as church, theater, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, political meeting, ball game, and so forth, have, of course, many funny pictures. But, whether it is that almost all absurd people constantly travel, and those with no touch of the motley do but seldom, or whether, as here, nothing else goes forward seriously to occupy the attention, one's mind is left more free to be struck by the ridiculousness of all mankind, so it is that perhaps as humorous a place as one may find is a busy railroad station. ”

“ To find such a company of well-fed, well-groomed, better-men than-you-are suddenly at your service is disturbing; to have to insult all the others in your selection of one is an uncomfortable thought. ”

“ An impelling to go see if the train is not coming numbs one's brain. A like contagious restlessness breathes through the waiting-room. People begin to stand up by their grips. Some go without on the search. ”

“ A fat fly buzzes leisurely about the door, then suddenly takes a straight line a considerable distance down the straggling street, pauses, circles about, returns, now through the early sunshine, now through the shadow of a venerable tree, back to the shelter of the porch, hums around again, poises absolutely stationary, tacks away another time over the same course, and returns as before. ”

“ Suddenly appearing, briskly advancing upon the scene, walking rapidly up from the direction of the railroad station, scintillating punctuality, dispatch, succinctness, assurance, commercial agility, comes an apparition from, without manner of doubt, the hurrying ways, the collision of the busy marts of men. ”

“ To snap the President would be equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death. ”

“ You deny that you need a shampoo. There is no denying that your hair is falling out. There is no denying that you sometimes shave yourself. You need try to conceal nothing from this man. He sees quite through you. (You recall a certain Roundabout Paper.) He has Found You Out! All you ask is to be allowed to go. He washes your face for you and turns you out of the chair. You pass into the hands of a boy, the same boy you denied to polish your shoes, a boy that has his opinions, who plays the tune of "Yankee Doodle" on you with a whisk-broom very much as if he snapped his fingers in your face ”

“ MacCrary.
The third boy, that is the present one, is not exactly mysterious, but he is peculiar. He attends strictly to his own business. He believes himself to be here for that purpose, apparently. He does not meddle with Mr. MacCrary's business. That is no concern of his. He is imbued with the good old adage: "If you want a thing well done, do it yourself." He follows this excellent principle himself, and believes others should do likewise. This boy is very sapient, and a wonderful student. His nature is more receptive than creative. ”

“ It is perhaps a man's misfortune that he should be so without delusions. Dean has found out there is no Santa Claus, in a manner of speaking, while the rest of us are yet humbugged. So while we may be pleased with our callings or our hobby-horses, our coins, or our cockle-shells, our drums, our fiddles, our pictures, our talents, our maggots and our butterflies, he can only shrug his shoulders and depreciate them to the best of his ability, saying that they are very poor cockle-shells, to be sure, though no man more than he deplores it that this is so. ”

“ Dean believes nothing that he reads in newspapers. He is not caught, for one thing, believing anecdotes of celebrated persons. These anecdotes are pretty stories yearned for by a sentimental public. The public is amusing, composed as it is of simple, guileless people who know nothing of the world. Newspapers are concoctions of press agents, for the most part—bait for the gullible. A citizen of the word is Dean, and he has, alas! ”

“ Quick as a terrier that leaps from rat to rat, and with a single brilliant crunch breaks each rodent's back, our high-stepping man leaps his glance upon the dreaming butter and peaches and cream; her rich lashes fall, but she does not frown. No; she does not frown. But be bold enough, and you will not fail.
He has stepped through the doorway, set his grip down. Brightly he turns and does for the summer boarder. She springs open her parasol before her pleased confusion, and retreats, very slowly. He has turned to business ”

“ It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh when it is gone—but we know it will come again many times before the night is passed.
It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is positively amazing ”

“ MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election, disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are delightful to behold.
He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that "it is a funny world ”

“ Deats was left with a boy, and this boy must have something to start him on in life. "How can a boy start life with nothing?" thought Mr. Deats; and very rightly, too. One can't feed, clothe, and educate a boy on nothing. So Mr. Deats did his duty harder than ever; and he built up a business. Building up a business doesn't require culture or intelligence; but it does take some time. Mr. Deats has grown a trifle old in the building ”

“ For all the idler and the dilettante that he is, no man ever more conscientiously attended to business than Cramis. He is at it early and late. He is very successful. Yet he knows himself to be an impractical cuss, a dreamer, an æsthetic visionary. No man so thoroughly reliable was ever before so irresponsible.
On his visits at my place, Cramis writes a great quantity of letters. All globe trotters do this, I suppose, whether it is necessary or not. It is only natural. ”

“ Wigger's mustache, a great, glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big, with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated. In this man romance lives on. A prosaic age has not marred him. You can readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. ”

“ Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years' imprisonment. For though ladies blessed by nature might not, in this lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after having seen an effigy of her skeleton. ”

“ Then with a whirl that turns one a somersault inside, a long dark, heavy mass rushes across the light before one. When one comes again on one's feet, speaking figuratively, the train is standing there, and one hurries aboard to get a seat. ”

“ Kirk points the stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest man in Seattle (and there are no huskier men than in Seattle) , a big brute of a fireman, a regular giant, with a reputation as a whirlwind slugger. Yes. Why, it's all I can do to hold that boy myself. This," exhibiting another picture, "is my father. See that pair of shoulders? He is a little under the medium height, but the way he carries himself he doesn't look it. He looks to be a rather big man. He has an air. He came West a poor man, but one that could see chances, take them, and hold on to them. ”

“ You will see it, however, when you too have failed.
"In this age when every man you meet is a genius," says Dean—it amuses him that he is not of the many—"I have really seen only one really great man, and I have been compelled to know a good many of the geniuses too." This remarkable, unique gentleman, it appears, was an old sou'easter sawbuck of a codger up in the backwoods of Maine, where he lived hermit-wise in a shanty, being a squatter. When Dean met him there he felt instinctively that here he was before a man. Uncle Eli was old: he was a trifle filthy ”

“ It would never do to place yourself in such a position with this tailor—a comparative stranger to you. So you will not become abusive to him until you discover who is in the wrong.
But if the fault is his, mind you, he shall learn your character; you are not a man to be trifled with. This fellow can have no sense of business, or anything else, you think. This shall be the last work he will ever get from you. Such a man should not have a business. ”

“ Mr. Woolen's perturbation was too genuine for suspicion of his having made away with the package. But this very honesty of emotion, in conjunction with the circumstance of the absence of the washing, and divers indications in breath and manner, noticeable from the first, aided in making out a case against him. A jury would reasonably have inferred that Mr. Woolen had a frailty, known and provided against by his wife, that, specifically, he had a weakness which, though not uncommonly associated with the most amiable characters, is not compatible with being left to receive money for washing. ”