Thomas Sigismund Stribling

“ As the motor whirled cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat, staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with its long-drawn, melancholy burden.
Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was always just work, work, work— going after an order, or collecting a bill—never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace business... ”

“ While his two companions were signing, Strawbridge yielded to that impulse for horse-play which so often attacks Americans who are young and full-blooded. He leaned out of the motor very solemnly, lifted the cap of the sentry, turned the visor behind, and replaced it on his head. The effect was faintly but undeniably comic. The little soldier's face went beet-colored. At the same moment came a movement inside the sentry-box and out of the door stepped a somewhat corpulent man wearing the epaulettes, gold braid, and stars of a general. ”

“ If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot haggle about the price.”
“But that isn't doing those fellows right!” cried Strawbridge, pointing vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. “It isn't doing those particular individuals right!”
“A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war. Was it right to draft them?” Gumersindo paused a moment, and then added: “No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a group of workers represented by the ‘reds.’ It is the price of leisure for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority. ”

“ He was the most dignified man find had the most penetrating eyes that Strawbridge had ever seen in his life. He had that peculiar possessive air about him which Strawbridge had felt when once, at a New York banquet, he saw J. P. Morgan. By merely stepping out of the sentry-box this man seemed to appropriate the calle, the motor and men, and the llanos beyond the town. Strawbridge instantly knew that he was in the presence of General Adriano Fombombo, and the gaucherie of having turned around the little sentry's cap set up a sharp sinking feeling in the drummer's chest. ”

“ The bath-tub was a basin of white marble, rather dirty, and built into the tiled floor. It was a miniature swimming-pool. Overhead was a clumsy silver nozzle on a water-pipe. The drummer turned it on, and the water which sprayed over him was neither cool nor very clean. The roaring and banging of the cathedral bells continued as if they would never leave off. As Strawbridge soaped and rubbed he recalled somewhat moodily his engagement to go with General Fombombo's force; to San Geronimo. ”

“ Señor Strawbridge, there is no ‘everybody’ in Venezuela. Wben you say ‘everybody’ you are speaking as an American, of your American middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political action whatsoever. ”

“ Strawbridge was outraged.
“Now, is n't that a hell of a law! No reason at all, I suppose. Like their custom laws. They don't tax you for what you bring into this God-forsaken country; they tax you for the mistakes you make in saying what you've brought in. They look over your manifest and charge you for the errors you've made in Spanish grammar. Venezuela's correspondence course in the niceties of the Castilian tongue!” ”

“ He walked briskly away, with the quick, machine-like strides of an American drummer. After a block or two he paused in the shade of a great purple flowering shrub that gushed over the high adobe wall of some hidden garden. ”

“ The consul again smiled wearily.
“They have a better reason than that for forbidding rifles —revolutions. You know in this country they stage at least one revolution every forty-eight hours. The minute any Venezuelan gets hold of a gun he steps out and begins to shoot up the Government. If he wings the President, he gets the President's place. It's a very lucrative place, very. It's about the only job in this country worth a cuss. So you see there's a big reason for forbidding the importation of arms into Venezuela.”
Mr. Strawbridge drew down his lips in disgust. ”

“ It was a short daily reaction from his American heartiness, his American optimism, his tendency to convert every moment into a fanfare and a balloon ascension. This early morning depression continued until he had had his coffee and the fife-and-drum corps of his spirit started up their stridor again. It is just possible that the American flag, instead of stars, should bear forty-eight coffee beans rampant.
A woman in black passed the barred windows of Strawbridge 's room. The drummer, after the manner of men, moved slowly about his window to keep her in sight as long as possible. ”

“ When the colonel stood up and shook hands with the drummer, Strawbridge discovered that he was in the presence of an athlete. The salesman put himself on a friendly footing with this officer at once, just as he always did with the clerks in American stores. He seated himself on the edge of Coronel Saturnino's desk, very much at ease.
“Well, I thought I was going to land the old general right off the bat!” he confided, laughing.
“Yes?” inquired Saturnino, politely, still standing. “Why your haste?”
“Oh, well—” Strawbridge wagged his head—“push your business or your business will push you. ”

“ This was evidently a question which the drummer was to answer, so he said:
“Why,... they invest that and make still more money.”
The editor smiled.
“A very American answer! That is the difference, señor, between the middle-class mind and the aristocratic mind. The bourgeois cannot conceive of anything beyond a mere extension of wealth. But wealth is only an instrument. It must be used to some end. Mere brute riches cannot avail a man or a people.”
The car rattled ahead as Strawbridge considered the editor's implications that wealth was not the end of existence. ”

“ Coronel Saturnino did not appear particularly gratified by this encomium heaped upon his home town. He picked up a paper-weight and looked at it with a faint smile.
"Did the general tell you about that?"
"Oh, yes," declared Strawbridge, heartily, "we buddied up from the jump. Why, I never meet a stranger. I'm just Tom Strawbridge wherever you find me."
The colonel passed over Mr. Strawbridge's declaration of his identity. ”

“ Strawbridge turned and stared frankly at the negro.
“Wha-ut?” he drawled, curving up his voice at the absurdity of it and beginning to laugh. “Compared to George Washington, first in war, first in—”
“Sí, ciertamente, señor,” Gumersindo assured his companion, with Venezuelan earnestness.
“But look here—” Strawbridge laid a hand on his companion's shoulder—“do you know what George Washington did, man? He set the whole United States free!”
“But, hombre!” cried the editor. “Bolivar! This great, great man—” he pointed to the blue marble mansion—“set free the whole continent of South America!” ”

“ Señor Strawbridge, those prisons are full of men who are innocent and guilty. Some have attempted to assassinate the President, some to stir up revolution; some are merely suspected. A number of men are put in prison simply to force through some business deal advantageous to the governmental clique. I know one editor who has been confined in the dungeons of La Rotunda for ten years. ”

“ An American army with big American guns could blow that little toy right out of existence.” Nevertheless he continued to be depressed and somehow dismayed by the hard and savage suddenness of the sunrise gun, and in his heart he determined firmly that he would not go with the army to San Geronimo. In his mind Strawbridge uttered these thoughts resolutely, and he felt himself to be one of those strong-willed men who, having once settled on a program, never vary from it, no matter what chance befalls. ”

“ By this time the motor was again below the level of the alcornoque growth and the men began discussing what they had seen.
“What 'a the object of it!” asked Strawbridge.
“The general is going to canalize at least one half of this entire Orinoco valley. This sandy stretch you see around you, señor, will be as fat as the valley of the Nile.”
The idea seized on the drummer's American imagination.
“Why!” he exclaimed, “this is amazing! it's splendid! Why haven't I heard of this? Why haven't the American capitalists got wind of this?” ”

“ Strawbridge looked at the negro, but his humble expression appeared guileless.
“I am an American,” he nodded. “Now, just hand that to your master and tell him he can communicate with me at the Hotel Bolivia.” Strawbridge was about to go.
“Sí, seño',” nodded the servant, throwing away the mango stone.“ I tell him about de Americano. I heard about yo' country, seño', el grand America del Norte; so cold in de rainy season you freeze to death, so hot in de dry season you drap dead. Sí, seño', but ever'body rich—dem what ain't froze to death or drap dead.” ”

“ All the jefes civiles are not angels. Sometimes they send a man to the ‘reds’ because they want his cow, or his wife or his daughter—”
“Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic ends!” cried Strawbridge.
“Mi caro amigo,” argued the editor, with the amiability of a man explaining a well-thought-out premise, “why not? There must be a beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They would never be convinced.” ”

“ Inside the fold was the sentence, “This will introduce to you a very worthy young American, Mr. Thomas Strawbridge, a young man of discretion, prompt decision, strict morals, and unimpeachable honesty.” It bore no signature.
Strawbridge turned it over and perused the address for upward of half a minute. Now and then he looked up and down the street, then at the numbers on the houses, after the fashion of a man trying to orient himself in a strange city. ”

“ IN THE capital of Venezuela, ancient usage has given names to the street corners instead of to the streets. This may have been very well in the thinly populated days of the Spanish conquest, but to-day this nomenclature forms a hopeless puzzle for half the natives and all the foreigners.
To Mr. Thomas Strawbridge the address on the consul's note was especially annoying. He hardly knew what to do. He could not go back and ask Mr. Anderson where was Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas, because in a way there was a tacit understanding between the two men that no note had passed between them. ”

“ You want your customer to rely on you,’ says my old man, ‘so you must be reliable. When you sell a man, you have really gone into partnership with him. His gain is your gain.’ ”By this time Strawbridge was emphasizing his points by thumping earnestly on the dictator's shoulder. “A hundred times I've had my old man say to me, ‘Strawbridge, if you don't make your customer's business your own, if his problems are not your problems, if you can't give him expert advice on his difficulties, then you are no salesman ”

“ To the ordinary white American an educated negro is an object of curious interest, and Strawbridge strolled along the streets of Caracas with a feeling toward the black editor much the same as one has toward the educated pony which can paw out its name from among the letters of the alphabet. ”

“ A priest in a cassock stood at the head of the procession, and immediately behind him were two peons, a young man and a girl, both in wedding finery. They evidently had come for the legal ceremony which in Venezuela must follow the religious ceremony, for as the car stopped a number of voices became audible: “There is his Excellency!” “In the motor, not in the palacio!” The priest lifted his voice:
“Your Excellency, here are a man and a woman who desire—”
While the priest was speaking, a graceful figure ran up the ornamental steps and stood out strongly against the white marble. ”

“ The drummer put up a hand in protest.
“Now, General, I'll go on to the hotel.”
The general erased the objection:
“There are no hotels in Canalejos, Señor Strawbridge; a few little eating-houses which the peons use when they come in from the llanos, that is all.”
By this time Strawbridge's embarrassment had vanished. The general somehow magnified him, set him up on a plane the salesman had never occupied before.
“Well, General,” he began cheerfully, using the American formula, “how's business here in Canalejos?”
“Business?” repeated the soldier, suavely. “Let me see,... business. ”

“ I did a little music.”
“Teach?” probed the American.
“Well... no... Really, I'm afraid I didn't do anything.”
Strawbridge nodded as if some puzzle had been solved for him.
“Now, that's where you made your mistake,” he explained paternally. “A woman ought to have a job just the same as a man. She ought to be able to hold over her goods until the market is right. Now take me: suppose I had to sell my rifles right now because I didn't have the overhead to keep them ninety days longer; I'd be in a bad way. It's the same way with you girls. ”

“ Every article that leaves our shop is guaranteed; the Orion Arms brands are to-day the standards by which all other firearms are judged. You can't make a mistake by ordering now.” He pushed the pen and the book closer to the general's hand. All the general had to do now was simply to close his fingers.
“Señor, we can hardly go into such details to-night.” The dictator moved back a trifle from the drummer, with a South American's distaste of touching another human being of the same sex. “There is no necessity. ”