Johnson Boller

“ To be a perfect servant, one's teeth must remain in place and one's face must be free from bruises. Wilkins, after a brief, intent look at Johnson Boller's fists, turned and fled!
"So this," said Mrs. Johnson Boller with deadly calm, "is what happens when you think I've gone away!"
Her husband turned upon her and threw out his hands.
"Beatrice!" he cried. "I swear to you——"
"Don't touch me, you filthy creature!" said his Beatrice. "I—I couldn't have thought it. You seemed different from other men!"
"This woman——" Johnson Boller floundered, and then caught Anthony's cold eye. ”

“ Johnson Boller laughed harshly and stared hard at his old friend. Under certain conditions, even the empty apartment on Riverside Drive might not be so bad.
"Say!" he demanded. "Are you going to keep that little rat here and argue with him till he admits that he recognizes whatever opportunity you're going to thrust at him?"
"Essentially that."
"Well, if it's an opportunity to earn an honest living, he'll never see it—and if the chatter takes more than an hour I'm going home!" Johnson Boller snapped. "I'd have stayed there if I'd known you were going off into the abstract, Anthony. ”

“ Johnson Boller said honestly.
"An old man, perhaps—one who fancies his opportunities all past and done for. What more vitally interesting than thrusting opportunity upon such a man, Johnson?"
"So far as I'm concerned, anything under the sun and——"
"Or perhaps a middle-aged failure," Anthony rambled on. "A man just past the age when hope is richest—a man who has seen his chances come and go. I don't know, Johnson, but I rather believe that I'm hoping for a middle-aged man."
"Yes, one that's weak enough to gag before he can yell for the police," Johnson Boller grunted. ”

“ Johnson Boller, therefore, with an impulse he was to regret bitterly in the very near future, gave a prod to discussion by smiling in his own unhappy way and saying:
"What's the idea, Anthony? You're wrong, but—what is it?"
"My idea," said the proprietor of Fry's Imperial Liniment slowly, "is merely this, Johnson: that the whole proposition of the man who is a dire failure, the man who is a tremendous success, is vastly exaggerated." ”

“ Johnson Boller agreed.
"How could you leave our home, Pudgy-wudgy?" his darling asked reprovingly.
"If I had stayed there another hour without my little chicky-biddy, I'd have shot myself!" said Pudgy-wudgy. "Ask Anthony!" And here he looked at Anthony and demanded: "Ain't we silly? Like a couple of kids!"
"You certainly are!" Anthony Fry rasped.
"You don't have to screw your face all up when you say it!" Mr. Boller informed him, disengaging himself.
Beatrice laughed charmingly. ”

“ Intelligence has no place in this evening."
"Oh, yes it has. Let's examine the case of this David youngster and try to reconstruct his emotions and his mental impressions when confronted with opportunity such as——"
"Damn opportunity!" said Johnson Boller, rising with a jerk. "I'm going to bed!"
Only once had Johnson Boller tarried in Montreal, and on that occasion the thermometer had ranged about ninety in the shade. Yet now, as he slumbered fitfully in Anthony's Circassian guest-chamber, childhood notions of Canada came to haunt his dreams. ”

“ Have nothing shipped from this apartment until we have talked again!"
Then Mr. Hitchin, courageously turning his back upon the pair, moved out of the flat, leaving Johnson Boller and his oldest friend in a state of partial paralysis. Anthony recovered in perhaps three seconds.
"That—that infernal idiot!" said Anthony. "Why, the lunatic asylums have saner people in strait-jackets!"
"Maybe they have," Johnson Boller said hoarsely, "but all the same, many a good man has sat in the electric chair on the strength of circumstantial evidence not nearly so good as he made out!" ”

“ Johnson Boller said, and there was something almost pathetic in his voice. "You're dead right, Anthony! All you have to do is to stick opportunity before a man long enough and he's bound to chuck a hammerlock into her and slam her down to the mat for keeps! So that's settled, and we don't have to do any experimenting with human subjects. Or if you do have to have a live one to work on, wait till we get home and we'll take Wilkins, Anthony! ”

“ Mary inquired, pausing in the process of knotting up her wonderful hair.
"Because Boller—Boller——" Anthony stammered wildly. "There is no need of his knowing that you're a—a young woman, now or in future. I am speaking for your own sake, you know. You may meet him a thousand times elsewhere in years to come, and there's a mean streak in Boller which——"
"Is there?" Mary asked, with what was really her very first touch of concern since resuming her proper sex. "Give me the wig, then."
Fortunately, at the living-room end of the corridor, Johnson Boller devoted a good five minutes to meditation. ”

“ On the whole, I really hope that a young man is coming!"
And now, for a time, Johnson Boller said nothing at all. There was always the chance that Anthony might work it out of his system in talk—there was the other chance, growing rosier and rosier by the minute, that the odd chair had not been sold at all.
It was rather queer, when one considered that seats for this particular star bout had been at a premium for a week, but it was nevertheless the fact that the preliminary arguments were over and the announcer spinning his megaphoned tale for the big battle, and the seat still unoccupied. ”

“ You can't fool me when it comes to women."
"Well, now, suppose we drop the subject and——" Anthony began agitatedly.
"Let me slip this kid some real advice," said Mr. Boller. "Davy, I know all sorts of women—good and bad and the kind you think are all right, but aren't! Get me? You're only a boy, and offhand I'd say that this French damsel belonged in the latter class. At a guess, you met her——"
"Stop!" cried Anthony Fry in pure terror.
Johnson Boller gazed mildly at him. ”

“ When you have graduated, and everything that can be taught you has been taught you, I shall establish you in proper offices and use my considerable personal influence to see that you are supplied with work, and again until you are self-supporting I shall bear all the expense. In short, David," Anthony concluded, "I am holding opportunity before you—opportunity to do, without trouble or worry or delay, the thing you most desire. Well?"
Even Johnson Boller was mildly interested, although only mildly, and with a deprecatory smile on his lips. ”

“ Fry. "It is fate and nothing else, Johnson. Out of all the millions in New York, one man—absolutely unknown to, unsuspected by, either you or me—is coming to take this seat, doubtless for the star bout."
"But——"
"To that man," said Anthony, "I shall offer opportunity!"
"What d'ye mean? Money?" Johnson Boller asked incredulously.
"It will involve money, doubtless; I can afford a little."
"Well, you go and poke a handful of bills into a man's face and all you're going to prove is that——"
"I have no idea of doing anything of the sort," Anthony said impatiently. ”

“ If he isn't a crook, just as soon as he gets loose and talks it over with his friends, he'll have you pinched for detaining him here against his will; and I'll give you ten to one that he collects not less than twenty-five hundred dollars before he's through. You scared him stiff with your eagle eye and your crazy notions, and he pleaded guilty so he could go to bed and get away from you. I'll have to testify to that if he calls on me."
"Fiddlesticks!" said Anthony Fry.
"Is it? Wait and see, Anthony," Johnson Boller said earnestly. "That kid spells trouble. I can feel it in the air." ”

“ What a different picture from my cherished one of cork hats and express rifles! The suggestion was horribly insidious. To be interesting to women en masse was to my manly view exceedingly unmanly; to labor for reward in knit slippers the depth of degradation. I was about to declare to Boller that I was not going to be his kind of a clergyman when I stopped to ask myself if I had ever known any other kind, if my own ideal were not as unattainable as to be another Ivanhoe or Captain Cook. Mr. Pound rose before me, his feet incased in the loving handiwork of Miss Spinner. ”

“ The next morning after his reappearance Doctor Todd announced that our distinguished alumnus had been induced to speak informally to the students that evening on journalism and its appeal to young men. In the rôle of a very old man, Boller from the chapel rostrum descanted learnedly on what he termed the "greatest power for righteousness in modern times and the dynamic force through the operation of which the race is to attain its ideals." ”

“ It was the picture which Boller made that settled my mind. There was something attractive in his careless attire—the baggy clothes, the flowing tie; and the glasses with the broad ribbon gave an air of dash and intellectuality which I had never seen in the stiff uniform of the bar, even as worn by that leader, Judge Bundy. It is often such absurd impressions on our unsophisticated minds that set the course of our lives. It was so with me. I compared Boller with Doctor Todd, with Mr. ”

“ I saw a hidden meaning, and behind my back I clinched my hands and registered my unalterable will. "You are going out into the world to make your name, David," the doctor went on, growing grave. "I do hope that you will succeed as well as Boller of '89. Boller, David, is a man of whom McGraw is proud—a remarkable young man. He dropped into my study for a few minutes this evening and it was a pleasure to listen to him. Such a breadth of view! Such nobility of purpose! He will rise high—that young man. We shall hear much of Boller." ”

“ Bolli rode from the ship with twelve men, and all his followers were dressed in scarlet, and rode on gilt saddles, and all were they a trusty band, though Bolli was peerless among them. He had on the clothes of fur which the Garth-king had given him, he had over all a scarlet cape; and he had Footbiter girt on him, the hilt of which was dight with gold, and the grip woven with gold; he had a gilded helmet on his head, and a red shield on his flank, with a knight painted on it in gold. ”

“ Boller stretched and removed his cigar, so that his grin might spread from ear to ear.
"It only goes to show you, Anthony, that there's some power watching over people like you and governing their affairs, that is past our understanding. ”

“ Bolingbroke stands for a whole body of conviction which bulked very big in English history, but which with the recent winding of the course of history has gone out of sight. Yet without grasping it we cannot understand our past, nor, I will add, our future. Curiously enough, the best English books of the eighteenth century are crammed with it, yet modern culture cannot see it when it is there. Dr. Johnson is full of it; it is what he meant when he denounced minority rule in Ireland, as well as when he said that the devil was the first Whig. ”

“ The positions which he transmitted from Bolingbroke he seems not to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation that made them orthodox.
A man of such exalted superiority and so little moderation would naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those who could not deny that he was excellent would rejoice to find that he was not perfect. Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the same man is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has been depreciated. ”

“ He knew how the old man's sudden outbreak of righteous indignation would go against him in the newspaper reports that would follow, and John Boler was kind-hearted as well as fearless.
"Good Lord, don't you worry about me, Johnnie!" said the old man, craning his neck to watch the retreating forms from the window. "But those young devils have gone over to the doctor's office and they'll bully him into telling where the girl is, and then they'll bully the police into dragging her into court yet. ”

“ The doctor offered her a powder which she swallowed without a word. John Boler stepped to the table and poured out a glass of wine, but when he held it toward her she shook her head and closed her eyes a moment. Then she spoke again as if no break had checked her thought. "Oh, no; I do not care to see your priest. The poor no longer fail to note his willingness to risk the needle's eye with camel's back piled high with worldly gain. If he may enter thus, why may not they with simpler train and fewer trappings? The poor are asking this to-day of prince and priest alike. ”

“ Bolliver said, casting an eye at the boys, who were wordlessly punching one another in a corner. "Your brother, Mark, went to sea when he was fourteen; he was commanding his own ship before he was twenty-one. This Mark is seventeen—going toward eighteen, isn't he? No school in summer, anyway. I can get berths—almost have 'em, in fact—wireless-man and oiler. ”

“ This mean act involved Mallet in a short pamphlet-war with Pope's friends (cf. Boswell, i. 329) , but he was rewarded by the gift of Bolingbroke's works, printed and in manuscript, of which he published an edition in 5 vols. in March 1754 (Goldsmith, Life of Bolingbroke) . Dr. Johnson remarked on this enterprise that Bolingbroke had ‘spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity,’ and ‘left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.’ In 1751, three years after the death of Thomson, Mallet published a new version of the masque of 1740. ”

“ When his face was well dried, and the wig replaced, he looked up in the face of Bolland, who had just returned from his errand, with a smile of satisfaction, saying, "I think I could do it now, Bolland; I think I could do it now. But I won't try till I have put the beefsteak upon the top of the punch. In the meantime, give me the whole particulars of this grand discovery you have made. Where is this man to be found, and how have you found him out? for we must be sure of what we are about, before we stir an inch." ”