Potlatch

“ A man after giving a potlatch will sit down, his children, too, without knowing where he is going to get his food and clothes, as he has given away everything, and he has borrowed half of it, for which he has to pay back double. And another thing is, when they are mad with one another they will break canoes or tear blankets or break a valuable copper, to shame their opponent. The potlatch is one fight, with quarrelling and hating one another. ”

“ The corner-posts were carved into life-size grotesque figures of men.
Between Ellen and Jean sauntered Kayak Bill. Their half-fearful looks at the Potlach-house were inspired by the stories he had told, with a certain grim amusement, to these two fair women of the South. They were stories told to him over the hootch-cup by the wicked Old-Woman-Who-Would-Not-Die; tales of the long-ago heathen times when the Potlatch-house was erected and dedicated with human sacrifices ”

“ Winfree said. "Peggy and I have set the wedding for twenty-three December, the day before Potlatch. We'd be delighted should your duties allow you to attend, Major."
"I'll be there," Major Dampfer promised. "And as a little gift from the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, Winfree, I order you to move out on your new campaign that same day: twenty-three December." He raised a gauntleted hand. "No, Captain! Don't protest that you'll be needed here. Your work is strategy, not tactics. Your plans can be implemented by your staff while you're off on your honeymoon." ”

“ He would count his chickimin, count his nuggets, gloat over them, toss them in his palms. He rested his head on them as he slept, he packed them about with him through the day. He loved them better than food, better than his tillicums, better than his life. The entire tribe arose. They said Shak-shak had the disease of greed; that to cure it he must give a great potlatch, divide his riches with the poorer ones, share them with the old, the sick, the foodless. ”

“ Captain Winfree said, quoting an early slogan of the BSG.
"Your artificial prosperity requires us, the moment we're sated with chrome chariots and miracle-fiber dressing-gowns and electronic magics, the minute our children have toys enough to last them through the age of franchise, to take in hand the feather forced upon us by regulation of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities and visit the parish Potlatch Pyre, our modern vomitorium, to spew up last year's dainties to make belly-room for a new lot," MacHenery said.
"Daddy!" Peggy MacHenery protested from the living-room doorway. ”

“ It was at this time, I remember, that the Argus first spoke of our town as "a gem at beauty's throat," and, touching the rare enterprise of our citizens, declared that, "If you put a Slocum County man astride a streak of lightning, he'd call for a pair of spurs."
For myself, I frankly mourned Potts. For I saw now that he had been truly and finely of that Greek spirit—one accepting gifts from the gods with a joyous young faith in their continuance. I felt that he had divined more of the lesson of Greek art than his one-time love could write down in papers unending. ”

“ Ours is an age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will not.”
“I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts.”
“Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe all your griefs to your godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to give you a passport. Where do you wish to go?”
“I wish, first of all, to go to Como.” ”

“ This seemed to arouse Potts, and he surveyed Eubanks with more curiosity than delight. He arose, buttoned his coat, fixed his hat firmly upon his head, and took up his stick and bag. He put upon Eustace a glance of dignified urbanity, as he spoke.
"I don't know who you are, sir,—never saw you before in my life,—but I have done what every good citizen should do. I have spent my money at home. This is a cheap place, full of cheap men. What the town needs, sir, is capital—capital to develop its attributes and industries. It needs more men with the public spirit of J. Rodney, sir. ”

“ Pottsville consists of a single street, lying in a somewhat narrow vale on the right shore of the Schuylkill, and owes its name to a Mr. Pott, who commenced the first iron works. The entrances of two coal-mines are seen on the shore opposite the place; there are some which, however, are not worked on account of scarcity of labourers. I became acquainted in our tavern with a Mr. Baker from New York, who is one of the chief men in this undertaking, as well as with a Mr. ”

“ After taking leave of this brave patriot, I went to Christianpol, where lived the famous palatin Potocki, who had been one of the lovers of the empress Anna Ivanovna. He had founded the town in which he lived and called it after his own name. This nobleman, still a fine man, kept a splendid court. He honoured Count Bruhl by keeping me at his house for a fortnight, and sending me out every day with his doctor, the famous Styrneus, the sworn foe of Van Swieten, a still more famous physician. ”

“ Now, I thought, my fine young man, I’ll catch you; for I’ll call on Sir John himself and ask him.”
“You did right, Sir,” said Potts, who had taken an intense interest in this narrative. “I’m the very man you ought to have come to. I can tell you all you want. This Brandon is a miserable swindler.”
“Good! I thought so. You’ll give me that, Sir John, over your own name, will you?” cried Brandon, in great apparent excitement.
“Of course I will,” said Potts, “and a good deal more. But tell me, first, what that young devil said as to how he got to Cincinnati? How did he find his way there?” ”

“ If I be pushed to the avowal, I am sorry it is Potts. Algernon Sydney do a deal, but they can't do everything,—not to say that captious folk see a certain bathos in the collocation with my surname. Can a man hope to make such a name illustrious? Can be aspire to the notion of a time when people will allude to the great Potts, the celebrated Potts, the immortal Potts? ”

“ Pottage came in as magnificent as a queen-dowager in black satin to ask if her lodgers would give her the pleasure of their company in the parlour.
“I’ve got a few friends coming in to celebrate Christmas. Mrs. Bugbird’s here, and two of my unintendeds—Mr. Hopkins, the chandler—well, I thought I’d ask him, though he’s no more addition to anything than a nought, which is what he looks like—and then there’s Mr. Watcher. Yes, Watcher’s a good name for him, for he watches me like a dog watches a bone. He and Mr. Hopkins can’t bear the sight of one another. ”

“ Polatkin said.
"Sure; why not? A nice girl like Miss—whatever her name is—ain't too good for me, Mr. Polatkin. I got a good business there in Bridgetown, and——"
"But I don't know what for a girl she is at all," Polatkin protested.
"She's got anyhow five thousand dollars," Kapfer retorted, "and when a girl's got five thousand dollars, Mr. Polatkin, beauty ain't even skin-deep."
"Sure, I know," Polatkin agreed; "but so soon as you see Fischko and tell him you ain't Elkan Lubliner he would refuse to take you round to see the girl at all." ”

“ Feder replied. "His name is Hymie Kotzen."
[Pg 129]
CHAPTER VII
"Max Fried, of the A La Mode Store, was in here a few minutes since, Mawruss," said Abe Potash, to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, after the latter had returned from lunch one busy August day, "and bought a couple of hundred of them long Trouvilles. He also wanted something to ask it of us as a favor, Mawruss."
"Sixty days is long enough, Abe," said Morris, on the principle of "once bitten, twice shy." "For a man what runs a little store like the A La Mode on Main Street, Buffalo, Abe, Max don't buy too few goods, neither. ”

“ Potiphar grew purple, and Mr. Cheese looked at Boosey in the most serious manner over the top of his champagne-glass. I am glad to say that Polly has properly rebuked Gauche Boosey for his irreligion, by not asking him to her Saturday evening matinees dansantes.
There was no escape from the house, however. It must be built. It was not only Mrs. Potiphar that persisted, but the spirit of the age and of the country. One can’t live among shops. When Pearl street comes to Park Place, Park Place must run for its life up to Thirtieth street. ”

“ As it was, there were orders flying through Europe to arrest Pottinger,—I—can't forget the name. We used to have it every day in the Chancellerie: Pottinger, five feet nine, weak-looking and vulgar, low forehead, light hair and eyes, slight lisp, talks German fluently, but ill. I have copied that portrait of you twenty, ay, thirty times.”
“And yet, sir, neither the name nor the description apply. I am no more Pottinger than I am ignoble-looking and vulgar.”
“What's the name, then?—not Harpar, nor Pottinger? But who cares a rush for the name of fellows like you? ”

“ Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, and soon showed, in her whole demeanor, a consciousness of the latter's small titular decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-class with a vengeance. ”

“ He folded his arms, and said nothing.
“You appear to have been mistaken in your man,” said the stranger, coolly. “These are not your servants; they’re mine. Shall I tell them to seize you?”
Potts glared at him with bloodshot eyes, but said nothing.
“Shall I tell them to pull up your sleeve and display the mark of Bowhani, Sir? Shall I tell who and what you are? Shall I begin from your birth and give them a full and complete history of your life?”
Potts looked around like a wild beast in the arena, seeking for some opening for escape, but finding nothing except hostile faces. ”

“ Potts had gracefully described as "the golden age of Pericles."
To the end of his days he should be blithely, naïvely Greek; a dog of wretched field manners, pointing cattle and quail impartially, shamefully gun-shy, inconsequent, volatile, ignorant, forever paganly joyous without due cause. For him I should do what no one had been able to do for me—detain him in that "world of fine fabling" where everything is true that ought to be; where the earth is a running course, fascinating in its surprises of open road and tangled hedgerow; where mere indiscriminate smelling is keenest ecstasy ”

“ But we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the story) ; but for all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in ourselves and in the world, and that the social problem is not a problem of story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of Pottses, and of how to make men of them. ”

“ Potts, enthroned upon a big box in front, among bolts of muslin, straw hats, and bunches of innocent early lettuce, read the splendid tribute of the store's proprietor to his capacity as an expert in jurisprudence and his fitness for a seat of judicial honor. The bank and Chislett's being still closed, the little street, except in the near vicinity of Potts, began to sleep in a strange calm.
There were other doors to conquer, however, and Potts, at the head of his Argus-waving crowd of degenerates, vanquished them all. ”

“ Potiphar’s is, in some ways, better than going shopping. You see more new and costly things in a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a chair!” “What a darling table!” “What a heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease their husbands to get things precisely like them. When Kurz Pacha the Sennaar Minister, came to a dinner at my house, he said:
“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house is just like your neighbor’s.”
I know it. I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference between my house and Croesus’s, than there is in two ten dollar bills of the same bank. ”

“ Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields.
Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book. ”

“ Too much light, and eating, and drinking, and dancing, and flirting, and dressing, and feigning, and smirking, and much too many people. Good taste insists first upon fitness. But why had Mrs. Potiphar given this ball? We inquired industriously, and learned it was because she did not give one last year. Is it then essential to do this thing biennially? inquired we with some trepidation. “Certainly,” was the bland reply, “or society will forget you.” Everybody was unhappy at Mrs. Potiphar’s, save a few girls and boys, who danced violently all the evening. ”