Spittoon

“ Spitzer wasn't much to look at, neither was he of much account on the Hill Division. Some men rise to occasions, others don't; as for Spitzer—well, he was a snubby-nosed, peaked-faced, touzled-haired little fellow with washed-out blue eyes that always seemed to carry around an apology in their depths that their owner existed, and this idea was backed up a good bit by Spitzer's voice. ”

“ He set about his task of making up the berths in the stateroom with the air of a high priest performing a sacerdotal ritual. His big pink hands gently smoothed the crinkles from the linen pillow cases; the woolen blankets he arranged in neat, folded triangles and stood off to survey the effect as an artist might. And, indeed, Monsieur Pettipon considered himself an artist.
To him the art of being a steward was just as estimable as the art of being a poet; he was a Shelley of the dustpan; a Keats of the sheets. To him the making up of a berth in one of the cabins he tended was a sonnet ”

“ At all events, no gentleman will ever insult a lady by smoking in the streets in her company; [76] and in meeting and saluting a lady he will always remove his cigar from his mouth.”
Spitting is one of those things that no man should do, if he can avoid it. If in the street, common decency, it would seem, should prompt a man to go to the gutter if he finds it necessary to spit; and if anywhere else, it should prompt him not to spit on the floor, be the floor carpeted or not. We often see men spit on a carpet, especially in our theatres, but we never see any man spit on a carpet of his own. ”

“ Babadag the Tailor, Goolk the Spider, and the Eight Tailors
We were standing in a magnificent apartment, paved with colored marble, hung and spread with soft rugs, and lit with hundreds of tapers. At the left, near the wall, was sitting an old man, and behind his chair, from ceiling to floor, was a gigantic spider’s web, which glistened like silver in the candlelight. In the center of this web was a great green spider, with five or six small black spiders about him. ”

“ But this was, for the most part, past history, and of the days gone by, for the Spider now had grown old—had grown to be an old man—for it had begun of late to be whispered that he talked more than he had been wont to talk in the days of his prime, that he was not as safe as he had been, and in consequence his trade of late had begun to drift away from him. ”

“ Spittle tabooed.—The same fear of witchcraft which has led so many people to hide or destroy their loose hair and nails has induced other or the same people to treat their spittle in a like fashion. For on the principles of sympathetic magic the spittle is part of the man, and whatever is done to it will have a corresponding effect on him. A Chilote Indian, who has gathered up the spittle of an enemy, will put it in a potato, and hang the potato in the smoke, uttering certain spells as he does so in the belief that his foe will waste away as the potato dries in the smoke. ”

“ Why should you lie? It can't be! I can't believe it!"
"Don't youse take me word fer it, ma'am," he begged hoarsely. "Don't believe me. Just put it off till t'morrow—ask an' see if I've told the truth——"
Suddenly she rose and tied up the companionway. The Spider followed instantly—to find the girl confronting Worth himself.
The man stood in the stern, alone, but for the presence of the sailor at the wheel. The Heloise was not yet under way, though it was now but a matter of moments, even of seconds. The Spider noted that the launch had not cast off. ”

“ When the little kitties were quite strong, they used to play a funny sort of game. There was a round foot-stool, covered with carpet, and Spitfire used to sit up on it, and then Cuddle and Miss Tittens would try to climb up the sides. Then Spitfire would say, "Sptss!" and pat them on the heads with her little paws until they rolled down again. Sometimes, when she was busy driving one off, another would get up behind her, and drive her off too; but she always worked hard until she was up again. ”

“ Under-sized, excitable and small-minded was 'Spider.' He had breadth and strength of body, but no more intellects than please God he wanted. He was so black as if he'd been soaked in a peat bog—black hair, black eyes, black moustache and black beard. A short, noisy man with long arms and hair so thick as soot on 'em. He owned Beech Cot on Merripit Hill when his mother died, and there he took Jenny after they was wed; and the people called 'em Beauty and the Beast.
Not that there was anything right-down beastly about Nicky but his spidery appearance. ”

“ By the way, boy, have you been in the habit of reading dime novels?"
"I never read one in my life, sir."
"Then I think you would succeed in writing them. For a boy of sixteen, you certainly have a vivid imagination."
"I quite agree with my husband," said Mrs. Pitkin. "The boy's story is ridiculously improbable. I can't understand how he has the face to stand there and expect Uncle Oliver to swallow such rubbish."
"I don't expect you to believe it, either of you," said Philip manfully, "for you have never treated me fairly." ”

“ You will marry me in spite——"
"I will never——"
"Oh, yes, but you will—after you've compromised yourself with this little trip!" He turned away, raising his voice to reach the ear of the man on the bridge: "Go——"
But the Spider, the despised, cut him short. His arm shot out, his foot crossed Worth's—and the man was rolling on the deck, half-a-dozen feet distant. The Spider caught the girl roughly by the arm; there was no time for formalities. He hurried her toward the gangway, at the foot of which lay the gasoline launch, with two white-clad figures still busy therein. ”

“ The ordinary voice of the ordinary man on the Hill Division was not weak—it was assertive. Spitzer suffered thereby because everybody crawled over him. Nobody thought anything of Spitzer. They all knew him, of course, that is, those whose duties brought them within the zone of Spitzer's orbit, which was restricted to Big Cloud or, rather, to the roundhouse at Big Cloud. Nobody ever gave him credit for courage enough to call his soul his own. ”

“ Wentworth then told her briefly what had happened that night, and that his enemy must have placed his seal on the policemen's foreheads.
“Do you know what that means, my darling? If any criminal has the courage to imitate the Spider, to try to pin his crimes on him, then that man must have an amazing and fiendish plot before him, for the underworld dreads the Spider and fears him.” ”

“ Spitzer and the man who broke his neck aren’t the only ones who’ve had their ups and downs that way, not by several. There isn’t any moral to this except that here and there you’ll find a man who isn’t as, modest about his own ability as he ought to be!
Spitzer’s nocturnal habits, that were a matter of so much unconcern and of which the railroad crowd at Big Cloud were so densely in ignorance, have a part in this. The truth is that between the lunch-counter and the station is the baggage and freight-shed, and behind the freight-shed it is very dark ”

“ In fact, the lines of rigging, as seen from the place where Rollo and Jane were seated, looked so fine, and the men appeared so small, that the whole spectacle naturally reminded one of a gigantic spider's web, with black spiders of curious forms ascending and descending upon them, so easily and adroitly did the men pass to and fro and up and down, attaching new lines to new points, and then running off with them, as a spider would do with her thread, wherever they were required. ”

“ Spiser's ideals were no higher than himself, and Spiser was merely a crafty, masterful brute.
Nan's clear eyes, her air of good breeding, her manner with its mixture of girlish candor and reserve, her conversation and dress, which bore every earmark of education and refinement, conveyed nothing to him beyond the fact that an unusual and uncommonly attractive young woman had arrived within his field of activities ready to walk into a properly constructed web. ”

“ Being new, Pettigrew received a good deal of attention. "Who are you?" "What's your Uncle-name?" "Do you live with Santy Claus or with the fairies?" "How cold is the cold side of Number One Sun?" "Do you like merry-go-rounds better than rolly-coasters?"
The pelting of this verbal barrage sent him spinning like a crippled spaceship and I wedged myself through the ring of Kids to rescue him. "Come on, gang! Break it up!"
Pettigrew gave me a look of wide-eyed terror. "They're insane," he whispered. "Look at them! They're adults, but they act like—like—"
"Like children," I said. ”

“ Pitkin, rising with dignity. "Since Uncle Oliver chooses to charge his own nephew with being a thief----"
"I beg pardon, Lavinia, I have not done so."
"You might just as well," said Lavinia Pitkin, tossing her head. "Come, Mr. Pitkin; come, my poor Lonny, we will go home. This is no place for you."
"Good-evening, Lavinia," said Mr. Carter calmly. "I shall be glad to see you whenever you feel like calling."
"When you have discharged that boy, I may call again," said Mrs. Pitkin spitefully.
"You will have to wait some time, then. I am quite capable of managing my own affairs." ”

“ Seth Strickett and George Morgan stepped forward.
"Barney—Bill Bunce—Pete—Clarky, will you be taken and strung up like so many slaughtered hogs? Stand by me, now, and fight to the death!" and whipping out a revolver, he fired point-blank at Old Spicer's heart.
But the attenuated detective was not a very good mark for a weak and excited man to aim at, and so the ball sped by, and the next instant a howl went up, as though all the witches of Macbeth were yelling in concert. ”

“ Because justice must wait on such men, Wentworth tonight had turned his back upon gayety; leaving the side of the woman he loved, to grope through the vicious underworld in hopes of grappling with that mocking skeleton at the feast; risking his life once more that the tentacles of crime might be kept from the throat of the city. Because of this, Wentworth tonight again became the Spider! ”

“ His opponent, the Harlem Smasher, lingered in his dressing-room; he was in no haste to win. Impatiently the Spider moved about within the squared circle, feeling of the padded posts, testing with his feet the resiliency of the padded flooring—pawing it with something in his manner suggestive of a veteran cavalry charger sniffing again the smell of powder.
The air was humid and foul with the reek of cheap beer and the fumes of doubtful cigars. Some two hundred men were herded together in the narrow confines of Maguire's secluded back room. ”

“ A loom is but a dead machine on which fingers work more or less clumsily. The spider is both machine and living artisan, spinning, weaving, more surely, more exquisitely than could any dead mechanism worked by man. Who had approached the delicacy, the beauty, of the spider’s web?
Suddenly Graydon seemed to look into a whole new world of appalling grotesquerie—soulless spider men and spider women spread out over great webs and weaving with needled fingers wondrous fabrics ”

“ The girl's own family were keenly suspicious of Worth; a word would ruin him. The man, the crafty egoist, took thought; for the Spider must be eliminated for a time. "He will be glad to be taken back afterwards," Worth forecast.
He had influence of a sort that better men disdain; and abruptly he had a new valet. As for the Spider, he was serving ninety days in the workhouse for a crime which he had not committed.
IV. Into the sultry splendor of an August afternoon a black squall leaped furiously from the cloud-bank that lowered in the west. ”

“ To what a degree of fineness can the silky matter be wrought wherewith the young Spider is provided! Our manufacturers are able to turn out platinum-wire that can only be seen when it is made red-hot. With much simpler means the Spiderling draws from her wire-mill threads so delicate that even the brilliant light of the sun does not always enable us to discern them.
We must not let all the climbers be stranded on the ceiling, an inhospitable region, where most of them will doubtless perish, being unable to produce a second thread before they have had a meal. ”

“ Wentworth's mouth went into a thin straight line. “If the Spider is the man who placed the seal upon their foreheads, the Spider shall pay.”
For long moments the men's gaze locked, and the slow languorous strains of another waltz came like music from another world, so foreign was it to the tension of the two. ”

“ So he leaned out of the window and called to the monster: "you might as well go away now. I've decided to become a spider."
"What!" shouted the twenty-headed Gallopus, "why, you must be crazy. Why—why, it's an awful feeling to be a spider. It's much nicer to be eaten. Come on out and I'll swallow you whole and it won't hurt a bit."
"No," said Ting, "I think I prefer to be a spider." ”

“ At any rate, he argued, it would do the Spider no harm to try it on.
"Naw," said the Spider; "I wouldn't do. I ain't got no chanst. I'm—too old!"
He quvered again, tracing meaningless circles with his forefinger on the sloppy table-top. "Thanks all the same."
He was twenty-six—not seven months more. But the "ring" drains the veins of its devotees; youth fades in its blush.
Afterwards he yielded and went with Worth.
III. At the end of five years he was changed greatly, although he was still, to Worth and to his master's intimates, the Spider, the former light-weight champion. ”