Read Ebook: Peeps at People by Holliday Robert Cortes Duncan Walter Jack Illustrator

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Ebook has 155 lines and 13632 words, and 4 pages

d that Mr. Deats' business is one of the best in the city. And Mr. Deats has a fine son. After the manner of his class, Mr. Deats believed that all the things that were denied him were the very best things for his son. His son should not have to work as his father did--and he doesn't.

Mr. Deats, jr., has had advantages; he is a college graduate, a member of clubs, and one of the prominent young men of the city socially. Of course, being much cleverer, young Deats sees many of the mistakes his father made in life. He sees, for one thing, what an old fogy is Mr. Deats, sr. He sees how much better the business could be run. Mr. Deats, sr., does not know how to run a business; he is not modern enough. Still, he thinks he knows it all--that is the way with these bull-headed old codgers--and won't let young Deats conduct the business as it should be conducted. This, naturally, is very irritating to young Deats. No man enjoys seeing his own business go to rack and ruin. But the old man can't be kicked plump out into the street. He has no home but with young Deats. And, in a way, he is useful about the office; though even were he not, he must be humored. After all, he is the father of young Deats, and blood is thicker than water.

HAIR THAT IS SCENERY

Mr. Wigger, Mrs. Wigger's husband , is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight upward to the crown of his head an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black, undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. 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. He is a man not tonsorially decadent.

A NICE MAN

The clerk of the store is what is known as a nice man. He is known as such among his neighbors. He is known as such by his customers. People, wives sometimes to their husbands, refer to him as a nice man. Motherly old ladies say, "He is such a nice man!" Younger ladies exclaim, "What a nice man!" You cannot look at him and fail to know that he is a nice man. You cannot look at him and fail to know that his life has been blameless. He is very clean, tidy, and very, fresh-faced. His cheeks are round and rosy; his eyes are bright; his mustache is silken. He is in perfect health; his expression is pleasant; his disposition agreeable; and his manners are perfect. His name is Will .

The nice man has a little wife, who is almost as nice as he. She is interested in Sunday schools. The nice man and his wife have a little baby that looks just like its father. On Sundays they walk in the park, pushing the baby-cab before them. On great days of celebration they go together into the country, on picnics; and return home at night tired out. On these trips to the country the little wife brings home chestnut burrs to hang from the chandelier in the parlor. She made some pussy-willow buds to look like little cats on a stick. These are on the mantel. When Will got the job he now has his wife turned to the store's advertisement the first thing in the newspaper every evening to read it. She had always known that Will had it in him to be something, and so she had always told him. When the nice men gets a raise in salary he and his wife will put away so much a week and soon have a home of their own somewhere in the suburbs. Already, the baby has a savings-bank account of its own, and by the time it has developed into the grown image of the nice man, its father, it will have a sum of money.

NO SNOB

Let us walk down the street with Muldoon.

Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it. There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but had landed it insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment, decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off without giving the slightest thought to the matter.

Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion "mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable. Still he is spoken of among his confr?rie as "a good man," and is never without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been editor--sporting editor, we believe he says--though in his own city--we should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back again--he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.

Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and "Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and the odd circumstance that most of the lady characters were named Flossie, and which was a failure financially.

We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi, Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi, Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.

We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance . "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" , cries Muldoon, then, as if in afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a moment--we had got quite past the acquaintance--goes back and engages him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says , "I would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right," cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.

We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. The horses were hitched, and stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat, jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang! Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging, staggering, now on two wheels, now on one, now on none at all--on and on and on, around corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.

A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in . He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman , and recounts to him the details of his late illness, which are most astonishing.

When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who predicted that he would come to a bad end. On the occasion of his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles, and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk about. It will be a fine revenge.

EVERY INCH A MAN

If there is a finer fellow in the world than Chester Kirk we have never seen him. As he himself so often says, the finest things are done up in small packages.

When in eyeshot of ladies, especially when he is unknown to them, he is grand. He takes his gloves from his pocket and holds them in his left hand. He searches himself for a cigar, which, when found, he holds before him, unlighted, in his right hand, on a level with his chest, his elbow crooked. He stands very firmly, with one leg bending backward in a line of virile, graceful curve. His back is taut. His other knee is bent forward, relaxed. Or he strides up and down, with something of a fine strut, like a fighting cock. So, he reminds us of Alan Breck.

When, in this stimulating position, he has on a long coat, he swings its skirt from side to side. He feels, undoubtedly so brave and strong. He laughs, when there is opportunity for it, in a deep, manly voice, and often. He sometimes pulls back his head so that he has a double chin. He is every inch a man.

As is quite fitting and proper, he is one of the most photographed of men. This is a family trait. He has ever just had a new photograph taken to send to his people, or his people have just sent some new ones to him, which he shows about with great gusto to his friends. His room is littered with likenesses of the Kirks, a very remarkable family. Here is a photograph of his brother.

"Notice that chest," says Kirk. "He's got an expansion on him like the front of a house. Why, in his freshman year he had the biggest expansion in his class. Athlete! That boy's a boxer." Kirk points the stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest man 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. He took them and hung on. He built up that business, I think I have a right to say that it's the biggest on the Pacific Slope, in an incredibly short time. Business he was from the word go. He could handle men! An entertainer he is, too; he makes friends wherever he goes; everybody likes him. Here's my sister. 'Sis' is the society woman of the younger set at home. That's my other brother. He's a hunter."

Next to pictures of himself and family, and their pets and live stock, there is nothing Kirk revels in so much as snapshots of his native country, "greatest country in the world." He has these pasted into several volumes: each print is labeled, as "Mt. Ranier, looking north," "Puget Sound, low tide," and so forth. Each new acquaintance Kirk takes through the lot and explains the circumstances under which each picture was taken.

As Kirk himself remarks, his handwriting is very strong. It is that strong that it has only about three, sometimes four, short words to a line, with good strong spaces in between. The descending loops of letters on one line often come down and lariat small letters on the line below. The sense goes at a splendid break-neck speed, and takes pauses and stops as though they were hurdles. The whole is penned in somewhat that fashion in which express clerks make out receipts.

That reminds us. We one time went with Kirk into an express office to send a package. We ignorantly considered this to be a thing of little moment. That was because we do not know how to handle men. A pale young man, with a high, bald forehead, who had the appearance of an excellent assistant to some one in an office, was standing at the counter. He witnessed the entrance of the two without remarking it as an impressive ceremony. Indeed, the clerk was quite apathetic. In an instant all this was changed.

"Let me have your pencil," Kirk demanded. It was the voice of the man born to command, the man that moves an army of subordinates this way or that, as he wills, like chessmen. He took the pencil, hoisted his package onto the counter with a flourish, tilted his cigar upward in one corner of his mouth by a movement of his jaws, and fell into so fine an attitude that the pale young man became interested and leaned over to see what important name would appear in the address. In his strongest hand Kirk addressed it. It was a package worth two dollars Kirk was sending to his brother, who needed it. "Send collect," cried Kirk. And the entire company, Kirk included, and ourself, who also knew the contents of the package, felt, it was evident, that a transaction very important to the interests of business had been accomplished.

Kirk was one time playing checkers when we entered. "Well, how are you coming out?" we inquired. "Are you being beaten, Chester?" He flared up like a flash. "I can beat you!" he cried. We had never seen the man so beautiful. He looked to be invincible; though he wasn't; for he had lost every game.

HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD

"HULLO there, Bill! I'm glad to see you. How're you getting along? Do you know, I didn't know you when you first came in. Let me see, it's been a couple--no, four years since I saw you before. I was pretty much down and out then, ha! ha! Just bummed my way to New York, you know. Well, how are things with you? You know, I sat there looking an' a looking at you--couldn't make up my mind whether it was you or not. I says to myself, 'I'll risk it,' I says. 'If it's Bill, we'll have a time,' I says. Ha! Ha! I came over to take a bath--there's a fine bath place across the street, where I always go. I'm in the photograph business, you know, over in Brooklyn. Yes, doing well now; I'm manager of the place; I'll take you over to see it. Been in the business three years, same place; first two years work, work all the time, no pay at all, so to speak. But I knew I was learning the business, and I liked the job and liked the boss; we were busted together, you know. I was head musher in a mushhouse at Coney, you know, when I first met him; then I lost the job; we bummed around together awhile. Then I went back to Indiana--by freight--to see my folks.

"Yes, the old man's well; Dora's married, you know; married a Sunday school superintendent, church where she taught Sunday school. Nothing doing in Indiana. Laid around awhile, then I got a letter from this feller. He had come into money, set up a photograph shop, told me to come back and take a job with him. I went to my sister, Dora, you know, and got railroad fare here. I says to her, 'If you can get me the money, I'll pay you as soon as I can, which won't be long,' I says. 'I've got a good job there,' I says. I says, 'Of course, I can bum my way back, but it will take me four or five days, maybe a week,' I says. 'If I have railroad fare I can get on a train here one day and get off there the next,' I says. She got me the money from her husband--sixteen dollars; she's been awful good to me; and I came in a passenger train. First time, you know, ha! ha! Second-class, though; just as good as first, though. I got on at Indianapolis one day, you know, and got off in New York the next day. Twenty-four hours, you know.

"First thing, I went to the feller's place, but he had moved. Didn't leave any address, where he had gone, you know; nobody around there knew anything about him. I was in a deuce of a fix. Didn't have a cent of money--wasn't the first time, though. We used to write to each other sometimes through the General Delivery, so I went there, and sure enough there was a letter for me; but there was some postage due on it somehow. I says to the man, I says, 'I haven't got any money; I can't pay it'; there was a feller standing behind me in the line; he ups and says, 'Here, I'll pay it,' he says; 'it's only two cents' he says. So I got the letter and set right out for the address; the feller had moved to a better place.

"Girls, Bill! you ought to see the girls that come to my place, Bill, yes, sir, to get their pictures taken. They all call me 'Jack.' Yes, everybody around here calls me 'Jack.' I used to be 'John,' you know, at home, where we were boys together; great days those, yes, sir; I never will forget those days.

"Why, you know, I could have been married, Bill; yes, sir, ha! ha! Me, a tramp. A fine girl, too, a regular lady, the real article, yes, sir, rich too, yes, sir. Why I went over there one day, and their dog--a blame little black dog--was sick; you ought to have seen the case of medicine they had for that dog. A whole blame box full of bottles of medicine; good medicine, too, yes, sir; why, I would have liked to have had some of that medicine myself.

"I'll take you over and introduce you to some of those girls; here's a picture I took of one; she's a daisy. I took her to the theater last Saturday night. You know, it does a feller good to see good shows at the theater. This theater--it's a little place right near my gallery--I go there every once in awhile; they have better shows there than they do at the Opera House; I like 'em better. This was a fine show, 'His Mother's Son.' Yes, sir, it does a feller good to go to the theater.

"What's the matter with your coming over and staying with me to-night? But no, I haven't a room now; you'd have to bunk in the gallery. That's where I sleep now. I did have a room, you know, blame fine room, running water, hot and cold, and all that sort of thing, three dollars a week. But I got tired of it. Yes, too comfortable, bed all made up for me every day, and everything else. It made me sick. I like to make my own bed. I like to rough it like I'm used to doing, yes, so I gave it up and sleep in the gallery now where I belong. I feel at home there, and there's plenty of room.

"Say, Bill, how are you fixed? Need any money? I've got more'n I want. Don't know what to do with it all, you know. Not used to it, just blow it in. Well, all right, we'll take and spend it then. Drink up, Bill, and let's go some other place."

A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS

WE are much interested in the picturesque character of Caroline. Caroline is twelve. She is like a buxom, rosy apple. Her dress is a "Peter Thompson." Her physical sports are running like the wind, and, in summer, fishing. Our concern, however, is more with her mind. Caroline is a voracious reader. We are somewhat bookish ourselves, and the conversations between us are often frankly literary. Caroline's taste in this matter, for one of her sex, is rather startling.

"Oh, you ought to read the 'Pit and the Pendulum,'" says Caroline. "Is it good?" we ask. "Fine!" Caroline replies. "It's at the time of the Inquisition, you know," she explains. "They take a man and torture him. It's fine," declares Caroline. "The demon's eyes grow brighter and brighter" , "the pendulum comes nearer and nearer--but I think he deserved to escape," says Caroline, "because he tried so hard." Now that is really a deep moral observation, "because he tried so hard," and a sound questioning of the philosophical verity of a work of art.

"There's a good murder in here," says Caroline.

"I like Sherlock Holmes," Caroline says.

She reads the "Mark of the Beast" and the "Black Cat" with great satisfaction. For comedy or for psychological moments she does not care, but there is nobody, we believe, with greater capacity for enjoyment of terrible murder in horrible dark places in the land of fiction.

Night after night we heard her voice reading aloud to her visitor Emily after the two had retired, until we fell asleep; and in the morning we saw that the relish of horror was still upon her.

Emily had gone. Caroline had retired alone. We read by the lamp in the living-room. We were startled and mystified to hear suddenly mingle with the sound of the night rain all around, a long, uncertain wailing, a melancholy, haunting, sinking, rising, halting, gruesome sound, uncannily redolent of weird Gothic tales; the "Castle of Otranto" came into our mind. This apparently proceeded from an "upper chamber," as would be said in the type of story mentioned.

"That," said brother Henry, in replying doubtless to a blank face, "is Caroline playing the flute."

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.

IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE

IN "Bleak House," I think it is, that Poor Joe keeps "movin' along." One of the atoms of London, he passes his whole life in the midst of thousands upon thousands of signs. Printed letters, painted letters, carved letters, words, words, words, blaze upon him all about. Yet not a syllable of them all speaks to him; seen but all unheard by him they clothe his path. Poor Joe cannot read. How must he regard these strange, unmeaning signs? What is it goes on in this head which so little can enter? What has filtered in where the great main avenue of approach remains, as far from the first, black and unopened? What does this mind, sitting there far off in the dark, looking out, comprehend of the pageant? And how does it strike him? Some such a mysterious mind looks out from Ida's eyes.

Ida is "colored." It is my belief that though she is grown and well formed a little child dwells in her head. I know that when I ask her to bring me another cup of coffee and she pauses, slightly bends forward, her lips a trifle parted, and fastens her clear, utterly innocent, curious eyes upon me, waiting to hear repeated what she has already heard, she sees me as a sort of toy balloon on a string, whose incomprehensible movements excite a pleasurable wonder. As regularly as the dinner hour comes around Ida asks, with that same amazingly unsophisticated, interested look, if each of us will have soup. If it were our custom occasionally not to take soup, if we had declined soup a couple of times even, a good while ago, if even we had declined soup once--but, as Mr. MacKeene says, what could have put it into her head that we might not take soup? It is the same with dessert, with cereal at breakfast. I hardly know why it is not the same with having our beds made.

It is easy to give Ida pleasure. She has not been satiated, perhaps, with pleasure. A very little quite overjoys her. I turn about in my chair to reach a book, and discover Ida silently dusting the furniture. "Why! I didn't know you were in here," I say to Ida. Ida breaks into great light at this highly entertaining situation. "Didin you know I was in here! Didin you!" Her eyebrows go up with delight. Her pose might be the original of Miss Rogson's "Merely Mary Ann."

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