CHAPTER III.

Reminiscentially Autobiographical.

This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not

prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a

coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes

clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after

the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his

age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long

Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the

trade of the fisher and huntsman.

Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to

guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of

Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving

accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery

dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the

National Convention,--in spite of my youth. He was a ne'er-do-weel, said

my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we

loved each other as brothers seldom do.

At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better

education than our local standard accepted as either useful or

necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a

voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose

black-letter "Agents Wanted" is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he

was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a

canvasser for a book sold by subscription,--a "Veterinarians' Guide," I

believe it was,--and report said that he was "making money." Again I

learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and,

later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,--the old farmer

who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until

that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress

and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt

to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine;

and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was

some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful

publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the

smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago.

I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand,

said, "How are you, Al?" and paused, holding the hand I gave him,

evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with

one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for

half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences to ask after

such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare.

"Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you

followed off the 'Veterinarians' Guide,' and I lost you?" I inquired at

last.

"I've been everywhere, and I've done everything, almost," said he. "Put

it in the 'negative case,' and my history'll be briefer."

"I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade," said I, "as about the

last thing you would engage in."

"Ah!" he replied, "His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that

time, did he? Well, I didn't think he had the sense. And I doubted the

memory on your part, and I wasn't at all sure you were the real Barslow.

But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau

factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so

patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the

merits of the tariff controversy!"

It was the same old Jim, I thought.

"We used to have a scheme," I remarked, "our favorite one, of occupying

an island in the Pacific,--or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the

Spanish Main--"

"If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,

and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier," he answered, as if it were

a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, "it was in the

Pacific--the South Pacific, where the whale-oil comes from. A coral

atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe

of palms along the margin--coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was

green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the

bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in

the phosphorescent waves...."

His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased

to speak without finishing the sentence,--which it took me some minutes

to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to

find these foolish things so green in his memory.

"The plan involved," said I soberly, "capturing a Spanish galleon filled

with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them

their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember

it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived

richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:

do you remember?"

"Remember! Well, I should smile!"--he had been laughing like a boy, with

his old frank laugh. "Them's the things we don't forget.... Did you ever

gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did."

"I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I

must confess," said I, "that I'm a little hazy on the galleon question

yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out

the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn't it, Jim?"

"Apt to," he assented, "but specifically? As to which, you know?"

"Well, I've had my share of experience with them," I answered, "though

not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee."

Jim looked at me quizzically.

"Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?" he ventured.

"General business," I responded, "and ... politics."

"Local, state, or national?" he went on, craftily ignoring the general

business.

"A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I've been

elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms."

"Good for you!" he responded. "But I don't see how that can be made to

harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It's been your own

fault, if you haven't been on the profitable side of the game, with the

dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three

meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b'lay this rob-ee business

(as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County.

As a former partner in crime, I won't squeal; and the next election is

some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it's no fair,

you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good,

honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack

of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,--especially in things

they know all about by extrinsic evidence,--and keep concealment for the

great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the

sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth,

and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry

powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and

as the poet saith,

"'Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam

Survey our empire and behold our home,'

or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your

former chieftain, who doesn't even vote in your county or state, and

moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I'm ashamed

of you, by George, I am!"

This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of

the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor,

passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude

of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at

Jim's peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.

"No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are

concerned," said I, when we had finished our laugh, "for I go out of

office January first, next."

"Oh, well, that accounts for it, then," said he. "I notice, say, three

kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention,

and post-election. Which is yours?"

"Post-convention, I'm sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary."

"It _is_ the cheapest; but you're in great luck not to get licked at the

polls. Altogether, you're in great luck. You've been betting on a game

in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you've

won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You've got no kick

coming: you're in big luck. Don't you know you are?"

I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some

time in silence.

"It strikes me, Jim," said I, at last, "that you've done all the

cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How

about you and your conduct?"

"As for my conduct," was the prompt answer, "it's away up in the

neighborhood of G. I've managed to hold the confounded world up for a

living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the

picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation

have been brief. By practicing on the 'Veterinarians' Guide' and other

similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them

believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing

the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets

this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I

handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature,

including county histories--"

"Sh-h-h!" said I, "somebody might hear you."

"--and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error

of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and

holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature

loose, and became a missionary."

"A what!" I exclaimed.

"A missionary," he responded soberly. "That is, you understand, not one

of these theological, India's-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about

the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good

so far as in him lies."

"I see," said I, punning horribly, "'in him lies.'"

"Eh?... Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can't defend this

foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this

vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light

just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went

out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and

Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity

in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits."

"I perceive," said I.

"Perfectly plain, isn't it, to the seeing eye?" he went on. "You see it

was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City

Land Company, years ago, during the boom--by the way, I didn't mention

that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as

they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we'd sort

of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature--hotel

registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland.

That's how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention.

Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into

Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept

going a few years down on the farm--Springfield, or Jacksonville, or

somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just

changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis.

Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the

position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving

awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just

starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states."

"How does it agree with you?" I inquired.

"Not well," said he, "but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to

me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the

boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true

insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my

burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain,

if it weren't for the salary, I'd quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I

wouldn't. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I'm

actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but

to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second

husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true

plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and--"

"Never mind!" said I with a silence-commanding gesture. "I've heard all

that before. You're onto the ropes thoroughly; but don't practice your

infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?"

"Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it."

"You used to be more modest," said I. "I remember that you once nearly

broke your heart because you couldn't summon up courage to ask Creeshy

Hammond to go to the 'Fourth' with you; d'ye remember?"

"Well, I guess, yes!" he replied. "Wasn't I a miserable wretch for a few

days! And I've never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the

fateful question, yet."

We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an

hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw

that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of

conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made

him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I

should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in

spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power

of making statements of mere opinion, which, from some vibration of

voice or trick of expression, struck the hearer as solid facts, thrice

buttressed by evidence. He bore no marks of dissipation, unless the

occasional use of terms traceable to the turf or the gaming-table might

be considered such; but these expressions, I considered, are so

constantly before every reader of the newspapers that the language of

the pulpit, even, is infected by them. Their evidential value being thus

destroyed, they ought not to be weighed at all, as against firm,

wholesome flesh, a good complexion, and a clear eye, all of which Mr.

Elkins possessed.

"It's funny," said I, "how seldom I meet any of the old neighbor-boys.

Do you see any of them in your travels?"

"Not often," he answered, "but you remember little Ed Smith, who lived

on the Hayes place for a while, and brought the streaked snake into the

schoolhouse while Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect

at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw

him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell

you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and

irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you

couldn't rest. If I'd got into that push soon enough, I shouldn't have

made a thing but money; as it was, I didn't lose only what I had. A good

many of the boys lost a lot more. But I tell you, Al, a boom properly

boomed is a sure thing."

"You're a constant source of surprise to me, Jim," said I. "I should

have thought them sure to lose."

"They're sure to win," said he earnestly.

I demurred. "I don't see how that can possibly be," said I, "for of all

things, booms seem to me the most fickle and incalculable."

"They seem so," said he, smiling, but still in earnest, "to your rustic

and untaught mind, and to most others, because they haven't been

studied. The comet, likewise, doesn't seem very stable or dependable;

but to the eye of the astronomer its orbit is plain, and the time of its

return engagement pretty certain. It's the same with seventeen-year

locusts--and booms; their visits are so far apart that the masses forget

their birthmarks and the W's on their backs. But if you'll follow their

appearances from place to place, as I've done, putting up my ante right

along for the privilege, you'll become an accomplished boomist; and from

the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you

can forecast their growth, maturity, and collapse."

"I must be permitted to doubt it," said I.

"It's easy, my son," he resumed, "dead easy, and it's psychology on the

hugest scale; and among the results of its study is constant improvement

of the mind, going on coincidentally with the preparation of the way to

the ownership of steam-yachts and racing-stables, or any other similar

trifles you hanker for."

"Great brain, Jim! Massive intellect!" said I, laughing at the fantastic

absurdity of his assertion. "Why, such knowledge as you possess is

better than straight tips on all the races ever to be run. It's better

than our tropical island and Spanish galleons. You get richer, and you

don't have to look out for men-of-war. Do I hold my job as Grand

Vizier?"

"You hold any job you'll take: I'll make out the appointment with the

position and salary blank, and you can fill it up. And if you get

dissatisfied with that, the old grand hailing-sign of distress will

catch the speaker's eye, any old time. But, I tell you, Al, in all

seriousness, I'm right about this boom business. They're all alike, and

they all have the same history. With the conditions right, one can be

started anywhere in a growing country. I've had my ear to the ground for

a while back, and I've heard things. I'm sure I detect some of the

premonitory symptoms: money piling up in the financial centers; property

away down, but strengthening, in the newer regions; and, lately, a

little tendency to take chances in investments, forgetting the scorching

of ten or twelve years ago. A new generation of suckers is gettin' ready

to bite. Look into this thing, Al, and don't be a chump."

"The same old Jim," said I; "you were manipulating a corner in

tobacco-tags while I was learning my letters."

"Do you ever forget anything?" he inquired. "I have about forgotten that

myself. How was that tobacco-tag business, Al?"

Then with the painstaking circumstantiality of two old schoolmates

luxuriating in memories, we talked over the tobacco-tag craze which

swept through our school one winter. Everything in life takes place in

school, and the "tobacco-tag craze" has quite often recurred to me as

showing boys acting just as men act, and Jimmie Elkins as the born

stormy petrel of financial seas.

It all came back to our minds, and we reconstructed this story. The

manufacturers of "Tomahawk Plug" had offered a dozen photographs of

actresses and dancers to any one sending in a certain number of the tin

hatchets concealed in their tobacco. The makers of "Broad-axe Navy"

offered something equally cheap and alluring for consignments of their

brass broad-axes. The older boys began collecting photographs, and a

market for tobacco-tags of certain kinds was established. We little

fellows, though without knowledge of the mysterious forces which had

given value to these bits of metal, began to pick up stray tags from

sidewalk, foot-path, and floor. A marked upward tendency soon manifested

itself. Boys found their "Broad-axe" or "Door-key" tags, picked up at

night, doubled in value by morning. The primary object in collecting

tags was forgotten in the speculative mania which set in. Who would

exchange "Tomahawk" tags for the counterfeit presentment of decollete

dancers, when by holding them he could make cent-per-cent on his

investment of hazel-nuts and slate-pencils?

The playground became a Board of Trade. We learned nothing but mental

arithmetic applied to deals in "Door-keys," "Arrow-heads," and other tag

properties. We went about with pockets full of tags.

Jim, not yet old enough to admire the beauties of the photographs, came

forward in a week as the Napoleon of tobacco-tag finance. He acquired

tags in the slumps, and sold them in the bulges. He raided particular

brands with rumors of the vast supply with which the village boys were

preparing to flood us. He converted his holdings into marbles and tops.

Finally, he planned his master-stroke. He dropped mysterious hints

regarding some tag considered worthless. He asked us in whispers if we

had any. Others followed his example, and "Door-key" tags went above all

others and were scarce at any price. Then Jimmie Elkins brought out the

supply which he had "cornered," threw it on the market, and before it

had time to drop took in a large part of the playground currency. I lost

to him a good drawing-slate and a figure-4 trap.

Jimmie pocketed his winnings, but the trouble attracted the attention of

the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set

in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which

was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters

worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin

the spring's work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and

disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and

knives, most of which we had to obtain from Jimmie Elkins.

"Yes," said he, "it's a good deal the same with booms. But if you

understand 'em ... eh, Al?"

"Well," said I, really impressed now, "I'll look into it. And when you

get ready to sow your boom-seed, let me know. I change cars in a few

minutes, and you go on. Come down and see me sometimes, can't you? We

haven't had our talk half out yet. Doesn't your business ever bring you

down our way?"

"It hasn't yet, but I'm coming down into that neck of the woods within

six weeks, and I guess I can fix it so's to stop off,--mingling pleasure

and business. It's the only way the hustling philanthropist of my style

ever gets any recreation."

"Do it," said I; "I'll have plenty of time at my disposal; for I go out

of office before that time; and I may want to go into your

boom-hatchery."

"On the theory that the great adversary of mankind runs an employment

agency for ex's? There's the whistle for your junction. By George, Al, I

can't tell you how glad I am to have ketched up with you again! I've

wondered about you a million times. Don't let's lose track of each other

again."

"No, no, Jim, we won't!" The train was coming to a stop. "Don't allow

anything to side-track you and prevent that visit."

"Well, I should say not," he answered, following me out upon the

platform of the station. "We'll have a regular piratical reunion--a sort

of buccaneers' camp-fire. I've a curiosity to see some of the fellows

who acted the part of rob-or to your rob-ee. I want to hear their side

of the story. Good-by, Al. Confound it, I wish you were going on with

me!"

He wrung my hand at parting, reminding me of the old Jim who studied

from the same geography with me, more than at any time since we met. He

stayed with me until after his train had started, caught hold of the

hand-rail as the rear car went by, and passed out of view, waving his

hand to me.

I sat down on a baggage-truck waiting for my train, thinking of my

encounter with Jim. All the way home I was busy pondering over a

thousand things thus suddenly recalled to me. I could see every

fence-corner and barn, every hill and stream of our old haunts; and

after I got home I told Alice all about it.

"He seems quite a remarkable fellow," said I, "and a perfect specimen of

the pusher and hustler--a quick-witted man of affairs. If he is ever

put down, he can't be kept down."

"I think I prefer a more refined type of man," said Alice.

"In the sixteenth century," I went on with that excessive perspicacity

which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a

Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in

this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great

railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with

him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have

expected to find him. I think you'll like him."

She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of

people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to

marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our

feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to do

more than point out this feeling, which will, I think, be admitted by

all husbands to exist.

"That sort of man," said she, "lacks the qualities of bravery and

intrepidity which make up a Drake or a Dampier. They are so a-scheming

and calculating!"

"The last time I saw Jim until to-day," said I, "he did something which

seems to show that he had those more admirable qualities."

Then I told her that story of Jim and the mad dog, which is remembered

in Pleasant Valley to this day. Some say the dog was not mad; but I, who

saw his terrible, insane look as he came snapping and frothing down the

road, believe that he was. Jim had left the school for a year or so, and

I was a "big boy" ready to leave it. It was at four one afternoon, and

as the children filed into the road, there met them the shouts of men

and cries of "Run! Run! Mad dog!"

The children scattered like a covey of quail; but a pair of little

five-year-olds, forgotten by the others, walked on hand in hand, looking

into each other's faces, right toward the poor crazed, hunted brute,

which trotted slowly toward the children, gnashing its frothing jaws at

sticks and weeds, at everything it met, ready to bury its teeth in the

first baby to come within reach.

A young man with a canvasser's portfolio stood behind a fence over which

he had jumped to avoid the dog. Suddenly he saw the children, knew their

danger, and leaped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter

vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,--only it was to

save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children

than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running

lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he

neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the

dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and

under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man's hands with a vicious,

metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a

powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about

his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and the snap

could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand

such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?

Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was

gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head

whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.

Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,

using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with

red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his

effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had

fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.

Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held

high.

"That was fine!" said she. "I want to see that man!"