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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (May 24, 1908)
. . - 1 . .. . ' '. ' . . THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAN, FORTLAyP, MAY 24, I90S. 5 WJmOFMOC BV FORD ATAL& WHEREIN PROFESSOR 5H0RTY MS CASE, ON SHOST NOTICE, &ms &1J mOPS SQOAL NSASm. WELL, it was Ilka this: I starts out to buy a. bull pup. I might have w w eot htm, too. If It hadn't been for lhjo finpnoodie; but, seein' the way things turned out, I don't bear no grudge. It was the Doe I met first. I'd seen him drifttn' up and down the stairs once or twice, but didn't pipe him off special. There's too many freaks around Forty-second street to keep cases on all of 'em. But one day about a month ago I was sittin in the front office here, gettln' the earache' from hearing Swifty Joe tell about what he meant to Jo to Gans that last time, when the door swings open so hard it most takes the hinges off, and we sees a streak of arms and legs and tall hat making a dive under the bed couch In the corner.. "They've most got the range, Swifty," says I. "Two feet to the left and you'd been a bull's-eye. What you got your mouth open so wide for? Goin' to try to catch the next one in your teeth?" Swifty didn't have time to uncork- any repartee before some one struck, the landing outside like they'd come down a flight of foidin" steps feet first, and a little sharp-nosed woman with pur ple flowers in her hat bobs in and squints once at each of us. Say, I don't want to be looked at often like that! It felt like bein' sampled with a cheese tester. "Did Montgomery Smith just come In here?" says she. "Did he? Don't lie, now! Where is he?" and the way she jerked them little black eyes around was enough to tear holes in the mat ting. "Lady " says I. "Don't lady me, Mr. Fresh!" says she, throwin' the gimlets my way. "And tell that broken-nosed chlld-stealer over there ' to take that monkey grin off'n his face or I'll scratch his eyes out." "Hully chee!" yellB Swifty, throwin' I back somersault through the gym door and snappin' the lock. "Anything more, miss?" says I. "We're here to please." "Humph!" says she. "It'd take some thin' better than you to please me." "Glad I was born lucky," thinks I, but thought it under my breath. "Is my Monty biding in that room?" says she, jabbln a finger at the gym. "Cross my heart, he ain't," says I. "I don't believe you could think quick enough to lie," says she, and with that she nips out about as fast as she came in. I didn't stir until I hears her hit the lower hall. Then I bolts the door, goes and calls Swifty down off the top of the swingln' rope, and we come to a parade rest alongside the couch. "Monty, dear Monty," says I, "the cyclone's passed out to sea. Come out and give up your rain check." He backs out feet first, climbs upon the couch, and drops his chin Into his hands for a minute, while he gets over the worst of the shock. Say, at first sight he wa'n't a man you'd think any woman would lose her breath tryin' to catch, less'n she was his landlady, and that was what I figures out that this fe male peace disturber was. Monty might have been a winner once, but It was a long spell back. Just then he was some out of repair. He had a head big enough for a college professor, and a crop of hair like an herb doctor, but his eyes were puffy underneath, and you could see by the cafe au lalt tint to his face that his Uver'd been on a long strike. He was fairly thick through the middle, but his legs didn't match the rest of htm. They were too thin and too short. "If I'd known you was comln' I'd had the scrub lady dust under there." says I: "but it won't need It now for a couple of weeks." He makes a stab at sayin' something, but his breath hadn't come back yet. He revives enough, though, to take a look at his clothes. Then he works his ilk dicer up off'-n his ears, and has a peek at that. It was a punky Ud, all right,' but it had saved a lot of wear and tear on his cocoa when he made that slide for home plate, and struck the wall. "Was this a lon-distance run, or just a hundred-yard sprint?" says I. "Never . mind, if it comes hard. I don't blame you a bit for side-steppln1 a heart-to-heart talk with any such rough-and-ready converser as your friend. I'd do the same myself." He looks up kind of grateful at that, and stieks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shnke. Say, that wasn't such a IN WHICH HE SHOWS THE TRAITS OF CHARACTER WHICH PLUG FOR SUCCESS IN BASEBALL, AND COMPARES IT WITH OTHER LINES OF ENDEAVOR BY JIM NAS1UM. "0! . N the level," continued the Old Sport,asthe players bunched up in the hotel corridor, "you ball- . players stack up against a proposition that doesn't exist In any other busi ness. If you're chalking up odds in a banking Joint, dealing out tripe In a butcher shop, or handing out Scrip tural dope from the pulpit, you can pull off a dozen mistakes for a day and get away with it; and still be rated as a pretty fair sort of a success in the world. The doctor buries every mis take he makes, the lawyer shoves his Into a dungeon and it Is advertised to the world as an act of Justice, but the ballplayers' mistakes are hooted at by 10.000 howling Dervishes, who thirst for his gore, and are advertised in every paper in the land so that 'he who runs may read,' and he is hailed as a dub throughout the entire universe every time he slips up in the pinches. "In any other business, if you are a corking good man, you are touted as the real goods at all times and the world slops the salve all over your foosles, and if you are a shallow headed dub they hand you wads of sympathy and plug for you all they can if you are a good, fellow. But let me tell you, that In baseball there is no guy who- is so good that he isn't often called a dub and a lot of other filings . that aren't exactly rated as proper garb for a pink tea social, and there is no dub so much on the punk that he isn't occasionally a hero. "There's nothing to it, boys, success In baseball demands a blamed sight more logical reasoning powers, a clearer head and cooler nerve, and more con tempt for the public eye than ever showed Its mug in any other business joint. Take the situation that a ball player finds himself butting into dally: The bases populated, two out. one run needed to tie up and ave the day, and a guy has to grab his cudgel and face this situation with the success of the whole day's business resting upon his shoulders and 10,000 pairs of eyes fo cused upon his effort. The pitcher poises the ball aloft, starts to wind up, and that guy knows that in two more minutes he will be either a dub or a hero. Take the ordinary successful bualneea man. and atauk him up agauut slow play, either! He was tbo groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near wlnnln' me right there. I sets -Swifty I tf V k , - , IliliplSIii l . X V 'A J : i , . s My Monty Hiding In That Roor?" to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of Ice-water, and in a minute or so his voice comes back. Oh, yes, he had one. It was a little shaky, but, barrin' that, it was as smooth as mayonnaise. And language! Why. Just teliln" me how much obliged he was, he near stood the dictionary on Its head. There wasn't no doubt of his warm feelln' for me by the time he was through. It was almost like bein' adopted by a rich uncle. " "Oh, that's all right," says I. "You can use that couch any time the dts appearin fit comes on. She was hot on the trail: eh. Monty T' "It was all a painful, abs'urd error," says he. "a mistake in identity, I pre sume. Permit me to make myself known to you," and he shoves out his card. Rasmulli Pinphoodle, J. R. D. that was the way it read. . "Long ways from Smith, ain't it?" says I. "The first of it sounds like a Persian rug." . "My Hindu birth name," says he. I'd have bet you wa'n't a domestic filler," says I. "The Pinphoodle is ling lish. ain't it?" , He smiles like I'd asked him to split a pint with me, and says that it was. "But the tag on the endv-J. R. D. I passes up," says I. "Don't stand for Judge of Rent Dodsers, does it?" "Those letters," says he, makln' an other merry face, "represent the symbols of my Vedic progression." "If I'd stop to think I'd fetched that," says I. It was a Jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression anyways, not hard enough to know It at the time, but I wa'n't goin" to let him stun me.- Later on I got next to the fact that he was some kind of a healer, and that the proper thing to do was to call him Doc. Seems he had a four-by-nine office on the top floor back, over the studio, and that he was H startin' to intro duce the Vedic stunt in New York. Mostly he worked the mail-order racket. He showed me his ad in the Sunday personal column, and it was all to the velvet Accordin' to his own specifica tions he was a head-liner in the East Indian philosophy business, whatever that was. He'd Just torn himself away from the crowned heads of Europe for an American tour, and he stood ready to ladle out advice to statesmen, tinker up broken hearts, forecast the future, and man nut thn rnaji to TATellville for mil lionaire of their fee.1. He sure had a full bag of tricks to draw from; but I've noticed that the more glass balls you try to keep in the air at once, the surer you are apt to queer the act. And Pinphoodle didn't look like a gent that kept the receivin' teller workin' overtime. There was somethln' about him. though, that was a situation like this in his own busi ness, and I'll gamble that his nerves will Jump h.e governor belt and put him down for the count. And If he had to butt up against this proposition every day of his life like the ballplayer, you can take it from me there would be an awful epidemic of nervous pros tration throughout the universe. "In addition to these added qualities that a successful ballplayer has to keep packed up in his garret, he has to pack a thundering lot of the goods that are demanded as -a tribute to the god Success in any other walk of life. The guy who can grin In the face of trouble and let out a few kinks in the pinches is the one who will succeed in any business, while the dub who hugs the what's-the-use dope and lays down on his job when he Is up against It won't decorate the official averages much, and he won't have his name splattered through the business directory to any great extent either. "I want to tell you that while it is all right to shut out the other fellows without hit, and a good pitcher may often step onto the rubber and have the Indian sign on the other guys from get away .to tape, a pitchr isn't going to get away with these stunts often enough in fast company to make him a great twirler. No matter how great his physical ability, if he blows up in the pinches he won't last long enough in the game to get in the pass gate without giving his name. It's the ability to Bet tie down and dish out your best goods when you are up against it and work yourself out of holes that makes the great ballplayer, and it is the same qualifica tions that makes the successful business man. It's all well enough to say that the guy who is there with the goods never gets into holes and doesn't have to work himself out of them, but take it from me, that guy hasn't been born yet. The Na tional Commission doesn't know anything about him, and you'll not find his name in the business directory either. "I know that there are a lot of mush heads who will try to throw It into you that ballplaying is solely a physical ac complishment, and I'll admit that W doesn't take the same brand of brain goods that it does to run a bank or boost the Beef Trust, but you can take my tip that there are a blamed slcht more ball games won wrth the head than with the hands and feet. Some wise guy has handed out the dope that 'the eye is the hi r kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havtn' his collar 'n cuffs polished, and would go without eatln' rather than frisk the free lunch at the beer Joint. He was willln' to talk about anything but the. female with the keen-cutter tongue. "She is a mistaken, -misguided person," says he. "And by the way. Professor McCabe, there is a fire-escape, J believe, which leads from my office down to your back windows. .Would it be presuming too much if I should ask you to admit me there occasionally, in the event of my being erpursutd again?" "It ain't a board bill, is It,. Doer says I. - "Nothing of the kind, I assure you," says he. "Glad to hear it." says I. "As a rule, I don't run no rock-of-ages refuge, but as long's you're a neighbor of mine, help yourself." So we fixed it up that" way, and about every so often I'd see Doc Pinphoodle slidin' in the back window, with a wor ried look or. his face and iron rust on his trousers. He was a quiet neighbor, though didn't torture. the cornet, or deal in voice culture, or get me to cash checks that came back with remarks in red ink written on 'em. I was .wonderin' how the Vedic stunt was catchln' on, when all of a sudden lie buds out in an JS-hat. this year's model, and begins to lug around an lv'ry handled cane. "I'm glad their comln' your way, Doc," says I. "Thanks," Bays he. "If I can in any measure repay some of the many kind nesses which you " "Sponge It off," says- I. "Maybe I'll want to throw a lady off the scent my self some day." A week or so later I misses him alto gether, and the janitor tells me he's paid up and moved. Well, they come and So like that, so it don't pay to feel lonesome: but I had the floor swept under the couch reg'lar, on a chance that he might show up again. - It was along about then that I hears about the bull pup: I'd been wantin' to have one out to Primrose Park where , , 4 mm THEN DOC PUTS AN ARM AROUND I goes to prop up the week-end, you know, at the cottage I bought off'n Mr. Jarvis. Pinckney was tellin me of a friend of his that owns a Hkely-lookin litter, so one Saturday afternoon I starts to hoof It over and size 'em up. Now that was reg'iar,- wa'n't it? You wouldn't think a two-eyed man like me could go astray Just tryin to pick out a bull pup, would you? But look what I runs .into! I'd got about four miles from home and was hittin up a Daddy Weston -clip on the side path, when I sees one of them big: bay-windowed bubbles slidin past like a train window of the soul,' and that 'a man's character and mental qualities are mir rored in his face, and it is this reason that you can pipe off a good ballplayer a blamed sight quicker by looking into his mug than by examtning his limbs like you would a racehorse. It is character, temperament and mental acumen more than physical ability that makes the classy player stick out from the dubs like a mole on a debutante's nose. Did you ever see a good ballplayer with a sissy face? Not on your life. The guy who can pull off an unexpected play in the presence of a howling mob of bughouse fans and get his pitcher out of a hole when he is up against it; who can grab his' cudgel in a pinch and slam out the hit that cleans the bases, has determina tion and cool judgment plastered over his mug so deep that it ruins him forever as a candidate for honors at a beauty show, but somehow when one of these mugs toes the pan in a pinch and sticks out his jaw at the pitcher the fans feel that something is going to happen. The bugs can split their larynxes yelling vile names and casting aspersions on the personal beauty of a ballplayer's frontis piece if they want to, but Just the same when the guy with a jaw like a bear trap and eyes like the glitter of cold steel toes the pan for the home team the home fans feel that they have a chance for their money." "I guess you've got us sized up about right. Dad." Interjected "Shorty." "I know I'd hate like thunder to risk any coin on this bunch at a beauty show." "Well," replied the Old Sport, "don't let it worry you any. There is no beauty column in the official averages, and you may be the ugliest old wart on the land scape, -but if you can pound the leather up against the whisky ads and pull liners out of the milky way the fans would a blamed sight rather see you out on the ball lot than an Apollo or an Adonis. Even If you don't lend that chaste ap pearance to the view that is splattered through the Hall of Statuary, bear in mind that there are blamed few opportunrri to pose to advantage anyway, when you are ploughing up the base paths with your wishbone, and digging grounders out of the dirt. The poetry of motion doesn't make much of a hit on the ball grounds, and the chances are that if yon had Narcissus, skinned a block, the fans wouldn't notice it." "But you're talking; u if a bail 9f - jr. loY- 9. .y 4. n fiat M of cars. There was a girl on the back seat that looks like i of natural. She seen me, too, shouts to Francois to put on the emergency brake and begins wavin her parasol at me to hurry on. It was Sadie Sullivan. "Hurry up. Shorty! Run!" she yells. "There isn't a minute to lose." I e;ets up on my toes at that, and I hadn't no more'n climbed aboard be fore the machine was tearln' up the macadam again. "Anybody dyin'," says I, "or does the bargain counter close at 5 o'clock?" "Aunt Tillle's eloping," says she, "and if we don't head her off she'll marry an old villain who ought to be in jail." "Not Mr. Pinckney's Aunt Tillie, the old g-irl that owns the big: place up near Blenmont?" says 1. s "That's the one." says Sadie. "Why, she's qualified for an old la dles' home,' says I. "You don't mean to say she's got, kittenish ?" "There's no age limit to that kind of foolishness," says Sadie, "and this looks like a serious attack. We've got to atop it, though, for I promised Plnckney I'd stand guard until he came back from Newport." I hadn't seen the old girl myself, but I knew her record, and now I got It revised to date. She'd hooked two hus bands in her time, but neither of 'em had lasted long. Then she gave It up for a spell, and it wa'n't until she was 65 that she begins to wear rain bow clothes again and caper around like one of the squab octet. Lately she'd begun to show signs of wantin" to sit in a shady corner with a man. Pinckney had discouraged one bald headed minister, warned off an old bachelor and dropped strong hints to a couple of widowers that took to callln' frequent for afternoon tea. Then a new one had showed up. "He's a sticker, too." says Sadie. "I don't know where Aunt Tillie found him, but Pinckney says he's been com ing out from the city every other aay for a couple of weeks. She's been meet ing him at the station and taking him for drives. She says he's some sort of an East Indian priest, and that he's giving her lessons In a new faith cure that she's taken up. Today, though, af- xrs. - m. - - t , . HER BELT LINE AND LETS HER WEEP ON HIS SUNDAY COAT. ter she'd gone off, the housekeeper found that her trunk hid been smug gled to the station. Then a note was picked up In her room. It said some thing about meeting tier at the cnurch of St. Paul's-in-the-Wood at rour-tjilr-ty, and was signed 'Your darling Mulll.' Oh, dear, it's almost half-past now! Cant you go any faster, Francois?" I thought he couldn't, but he did. He Jammed the speed lever up another notch, and in a minute more we were hitting only the high places. "We car omed against them red-leather cushions like a couple of pebbles in a bottle, and SfRE'S "WHERE f STKAMSLE few m&ms Tre-guy-who- 6ME. rALLUr IKUUDLL-AND-ULia OOT-A-FEW-EXTRA-RINKS- m-THE-PINCiiEa-ia-THt-KID- VfflO - WILL - aTJCCEED - IN - ANY - player should sacrifice everything on tae si tar of base bail. Dad. ecoke up it was a case of holdln' on and hoping the thing would stay rsgnt side up. I hadn't worked up mush enthusiasm about gettln' to St. Paurs-iii-the-Wood before, but I did then, all right. "There's her carriage waiting at the chapel door!" says Sadie. "Shorty, we must stop this."' "It's out of my line, says I, "but I'll help." We made a break for the front door and butted right in. just as though they'd sent us cards. It wasn't very light Inside, b-ut down at the far end we could see a little bunch of folks standin' around as if they was waitin' for somethin' to happen. Sadie didn't make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, piefaced old girl, with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see In the Sixth-avenue showcases. She was actin kind of nervous, and grinnln" a silly kind of grim, but when she spotsSadie she puts on a look like the hired girl wears when she's been caught bein' Kissed by the grocery boy. "You haven't done it, have you?" says Sadie. "No," says Aunt Tillie: "but Its going to.be done just as soon as the rector gets on his other coat." "Now, please don't, Mrs. Wlnfleld," says Sadie, gettln' a waist grip on- the old girl, and rubbin' her cheek up against her - shoulder In that purry, coaxln' way she has. "You know how badly we should all feel If it didn't turn out weH,'and Pinckney " ' "He's a meddlesome. Impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, grow In' red under the layers of rice pow der. "Haven't I a right to marry with out consulting him, I'd like to know?" "Oh, yes, of course," says Sadie, soothing her down, "but Pinckney says " "Don't tell me anything that he says, not a word!" she shouts. "I won't lis-' ten to it. He had the Impudence to suggest that my dear Mulli was a a corn doctor, or something like that." "Did he?" says Sadie. "I wouldn't have thought it of Pinckney. Well, just . - &'.'.'.i. .lv k- to show him that he was wrong I would put this affair off until you can have a regular church wedding, with invitations, and ushers and pretty flower girls. And you ought to have a gray silk wedding- gown you'd look perfectly stunning- in gray silk, you know. Wouldn't all that be much nicer than running off like this, as though you were ashamed of something? Say, it was a slick game of talk that Sadie handed out then, for she was playin for time. But Aunt Tillie was no come-on. "Mulli doesn't want to wait another BUSINESa. i the manager. Tet 111 gamble that If 1 you . t a banker who thought of day," says she. "and neither do I, so that settles it. And hero comes the rector now." r. J r v, Monty Might Have Been a Winner Once. "Looks like we'd played out our hand, don't it?" "Walt!" says she. "I want to get a good look at the man." He was trailin' along after the min ister, and It wa'n't until he was within six feet of me that I saw who it was. "Hello. Doc!" says I. "So you're the dear Mulli, are you?" He near Jumped out of his collar, Pinphoodle did, when he gets his lamps on me. It only lasted a minute, though, for he was a quick recoverer. "Why, professor!" says he. "This is an unexpected pleasure." "I guess some of that's right," says I. And say, but he was dressed for the Joyful bridegroom part! striped trous ers, frock coat, white puff tie and white gloves. He'd had a close shave and a shampoo, and the massage artist had rubbed out some of the swellin' from under his evs. Didn't look much like the has-been that done the dive under my couch. "Well!" says I, "this ts where the private cinch comes In, eh? Doc, you've got a head likea horse." "I should think he'd be ashamed of himself," says Sadie, "running off with a silly old -woman!" The Sullivan temper had got the best of her.- After that the deep lard was all over the cook-stove. Aunt Tillie throws four cat-fits to the min ute. Then Doc steps up, puts a manly arm half way round her belt line, and lets her weep on his Sunday coat. By this time the preacher was all broke up. He was a nice, healthy lookin' young chap, one of the straw-' b'ry-blond kind, with pink-and-whlte cheeks and hair as soft as a toy span iels. It turns out that this was his first call to spiel off the splicin' ser vice. "I trust," says he, "that no one has any valid objection to the uniting of this couple?" . "I will convince you of that," says Doc Pinphoodle, apeakin' up brisk and cocky, "by putting to this young lady a few pertinent questions-.-" Well, he did.' As a cross-examiner for the defense he was a regular Joe Choate. Inside of two minutes he'd made torn mosquito netting of Sadie's kick, shown her up for a rank out sider, and put us both through the ropes. "Now," says he, with a kind of calm, satisfied, I've-swallowed-the-can-ary smile, "we will proceed with the ceremony." ' Sadie was near cryin with the mad in her, she bein a hard loser at any game. "You're an old fraud, that's what you are!' she spits out. ."And you're just marrying Pinckney's silly old aunt to get her money." But that rolls off Doc like a damage suit off'n a corporation. He had us down and out. In five minutes more he'd have a two hundred-pound wife and a fifty thousand-dollar income. "It. strikes me." says he over his nothing but money, a clothier who speiled about shoddies and cheviots all the time, or a groceryman whose whole blamed existence was centered about prunes and potatoes, you'd feel like kicking him into the middle of next week." "That's all right." replied the Old Sport, "but I'm talking about business hours. I don't care a brass-mounted continental what a ball player is when he is off duty, and neither do -the fans. He can be a safe . blower or a bridge jumper if he wants, or he can crawl into a pair of corsets and do the fashion-plate act on the Great White Way. And I'm not making any distinction between the ball player and any other business man, either. The prune mer chant, the banker, and the clothier should allow no outside influence to butt into their business affairs during office hours and put things on the bum, and neither - should tne ball player. How -long do you think a clerk in a clothing store would hang on to his job if he ptrt in his time pos ing in the show windows to look pret ty for the crowds and let the custom ers wait? The main squeeze can buy a good dummy to do that for a few plunks, and I want to give you the tip that a baseball manager can hire, the best artist's models In the country to pose on the field a blamed Bight cheaper than he can hire good ball players. . "Now, I know that you guys are only human, and you're mighty apt to get hooked np with a bunch of skirts and get a little careless about what the rest of the world thinks, as long as I.lzsie or May thmks you're Just about the handsomest piece of decoration that was ever turned out. By taking care ttyat your hair always flops over your left eye in a becoming style, by striking artistic poses at the bat and keeping your mind concentrated on the grace of your movements when you go after a grounder, you may succeed In keeping Lizzie or May hugging this dope for a while, but after she has attended the games and heard five or six thousand people standing on their hind legs and calling you every vile name contained in the English and Profane languages for trying to look pretty instead of playing the game, she is mighty apt to get hep that you ii '-""' ":-;--: : -:-y -. .- .Vy'-'-f''; vX'1 ' -' 'v- ;:! shoulder, "that if I had got hold of a fortune In the way you got yours, -yonng woman. I wouldn't make any . comments about mercenary marriages." Well say, up to that time I had . half-baked Idea that maybe I wasn't called on to block his little game, but when he begins to rub it Into Sadie I sours on Doc right away. "Hold on there. Doc," says I. ."I'll give in that you've got our case -' quashed as It stood. But maybe some- ' one else has got an interest In these doin's." "Ah!" Bays he. "And Who might that be?" ' "Mrs. Montgomery Smith," says I. It was a chance shot, but it rung the hell. Doc goes as limp as a straw hat that's been hooked up after a dip In the bay. and his eyes took on that shifty look they had the first time I ever saw him. "Why." gay he. swallowln hard, and doing his best to get back the stiff front he'd been puttin up "why, there is no such person." "No?", says I. "How abopt the or.u that calls you Monty and runs yau under, the couch?" "It's a He!" says he. "She's nothing to me." "Oh. well." says I. "that's between you and her. She says different. Any way, she's come clear up here to put in her bid; so that's no more'n fair to give her- a show. I'll just -bring her in." As I starts toward the front door Doo gives me one look, to see if I means business. Then, Sadie says, he turns the color of pie-crust, drops Aunt Til lie as if she was a live wire, and Jumps chrough the back door like he'd been kicked by a mule. I got back Just in time to see him hifrdle a five-foot hedge without stirrin' a leaf, and the last glimpse we got of him he was headin' for a stretch of woods up Con necticut way. "Looks like you'd just missed assist In' at a case of bigamy." says. I to che young preacher, as we was bringln Aunt Tillie out of her faint. 'Shocking'." says he. "Shocking!" as he fans himself with a hymn book. He was taktn' it hard. Aunt Tillie wouldn't speak to any of us, and .as we bundled her into -her carriage and sent her home she looked as mad as a settln' hen with her feec tied. "Shorty," says Sadie,1 on the way back, "that was an elegant bluff you put up." "Lucky my hand wa'n't called." says I. "But it was rough on the preacher chap, wa'n't it? He had his mouth all made up to marry some one. Blamed if I didn't want to offer him a Job myself." "And who would you have picked out. Shorty?" "Well," says I, lookin' her over wish ful, "there ain't never been but one girl that I'd chose for a side partner, and she's out of my lass now. "Was her name Sullivan once?" says she. ''It was." says I. She didn't say anything more for a : spell after that, and I didn't;' but there's times when conversation don't fit in. All I know Is that you can sit just as close on the back seat of one of them big benzine carts as you can on a parlor sofa; and with Sadie snuggled up against me I felt like It was always goin' to be Sum mer, with Sousa's hand playiri some where behind the rubber trees. First thing I knows we fetches up at my shack in Primrose Park and I was standin' on the horse block, along side the bubble. Sadie'd dropped both hands on my shoulders and was turn-, in' them eyes of hers on me at close range. Francois was lookin' straight ahead, and there wasn't anyone in sight. So I just took a good look Into that pair of Irish blues. "What a chump you are. Shorty!" she whispers. "Ah, quit your kiddinV says I. But I didn't make any move, and she didn't. "Well, good-by," says she, letting out a long breath. "By-by Sadie," says I, and oft she goes. Say, I don't know how it was. but I've been feelin' ever since that I'd missed somethin that was comln' to me. Maybe it was that bull pup I for got to buy. (Copyright Associated Sunday Maga- zine. Inc.) are not exactly the idol of the public, she'll throw you down and hook up with the awkward slab-sided and lantern-jawed guy who has a habit of slamming the ball to the palings and gets the merry mlt from the crowd every time he toes the pan. "There's nothing to it, fellows, the ball player, just the same as a guy in any other business wants to be a dif ferent guy entirely during business hours than he is after the shop closes. And you can take It from me that the good ones always are. To plug along with the top row In this old dump of a world you've got to be a crab during business hours and a clam afterwards. Old John D.. 'Pierpont Morgan, Andy Carnegie and that bunch are as tight and crusty at their work as a pie in a railway restaurant, but after the office closes you'll usually be surprised to find that they are pretty good fellows. Ty Cobb is the worst kind of a crab on the ball lot, but the fans would' be surprised to find what a quiet and in offensive guy he is when you meet hlra in the evening. Sherwood Magee was never put out fairly in a ball game in his life, from the way he acts, and he is after the umpire and the opposing players from the time he crawls into his baseball rags till he hits the shower bath, but the minute he gets inside his street clothes and Is lit up with that white vest of his, he Is as amiable as a Spring lamb. McOraw. Han Wagner, Nap Lajoie, John W. Gates, George Gould, Harrlman, all the successful men In their respective lines of business change their entire na tures when the office door clangs be hind them. ' . "And you can take it from me, boys, that it pays to be a crab on the baseball lot. The crab is the guy who gets the best of the breaks, no matter how square the ump tries to be; he bluffs the heart out of his opponents and gets their goat in the pinches if they are at all inclined to be sensitive and" weak-kneed. "Well," said Shorty, "it's gettting late. Let's take a walk down and look at the ships and then hit the hay." "That's all right, boys," said the Old Sport,- "but don't look at too many, schooners while you're out. Remember that you can't play ball with mu-h sur cess if you spend your nights piloting schooners over the bar. Good night, boys, it's me for the feathers."
