text:
Page:Memoirs of John Abernethy, F. R. S., with a view of his lectures, writings, and character (IA 39002086429751.med.yale.edu).pdf/23

PREFACE. XV most grateful acknowledgments to my re- spected friend, Mr. Fowler of Datchet, and his son, Mr. Alfred Fowler, Mr. Thacker and Mr. Tummins of Wolverhampton—three of them being old schoolfellows of Abernethy; to Mr. White, the distinguished head master of Wolver- hampten School, whose acceptable services have been further enhanced by the ready kindness with which they were contributed ; to Mr. Belfour, the Secrctary of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Mr. Stone, the Librarian, I have to cxpress my best thanks for their kind assistance, and to the latter especially for many very acceptable contributions.

I have also to acknowledge the kind interest taken in the work by Mr. Wood of Rochdale, Mr. Stowe of Buckingham, old and dis- tinguished pupils of Abernethy. My best thanks are also due to Dr. Nixon of Antrim, not only for his own contributions, but still more for the personal trouble he was so kind as to take in relation to some particulars concernng the ancestors of Mr, Abernethy ; to Mr. Chevasse of Sutton Coldfield, for very �


text:
Page:Memoirs of John Abernethy, F. R. S., with a view of his lectures, writings, and character (IA 39002086429751.med.yale.edu).pdf/24

xvi PREFACE. acceptable communications ; and to Mr. Preston of Norwich. Nor must I omit to express my obligation to several gentlemen whom I have consulted at various times. My thanks are specially due to Professor Owen. My old friends and fellow-pupils, Mr. Kingden, Mr. E. A. Lloyd, Dr. Barnett, Mr. Skey, and Mr. Welbank, have shown as much interest in the work as their opportunities allowed them, and will please to accept my best acknowledgments.

G. M.

LONDON,

sEpT, 20, 1843. �

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Template:Ebs

For End Begin Section, but I've never managed to get it to work.

The (latest) goal was to do

because that's how I (Alien333) do with most of my works, but apparently section tags cannot work on transclusion, even with {{#tag.

title: Template:Ebs


text:
The Lady's Realm

Volumes

 * Volume 6 (1899)

title: The Lady's Realm


text: The Lady's Realm/Volume 6

title: The Lady's Realm/Volume 6


title: Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/511


title: Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/512


title: Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/513


title: Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/514


text: The Lady's Realm/Volume 6/Zampach and its Ghosts


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/460

382

Then spake of Bern the hero: “My trusty lieges dear,

Now be ye not too hasty! what hath befallen here

Was wrought by homeless warriors, by dire distresses driven;

And let them use the freedom that I to them have given.”

Then spake the gallant Wolfhart: “I will myself be gone

And ask about the matter, what ’tis that they have done.

And then I will report it to you, my master dear,

When yonder I discover what mean the cries we hear.”

Thereon Lord Dietrich answer’d: “When one has wrath to face,

Full oft, at ill-timed questions, ’tis found to be the case

That warriors too swiftly are apt offence to take:

In truth I will not, Wolfhart, that you the quest should make.”

Thereon he summon’d Helfrich right speedily to go;

And from the men of Etzel he bade him get to know,—

Or even from the strangers,— what doings there had been;

For ne’er such great lamenting of people was there seen.

The envoy made inquiry: “What hath there here been done?”

Then answer’d one among them: “Now is for ever gone

All that we had of pleasure in this Hungarian land!—

Here Rüdeger lies slaughter’’d by the Burgundians’ hand.

“Of those who enter’d with him not one came out again.”

Then verily to Helfrich ne’er could be greater pain.

In sooth he ne’er had carried news so unwillingly:

The messenger to Dietrich went weeping bitterly.


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/461

XXXVIII.]

“What hast thou,” then said Dietrich, “for us discoveréd?

And wherefore, warrior Helfrich, thy tears so freely shed?”

“Good cause have I for weeping,” answer’d the noble thane:

“Good Rüdeger is lying by the Burgundians slain.”

The knight of Bern made answer: “God grant that may not be!

That were a fearful vengeance, and foul fiend’s pleasantry:

Howe’er were such requital deserved by Rüdeger?

For well am I persuaded he held the strangers dear.”

Thereto made Wolfhart answer: “If they this deed have done

It verily shall cost them the life of everyone!

To us ’twould be disgraceful if this we were to stand,

For Rüdeger has served us right often with his hand.”

But Amelung’s chieftain bade them better inform’d to be.

Meanwhile within his window right mournfully sat he;

And Hildebrand enjoin’d he unto the guests to go,

That he whate’er had happen’d from them might surely know.

That warrior bold in battle, t he ancient Hildebrand,

Nor shield nor any weapon took with him in his hand;

He to the guests was going in courtesy alone.

But sore were the upbraidings made by his sister’s son.

For spake the fiery Wolfhart: “Wilt thou so simply go?

Then certes some misusage thou wilt not fail to know!

So, full of grief and trouble, thou needs must homeward fare:

But if thou takest thy weapons they each will have a care.”


text:
Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/197

 means), is sufficiently striking for his purpose; but it rather turns up at intervals than really binds the epistle into a whole. But the arrangement of his portrait gallery is really unsystematic; the affectation of system is rather in the way. The most striking characters in the essay on women were inserted (whenever composed) some time after its first appearance, and the construction is too loose to make any interruption of the argument perceptible. The poems contain some of Pope's most brilliant bits, but we can scarcely remember them as a whole. The characters of Wharton and Villiers, of Atossa, of the Man of Ross, and Sir Balaam, stand out as brilliant passages which would do almost as well in any other setting. In the imitations of Horace he is, of course, guided by lines already laid down for him; and he has shown admirable skill in translating the substance as well as the words of his author by the nearest equivalents. This peculiar mode of imitation had been tried by other writers, but in Pope's hands it succeeded beyond all precedent. There is so much congeniality between Horace and Pope, and the social orders of which they were the spokesmen, that he can represent his original without giving us any sense of constraint. Yet even here he sometimes obscures the thread of connexion, and we feel more or less clearly that the order of thought is not that which would have spontaneously arisen in his own mind. So, for example, in the imitation of Horace's first epistle of the first book, the references to the Stoical and Epicurean morals imply a connexion of ideas to which nothing corresponds in Pope's reproduction. Horace is describing a genuine experience, while Pope is only putting together a string of commonplaces. The most interesting part of these imitations are those in which Pope takes advantage of the

title: Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/197


text:
Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/198

 suggestions in Horace to be thoroughly autobiographical. He manages to run his own experience and feelings into the moulds provided for him by his predecessor. One of the happiest passages is that in which he turns the serious panegyric on Augustus into a bitter irony against the other Augustus, whose name was George, and who, according to Lord Hervey, was so contrasted with his prototype, that whereas personal courage was the one weak point of the emperor, it was the one strong point of the English king. As soon as Pope has a chance of expressing his personal antipathies or (to do him bare justice) his personal attachments, his lines begin to glow. When he is trying to preach, to be ethical and philosophical, he is apt to fall into mouthing and to lose his place; but when he can forget his stilts, or point his morality by some concrete and personal instance, every word is alive. And it is this which makes the epilogues, and more especially the prologue to the satires, his most impressive performances. The unity which is very ill-supplied by some ostensible philosophical thesis, or even by the leading strings of Horace, is given by his own intense interest in himself. The best way of learning to enjoy Pope is to get by heart the epistle to Arbuthnot. That epistle is, as I have said, his Apologia. In its some 400 lines, he has managed to compress more of his feelings and thoughts than would fill an ordinary autobiography. It is true that the epistle requires a commentator. It wants some familiarity with the events of Pope's life, and many lines convey only a part of their meaning unless we are familiar not only with the events, but with the characters of the persons mentioned. Passages over which we pass carelessly at the first reading then come out with wonderful freshness, and single phrases throw a

title: Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/198


text:
Author:John Caswall Smith

Illustrations

 * photograph of František Lützow in "Zampach and its Ghosts", The Lady's Realm, vol. 6 (1899)
 * photograph of Douglas W. Freshfield in "The Progress of Science", Popular Science Monthly, vol. 65 (October 1904)
 * photograph of Joseph Knight in Notes by the Way (1909)

title: Author:John Caswall Smith


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/15

occurred very much at the same hour and together, the two main things that—exclusive of the death of his mother, recent and deeply felt by him—had yet befallen Ralph Pendrel, who, at thirty, had known fewer turns of fortune than many men of his age. But as these matters were quite distinct I take them for clearness in their order. He had up to this time perforce encountered life mainly in the form of loss and of sacrifice—inevitabilities these, however, such as scarce represented a chequered career. He had been left without his father in childhood; he had then seen two sisters die; he had in his twentieth year parted by the same law with his elder and only brother; and he had finally known the rupture of the strongest tie of all, an affection for which, as a living claim, he had had to give up much else. Among these latter things, none the less, he had not as yet had to reckon Mrs. Stent Coyne, and this even though the thought of such a peril was on the eve of his crisis fairly 1


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/16

 present to him. The peril hung before him in fact, though the first note of the crisis had by that time already sounded, from a different quarter, in the guise of a positive stroke of luck. It appeared that what destiny might call on him for this time would not be just another relinquishment. A letter from a friend in England, a fellow-countryman spending a few months in London and having friends of his own there—had mentioned to him the rumoured grave illness and imminent extinction, at a great age, of the last person in that country bearing Ralph's family name, a person of a distant cousinship with whom he had been indifferently aware. His indifference was not a little enlivened by a remark of his correspondent. "Surely when he does die you'll come in for something!"

"Surely" was a good deal to say and the whole hint fantastic—it took so much for granted; yet the words had an effect. This effect was that Ralph determined to mention the matter on the same occasion as something else the revolving months had charged him with, something he had at last really straightened himself to say to the woman he loved. He had had his fears, and in addition to other hindrances, infelicities of circumstance, imperfections of opportunity, had long deterred him, and he was now disposed to throw himself upon anything that could figure as a help. It might support him to be able to tell her there was a 2


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/462

384

Then did the ancient gird him e’en as the stripling bade.

But lo! before he knew it, in fighting gear array’d,

Were standing Dietrich’s warriors, with drawn sword everyone.

This thing the hero liked not, and gladly had forgone.

He asked where they were going. “Along with you we’ll fare!

Perchance Hagen of Tronjé so much the less may dare

With mocking speech to meet you,— which well he knows to use.”

When that he heard, the warrior no longer could refuse.

The gallant Volker saw them in armour fully dight,

Those knights of Bern come marching, all Dietrich’s men of might;

Their swords were girt upon them, they carried shield in hand.

Unto his lords he told it of the Burgundian land.

Then spake the fiddle-player: “Yonder I see them go,

The followers of Dietrich,— in semblance of a foe,

With weapons and in helmets: us mean they to withstand.

I trow for us poor exiles misfortune is at hand.”

E’en at the selfsame moment came Hildebrand to him,

And at his feet his buckler he set upon its rim.

The followers of Gunther to question then he sought “Alas! what harm, good heroes, to you hath Rüdeger wrought?

“Me hath my master Dietrich sent unto you to say:

‘If any one among you hath by his hand this day

Laid low the noble margrave,— as we are told by some, — An injury so grievous we ne’er could overcome.’”


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/17

 chance for him of a property—probably of some wonderful old house—in England: though less, properly speaking, as an improvement to his state of fortune, which might sufficiently pass, than as a bribe to her sense of the romantic. That faculty had originally been strong in her and what could be more depended on at any time in New York, in Park Avenue, to show as inordinate, as fetching, by the vulgar term, than so possibly to "come in" for something strange and storied, ancient and alien? Aurora Coyne was magnificent; that was where his interest in her and her effect upon him were strongest. Beautiful, different, proud, she had a congruity with things that were not as the things surrounding her, and these usual objects, in whatever abundance, were not the bribe to offer. He was glad, at this hour, that his name, by common consent—above all, always, it was true, in Park Avenue—cast a fine sharp traceable shadow, or in other words that his race had something of a backward, as well as of a not too sprawling lateral reach. He knew how little his possession of more mere money would help him, and also that it would have been in his interest to be personally quite of another type; but that his cleverness could on occasion please her he struck himself as in a position to remember, and he at present, turning the whole case over, found aid in the faith that she might at the worst marry him for curiosity. He was for that matter 3


text:
Category:Žampach

Žampach, a municipality and village in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic.

title: Category:Žampach


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/18

 himself just now inflamed with a curiosity that might prove communicable.

The element of uncertainty at all events, such as it was, came largely from the late changes in her own condition; so far as it was not likewise distinguishably riper fruit of the impression in him, rather heavy from the first, of something that he could only call to himself her greater knowledge of life. He had already more than once had to take into account that of the two she had seen, as people said, much the most of the world; and she had not at present seen less of it for returning to America, after her husband's death in the south of Europe and on the admonition of still other circumstances that he divined as beyond his measure, with something of the large air of a public policy. Her departures, absences, returns, returns as for the purpose of intensifying fresh disappearances, these things were what had somehow caused her to glare at him, to dazzle and almost to blind him, as by a wider initiation. He had seen her thus only at certain points of her sustained revolution; had been ignorant of many things with which the cup of her own knowledge overflowed; had been in short indebted for the extent of his privilege to the mere drops and lapses in the general time, as he termed it, that she so insolently kept. Sharing continuously as a child, and then as a growing girl, the life led by her parents in other countries, she had had behind 4


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/19

 her, at their first meeting, on their twentieth birthday—for in respect of age they marched well enough together—if not fifty years of Europe at least something that already caused him to view his untravelled state as a cycle of Cathay. The time immediately following had been her longest period at home, as well as that of his happiest opportunity—an opportunity not so enjoyed, however, as to have forestalled her marriage with so different a person and so selected a suitor as Townsend Coyne, which event had in its turn been rich in consequences.

Some of these, like the immediate migration to Europe of the happy couple, as the pair were prefigured, had been of the sort essentially indicated; such others as Coyne's early failure of health during a journey to the East had been unexpected and lamentable. He had reappeared with his wife, after a year or two, in America, where the air of home so reinforced him at first as to make the presumption of their settling for some stay natural; and then, disappointed and threatened afresh, had a second time taken flight with her to spend another term, wearily enough, in consultations and climates. The issue at last, indeed too promptly, had been Coyne's death, foreseen for some months, at Pisa, a place he liked and had been removed to from Florence, choosing it, as he said, in view of the end. Stricken and childless, his young widow had once more 5


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/463

XXXVIII.]

Then Hagen spake of Tronjé: “No lie the tidings are;

Though fain I were to grant you, for love of Rüdeger,

That they had lied who told you, and he were still in life:

He must be ever wept for by man and maid and wife.”

When all knew, of a surety, that Rüdeger was dead,

The warriors bewail’d him, as love and fealty bade.

From each of Dietrich’s liegemen one saw the tears-drops fall

O’er chin and beard descending: sore was the grief of all.

Then Siegestab outspeaking,— the duke from Bern,—said he:

“Forever now is ended the hospitality

That Rüdeger aye show’d us after our days of pain.

The Comfort of the exile lies by you heroes slain.”

Then from among the Amelungs, the warrior Wolfwin said:

“Were I this day before me to see my father dead,

Ne’er could I feel more sorrow than at this stricken life:

Alas! who now will comfort the worthy margrave’s wife?”

Thereon in mood of anger the thane Sir Wolfhart cried:

“Who on so many a foray shall now the warriors guide,

As heretofore the margrave hath times right often done?

Alas, most noble Rüdeger, that thou from us art gone!”

There Helferich and Wolfbrand and Helmot also were,

With all their friends, bewailing the death of Rüdeger;

And Hildebrand for sobbing could ask no more of aught.

He spake: “Now do ye, warriors, that which my lord hath sought,


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/20

 crossed the sea and, announcing her purpose of an indefinite rest, had spent in New York another winter, in the course of which Ralph Pendrel, held fast there by his close care of his mother, at this time more of a charge than ever and steadily failing, had repeatedly seen her; all of which, none the less, had not prevented, on Mrs. Coyne's part, the perversity of yet another departure, a step sudden and inconsequent, surprising and even disconcerting to our young man, possessed as he definitely was by that time of the length he would have gone had he been able a little longer to avert it. He had felt a delicacy about proposing marriage to a woman supposedly in grief, certainly in the deepest mourning, so that in again spreading her wings she struck him as having profited a little unfairly by his scruple. It was in fact as if she had gone because knowing what would happen if she didn't; but it was also precisely because she had described herself as now nevermore going that he had, in his delay, taken counsel of the decency with which he supposed she would credit him. Some such credit she had in fact doubtless given to him, but what was the use in New York of an advantage that could be enjoyed—really to call enjoyed—but, for example, in Rome? There were moments in which indeed for that matter he scarce quite knew what he had done for himself—measuring it as so distinct a quantity to have introduced confusion into his 6


text:
Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/199

 sudden light upon hidden depths of feeling. It is also true, unluckily, that parts of it must be read by the rule of contraries. They tell us not what Pope really was, but what he wished others to think him, and what he probably endeavoured to persuade himself that he was. How far he succeeded in imposing upon himself is indeed a very curious question which can never be fully answered. There is the strangest mixture of honesty and hypocrisy. Let me, he says, live my own and die so too—

Well, he was independent in his fashion, and we can at least believe that he so far believed in himself. But when he goes on to say that he "can sleep without a poem in his head,

we remember his calling up the maid four times a night in the dreadful winter of 1740 to save a thought, and the features writhing in anguish as he read a hostile pamphlet. Presently he informs us that "he thinks a lie in prose or verse the same"—only too much the same! and that "if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways." Alas! for the manliness. And yet again when he speaks of his parents,

can we doubt that he is speaking from the heart? We should perhaps like to forget that the really exquisite and touching lines in which he speaks of his mother had been so carefully elaborated.

title: Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/199


text:
Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/238

 But Drew's big shoulders blocked her frenzied effort to escape.

"Don't go away like that, Little Girl," he said. "You don't understand. It is n't a question of caring. You know I care. But don't you, don't you understand that a man does n't like to marry a woman who does n't love him?"

Her face brightened piteously. "But I will love you?" she protested. "I will love you. I prom ise. I promise you faithfully I will love you if you 11 only give me just a little time. " The old flicker of mischief came back to her eyes, and she began to count on her fingers. "Let me see," she said. "It's June now June, July, August, Sep tember, October, November six months. I promise you that I will love you by November."

"I don't believe it." Drew fairly slashed the words into the air.

Instantly the hurt, frightened look came back to her eyes. "Why, Drew," she whispered, "if it were money that I wanted, if I were starving, or sick, or any all-alone anything, you would n't re fuse to help me just because you could n't possibly see ahead just how I was ever going to pay you. Drew, I'm very unhappy and frightened and lost- feeling. I just want to borrow your love. I prom ise you I will pay it back to you. You won t be sorry. You won't. You won't !"

title: Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/238


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/464

386

“Give Rüdeger’s dead body to us from out the hall,

With whom, in very sorrow, our joys are ended all;

And let us now requite him for all that he hath done

For us, in faithful friendship, and many another one.

“We also here are strangers, like the thane Rüdeger,

Why do ye keep us waiting? Let us his body bear

Away, to him our service e’en after death to give:

Far rather had we done it, whilst he were yet alive!”

“No service is so worthy,” then the King Gunther spake,

“As that for a dead comrade a friend doth undertake,

And steadfast faith I call it, where’er the same I find.

Ye pay him honour rightly, to you he hath been kind.”

“How long must we be pleading?” Wolfhart the warrior said:

“Since our best Consolation b by you is stricken dead,

And we, alas! no longer the good thereof may have,

So let us take the chieftain and lay him in his grave.”

Thereto made answer Volker: “He shall be given by none!

Come to the hall and take him, here where the thane, fordone,

With deadly wounds disfigured, lies in the bloody pool:

That were to do your duty to Rüdeger in full.”

Thereon bold Wolfhart answer’d: “Sir Minstrel, God doth know

No need have ye to taunt us, ye’ve done us harm enow.

Durst I offend my master, you’d be the worse for this,

But we must pass it over, since strife forbidden us is.”


text:
User:Pfold

Setting up

title: User:Pfold


text:
Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/239

 Drew's hand reached up and smothered the words on her lips. You can t borrow my love," he said sternly. "It's yours, always, every bit of it. But I won't marry you unless you love me. I tell you it is n't fair to you."

Impulsively she took his hand and led him back to the big chair and pushed him gently into it, and perched herself like a little child on a pile of bulky law books at his feet. The eyes that looked up to his were very hopeful.

"Don't you think, Drew," she argued, "that just being willing to marry you is love enough?"

He scanned her face anxiously for some inner, hidden meaning to her words, some precious, latent confession; but her eyes were only blue, and just a little bit shy.

She stooped forward suddenly, and took Drew's hand and brushed it across her cheek to the edge of her lips. "I feel so safe with you, Drew," she whispered, "so safe, and comforted always. Oh, I'm sure I can teach you how to make me love you and you re the only man in the world that I'm willing to teach." Her chin stiffened suddenly with renewed stubbornness. "You are the Harbor that was meant for me, and Aleck Reese is nothing but a Storm. If you know it, and I know it, what's the use of dallying?"

Drew's solemn eyes brightened. "Do you truly'

title: Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/239


text:
Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/41

Rh always had other fish to fry. Physics, which in modern times has almost usurped the name philosophy, in England at least, has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honours of persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops, &c. of the middle ages knew that the contest between nominalism and realism, for instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than anything in astronomy, &e. A wrong notion about substance might play the mischief with transubstantiation.

The question of the earth's motion was the single point in which orthodoxy came into real contact with science. Many students of physics were suspected of magic, many of atheism: but, stupid as the mistake may have been, it was bonâ fide the magic or the atheism, not the physics, which was assailed. In the astronomical case it was the very doctrine, as a doctrine, independently of consequences, which was the corpus delicti: and this because it contradicted the Bible. And so it did; for the stability of the earth is as clearly assumed from one end of the Old Testament to the other as the solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to be totidem verbis dictated by the God of Truth can refuse to believe it; and they make strange reasons. They undertake, à priori, to settle Divine intentions. The Holy Spirit did not mean to teach natural philosophy: this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from finding that the earth does move, and the Bible says it does not. Of course, ignorance apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean truth. But this puts the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out what the writer meant, until we otherwise find out what is true. Those who like may, of course, declare for an inspiration over which they are to be viceroys; but common sense will either accept verbal meaning or deny verbal inspiration.


text:
Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/200

If there are more tender and exquisitely expressed lines in the language, I know not where to find them; and yet again I should be glad not to be reminded by a cruel commentator that poor Mrs. Pope had been dead for two years when they were published, and that even this touching effusion has therefore a taint of dramatic affectation.

To me, I confess, it seems most probable, though at first sight incredible, that these utterances were thoroughly sincere for the moment. I fancy that under Pope's elaborate masks of hypocrisy and mystification there was a heart always abnormally sensitive. Unfortunately it was as capable of bitter resentment as of warm affection, and was always liable to be misled by the suggestions of his strangely irritable vanity. And this seems to me to give the true key to Pope's poetical as well as to his personal characteristics.

To explain either, we must remember that he was a man of impulses; at one instant a mere incarnate thrill of gratitude or generosity, and in the next of spite or jealousy. A spasm of wounded vanity would make him for the time as mean and selfish as other men are made by a frenzy of bodily fear. He would instinctively snatch at a lie even when a moment's reflection would have shown that the plain truth would be more convenient, and therefore he had to accumulate lie upon lie, each intended to patch up some previous blunder. Though nominally the poet of reason, he was the very antithesis of the man who is reasonable in the highest sense: who is truthful in word

title: Page:Alexander Pope (Leslie).djvu/200


text:
User talk:Pfold

--Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:39, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

title: User talk:Pfold


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/465

XXXVIII.]

Then spake the fiddle-player: “Fear claims too much, I trow,

When all that is forbidden a man must needs forego;

By me that were not reckon’d a right good hero’s mood!”

The speech of his companion seemed unto Hagen good.

“That shall not serve your purpose,” Wolfhart in answer spake:

“I’ll so untune your fiddle that you a tale may take,

Along with you, when homewards unto the Rhine you ride;

I cannot brook with honour your overweening pride.”

Then spake the fiddle-player: “If thou a fiddlestring

Of mine untuneful makest, thy helmet’s glittering

Must speedily be lessen’d and clouded by my hand,

Howe’er betide my riding to the Burgundian land.”

He would have sprung upon him, if he had not been stay’d

By Hildebrand his uncle, who hands upon him laid:

“In this thy senseless anger thou wouldst, I trow, go mad,

And so my master’s favour might’st never more have had.”

“Let go the lion, master! fierce though he be of mood,

Comes he into my clutches,” said Volker, warrior good,

“Even though a world of people he with his hands hath slain,

I’ll kill him, that the story he ne’er may tell again.”

By this was sorely quicken’d the Berners’ angry mood;

And Wolfhart clutch’d his buckler, a ready knight and good:

E’en like a savage lion in front of them he rush’d,

Whilst following close behind him his friends the onset push’d.


text:
Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/247

 hunch of fear. Stooping to push her slippery new suit case closer under her feet, he caught the sharp, shuddering tremor of her knees, and as the automo- bile swayed finally into the street that led to his apartment, her lungs seemed to crumple up in a paroxysm of coughing. Under the garish lights that marked his apartment-house doorway her slight figure drooped like a tired flower, and the footsteps that tinkled behind him along the stone corridor rang in his ears with a dear, shy, girlish reluctance. The elevator had stopped running. One flight, two flights, three, four, five they toiled up the harsh, cool, metallic stairway. Four times Ruth stopped to get her breath, and twice to tie her shoe. Drew laughed to himself at the delicious subterfuge of it.

Then at the very top of the strange, gloomy, mid night building, when Drew's nervous fingers fum bled a second with his door-lock, without the slight est possible warning she reached out suddenly with one mad, frenzied impulse and struck the key from his hand. To his startled eyes she turned a face more vild, more agonized than any terror he had ever dreamed in his most hideous, sweating night mare. Instantly her hands went clutching out to him.

"Oh, Drew, for God's sake take me home !" she gasped. "What have I done ? What have I done ? What have I done? Oh, ALECK !"

title: Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/247


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/21

 friend's sequences. Perhaps after all she had retreated only to mark the more sharply the act of waiting. Wasn't it at any rate something for him to have caused her to give up a plan? The appearance was composed of two elements and might become clearer could these elements somehow be reconciled. He and her plan were not, after all, quantities that should absolutely refuse to mingle, and on the question of the particular something that might be given up for something else the combinations—between two persons not wholly unintelligent—were practically infinite. There might always be something to be gained so long as anything to be renounced was left. And finally in fact when poor Mrs. Pendrel did pass away it was quite as if Aurora had acted in obedience to some such view. She disembarked yet again from the frequent Cunarder, and this time, as appeared and as I have hinted, with a mind fully made up. She at once took possession of the ample house her husband had left her.

She had never been more splendid, it may at once be said, than in the light of the reception she gave him on the morrow of these events: she fed with so free a hand his fancy—all uninstructed as he ruefully confessed it—of her resemblance to some great portrait of the Renaissance. That was the analogy he had, at favouring times, in the approaches to Park Avenue, or perhaps still more in the retreats from it, fondly and consistently 7


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/466

388

Yet though he sprang so swiftly, to reach the palace wall

He could not on the stairway old Hildebrand forestall,

Who would not that another first in the fight should be.

Their guerdon from the strangers they both got presently.

Then quickly upon Hagen sprang Master Hildebrand:

The clashing of the sword-blades was heard on either hand;

Their wrath was sorely kindled, as presently was plain;

A fiery stream was scatter’d from off their weapons twain.

Yet quickly were they sunder’d under the stress of fight:

The men of Bern so caused it, prevailing in their might.

Whereon away from Hagen betook him Hildebrand;

And needs must gallant Volker stout Wolfhart’s onset stand.

He smote the fiddle-player upon his helmet good,

So bravely that the sword-edge unto the sidebands hew’d;

The fiddler bold repaid him with all his might and main,

And laid his blows on Wolfhart, until he reel’d again.

They struck from the mail-armour of fiery sparks enow;

Their hate for one another was felt in every blow;

Then came the warrior Wolfwin of Bern the twain between:

Had he not been a hero that never could have been.

The warrior Gunther also gave with unstinting hand

A welcome to the heroes far-famed of Amelung land;

And Giselher the lordly made helms that shone before,

On head of many a warrior, ruddy and wet with gore.


text:
Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/248

 Wrenching himself free from her hands, Drew dropped down on the floor and began to hunt around for the key. The blood surged into his head like a hot tide, and he felt all gritty-lunged and smothered, as though he were crawling under water. After a minute he stumbled to his feet and slipped the recre - ant key smoothly into the lock, and swung his door wide open, and turned back to Ruth. She stood facing him defiantly, her eyes blazing, her poor hands twisting.

Drew nodded toward the door, and shoved the suit case with his foot across the threshold. His face was very stern and set.

"You want me to take you home ?" he said. "This is home. What do you mean ? Take you back to your Brother's house ? You can t go back to your Brother's house on your wedding day. It would n't be fair to me. And I won't help you do an unfair thing even to me. You've got to give me a chance!"

He nodded again toward the open door, but the girl did not budge. His face brightened suddenly, and he stepped back to where she was standing, and lifted her up in his arms and swung her to his shoul der and stumbled through the pitch-black doorway. "Do you remember," he cried, the day at your grammar-school picnic when I carried you over the railroad trestle because the locomotive that was

title: Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/248


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/22

 found for her: she was an Italian princess of the cinque-cento, and Titian or the grand Veronese might, as the phrase was, have signed her image. She had a wondrous old-time bloom and an air of noble security. The roots of her flowering were watered by Wall Street, where old Mr. Coyne and her maternal grandsire, both still in the field and almost equally proud of her, conspired to direct the golden stream; though the plant itself seemed to spring from a soil in which upheavals—when upheavals occurred—offered to panic at least a deeper ground than a fall in stocks. Large calm beauty, low square dresses, crude and multiplied jewels, the habit of watching strife from a height and yet of looking at danger with a practised bravery, were some of the impressions that consorted with her presence. When therefore she had, with whatever kindness, shaken her slow head at Ralph three times, there came to him a sad sense of his having staked his cast, after all, but on the sensibility of a painted picture. She had touched him at other times with a high hardness, whereas at present, clearly, she would have given anything to seem mild; only it was at the end of ten minutes of such mildness as if he stood under her closed window in darkness and sleet. This brought the truth home to him as it had not yet come: he had nothing in common with her apprehension—so particular, so private as that would be—of the kind of personal force, of action 8


text:
Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/249

 swooping down upon us round the curve had scared all the starch out of your legs? Look out for your head now, honey, and I'll give you a very good imi- tation of a cave man bringing home his bride."

In another moment he had switched a blaze of electric light into his diminutive library, and de- posited his sobbing burden none too formally in the big easy chair that blocked almost all the open space between his desk and his bookcases. "What! Are n't you laughing, too ?" he cried in mock alarm. But the crumpled little figure in the big chair did not answer to his raillery.

Until it seemed as though he would totter from his wavering foothold, Drew stood and watched her dumbly. Then a voice that sounded strange even to himself spoke out of his lips.

"Ruth come here" he said.

She raised her rumpled head in astonishment, gaged for a throbbing instant the new authoritative glint in his eyes, and then slipped cautiously out of her chair and came to him, reeking with despair. For a second they just stood and stared at each other, white face to white face, a map of anger con- fronting a map of fear.

"You understand," said Drew, "that to-day, by every moral, legal, religious right and rite, you have delivered your life over utterly into my hands?" His voice was like ice.

title: Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/249


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/512

 "Now, then!" said a shrill female voice the instant Sam thrust his head in at the door, "what do you want, young man?"

Sam looked round in the direction whence the voice proceeded. It came from a rather stout lady of comfortable appearance, who was seated beside the fire-place in the bar, blowing the fire to make the kettle boil for tea. She was not alone; for on the other side of the fire-place, sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, was a man in thread-bare black clothes, with a back almost as long and stiff as that of the chair itself, who caught Sam's most particular and especial attention at once.

He was a prim-faced, red-nosed man, with a long, thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake sort of eye—rather sharp, but decidedly bad. He wore very short trousers, and black-cotton stockings, which, like the rest of his apparel, were particularly rusty. His looks were starched, but his white neckerchief was not, and its long limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. A pair of old, worn beaver gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whalebone sticking through the bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him, and, being disposed in a very tidy and careful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, whoever he was, had no intention of going away in a hurry.

To do the red-nosed man justice, he would have been very far from wise if he had entertained any such intention; for, to judge from all appearances, he must have been possessed of a most desirable circle of acquaintance, if he could have reasonably expected to be more comfortable anywhere else. The fire was blazing brightly under the influence of the bellows, and the kettle was singing gaily under the influence of both. A small tray of tea-things was arranged on the table, a plate of hot buttered toast was gently simmering before the fire, and the red-nosed man himself was busily


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/501

 Whether it was that the pretty house-maid's face looked prettier still, when it was raised towards Sam's, or whether it was the accidental consequence of their being so near to each other, is matter of uncertainty to this day; but Sam kissed her.

"You don't mean to say you did that on purpose," said the pretty house-maid, blushing.

"No, I didn't then," said Sam; "but I will now."

So he kissed her again.

"Sam!" said Mr. Pickwick, calling over the banisters.

"Coming, sir," replied Sam, running up stairs.

"How long you have been!" said Mr. Pickwick.

"There was something behind the door, sir, which perwented our getting it open, for ever so long, sir," replied Sam.

And this was the first passage of Mr. Weller's first love.


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/497

 and rushing on Mr. Job Trotter, who rose from his chair on the instant, tore and buffeted his large flat face, with an energy peculiar to excited females, and twining her hands in his long black hair, tore therefrom about enough to make five or six dozen of the very largest-sized mourning-rings. Having accomplished this feat with all the ardour which her devoted love for Mr. Muzzle inspired, she staggered back; and being a lady of very excitable and delicate feelings, she instantly fell under the dresser, and fainted away.

At this moment, the bell rang.

"That's for you, Job Trotter," said Sam; and before Mr. Trotter could offer remonstrance or reply—even before he had time to stanch the wounds inflicted by the insensible lady—Sam seized one arm and Mr. Muzzle the other; and one pulling before, and the other pushing behind, they conveyed him up stairs, and into the parlour.

It was an impressive tableau. Alfred Jingle, Esquire, alias Captain Fitz-Marshall, was standing near the door with his hat in his hand, and a smile on his face, wholly unmoved by his very unpleasant situation. Confronting him, stood Mr. Pickwick, who had evidently been inculcating some high moral lesson; for his left hand was beneath his coat tail, and his right extended in air, as was his wont when delivering himself of an impressive address. At a little distance, stood Mr. Tupman with indignant countenance, carefully held back by his two younger friends; at the further end of the room were Mr. Nupkins, Mrs. Nupkins, and Miss Nupkins, gloomily grand, and savagely vexed.

"What prevents me," said Mr. Nupkins, with magisterial dignity, as Job was brought in: "what prevents me from detaining these men as rogues and impostors? It is a foolish mercy. What prevents me?"

"Pride, old fellow, pride," replied Jingle, quite at his ease. "Wouldn't do—no go—caught a captain, eh?—ha! ha! very good—husband for daughter—biter bit—make it public-—not for worlds—look stupid—very!"


text:
Page:Poems Allen.djvu/163

Rh

title: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/163


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/467

XXXVIII.]

And Dankwart, Hagen’s brother, a fearsome man was he:

Whatever he, already, on Etzel’s chivalry

In battle had accomplish’d, e’en as the wind was naught:

The son of the bold Aldrian now like a madman fought.

Richart and Gerbart likewise, Helfrich and eke Wichart,

Who oftentimes in battle right well had play’d their part,

Now plainly show’d their prowess to Gunther’s fighting men;

Wolfbrand in combat proudly was seen to bear him then,

And like a madman raging fought ancient Hildebrand.

Full many a doughty warrior then fell by Wolfhart’s hand,

Death-stricken by his sword-blows, into the pool of blood.

Thus Rüdeger avenged they, these gallant knights and good.

Then fought the noble Siegstab as of his might was due;

Ha! and upon his foemen what goodly helmets too

Were shiver’d in the battle by Dietrich’s sister’s son;

He could not in the struggle e’er better work have done.

Thereon the sturdy Volker, as soon as he beheld

How from the tough mail-armour the blood in streamlets well’d

At gallant Siegstab’s sword-strokes, the hero’s wrath arose;

Forward he sprang to meet him: and so his life to lose

Upon the spot had Siegstab through that same fiddle-man;

Who forthwith of his cunning to give such proof began

That by his mighty weapon quick death must needs ensue.

Old Hildebrand avenged him, as of his strength was due.


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/496

 con-sider yourself as nice and well-behaved a young gen'lm'n as ever used a pink check pocket-handkerchief, and the number four collection?"

"And as was ever a-going to be married to a cook," said that lady, indignantly. "The willin!"

"And leave off his evil ways, and set up in the chandlery line, arterwards," said the house-maid.

"Now, I'll tell you what it is, young man," said Mr. Muzzle, solemnly, enraged at the last two allusions, "this here lady (pointing to the cook) keeps company with me; and when you presume, sir, to talk of keeping chandlers' shops with her, you injure me in one of the most delicatest points in which one man can injure another. Do injure another. Do you understand me, sir?"

Here Mr. Muzzle, who had a great notion of his eloquence, in which he imitated his master, paused for a reply.

But Mr. Trotter made no reply. So Mr. Muzzle proceeded in a solemn manner:

"It's very probable, sir, that you won't be wanted up stairs for several minutes, sir, because my master is at this moment particularly engaged in settling the hash of your master, sir; and therefore you'll have leisure, sir, for a little private talk with me, sir. Do you understand me, sir?"

Mr. Muzzle again paused for a reply; and again Mr. Trotter disappointed him.

'Well, then," said Mr. Muzzle, "I'm very sorry to have to explain myself before ladies, but the urgency of the case will be my excuse. The back kitchen's empty, sir. If you will step in there, sir, Mr. Weller will see fair, and we can have mutual satisfaction 'till the bell rings. Follow me, sir!"

As Mr. Muzzle uttered these words, he took a step or two towards the door; and by way of saving time, began to pull off his coat as he walked along.

Now, the cook no sooner heard the concluding words of this desperate challenge, and saw Mr. Muzzle about to put it into execution, than she uttered a loud and piercing shriek,


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/492

 see you, indeed, and hope our acquaintance may be a long 'un, as the gen'lm'n said to the fi' pun' note."

When this ceremony of introduction had been gone through, the cook and Mary retired into the back kitchen to titter, for ten minutes; then returning, all giggles and blushes, they sat down to dinner.

Mr. Weller's easy manners and conversational powers had such irresistible influence with his new friends, that before the dinner was half over, they were on footing of perfect intimacy, and in possession of a full account of the delinquency of Job Trotter.

"I never could a-bear that Job," said Mary.

"No more you never ought to, my dear," replied Mr. Weller.

"Why not?" inquired Mary.

"Cos ugliness and svindlin' never ought to be formiliar vith elegance and wirtew," replied Mr. Weller. "Ought they, Mr. Muzzle?"

"Not by no means," replied that gentleman.

Here Mary laughed, and said the cook had made her; and the cook laughed, and said she hadn't.

"I han't got a glass," said Mary.

"Drink with me, my dear," said Mr. Weller. "Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then I can kiss you by deputy."

"For shame, Mr. Weller!" said Mary.

"What 's a shame, my dear?"

"Talkin' in that way."

"Nonsense; it ain't no harm. It's natur; ain't it, cook?"

"Don't ask me imperence," replied the cook in a high state of delight and hereupon the cook and Mary laughed again, till what between the beer, and the cold meat, and the laughter combined, the latter young lady was brought to the verge of choking—an alarming crisis from which she was only recovered by sundry pats on the back, and other necessary attentions, most delicately administered by Mr. Samuel Weller.

In the midst of all this jolity and conviviality, a loud ring was heard at the garden-gate: to which the young gentleman


text:
Page:Poems Allen.djvu/164

152

title: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/164


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/488

 I can assure you that you have very little to smile at. Was the account you gave me just now strictly true? Now be careful, sir?"

"Your wash-up," stammered Grummer, "I—"

"Oh, you are confused, are you?" said the magistrate. "Mr. Jinks, you observe this confusion?"

"Certainly, sir," replied Jinks.

"Now," said the magistrate,"repeat your statement, Grummer, and again I warn you to be careful. Mr. Jinks, take his words down."

The unfortunate Grummer proceeded to re-state his complaint, but, what between Mr. Jinks's taking down his words, and the magistrate's taking them up; his natural tendency to rambling, and his extreme confusion; he managed to get involved, in something under three minutes, in such a mass of entanglement and contradiction, that Mr. Nupkins at once declared he didn't believe him. So the fines were remitted, and Mr. Jinks found a couple of bail in no time. And all these solemn proceedings having been satisfactorily concluded, Mr. Grummer was ignominiously ordered out—an awful instance of the instability of human greatness, and the uncertain tenure of great men's favour.

Mrs. Nupkins was a majestic female in a pink gauze turban and a light brown wig. Miss Nupkins possessed all her mamma's haughtiness without the turban, and all her ill-nature without the wig; and whenever the exercise of these two amiable qualities involved mother and daughter in some unpleasant dilemma, as they not unfrequently did, they both concurred in laying the blame on the shoulders of Mr. Nupkins. Accordingly, when Mr. Nupkins sought Mrs. Nupkins, and detailed the communication which had been made by Mr. Pickwick, Mrs. Nupkins suddenly recollected that she had always expected something of the kind; that she had always said it would be so; that her advice was never taken; that she really did not know what Mr. Nupkins supposed she was; and so forth.


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/478

 prisoners, and the impassioned language of Mr. Pickwick, summoned Mr Muzzle. Mr. Muzzle opened one half of the carriage gate, to admit the sedan, the captured ones, and the specials; and immediately slammed it in the faces of the mob, who, indignant at being excluded, and anxious to see what followed, relieved their feelings by kicking at the gate and ringing the bell, for an hour or two afterwards. In this amusement they all took part by turns, except three or four fortunate individuals, who, having discovered a grating in the gate which commanded a view of nothing, stared through it with the indefatigable perseverance with which people will flatten their noses against the front windows of a chemist's shop, when a drunken man, who has been run over by a dog-cart in the street, is undergoing a surgical inspection in the back-parlour.

At the foot of a flight of steps, leading to the house door, which was guarded on either side by an American aloe in a green tub, the sedan-chair stopped. Mr. Pickwick and his friends were conducted into the hall, whence, having been previously announced by Muzzle, and ordered in by Mr. Nupkins, they were ushered into the worshipful presence of that public-spirited officer.

The scene was an impressive one, well calculated to strike terror to the hearts of culprits, and to impress them with an adequate idea of the stern majesty of the law. In front of a big book-case, in a big chair, behind a big table, and before a big volume, sat Mr. Nupkins, looking a full size larger than any one of them, big as they were. The table was adorned with piles of papers and above the further end of it, appeared the head and shoulders of Mr. Jinks, who was busily engaged in looking as busy as possible. The party having all entered, Muzzle carefully closed the door, and placed himself behind his master's chair to await his orders. Mr. Nupkins threw himself back, with thrilling solemnity, and scrutinised the faces of his unwilling visitors.

"Now, Grummer, who is that person?" said Mr. Nupkins,


text:
Page:Poems Allen.djvu/165

Rh

title: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/165


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/476

 Grummer fall than he made a terrific onslaught on small boy who stood next him; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly christian spirit, and in order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him and Mr. Winkle to say, that they did not make the slightest attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller: who, after a most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken prisoner. The procession then re-formed; the chairmen resumed their stations; and the march was re-commenced.

Mr. Pickwick's indignation during the whole of this proceeding was beyond all bounds. He could just see Sam upsetting the specials, and flying about in every direction; and that was all he could see, for the sedan doors wouldn't open, and the blinds wouldn't pull up. At length, with the assistance of Mr. Tupman, he managed to push open the roof; and mounting on the seat, and steadying himself as well as he could, by placing his hand on that gentleman's shoulder, Mr. Pickwick proceeded to address the multitude; to dwell upon the unjustifiable manner in which he had been treated; and to call upon them to take notice that his servant had been first assaulted. In this order they reached the magistrate's house; the chairmen trotting, the prisoners following, Mr. Pickwick oratorising, and the crowd shouting.


text:
Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/468

390

“Woe, for my lord belovéd!” cried Master Hildebrand,

“Who here in death is lying stricken by Volker’s hand:

Henceforth this fiddle-player shall save himself no more!”

Bold Hildebrand was wrathful as ne’er he was before.

Then smote he so at Volker, that far to either wall

The bands and clasps in pieces were strown about the hall,

From helm and eke from buckler of that same minstrel bold:

And so of sturdy Volker the ending there was told.

The liegemen then of Dietrich came thronging to the rout;

They smote till from the hauberks the links flew far about,

And splinter’d weapons saw one as high in air they flew;

Hot flowing blood in streamlets from out the helms they drew.

When Hagen, lord of Tronjé, saw Volker lying slain,

More grievous was his sorrow than all the other pain

That in this high foregathering he had for man or kin.

What vengeance for the hero did Hagen then begin!

“It shall not long advantage the old man Hildebrand

That yonder lies my helpmate slain by the hero’s hand,—

The veriest good comrade that ever yet I had!”

He raised his shield, and forward he rush’d with hewing blade.

Meanwhile the stalwart Helfrich had stricken Dankwart low.

To Giselher and Gunther grievous it was enow

When in the stress of battle they saw him fall beneath:

With his own hands already he had avenged his death.


text:
Page:Poems Allen.djvu/166

154

title: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/166


text:
Cross-Eye's Double Cross

ÜMMEL ain't no beverage for me. Nope! If you fellahs got any regular dope I can make a highball outa, that's different. If your cellar's getting dry I'll stick to Vichy. Oh, thanks!

No, kümmel naturally was a Proosian dish. My private notion is that Bill Kaiser used to soak up on caraway juice and that's one reason he went crazy. Anybody, even a German, is dangerous with some of it under his pod restrictor-particularly an Irishman, I guess. Look out for a Fritz whose breath smells like the inside of a loaf of Milwaukee rye bread. But when it's a harp, run for your life!

I'm retrospecting on Hindy Corrigan, of course. You guys ain't never heard the gospel about that rookie. Why? Well, because me and Walters-who got his going up the hill at Château-Thierry-was the only ones wise; and being wise ain't made me proud, so to speak. Now, Hindy's finally pickled himself in caraway. The papers tell how he cashed in up at his country estate on the Hudson, so I guess it's up to me as the only survivor to dish him out his R. I. P. and epitaph. They's a million bugs waiting to hear it too.

Hindy was the one and only guy I ever knew of who cracked down a fortune outa baseball, and he done it in one season too. Sure, I was one of the goats—but so was everybody else. Even I ain't accusing him of being partial. If he had 'a' been I'd 'a' owed him more dough by the time October come round than all them flossy actorines owes their dressmakers at the end of the year. No, he just naturally glommed onto the yellow backs wherever they was hiding, on the notion that an eagle don't care who makes it scream, I guess.

The Rats had prospects that spring about four joss sticks more aromatic than rotten. In February and March we gave up playing even semipros and took on all the high schools down in Texas, so as the scores wouldn't look so bad. The pitchers we carried was the kind you take to an old man's home for the winter, fearing they'd get so tied up with rheumatiz from the frost they couldn't hobble onto the field in the spring.

All of them had been good-once. None of them ever would be real good again. That's how we come to have them. Charley-horse Steinberg, who held the stock of the Rats that year, give me just about as much money for new players as a Scotchman wishes on his caddy. I had two rookie outfielders trying for a place on their own and one old war horse of a utility infielder. Besides the three catchers and the regulars, though, that was all. We was ready for our usual place heading the second division- facing backward-always providing we could keep nine men on the field at once. If any of the old guys broke their legs or anything I was figuring on putting Looie, the bat boy, in right field and filling in at shortstop myself. That's just how hard up I was.

One morning just about a week before the season opened I was sitting there in the dugout watching batting practice. By the way all those old boys creaked when they swung at a ball I knew it'd take a million gallons of horse liniment to keep 'em moving their joints all season. As I was chewing away and cussing Steinberg somebody comes up behind me and touches me on the shoulder.

Because I thought I was alone, I swung right round. There, standing in front of me with his foot up on the bench, was one of the oddest-looking ducks you ever flashed a glass eye on! He was a squatty, bald- headed harp and he was holding a corncob in the crookedest teeth I ever seen on a human being. But you fellows know what Hindy Corrigan looked like. He was a sort of cross between a gorilla and a gargoyle, with the ape a little bit ahead because of having more hair everywhere but on its head. When I seen him I thought right away of the Bronx Zoo and of those funny faces they carve on the handles of senior canes up at Dartmouth. I never once thought about baseball. Even when he was going his best, nobody ever accused Hindy of looking like a ball player. Maybe that's part of the reason he got away with it.

After about a second I got my eyes past his face and then I really got interested. The funny-looking guy was holding a fifty-dollar bill right up under my nose!.

"You're Seth Haskell, the manager, ain't you?" he asked, and I wondered where the deuce that big voice could come from in him.

"Ye-ah," I admitted, keeping my glims on that fifty. "What've I got that's worth that much to you?"

"That's a bet!" he returned, waving the fifty. "I want to put it on myself!" He waited-expectantlike.

"This is a ball field, not a bricklayers' picnic. You got in on the wrong ticket," I growled, because I was kinda disappointed that the guy wasn't somebody who'd owed me money and wanted to pay up; or a lawyer with a legacy from a rich uncle or something.

"Not me!" he says, chewing on the corncob like he meant it. "Maybe I ain't much on looks, but I'm a ball player too. I'm a pitcher!"

I stand up gravely and jump on one foot like a swimmer does when he gets water in his ear. I was sure I didn't get him right.

"Pitcher!" I echoes. "Water or quoits or what?"..

"Well," he says, cocking the pipe up snappy, "I ain't cracked like them relics you got in your china set anyway. Here's fifty that says I can start the game for you next Saturday and win it!"

Right there I whistle a little tune I learnt a long while back. It's something about Little Willie and a stick of dynamite. The guy that looks like he oughta been carrying a hod couldn't 'a' hit me squarer if he'd aimed with an eight gauge. Course he was foolish-nutty as the ducks in Matteawan who aren't there because they have good lawyers. For a second I listen, though.

"Come on! Are ye game-or just broke?" he says, waving the money insultinglike. "I know they don't pay you guys enough so as you can afford to gamble much, but I thought maybe the manager"

"Shut up, you poor fish!" I answered crossly. "When you says you were a pitcher you gave me a start, 'cause I was just kinda dreaming away and hoping that Clarke Griffith would call me up on long distance and tell me Walter Johnson wanted to be traded to the Rats. I'm short on good pitchers, as everybody knows, but I ain't that hard up!"

"Don't want to make fifty, easy money, eh?" he says kinda to himself.

"That ain't it. I got to work like sin to have a chance with that Pink Sox bunch in the first game. I can't afford to throw it, even for fifty bucks. Who in hell are you, anyway? Where'd you learn to pitch?"

"Never mind about that. Maybe I'm Slim Sallee or Grover Alexander or Babe Ruth in disguise."

"Ye-ah, and maybe you ain't."

I gave him one last look and felt sore at myself for even wasting words on him. He mighta been a good man once in the Shamrock League, but he wasn't cut out even for the bushes now. I just jerks my thumb toward the gate. That kinda acts like sticking him with a pin.

"Not a chance!" he yells, and slaps the fifty right into my hand. "Here!" he goes on. "That's to pay for an hour of your valuable time. Come on! I want to show you something!"

Boys, that was one of the crucial times of my young life and I weakened. I looked straight into those funny blue eyes of his and then at the fifty in my hand, and I just couldn't resist. He grabbed me by the arm and led me out on the field.

"So long as the boys are batting," says Corrigan, "I'll go up there and let you see me swipe at a few balls. Tell that lanky lummox who's heaving them to put all the stuff on 'em he's got!"

I was willing by then. It looked like an easy way to make him look foolish. I walked up to Lem Wilson, who is the best bet we've got, and slips him the dope.

"This here guy," I says, "wants to show us how to hit a few home runs. Will you lob 'em over for him?"

Lem kinda grins and nods. Corrigan picks up a bat and sidles awkward up toward the pan. There he takes his coat off, spits on his hands, hists his suspenders and monkeys round about half a minute. It looks a little as though he's fussed, and if it wasn't for the fifty in my jeans maybe I'd 'a' been sorry for him a little. Most of the time he's just staring out at Lem, who stands like Patience on a monument waiting for him to walk into the box.

Then Corrigan steps up. Lem slips him a bean ball right away, so as to scare him. Corrigan drops flat in the dust, out before Walters, the catcher, gets the pill back to Lem, Corrigan is up again, glaring savage like he was going to bite somebody.

Lem shoots what's meant to be a drop. Like the boom of a sailboat Corrigan swings round. By accident, like sometimes happens, he busts the leather right on the nose. Smack! Away it sails, high and far. With something like a feeling of respect, I see it clear the score board in center field. It takes a husky wallop to do that. None of my guys even had hit the board on the fly for two full seasons.

"Ye'll never find that ball!" barks Corrigan. "Try another one." Lem looks kinda sheepish, but he picks up another ball and hunches up his shoulders the way he does when he's sore. I see him wind up like a windmill and shoot his spitter across like a meteor. Corrigan never offers at that, though it cuts the outside of the pan, but stands like a wooden Indian, staring at Lem like he was going to eat him up. Well, the next ball ain't so good. It hits the dirt and Corrigan has to back away from the bounce.

"I ain't no submarine!" he yells. "Stick her over the plate!"

Well, this is just what Lem did on the next one and again Hindy swung. This time the pill sailed toward right field, long and low like the way some of these candy golfers drive a golf ball. It didn't go high enough for a home run, but it went plunk into the wire netting in front of the seats, as pretty a three-baser as you ever want to see!

"Didn't get that one up enough!" growled Corrigan. I stopped with my mouth open, just about to say something. The darned rookie was beefing because he hadn't put it in the stands! That was too much for me. I motions Lem to slip him a couple of out curves, thinking this would be something else again.

Lem obeys, but I can see the sweat coming to his forehead from where I stand in the coacher's box. He's worried for fear his arm is going bad-that's plain.

The first one Hindy fouls off and the second one he lets go by.

"Strike two!" I yells, just to encourage Lem a bit. Hindy don't pay no attention though. He just glares at Lem and waits.

The next ball is a slow one, a teaser that's easy to hit but darned hard to knock fair. It's pie for the Clark Street Bridge though. Up goes a high fly that don't come down until it's way past the bleacher ticket office over on Higg's Alley.

"Now, am I Babe Ruth in disguise or ain't I?" yells Corrigan, grinning.

I don't say nothing, but chases Lem Wilson to the showers-and he's glad to go at that. Baldy White, who's been watching all the performance, is the next victim. He's a port-wheeler and I figure he'll show the darned upstart that all major-league pitching ain't as bad as Wilson's.

It seems like Baldy's rattled or cold or something. For a couple of minutes he don't get one any nearer the pan than the Battery is to the Polo Grounds. Hindy just stands and glares. When the first fast one comes in reach of his hat he pastes it straight in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. I ain't claiming that it made one of these nonstop flights to Ireland, or nothing like that, but I'll bet the geezers in the Azores wondered where that new shooting star come from. Last I seen of that ball it was up in the nimbuses and still going.

Baldy kinda gaped, but he was game. Three more home runs went kiting away, with a pair of fouls mixed in for good measure with one clean strike-the first ball Hindy had swung at without hitting. I called it off. There wasn't any use in wasting the whole of that fifty in lost balls. I had seen enough to show me that the harp in suspenders knew something more about batting than I did.

"You don't have to do no more, young feller," I says, stepping up to him. "Here's your fifty back, and if you come into the clubhouse now I'll get a unie and a rookie contract for you."

I wasn't sure how I could make Steinberg see it, but I needed a guy in my line-up who could hit one like that and I knew it.

Hindy shook his head.

"You ain't seen me pitch," he barked. "I'm a pitcher, I am. And I don't want no rookie contract neither."

This kinda stalls me for a second, and while I'm figuring he walks out and picks up Baldy's glove and one of the balls.

"Now send up some good batters and you go back there and empire," he says, pointing at the plate.

I nods. He's giving the party; and though he's got his fifty bucks back I'm willing to let him go on. All the time I'm wondering whether I can teach him how to catch a fly ball, so as I can make a place for him out in the field.

To keep him going, I send Sliver Chitney, our third baseman, up to bat. Sliver has a record of hitting an average of .237 for about eleventeen years or so and he ain't exactly what you'd call a greenhorn at the bat.

Before Hindy throws one at all I sees him glaring down at us; and, believe me, them eyes of his kinda made me uneasylike without knowing exactly why. Sliver feels it, and Walters, the catcher. I know, because I hear 'em say something about his looking at 'em like a cat looks at you in the dark.

Then he started a ball our way. I say that advisable, because, as you guys know, Hindy never did use no wind-up to speak of. One second he was standing still, glaring at you. The next the ball was coming and you hardly saw how he done it.

There wasn't nothing on that ball at all. It just floated over like a toy balloon. Sliver dodged like it was aimed at his bean!

"Got to call that a strike," I says. "Why didn't you hit it, Sliver?"

He mumbled something about a corkscrew that I didn't get, and came back to the plate. This time he swung, and though I could see that Hindy didn't have much more than a glove and a prayer, Sliver missed the pill by ten inches.

"One more like that and you go to Sioux City for a long rest!" I yells. The guy was making us all look more like a monkey than he was himself.

Sliver didn't have no comeback. He just dusts his hands and tries twice more. Each time he misses so far you could 'a' druv a flivver through the hole.

"Let me have the stick!" I says finally in disgust. "You couldn't hit an elephant with a feather duster."

Sliver throws down the hickory, mad as a hornet, but he didn't say nothing, just looking at me kinda queer.

Well, I ain't going to be the hero of the yarn. When I got up there Hindy struck me out three times running without me even knocking a tick foul! Right then, though, I seen better what had been the matter with Sliver. That guy Corrigan had a bunch of curves that never was in the book at all! Unless you was batting it was hard to see 'em for some reason or other, but up there you didn't have no difficulty, believe me! He had a spiral twister that came toward the plate like a corkscrew cutting into a cork. Also a scallop curve that had four separate jumps in it. Them ballistic experts proved on paper that them things couldn't be true, but I seen 'em time and time again and I know what I'm talking about.

Before long I had the whole gang hooting at me when I whiffed, but I got so I didn't care. The old gorilla out there throwing them things at me was a born major-league starif I ever saw one. I was just itching to get his John Henry on the dotted line of one of our contracts before somebody else saw him. When I'd had enough of fanning, I yanked him right off the field and into the office. Without consulting Steinberg or nobody I fixed him up a contract calling for eighteen hundred and uncapped my own fountain pen to make it easy for him to sign.

Without even reading it he shoved the contract back.

"Nothing doing!" he says. "I don't want no contract that way at all."

I tried to reason with him, telling him every player in the major leagues was tied up that way, but he wouldn't listen. When I asked him what he did want, he wouldn't even tell me either.

"You just let me pitch that opening game for you free of charge," he says, "and after that I'll tell you the kind of arrangement that will suit," he says.

Don't let 'em tell you that I didn't fight for a contract right then. I even raised the ante to two thousand and then to twenty-five hundred, because I had a regular poker hunch that I'd get stuck big if I didn't nail him down. Well, I just couldn't convince him. When I threatened to kick him out and not even let him try to play, he just grinned.

"They's other guys what ain't so proud," he says. "If you'd rather have me hunt up Muggsy McGraw "

That was just what I didn't want, though I didn't tell him. The Giants wasn't what you'd call rivals of us-them being fighting the Cubs for first place while we trailed the whole outfit during the season that had just gone into history, as the orator says-but still I believe always in fixing up the old proverb to read, "To him what ain't oughta be given a chance, anyway." And doping out how the Rats could get a chance to finish as high as seventh place was an equation in indifferent calculus or some such kind of math that ain't taught on the diamond.

While I was trying to hedge and save face and so on, he reaches for his hip, naturallike. In the movies this always means a gun fight starting, but among ball spielers it's something else again. It listens more like a booze fight starting. Sure as cucumbers and dyspepsia, out comes a flask-one of these fancy, leather-covered ones with four thimble-sized cups slung in the bottom.

"Redeye?" I demands, starting my managerial scowl. With ordinary guys hard liquor and ball playing get along about as well as molasses taffy and the mumps, and I know it only too well, me losing Butcher Hardy, the best left fielder in the game—but this ain't got nothing to do with Butch.

"No," he answers, casual. "Kümmel."

Before I gets a chance to say nothing more he jerks out two of the thimbles, fills 'em up from the flask and passes one to me. The flooid ain't highly colored, but innocent and pure-looking-like gin. The stink from them two little cups fills the office right away though, like asafedity in a schoolroom when the steam pipes are red-hot in winter.

I ain't never tasted kümmel, but when I sees him toss his thimbleful and reach for more I think it can't be as bad as it smells, and shoots mine. Well, all of a sudden I want to make a face, just like a kid does when he bites into a fresh lime. The dope proves up more like poison than anything I tasted since the day I nibbled a rat biscuit, thinking it was an after-dinner mint.

I keep a tight rein on my seventh cranial nerve, though, 'cause a notion just popped.

"Had much of the stuff to-day?" I asks unconcernedlike.

"Just one pint," he answers, regretful. "Y'see it's kinda early yet!"

I didn't say nothing, trying to look boredlike as if anything short of a gallon before breakfast was a teetotal day for me. Without much persuading he pours again.

Well, there ain't no use trying to camouflage it. Even with a pint handicap, Hindy wasn't bothered by the contents of the flask I was. By the time I had half under my belt I thought he was a good fellah and had promised him he could pitch Saturday. This was all he wanted, and with the last drop of the pint flask under his belt he beat it for the hotel where he had his duds.

During the next four days I put the Rats in the hands of Casso Thorpe, the coacher, and I spent my mornings and afternoons with Walters and Corrigan. We'd go off in a corner of the lot by ourselves and work like troopers. We had to fix up a whole new line of signals for Hindy, 'cause of his new curves. When this was finished I batted him grounders and taught him some about fielding his position.

He wasn't nearly the ignoramus he looked though. Spite of the fact that he wouldn't tell us nothing about his previous jobs, you could see he had played some baseball. It might 'a' been years before or it might 'a' been in a hick league somewhere, but he had the general idea good enough. Little points like covering first base and fielding bunts were new, but I put them across quick. I could see that Hindy's fielding percentage never was going much higher than his batting, but that wasn't worrying me a lot. Any guy that could hit the stuff he passed out was good enough to get on base anyway, the way I doped it.

Saturday came round and about eight hundred fans turns out for our grand opening with the Cubs. Y'see, the papers have it all figured out how we couldn't even play six, seven, eight in the Three Eyes League, so only the real rabid guys came out. Even the band I hired for the doings seemed to get tired by a quarter to three, there was so few ears to play to.

Well, I feel kinda sick, 'cause I know what's going to happen to the Rats-and my job-if we can't draw better than that. Charley Steinberg is up in the box and from the way he's looking round I can see he's got every nickel of the gate figured. Unhappy? Well, I didn't really mind if he was, only for the bum prospect.

Without doing any explaining to nobody, I warmed up Corrigan and sent him to the box. In his unie he didn't look quite so bad-kinda like a cross between Rube Marquard and Benz, with all the outstanding features of each and then some, but not so bad as I thought.

Max Flack led off for them. When the first ball come he jumped, surprisedlike, and Rigler called it a strike. Then he took two more, like as not instructed to wait out Corrigan. The first one was a ball and then another strike. From where I was I couldn't see no kind of a curve on the ball at all, but Flack was acting queer. He said something to Walters and the empire, and then walked back and swung. He missed that ball clean, took off his cap and scratched his noodle and then walked back to the coop, puzzled looking. I saw him tell something to Hollocher when he came up.

Whatever it was, it didn't do Holly no good. After taking two balls and two strikes, the Cub shortstop called for a look at the ball Hindy was using. Him and Rigler couldn't find nothing the matter with it though, and I grinned to myself. I didn't blame them a darned bit for suspecting emery or shine or something. I never did see anything like the curves Hindy used right along-and I don't s'pose I ever will again, now he's dead.

Holly whiffed, same as Flack, and up came Pick, their keystoner. He got the count to two and three, and then dumped a little grounder in the direction of Sliver Chitney. It's the first fielding chance of the season, and-true to form-Sliver messes it up. By the time he's got hold of the ball Pick is standing on first and Paskert is batting. I kinda groaned to myself, 'cause I don't know what this will do to Hindy's nerve.

It don't bother him a bit, even when Pick steals second. He gives Paskert just three balls, at which the Dodo swings three times. The side is out and I sighs a big breath of relief.

Just then I catch Steinberg's eye, looking anxious at me. I walks over to him.

"The kid looks good," he says, bending forward. "Where'd you get him?"

"Kid nothing!" I comes back. "He's costing you enough so he better be good. He's going to win the flag for us this year!"

Steinberg starts to frown incredulously, but I don't waste no more parlez vous on him. Our side is up.

Hippo Vaughan is hurling for them and he sets down Karl Luesch and Sliver Chitney without no trouble. Banning, batting third, drops a Texas leaguer back of second base and the eight hundred bugs give a faint cheer. It's the first hit of the season.

That cheer was lost in a buzz the second Hindy ambled out from the dugout. A pitcher batting in the clean-up position! Some lone bug in the bleachers remembered just then the three strike-outs in the first half inning and gives him a hand. Maybe a dozen more join in, but the applause dies quick.

Hindy doesn't offer as two balls buzz by. Both of 'em are wide. The next comes straight as a die for the pan and I see the old jib boom come swinging round. The noise Hindy's bat made in meeting that ball brought everybody in the stands up to his feet. Like the ones he hit in practice, this ball sailed out into the bleachers clean as a whistle. A thin cheer from the eight hundred greets this and keeps up while Banning and he trot in with two runs. It's the first real sign of life the Rats have shown for nigh onto two years, and the eight hundred is glad they come.

Well, there ain't any use detailing that game. You can find it in the papers of April fourteenth for that year. Hindy held 'em. They got five hits in all, four of which Killefer, their red-headed catcher, pickled away. We beat 'em seven to nothing, Hindy getting another homer and a double. The last two times he batted Vaughan passed him, which same was some compliment to a rookie pitcher.

Right after the game Hindy makes me his proposition. I had sorta prepared Steinberg for a jolt, 'cause I figured Corrigan would strike for five thousand or something like that-the same being nothing for a regular player but a whole lot more than any rookie ever got from us.

Over the kümmel flask, though, Hindy pulls the funniest one I ever heard.

"The only contract I get is one that you give me," he says. "I don't sign nothing."

Which being exactly the way flats ain't rented and baseball teams ain't run.

After a lot of beefing I got his proposition. He wants to play for us on a commission basis, so to speak. He says he'll pitch any time I want him to, and pinch hit if I need him in other games. Every time he pitches and wins he is to get five hundred dollars; every time he loses he pays us back two hundred and fifty bucks. He figures the first game as nothing in his pocket, only if he loses two games he'll owe us nothing either.

Of course I fight like a wildcat and tell him how absurd his notion is. He explains, calm as anything, that any ordinary pitcher who was paid that way would make about enough to feed a white rat-if he was lucky. Also he points out that I don't need to pitch him if I don't want to, and when he don't pitch he don't earn no money. While I'm thinking how grand it would be just to have him for a pincher, without paying him nothing, the same hunch hits him too. He says that when he goes up to pinch hit he'll pay us twenty-five bucks if he don't get on base. If he does get on by a hit we pay him a hundred. If it's a pass, or anything like that, nobody pays nobody.

"That's an edge you can have!" he concludes.

For two whole days I scraps with him before I even put it up to Charley Steinberg. Then I only do it 'cause Hindy has his grip packed ready to hunt another club. Incidentally, Wilson and Baldy lose two games to the Cubs in these two days which we could 'a' won with Hindy either pinch- hitting or pitching. Steinberg took a day to figuring it all out on paper and then agreed that Hindy's proposition was fair enough. He didn't see how Corrigan could crack down more than two or three thousand that way, even if he was good. I gave his signed agreement to Corrigan. It wasn't my funeral, and I needed Hindy.

Well, there ain't no use telling you guys much about that season. Hindy proved up to be an iron man. I started pitching him once in five days and he won every start. The trouble was that the rest of the Rats were so badly shot that we had a hell of a time winning any of the other games. I got Hindy down to pitching every fourth day and sometimes finishing a game that looked like a possible victory. He pinch- hit in every game, except during one week when his ankle went bum.

It wasn't till the middle of July that Hindy lost a game. We was then in second place, with the Giants a game and a half ahead of us and the Cubs about that much behind. Things had got so that when Hindy was scheduled to pitch we could count on from fifteen to twenty-five thousand fans and on the days in between about four thousand-coming just to see him bat once! Charley Steinberg kicked at first when he had to pay, but he wasn't no fool. Even with what Hindy was cracking down, the Rats were making real money for the first time in years.

Hindy ran up against Dick Rudolph. Rudy was hurling one of those days when he could go ninety-nine innings without letting a guy get as far as second. It was in the fourteenth that Hindy blew up. They made eight runs off him in that one inning. I never believed but what he just got tired of working that hard and throwed the game, knowing he had two loses coming that wouldn't cost him nothing. He was drinking that danged kümmel all the time, you know.

You remember, I told you all of us were his goats? Well, Hindy didn't stick to the one graft he was putting over on Steinberg. He sat in at the boys' poker games and got them to raise the limit from two bits to four dollars. Then he got 'em going on seven- card piquet instead of draw-the seven- card game being something like stud, only faster and collected all the salaries of the bunch in addition to his own. Even I got bit bad. It seemed like you couldn't keep outa a game with him, even when you didn't want to play.

It wasn't that he was much luckier than us, either, or that he was crooked. It was just an edge he had 'cause of his being able to bluff better'n anyone I ever seen playing. Knowing what I know now, I kinda wonder that Hindy let us in on any pots at all but he did. I don't s'pose he won more'n two out of five pots when seven of us was playing, which goes to show he wasn't really what you'd call mercenary-only he didn't never lose. For a long time every hand he'd bluff he'd lay face up on the table, saying quietlike, "It pays to advertise, the guy tells me!"

Then naturally we'd call him every time he bet for a while-and he'd have 'em. He bluffed so frequent, though, and we was so poor at telling when that we just got to calling always. Y'know what that means. Winning at poker is a combo of betting right and calling only when the percentage demands. After we started that Hindy couldn't 'a' lost if he'd tried, him knowing cards better'n most of us knew our fingers.

'Long about August the bunch began giving I O U's. Hindy dropped out then and didn't play any more. He didn't really need to, 'cause I doped it out he got at least half of all the coin every one of us had drawn to date. Anyway, he was branching out in his deals in a way that made four-dollar limit look like pitching pennies. Understand, I didn't butt wise at the time, I was busy figuring how the Rats was good for about six pennants in a row, having Hindy. If I'd knowed I'd-oh, well, I didn't anyway.

We went ahead of the Giants on August eighth by trimming them three straight on their home field. In the first Hindy held 'em to two hits, we winning three to nix. The second was put on ice by him pinching for Roger Brett in the sixth and pounding out a four-carat swipe with the bags populated. The last of the series we actually won without Hindy, him having too much kümmel aboard even to put on a unie that day. I hunted him out and stuck him in a Turkish bath, lecturing him on the evils of turpentine and other strong drink in general and kümmel in particular, but you might as well try to argue a pelican outa eating fish. He ended up by persuading me to drink a thimbleful of the cussed stuff! You can't fight too hard with a pitcher who wins darned near all his games, likewise leads the league in batting with an average of .527. Maybe you could, but I couldn't. When I got Hindy's cold-blue glims sparkling at me I was player and he was manager-and I don't feel so bad about admitting it now.

The minute the Rats got in the lead hell broke loose generally. The fans of our town, never daring before to think that a pennant might possibly be coming their way, smelled blood. No matter what day it was, we got a capacity crowd. They was just a bunch of vegetarian lions that got an appetizer of antelope gore. Crazy? Well, I knew those Tessie fans of Boston in the old days of Speaker, Hooper and Duffy Lewis, and all I can say is, the Rats' rooters had 'em backed off the map.

Our bad luck started simultaneous, though. Chitney breaks his ankle. Baldy gets trouble with his arm. Walters splits a finger. With the small bunch we're carrying, these things put us in a hole, particular as Shenner, the second-string catcher, ain't never been able to hold Hindy any too well.

Our winning percentage drops. The two- game lead we have over the Giants fades. They come even and then go ahead. We spurt for a few days and pass them again. It's just about all square at the home stretch, the lead going back and forth and the bugs as crazy as locoed steers. Every paper in town was carrying a double-pink sheet and most of the space was articles about the great mystery, Hindy Corrigan. With all their sleuthing and butting in, the scribes never got past speculating where I dug him up and wondering what it was gave him his pitching ability and batting eye.

Well, the end came all too sudden. New York obliges by losing the last game to Philly. That leaves us just a little bunch of ten-thousandths of a per cent behind, with one game to play with the Cubs in Chicago. If we win we get into the world's series. If we lose but I ain't counting on that none, 'cause I've got Hindy to pitch and the Cubs ain't any too peppy now on account of being out of it.

Well, they pitches Tyler and I starts Corrigan. Five innings blow by in which they get one hit-that red-headed Killefer again-and make no errors and no runs. We make four hits and three errors and score once when Hindy's double against the fence sends in Brett.

Then the trouble begins. With Tyler batting to start the last of the sixth, Shenner blows a third strike, letting Tyler get to first. Flack gets hit by Hindy on purpose, but the empire don't see it. Then La Farge messes a grounder on first and there's three Cubs roosting on the bags.

Right then I am some nervous and get Shenner to stall a little over his shoe string. In the meantime Hollocher goes up to bat, but for some reason or other Mitchell dopes it out to change. He calls Holly and sends a lanky recruit up to bat.

The guy's name is Burfee, or something like that, as clear as I can get from the megaphone, but he is a new one with the meanest-looking face I ever seen on a ball player. He's got a long thin nose and eyes set closer together, and a mouth that slants down at the corners.

I'm nervous, but I got lots of confidence in Hindy, providing the other guys back him up. And then suddenlike I see Hindy shoot the pill across.

That is, it starts toward the plate and then changes its mind and goes out and away with a noise that breaks my heart. The mean guy knocked it clean to Wilmette! Four runs, putting them three ahead!

Hindy and I fought all the way to the ninth, but that inning was the end. We got two runs and they got one-and the Giants won the pennant. I didn't dare go back to Ratville for six months, the fans were so mad.

When I saw Hindy he had on cit's clothes again and was soaking up kümmel.

"Why did you give that guy Burfee that kind of a ball?" I growls, sidlin' up to him ready for a scrap or anything.

"I don't want to tell you now," he says, "cause maybe I wanta play next year. I can't tell yet."

"D'you mean you throwed it?" I yelled, jumping up.

He shook his head and kinda grinned, looking for his corncob.

"Nope," he said. "That's something that ain't in my line. I just made a hell of a mistake."

"What was it?" I asked quick. He wouldn't tell me then-said it would give away his system. I had to let it go at that.

Well, before the next winter was up you all heard about Hindy's deals on the Street. He took the thirty thou he got from ball playing and poker with us and ran it into a million on margins. Then two millions and then ten-and he wouldn't play no more baseball naturally.

One time we was in New York, playing the Giants, he came round to see me. Came in a big limo with all the trimmings. After I chewed at him for giving us the slip and talked over the past season, I just happened to think.

"Can you tell me now what went wrong down there in Chicago? I been waiting to hear."

He looked at me kinda funny for about a minute. Then he nodded and reached in his pocket for the flask.

"You have been a good fellah, even if you was manager," he says, "and you boys' money gave me my start. I guess I've got plenty now anyway, but I don't want to spill the news just yet. If I tell you can you keep your trap shut?"

I promised, 'cause I was as curious as all get-out.

"Well," he says, grinning, "you know them scallops, curves and spirals and so on you seen me throw?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I didn't never throw them at all! Them things was impossible!"

Guess my eyes must 'a' popped, but I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

"Before I tell you about them," he went on, "you gotta know something about me. For ten year before I butted into the big league I was known as Kellini, the hypnotist. Well, I wasn't a fake, but my graft went dead. The public got tired of seeing my kind of show. So I doped out a plan how I could make real money. I took a couple of weeks off and learned how to throw a straight ball and how to hit one when it came over just right. Then I went to the Rats."

"And and you  "I gasped.

"Hypnotized 'em!" he laughed. "Sure! When a batter came up I got him under control and made him see curves that wasn't there. Walters saw 'em sometimes and sometimes he didn't. The empires never. The reason Shenner couldn't catch me was 'cause he was too weak. He'd see 'em awful.

"It was the same way when I went up to bat. I'd hypnotize the pitcher so he'd toss me straight balls and not too fast. Then I'd bust 'em over the fence!"

"Good night!" I says. "Then you didn't have no curves at all?"

"Nope-just thought curves. I made a bunch of them newspaper men see 'em so I could get away with it, but it was all bunk from start to finish. Like the poker games. Some of you guys was easy subjects."

"Easy marks!" I retorts. Then I see I gotta swallow the medicine anyway, so I grins. "But how about that guy Burfee, who busted us in that last game?"

Hindy kinda shrugs his shoulders.

"Some guys I could hypnotize and some I couldn't," he says. "That guy Killefer of the Cubs was beyond me. Remember how he used to hit? Well, when this guy Burfee strolls up I can't catch his eye at all. I try hard, but somehow or other it won't take. Then I happen to notice him standing in the box. He ain't looking at me at all! He's watching something over in the first- base stands! So I tries to slip over a strike on him, and you know what happens.

"It ain't till after the game that I find out that guy Burfee is cross-eyed! When he's waiting for a ball, batting right-handed his left eye is pointed out at Addison Avenue somewhere! Being that way probably makes him harder to hypnotize too. Anyway, that's how he came to hit that homer."

I was quiet for quite a while and helped myself to some of his kümmel. "And I s'pose that's how you're making your dough now?" I says finally.

"Yeah!" he admits, "but don't tell the world-leastwise not quite yet."

title: Cross-Eye's Double Cross


text:
Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu/438

 best possible humour, when he was suddenly stopped by a most unexpected interruption; to wit, the entrance into the room of some person with a candle, who, after locking the door, advanced to the dressing table, and set down the light upon it.

The smile that played on Mr. Pickwick's features was instantaneously lost in a look of the most unbounded and wonder-stricken surprise. The person, whoever it was, had come in so suddenly and with so little noise, that Mr. Pickwick had had no time to call out, or oppose their entrance. Who could it be? A robber? Some evil-minded person who had seen him come up stairs with a handsome watch in his hand, perhaps. What was he to do!

The only way in which Mr. Pickwick could catch a glimpse of his mysterious visitor with the least danger of being seen himself, was by creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from between the curtains on the opposite side. To this manœuvre he accordingly resorted. Keeping the curtains carefully closed with his hand, so that nothing more of him could be seen than his face and night-cap, and putting on his spectacles, he mustered up courage, and looked out.

Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and dismay. Standing before the dressing-glass was a middle-aged lady, in yellow curl-papers, busily engaged in brushing what ladies call their "back-hair." However the unconscious middle-aged lady came into that room, it was quite clear that she contemplated remaining there for the night; for she had brought a rushlight and shade with her, which, with praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was glimmering away, like a gigantic lighthouse in a particularly small piece of water.

"Bless my soul," thought Mr. Pickwick, "what a dreadful thing!"

"Hem!" said the lady; and in went Mr. Pickwick's head with automaton-like rapidity.

"I never met with anything so awful as this," thought