“Nar, young man,” said Coffee John, pointing the stem of his pipe at the lad in the red sweater, “seein’ we’ve all agreed to testify, s’pose yer perceed to open the ball. You come in fust, an’ you talk fust. I ain’t no fly cop, but it strikes me you’re a bit different from the rest of us, though we’re all different enough, the Lord knows. Yer jacket fits yer, an’ thet alone is enough to myke yer conspicus in this ’ere shop. I see a good many men parss in an’ art from be’ind the carnter, but I don’t see none too many o’ the likes o’ you. If I ain’t mistook, you’ll be by wye o’ bein’ wot I might call a amatoor at this ’ere sort o’ livin’, an’ one as would find a joke w’erever ’e went. You’d larff at a bloomin’ corpse, you would, and flirt with Queen Victoria. You’ll never grow up, young fellar; I give yer thet stryte, before yer even open yer marth.”

“But wot I cawn’t figger art,” he continued, “is w’y yer jumped at the sight of a bunch o’ ord’n’ry yeller bananas. I’ve seen ’em eat with their bloomin’ knives, an’ comb their w’iskers with their bloomin’ forks, but this ’ere is a new one on me, an’ it gets my gyme. I’m nar ready to listen.”

“Even so!” said the youth. “Then I shall now proceed to let the procession of thought wriggle, the band play, and the bug hop. The suspense, I know, is something terrible, so I spare your anxiety.” And with this fanfare he began to relate

THE STORY OF THE HARVARD FRESHMAN

When I received a cordial invitation from the Dean to leave Harvard the second time—on that occasion it was for setting off ten alarm-clocks at two-minute intervals in chapel—the governor flew off the handle. My fool kid brother, that was to side-track the letter from the faculty, got mixed on his signals, and the telegram that the old man sent back nearly put the Cambridge office out of business. He said that I had foozled my last drive, and, although a good cane is sometimes made out of a crooked stick, he washed his hands of me, and would I please take notice that the remittances were herewith discontinued.

I noticed. After I’d settled up and given my farewell dinner to the Institute, where they were sorry to lose me because I was playing a cyclone game on the Freshman Eleven, I had ninety-eight dollars, and twelve hours to leave the college yard. Thinking it over, it struck me that the keenest way for me to get my money’s worth was to go out and take a sub-graduate course as a hobo—do the Wyckoff act, minus the worker and the prayer-meetings. I wasn’t going to beg my meals—there was where the pride of the Coffins stuck out—but I was willing to stand for the rest—dust, rust, and cinders. As a dead-head tourist, ninety-eight bones would feed me and sleep me for quite a space. I swung on at South Boston for my first lesson in brake-beams, and, tumbled off mighty sick at Worcester.

It’s a long tale, with hungry intervals, until I found myself in the pound, at Peru, Illinois, for smashing a fresh brakeman and running up against the constabulary. The police judge of that hustling little Western centre is paid out of the fines that he collects. It is a strange coincidence that when I was searched I had forty-seven, twenty, on my person, and my fine for vagrancy and assault came to forty dollars, with seven-twenty costs. The judge was a hard-shell deacon.

Next week, after I crawled out of the underground Pullman, at Louisville, I was watching Senator Burke’s racing stables come in, and I was hungry enough to digest a sand-car. It being work or beg, I says, “Here’s where I break the ethics of my chosen profession and strike for a job.” There was nothing doing until one of the hands mentioned, for a joke, that a waiter was wanted for the dining-room where the nigger jockeys ate. “It is only a matter of sentiment,” said I to myself, “and my Massachusetts ancestors fit and bled and died to make freedmen out of the sons of Ham. Here goes for a feed.” I took the place, collecting a breakfast in advance, and threw chow for three meals at coloured gentlemen who buried it with their knives. “If I am the prodigal son,” says I to myself, “these are the swine, all right.”

There was a black exercise-boy in the bunch who played the prize Berkshire hog. He was rather big for a man about the stables. Superstition held that he could lick everything of his weight on earth, and he acted as though he was a front-page feature in the Police Gazette. During the fourth meal he got gay over my frank, untrammelled way of passing soup. By way of repartee, I dropped the tray, tucked up my apron, and cleared for action.

First, I wiped off one end of the table with him, the way the hired girl handles crumbs. Then I hauled him out into the light of day, so as not to muss the dining-room, and stood him up against the pump, and gave him the Countercheck Quarrelsome. He was long on life and muscle, but short on science, and he swung miles wide. After I’d ducked and countered two attempts, he dropped his head all of a sudden. I saw what was coming. I got out of range and let him butt, and when he came into my zone of fire I gave him the knee good and proper. His face faded into a gaudy ruin.

The superintendent came down to restore order, and saw how merrily I jousted. He was a bit strict, but he was a true Peruvian in some ways, and he loved a scrapper. That night I got a hurry call to the office, and walked away James Wiswell Coffin 3d, anointed assistant rubber. After the season was over at Louisville, we pulled up stakes and hiked on to Chicago, following the circuit. When we moved I was raised to night-watchman—forty and found. Nothing happened until close to the end of the season at Chicago, except that I ate regularly. Money was easy in that part. Whenever I picked up any of it I looked around for good things in the betting. Without springing myself any, I cleaned up a little now and then, and when the big chance came I was $200 to the good.

This is the way that Fate laid herself open, so that I could get in one short-armed jab ere she countered hard. It was the night before a big race, really more important to us than the Derby. Everyone around the stables was bughouse with it. Before I went out on watch, the superintendent—his name was Tatum, please remember that—lined me up and told me that he’d have me garrotted, electrocuted, and crucified if there was a hair so much as crossed on either of our entries. We had two of them, Maduro and Maltese. The pair sold at six to five. Outside and in, it looked as though the old man hadn’t had a cup nailed so hard for years. The trainers were sleeping beside the ponies, but I was supposed to look in every half hour to see how things were coming on. At midnight Tatum came round and repeated his remarks, which riled me a bit, and Maduro’s trainer said he would turn in for a little sleep.

The next call, for Heaven knows what nutty reason, I got back to Maduro’s stall a quarter ahead of the hour. There was about a teaspoonful of light coming through the cracks. I got an eye to a knot-hole, and saw things happening. There was Maduro trussed like a rib-roast, and trying to jump, and there was the trainer—“Honest Bob” they used to call him—poking a lead-pencil up her nose. He said a swear word and began to feel around in the mare’s nostril, and pulled out a sponge. He squeezed it up tight and stuffed it back, and began to poke again. That was the cue for my grand entry.

“Good-morning,” I said through the hole; “you’re sleeping bully.” I was cutting and sarcastic, because I knew what was up. The sponge-game—stuff it up a horse’s nose, and he can walk and get around the same as ever, but when he tries to run, he’s a grampus.

He was too paralysed even to chuck the pencil. He stood there with his hands down and his mouth open.

“Oh, hello,” he said, when his wind blew back. “I was just doctoring the mare to make her sleep.” All this time I’d been opening the latch of the door, and I slid into the corner.

“Oh, sure,” said I, displaying my gun so that it would be conspicuous, but not obtrusive. “I suppose you’d like to have me send for Mr. Tatum. He’d like to hold her little hoof and bend above her dreams,” says I.

“Oh, there’s no necessity for bothering him,” said “Honest Bob,” in a kind of conciliatory way, and edging nearer to me all the time. I might have been caught if I hadn’t noticed that his right hand was lifted just a bit with the two first fingers spread. I learned that game with the alphabet. You slide in on your man, telling him all the time that he is your lootsy-toots, until you get your right in close, and then you shoot that fork into both his lamps. He can neither see nor shoot nor hit until his eyes clear out, which gives you time to do him properly. “Honest Bob” was taking a long chance.

I guarded my eyes and shoved the gun in his face. I felt like Old Nick Carter.

“How much do you want?” said he, all of a sudden.

“The honour of the Coffins never stoops to bribery,” said I; “but if you’ll tell me what’s going to win to-morrow, I’ll talk business. If the tip’s straight, I forget all about this job.”

“Early Rose,” he said.

“The devil you say!” said I. Early Rose was selling at twenty-five to one. I gave it to him oblique and perpendicular that if his tip was crooked I would peach and put him out of business for life. He swore that he was in the know. For the rest of that night I omitted Maduro’s stall and did some long-distance thinking.

I could see only one way out of it. Maduro loses sure, thinks I, and whether it’s to be Early Rose or not, there’s an investigation coming that involves little Jimmy 3d. What’s the matter with winning a pot of money and then disappearing in a self-sacrificing spirit, so that “Honest Bob” can lay it all to me? I was sick of the job, anyway.

What happened next day has passed into the history of the turf, but the thing that wasn’t put into the papers was the fact that I was in on Early Rose with one hundred and ninety plunks at twenty-five to one. He staggered home at the head of a groggy bunch that wilted at the three-quarters. I sloped for the ring and drew down $4,940. Just what happened, and whether the nags were all doped or not, I don’t know to this day, but there must be more in this horse-racing business than doth appear to the casual dÉbutante.

Two minutes after I left the bookies I was headed for the overland train. Just as we pulled out, I looked back, proud like a lion, for a last gloat at Chicago. There, on the platform, was that man Tatum, with a gang from the stables, acting as though he were looking for someone. In the front of the mob, shaking his fist and doing the virtuous in a manner that shocked and wounded, was “Honest Bob.” I took the tip, dropped off two stations down the line, doubled back on a local to a child’s size Illinois town, and rusticated there three days.

I’d had time to think, and this was the way it looked: Where the broad Pacific blends with the land of freedom and railway prospecti, the Mistress of the Pacific dreams among her hills. Beneath her shades lie two universities with building plans and endowments. It occurred to me that I’d better make two packages of my money. One of nine hundred was to get me out to San Francisco and show me the town in a manner befitting my birth and station. The other was to transport me like a dream through one of the aforesaid universities on a thousand a year, showing the co-eds what football was like. With my diplomas and press notices tucked under my arm, I would then report at the residence of James Wiswell Coffin 2d, at South Framingham, and receive a father’s blessing.

By the time I’d landed at this Midway Plaisance and bought a few rags, the small package looked something like four hundred dollars. It was at this stage of the game that I met the woman starring as the villainess in this weird tale. We went out to the Emeryville track together. All of my four hundred that I didn’t pay for incidentals I lost the first day out.

But that makes no never mind, says I to myself; it’s easy to go through a California university on seven-fifty per, and besides, a college course ought to be three years instead of four. So I dipped into the big pile. Let us drop the quick curtain. When it rises I am centre stage in the Palace Hotel, ninety-dollar overcoats and pin-checked cutaways to right and left, katzenjammer R. U. E., a week’s board-bill hovering in the flies above me—and strapped. I gets up, puts my dress-suit into its case, tucks in a sweater and a bunch of ties, tells the clerk that I am going away for a day or so, and will leave my baggage until I can come back and settle, and walks into the cold, wet world.

The dress-suit brought eight dollars. That fed me and slept me in a little room on Third Street for a week. After dragging the ties through every pawn-shop from Tar Flat to the Iron Works, I got a dollar for them. They cost twenty. Next was the suit-case—two and a half. The third day after that I had dropped the last cent, and was leaving my lodgings two jumps ahead of the landlord, a great coarse Swede.

I hadn’t a thing but the clothes on my back. In a vacant basement of a house on Folsom Street I found a front step invisible to the naked eye of the cop on the beat. There I took lodgings. I got two meals by trading my trousers for a cheaper pair and twenty cents to boot from the Yiddish man in the shop above. When that was gone I roamed this grand old city for four days and three nights, and never did such a vulgar thing as eat. That’s no Child’s Dream of a Star.

The fourth day was a study in starvation. Dead serious, joshing aside, that was about as happy a time as I ever put in. I forgot that I was hungry, and up against the real thing. I saw myself like some other guy that I had a line on, chasing about ’Frisco in that fix. I myself was warm and comfortable, and having a dreamy sort of a time wandering about.

I was strolling down Kearney Street, listening to the birds singing through the haze, when something that wore scrambled whiskers and an ash-barrel hat advised me to go down to Broadway wharf and take a chance with the fruit bums. He steered me the proper course, and I smoked the pipe along Broadway. There was the wharf all right, and there was a whole cargo of bananas being lifted on a derrick and let down. Once in a while one would drop. The crowd underneath would make a jump and fight for it. I stood there wondering if I really wanted any bananas, or if it was worth while to eat, seeing that I’d have to do it again, and was now pretty well broken of the habit, when a big, scaly bunch got loose from the stem and began to shake and shiver. I got under it and made a fair catch, and went through the centre with it the way I used to go through the Yale Freshmen line. There were seventeen bananas, and I ate them all.

Next thing, I began to feel thirsty. So I marched up to that Coggswell joke on Ben Franklin, somewhere in the dance-hall district, and foundered myself with water. After that I crawled into a packing-box back of a wood-yard, and for two days I was as sick as Ham, Shem, and Japhet the second day out on the Ark.

When I got better I was hungry again. It was bananas or nothing. I found them carting off the cargo, and managed to pick up quite a load in one way or another. After dark I took up two piles and salted them down back of my packing-box. Next day, pretty weak yet, I stayed at home and ate bananas. When the new moon shone like a ripe banana-peel in the heavens of the next night, I never wanted to see a banana as long as I lived. Nathless, me lieges, they were all that I had. After breakfast next morning, I shook my clothes out, hid the sweater, and put on my collar to go downtown. On the way I couldn’t look at the bananas on the fruit-stands. At the end of the line I bumped into a big yellow building with arches on its front and a sign out:

“Football players please see Secretary.” I looked and saw that it was the Y. M. C. A. “Aha,” says I, “maybe I dine.”

I sang a good spiel to the Secretary. They were getting up a light-weight team and wanted talent. Thanking the gods that I was an end instead of a centre, I spun him some dream about the Harlem Y. M. C. A. He said report that afternoon. I went back, choked down ten bananas for strength, and got out on the field in a borrowed suit. They lined up for only five minutes, but that was time enough for me to show what I could do.

I waited after the game to hear someone say training-table, and no one peeped. I stood around, making myself agreeable, and they said come around to the Wednesday socials, but no one asked me to say grace at his humble board. By the time I had washed up and got back home to the packing-box, I was the owner of such a fifty-horse-power hunger that I simply had to eat more bananas. I swore then and there that it was my finish. Why, the taste of them was so strong that my tongue felt like a banana-peel!

After dinner I piked back to the Y. M. C. A., seeing that it was my only opening, and began to study the Christian Advocate in the reading-room. And the first thing that I saw was a tailor-made that looked as though it had been ironed on her, and a pair of coffee-coloured eyes as big as doughnuts.

As I rubbered at her over the paper I saw her try to open one of the cases where they kept the silver cups. That was my cue. It wasn’t two minutes before I was showing her around like a director. I taught her some new facts about the Y. M. C. A., all right, all right. She was a Tribune woman doing a write-up, and she caught my game proper. We’d got to the gym, and I was giving the place all the world’s indoor athletic records, when she turned those lamps on me and said:

“You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t?” says I. “Don’t I strike you for as good a little Y. M. C. A.’ser as there is in the business?”

She looked me over as though she were wondering if I was somebody’s darling, and said in a serious way:

“My mother and I have supper at home. My brother’s just come on from the East, and I’d like to have you meet him. Could you join us this evening?”

Realising the transparency of that excuse for a lady-like poke-out, I tried to get haughty and plead a previous engagement, but the taste of bananas rose up in my mouth and made me half-witted. When we parted she had me dated and doddering over the prospects. Then I raised my hand to my chin and felt the stubble. “A shave is next in order,” says I. So I stood at the door and scanned the horizon. Along comes the football captain. If he was in the habit of shaving himself, I gambled that I would dine with a clean face. I made myself as pleasant as possible. Pretty soon he began to shift feet.

“Going down the street?” said I. “Well, I’ll walk along.” We got to his lodgings. “Going in?” said I. “Well, I’d like to see your quarters,” and I walked in. “Pretty rooms. That’s a nice safety razor you have there. How do you strop it?” He showed me, kind of wondering, and I said, “How’s your shaving-soap?” He brought it. “Looks good,” said I, heading for the washstand. I jerked in a jet of cold water, mixed it up, lathered my face, and began to shave, handing out chin-music all the time about Social Settlement work. He said never a word. It was a case of complete paralysis. When I had finished I begged to be excused. He hadn’t even the strength to see me to the door.

Oh, the joy of walking to Jones Street, realising with every step that I was going to have something to take the taste of bananas out of my mouth! I got to playing wish with myself. I had just decided on a tenderloin rare-to-medium, and Bass ale, when I bumped on her house and the cordial welcome. It was one of those little box flats where the dining-room opens by a folding-door off the living-room.

“Can you wait here just a minute?” said the girl with the doughnut orbs, “I want you to meet my brother.”

She was gone longer than I expected. She was a thoroughbred to leave such a hobo as me alone with the silver. It got so that I just had to look at the scene of the festivities. It was here, all right, a genuine Flemish quarter-sawed oak dining-table, all set, and me going to have my first square meal for ten days. About that time I heard two voices in the back of the house. One was the girl’s; the other was a baritone that sounded mighty familiar. I explored farther, and the next clew was a photograph on the mantel that lifted my hair out of its socket.

It was signed “Your loving brother, John,” and it was the picture of John Tatum, the manager of Burke’s stables!

I saw my dinner dwindling in the distance. I saw myself breakfasting on bananas, and says I, “Not on your hard luck.” I wouldn’t swipe the silver, but, by all the gods of hunger, if there was a scrap to eat in that dining-room I was going to have it. I ran through the sideboard; nothing but salt, pepper, vinegar, and mustard. China closet; nothing but dishes. There was only one more place in the whole room where grub could be kept. That was a sort of ticket-window arrangement in the far corner. Footsteps coming; “Last chance,” says I, and breaks for it like a shot. I grabbed the handle and tore it open.

And there was a large, fine plate of rich, golden, mealy bananas!