A companionable deputy sheriff, a hospitable
townsman, and "the best-natured wife on
earth" inspires Pierrepont's pen to the
narration of lively incidents.

Jasper, Ind., July 21, 189—

My Dear Father:

I am surprised that my broker should have given you the particulars of my little flyer in short ribs—I mean ribs short—and in future I shall patronize another broker. The few hundreds I made in that deal I had relied upon to dispose of a little bill I owe in Chicago. When it started it wasn't quite so much like the national debt as it is now; but the fact is, I have been carting a deputy sheriff round the country for three weeks, paying for his time and board. Now you want me to return the check, endorsed to the treasurer of some orphanage. If you saw that deputy sheriff you wouldn't have the heart. If I sent you back the check it was lost in the mail and we'll forget it.

I've been so busy arranging to sell carloads of our stuff that I really haven't been able to write before, but when I got rid of that deputy a great load was removed from my mind. It's a tough thing to go in to try and sell a hard proposition a bill of goods—this is a euphemism in our case—and know that the eye of the law is glued upon the show-window, lest you escape by the back door. If I'm to keep up my present spurt in the market you'll have to raise the limit. Thirty a week might do for a drummer when you started business, but for a commercial traveller of to-day it's only tip money. I'm making good now, and if I'm not worth more than thirty I'm useless to you. I may mention in passing that I've had an offer from Soper & Co. to jump over to them. They don't know I'm your son. They know that I'm the same fellow who was at your mailing desk a while back, and probably cannot imagine that you would treat your only the way I was treated. You will agree with me that business is business and I can learn it quite as well selling car lots for Soper as for any one else. A word to the wise—and to the cashier—is sufficient.

Don't worry about my becoming a victim to gambling on margin. Your tip on the market—that you will fire me if I keep it up—is valuable. I will see to it that you hear no more of my trading. I should not have taken this particular flyer had it not been for the fact that you wrote the last sheet of one of your recent letters on the back of a typewritten note from Gamble & Chance, in which they advised you that they had placed your order to sell ribs short. I just made up my mind that what was good enough for pop must be real velvet for sonny. You know you have always urged me to follow your example. I am quite certain that, now you are in possession of the full facts, you will revise your idea about that check. At all events, as I have hinted, that particular check is so full of bank teller's stamps that its own father would scarcely know it.

I never did take much stock in trading "on 'change." It's a form of gambling where interest is sacrificed by the fact that you do not see the ball rolled or the cards dealt. Even when you see the play you may be up against a brace game, so what can you expect when two or three big dealers, like my revered parent, get together and mark the cards for a big game? Anyway, I'd rather bet any day on something straight. If a man gambles on whether the sun will shine or not on certain days he may be unlucky enough to lose every trip, but he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that no thimble rigging in somebody's back office introduced the clouds.

Finance, as I understand it, is the art of making the other fellow's dollar work for the financier; but this requires a sort of hypnotism that I do not yet possess. I may grow to it; indeed, now that I find myself able to sell the goods manufactured by our house, I am almost afraid to look a mirror in the face lest I discover that I am possessed of the evil eye. The "marts of trade," as the poet puts it, strike me as queer places. The interior of a stock or produce exchange is certainly an understudy for bedlam, if my imagination is correct.

"Give you 86 for C.P. & N.," shouts one.

"No," comes the reply, "want 86 and an eighth."

"All right."

"Sold."

"I'll take 500."

And nobody takes a thing, for the man who sells it hasn't got it and the man who buys don't want it. No wonder the poor lambs lose their fleece and their heads. Nevertheless, that short-rib check was a life-saver.

I was actually so poor that I had to descend to living in lodgings for three days. Think of it, the heir of Graham & Co. in lodgings! What would "the street" say of that? But I have found that the Graham credit is all covered with N.G.'s at the hotels and I scarcely cared to come home with a deputy sheriff among my excess baggage. So I went into lodgings in an "over Sunday" town. It gave me a lesson on the danger of officiousness that I'm not likely to forget, but, although for a few minutes I could see the danger lights of a sound thrashing dead ahead, it ended pleasantly. Lodgings were hard to find, but the cigar store man finally recommended me to a place. The woman who answered my ring was willing to let me—and the sheriff—a room, but before we arranged terms she took me one side and made an explanation.

Her husband, she said, was apt to stay out very late at night in convivial company and I might be disturbed by his noise when he came home. I assured her that, as a patron of hotels, I was quite used to this sort of thing, and forthwith negotiated for the use of her front parlor. About two o'clock in the morning we were awakened by the sound of bacchanalian revelry outside the window. I looked out and saw a man on the grassplot in front of the house. He was just able to move—and howl—and his frantic struggles to get on his feet were funnier than Milligan's attempts to put on superior airs.

"Ah, the inebriate husband!" I said to the sheriff, who agreed with me that it would be a good scheme to get him off the lawn and into the house. So we slipped on enough clothing to cover the law and the major part of our persons and went out. The serenader was light weight and we carried him up the steps without difficulty. He stopped singing long enough to roar:

"Whas-yer-doin'—lemme go—lemme go, I tell yer."

"Come to bed," I said, soothingly.

"Done wan ter go ter bed—never go t' bed Sat'day night," he hiccoughed. "This not (hic) my bed."

We bore him into the front hall, and laid him down to get a fresh hold for the journey upstairs. He was happy again and started a new song. Just then a light appeared at the top of the stairs, and I saw the landlady's face peering over the balustrade. In my most courteous manner I asked:

"Shall we bring him upstairs, madam?"

"Who?" she asked.

"Your husband."

She did not reply, but another voice did. "I am her husband, sir," and another head, with a jolly face and a big moustache, appeared beside the landlady's.

We dumped our operatic load across the street and I hid my shamed head in the pillows, making a sacred vow that for ever more I shall keep very busy attending to my own affairs. This led to a very pleasant Sunday for me—and the sheriff—however. The landlady's husband could take a joke—especially when it was on me, and at breakfast we became very good friends. He invited me to his club and we—and the legal limb—spent the afternoon there. His face grew bigger and jollier each hour, and finally he became very confidential. Referring to his own peccadilloes, he made the statement that he had the best-natured wife in the world. I had no reason to controvert this, but he seemed to think that I doubted it, and went on to accumulate testimony.

"We've never had a quarrel yet, though we've been married sixteen years," he declared. "I'll bet that no matter what I might do when I go home, she'd smile through it all."

This didn't interest me, but my legal guardian seemed curious. He even went so far as to doubt our friend. It wasn't long before they had patched up some sort of a wager between them. The husband was to go home to supper, appear intoxicated, raise a row, break dishes and otherwise generally make an ass of himself. If his wife kept her temper it was on the sheriff, and vice versa.

Bill—his name was William Jenks—started off ahead. We were to follow at a distance and observe results from the yard. Bill began to totter and sway as he neared the house, and presently Mrs. J. ran out of the front gate to meet him. She picked up his hat from the ground, brushed it and put it on, and then kissed him. Then she guided his uncertain legs into the house. When we reached the window which looked into the parlor we saw Bill sitting on the floor, howling incoherencies at his wife, who was trying to help him pull off his shoes. When they were off he commanded: "Put 'em on the mantelpiece," and she did it. Then he got up and staggered across the room and fell, just before he reached a sofa.

"What did yer pull sofa 'way for?" he howled.

"Oh, William, forgive me. I didn't know. I'm so awkward. Did you hurt yourself?" And she tried to help him up. But he wouldn't get up, and continued to abuse her like a pickpocket. Finally she induced him to go into the dining-room and sit down at the supper table. As a prelude he shied a teacup past her head and against the wall. Then he pulled away the tablecloth and with it the dishes, and sat down on the floor amid the ruins.

What did that wonder of a woman do but plump down on the floor in front of him and say, with a smile as of gratified pleasure, "Why, William, isn't this nice? We haven't eaten on the floor since we were married. So like the old picnic days!" Then she tried to rearrange the broken crockery and rescue the supper. It was too much for me, and I guess Bill thought he had gone far enough, for he began to smile and abandoned his assumed inebriety.

"Mary, my dear," he said, "I brought home a couple of friends to supper. They're outside and—"

"Brought home friends to supper," cried his wife, jumping to her feet, "brought them home to supper, did you, without notice to me, when you knew it was Sally's afternoon out? I'll teach you," and she set both hands in his hair and shook him. "I've stood your freaks for sixteen years and been patient and loving, but this is more than human nature is capable of. Friends? No warning? What would they think of me?"

Our entrance relieved the tragedy, but Jenks was terror-stricken. The surprise was too much for him. For the first time he realized that even the most docile of women have reservations and that every worm has some turning point. He finally explained the joke and it was received with his wife's smiles. He was desperately anxious to square himself and then and there presented her with twenty dollars, to which the sheriff added the ten-dollar bill which he insisted he had lost on the wager. I saw Jenks the following evening. "You'll never guess," he said, "what that woman did with the thirty?"

I acknowledged my incapacity to cope with the subject.

"Bought me a smoking-jacket, a meerschaum pipe and three boxes of Havanas. And, my boy," he added, "I've quit drinking. She's so good that I'm going to see all I can of her in my lifetime, for we'll keep house separately in the next world."

I guess he's right, for they'll certainly feel called upon to build a special alcove in heaven when she reaches there.

Your snappy observation that the poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires strikes me in a very sensitive spot. I realize its truth, and I can assure you that if something is not done speedily to decrease the discrepancy between my income and my outgo, there will be a sensational story for the newspapers, with cuts—cuts of you and me, with possibly a picture of the hog plant thrown in for decorative purposes. If you think this would be a good ad., I'll play the cards as they lay. If not, please see to it that my expense accounts are accepted more in the spirit in which they are made.

My ex-guardian, the sheriff, has given me many pointers on how to escape the debt trap—it was after I settled his particular claim—but I don't think you'd care to have me get a reputation as a shirker of obligations. Sometimes, though, the escapes from the clutches of the law are very amusing. The sheriff tells of a good one that happened recently in Indianapolis. It seems that a young spendthrift was arrested for debt on the very day he was to be married to a wealthy widow. Knowledge of his plight would put an end to his expectations in this direction, and he was at his wits' ends as the two officers escorted him along the street.

In front of the City Hall a carriage was standing and as they approached the mayor of the city entered it and conversed for a moment through the window with a friend.

Mr. Spendthrift had an inspiration and said to the officers: "You know that gentleman who got into that carriage?"

"Yes," said one of them, "It's Mayor B——."

"Well, he's my uncle, and if I ask him he'll see me out of this thing. You'll take his guarantee, of course."

The deputies thought it would be satisfactory and when they reached the carriage the men hung back. The young man took off his hat and put his head into the carriage window just as it was about to start.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor," he said, "but there are two men with me who have influence in the seventh ward. They say they'll be glad to work for you at the election next week if you'll give them any encouragement."

"Very well," said the mayor, "bring them here."

The spendthrift beckoned to the deputies and they approached. The mayor looked them over and said: "Come around to my office at 5 o'clock this afternoon and I'll fix up this matter." Then he drove off and the spendthrift borrowed half a dollar of one of the deputies, went and got shaved and then married.

I simply mention this to illustrate to what extremities an appetite for truffles and mushrooms may lead a young man whose pocket money prescribes cheese sandwiches and spinach. For the honor of the name I must not be permitted to be set down as deficient in credit. This really must appeal to you. As you say, a man must not overwork a dollar, and the thirty of them I am now receiving per week get fatigued to a standstill within twenty-four hours after I make their acquaintance.

Yours in trust,
P.

P.S. I would respectfully suggest that you do not show this letter to mother. The story of Bill Jenk's wife might not appeal to her.

The Son's Society Girl.

LETTER NO. XV.