THE BOSS OF LITTLE ARCADY
TO
MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
"A chestin' out his chest lahk a ole ma'ash frawg"
"And yet I have been pestered by cheap flings at my personal bearing"
"We might get him to make a barrel of it for the Sunday-school picnic"
"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present"
"THE BOOK OF COLONEL POTTS."
CHAPTER I
Late last Thursday evening one Jonas Rodney Potts, better known to this community as "Upright" Potts, stumbled into the mill-race, where it had providentially been left open just north of Cady's mill. Everything was going along finely until two hopeless busybodies were attracted to the spot by his screams, and fished him out. It is feared that he will recover. We withhold the names of his rescuers, although under strong temptation to publish them broadcast.—Little Arcady Argus of May 21st.
Looking back to that time from a happier present, I am filled by a genuine awe of J. Rodney Potts. Reflecting upon those benign ends which the gods chose to make him serve, I can but marvel how lightly each of us may meet and scorn a casual Potts, unrecking his gracious and predestined office in the play of Fate.
Of the present—to me—supreme drama of the Little Country, I can only say that the gods had selected their agent with a cunning so flawless that suspicion of his portents could not well have been aroused in one lacking discernment like unto the gods' very own. So trivially, so utterly, so pitiably casual, to eyes of the flesh, was this Potts of Little Arcady, from his immortal soul to the least item of his inferior raiment!
Thus craftily are we fooled by the Lords of Destiny, whose caprice it is to affect remoteness from us and a lofty unconcern for our poor little doings.
There is bitterness in the lines of that Argus paragraph, and a flippant incivility might be read between them by the least discerning.
Arcady of the Little Country, however, knows there is neither bitterness nor real cynicism in Solon Denney, founder, editor, and proprietor of the Little Arcady Argus; motto, "Hew to the Line, Let the Chips Fall Where they May!" Indeed, we do know Solon. Often enough has the Argus hewn inexorably to the line, when that line led straight through the heart of its guiding genius and through the hearts of us all. One who had seen him, as I did, stand uncovered in the presence of his new Washington hand-press, the day that dynamo of Light was erected in the Argus office, could never suppose him to lack humanity or the just reverence demanded by his craft.
We may concede without disloyalty that Solon is peculiar unto himself. In his presence you are cursed with an unquiet suspicion that he may become frivolous with you at any moment,—may, indeed, be so at that moment, despite a due facial gravity and tones of weight,—for he will not infrequently seem to be both trivial and serious in the same breath. Again, he is amazingly sensitive for one not devoid of humor. In a pleasant sense he is acutely aware of himself, and he does not dislike to know that you feel his quality. Still again, he is bound to spice his writing. Were it his lot to report events on the Day of Judgment, I believe the Argus account would be thought too highly colored by many persons of good taste.
But Little Arcady knows that Solon is loyal to its welfare—knows that he is fit to wield the mightiest lever of Civilization in its behalf on Wednesday of each week.
We know now, moreover, that an undercurrent of circumstance existed which did not even ripple the surface of that apparently facetious brutality hurled at J. Rodney Potts.
The truth may not be told in a word. But it was in this affair that Solon Denney won his title of "Boss of Little Arcady," a title first rendered unto him somewhat in derision, I regret to say, by a number of our leading citizens, who sought, as it were, to make sport of him.
It began in a jest, as do all the choicest tragedies of the gods,—a few lines of idle badinage, meant to spice Solon's column of business locals with a readable sprightliness. The thing was printed, in fact, between "Let Harpin Cust shine your face with his new razors" and "See that line of clocks at Chislett's for sixty cents. They look like cuckoos and keep good time." "Not much news this week," the item blithely ran, "so we hereby start the rumor that 'Upright' Potts is going to leave town. We would incite no community to lawless endeavor, but—may the Colonel encounter swiftly in his new environment that warm reception to which his qualities of mind, no less than his qualities of heart, so richly entitle him,—that reception, in short, which our own debilitated public spirit has timidly refused him. We claim the right to start any rumor of this sort that will cheer the souls of an admiring constituency. Now is the time to pay up that subscription."
The intention, of course, was openly playful—a not subtle sally meant to be read and forgotten. Yet—will it be credited?—more than one of us read it so hurriedly, perhaps with so passionate a longing to have it the truth, as not to perceive its satirical indirections. The rumor actually lived for a day that Potts was to disembarrass the town of his presence.
And then, from the fictitious stuff of this rumor was spawned a veritable inspiration. Several of our most public-spirited citizens seemed to father it simultaneously.
"Why should Potts not leave town—why should he not seek out a new field of effort?"
"Field of effort" was a rank bit of poesy, it being certain that Potts would never make an effort worthy of the name in any field whatsoever; but the sense of it was plain. Increasingly with the years had plans been devised to alleviate the condition of Potts's residence among us. Some of these had required a too definite and artificial abruptness in the mechanics of his removal; others, like Eustace Eubanks's plot for having all our best people refuse to notice him, depended upon a sensitiveness in the person aimed at which he did not possess. Besides, there had been talk of disbarring him from the practice of his profession, and I, as a lawyer, had been urged to instigate that proceeding. Unquestionably there was ground for it.
But now this random pleasantry of Solon Denney's set our minds to working in another direction.
In the broad, pleasant window of the post-office, under the "NO LOAFING HERE!" sign, half a dozen of us discussed it while we waited for the noon mail. There seemed to be a half-formed belief that Potts might adroitly be made to perceive advantages in leaving us.
"It's a whole lot better to manipulate and be subtle in a case like this," suggested the editor of the Argus. "Threats of violence, forcible expulsion, disbarment proceedings—all crude—and besides they won't move Potts. Jonas Rodney may not be gifted with a giant intellect, but he is cunning."
"The cunning of a precocious boy," prompted Eustace Eubanks, who was one of us. "He is well aware that we would not dare attempt lawless violence."
"Exactly, Eustace," answered Solon. "I tell you, gentlemen, this thriving little town needs a canning factory, as we all know; but more than a canning factory it needs a Boss,—one of those strong characters that make tools of their fellow-men, who rule our cities with an iron hand but take care to keep the hand in a velvet glove,—a Boss that is diplomatic, yet an autocrat."
That careless use of the term "Boss" was afterward seen to be unfortunate for Solon. They remembered it against him.
"That's right," said Westley Keyts. "Let's be diplomatic with him."
"How would you begin, Westley, if you don't mind telling us?" Solon had already begun to shape a scheme of his own.
"Why," answered Westley, looking very earnest, "just go up to him in a quiet, refined manner—no blustering, understand—and say in a low tone, kind of off-hand but serious, 'Now, look a' here, Potts, old boy, let's talk this thing over like a couple of gentlemen had ought to.' 'Well,
We had listened patiently enough, but this was too summary. Westley Keyts is our butcher, a good, honest, energetic, downright business man with a square forehead and a blunt jaw and red hair that bristles with challenges. But he seems compelled to say too nearly what he means to render him useful in negotiations requiring any considerable finesse.
"We were speaking, Westley, of the gentle functions of diplomacy," remarked Solon, cuttingly. "Of course, we could waylay Potts and kill him with one of your cleavers and have his noble head stuffed and mounted to hang up over Barney Skeyhan's bar, but it wouldn't be subtle—it would not be what the newspapers call 'a triumph of diplomacy'! And then, again, reports of it might be carried to other towns, and talk would be caused."
"Now, say," retorted Westley, somewhat abashed, "I was thinking I answered all that by winding up the way like I did, asking him,—not mad-like, you understand,—'Now will you go or won't you?' just like that. All I can say is, if that ain't diplomacy, then I don't know what in Time diplomacy is!"
I think we conceded this, in silence, be it understood, for Westley is respected. But we looked to Solon for a more tenuous subtlety. Nor did he fail us. Two days later Potts upon the public street actually announced his early departure from Little Arcady.
To know how pleasing an excitement this created one should know more about Potts. It will have been inferred that he was objectionable. For the fact, he was objectionable in every way: as a human being, a man, a citizen, a member of the Slocum County bar, and a veteran of our late civil conflict. He was shiftless, untidy, a borrower, a pompous braggart, a trouble-maker, forever driving some poor devil into senseless litigation. Moreover, he was blithely unscrupulous in his dealings with the Court, his clients, his brother-attorneys, and his fellow-men at large. When I add that he was given to spells of hard drinking, during which he became obnoxious beyond the wildest possible dreams of that quality, it will be seen that we of Little Arcady were not without reason for wishing him away.
He had drifted casually in upon us after the war, accompanied somewhat elegantly by one John Randolph Clement Tuckerman, an ex-slave. He came with much talk of his regiment,—a fat-cheeked, florid man of forty-five or so, with shifty blue eyes and an address moderately insinuating. Very tall he was, and so erect that he seemed to lean a little backward. This physical trait, combining with a fancy for referring to himself freely as "an upright citizen of this reunited and glorious republic, sir!" had speedily made him known as "Upright" Potts. He was of a slender build and a bony frame, except in front. His long, single-breasted frock-coat hung loosely enough about his shoulders, yet buttoned tightly over a stomach that was so incongruous as to seem artificial. The sleeves of the coat were glossy from much desk rubbing, and its front advertised a rather inattentive behavior at table. The Colonel's dress was completed by drab overgaiters and poorly draped trousers of the same once-delicate hue. Upon his bald head, which was high and peaked, like Sir Walter Scott's, he carried a silk hat in an inferior state of preservation. When he began to drink it was his custom to repair at once to a barber and submit to having his side-whiskers trimmed fastidiously. Sober, he seemed to feel little pride of person, and his whiskers at such a time merely called attention somewhat unprettily to his lack of a chin. His other possessions were an ebony walking stick with a gold head and what he referred to in moments of expansion as his "library." This consisted of a copy of the Revised Statutes, a directory of Cincinnati, Ohio, for the year 1867, and two volumes of Patent Office reports.
At the time of which I speak the Colonel had long been sober, and the day that Solon Denney completed those mysterious negotiations with him he was as far from conventional standards of the beautiful as I remember to have seen him.
The guise of Solon's subtlety, the touch of his iron hand in a glove of softest velvet, had been in this wise: he had pointed out to the Colonel that there were richer fields of endeavor to the west of us; newer, larger towns, fitter abodes for a man of his parts; communities which had honors and emoluments to lavish upon the worthy,—prizes which it would doubtless never be in our poor power to bestow.
Potts was stirred by all this, but he was not blinded to certain disadvantages,—"a stranger in a strange land," etc., while in Little Arcady he had already "made himself known."
But, suggested Solon, with a ready wit, if the stranger were to go fortified with certificates of character from the leading citizens of his late home?
This was a thing to consider. Potts reflected more favorably; but still he hesitated. He was unable to believe that these certificates of his excellence might be obtained. The bar and the commercial element of Little Arcady had been cold, not to say suspicious, toward him. It was an unpleasant thing to mention, but a cabal had undeniably been formed.
Solon was politely incredulous. He pledged his word of honor as a gentleman to provide the letters,—a laudatory, an uplifting letter, from every citizen in town whose testimony would be of weight; also a half-column of fit praise in the next issue of the Argus, twelve copies of which Potts should freely carry off with him for judicious scattering about the fortunate town in which his journey should end.
Then Potts spoke openly of the expenses of travel. Solon, royally promising a purse of gold to take him on his way, clenched the winning of a neat and bloodless victory.
No one has ever denied that Denney must have employed a faultless, an incomparable tact, to bring J. Rodney Potts to this agreement. By tact alone had he achieved that which open sneers, covert insult, abuse, ridicule, contumely, and forthright threats had failed to consummate, and in the first flush of the news we all felt much as Westley Keyts said he did.
"Solon Denney is some subtler than me," said Westley, in a winning spirit of concession; "I can see that, now. He's the Boss of Little Arcady after this, all right, so far as I know."
Nevertheless, there was misgiving about the letters for Potts. Old Asa Bundy, our banker, wanted to know, somewhat peevishly, if it seemed quite honest to send Potts to another town with a satchel full of letters certifying to his rare values as a man and a citizen. What would that town think of us two or three days later?
"This is no time to split hairs, Bundy," said Solon; and I believe I added, "Don't be quixotic, Mr. Bundy!"
Hereupon Westley Keyts broke in brightly.
"Why, now, they'll see in a minute that the whole thing was meant as a joke. They'll see that the laugh is on them, and they'll have a lot of fun out of it, and then send the old cuss along to another town with some more funny letters to fool the next ones." "That's all very well, but it isn't high conduct," insisted Bundy.
Westley Keyts now achieved the nearest approach to diplomacy I have ever known of him.
"Oh, well, Asa,
"We must use common sense in these matters, you know, Bundy," observed Solon, judicially.
And that sophistry prevailed, for we were weak unto faintness from our burden.
We gave letters setting forth that J. Rodney Potts was the ideal inhabitant of a city larger than our own. We glowed in describing the virtues of our departing townsman; his honesty of purpose, his integrity of character, his learning in the law, his wide range of achievement, civic and military,—all those attributes that fitted him to become a stately ornament and a tower of strength to any community larger in the least degree than our own modest town.
And there was the purse. Fifty dollars was suggested by Eustace Eubanks, but Asa Bundy said that this would not take Potts far enough. Eustace said that a man could travel an immense distance for fifty dollars. Bundy retorted that an ordinary man might perhaps go far enough on that sum, but not Potts.
"If we are to perpetrate this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back—" We all nodded to this.
"—and another thing, the farther away from this town those letters are read,—why, the better for our reputations."
A hundred dollars it was. Purse and letters were turned over to Solon Denney to deliver to Potts. The Argus came out with its promised eulogy, a thing so fulsome that any human being but J. Rodney Potts would have sickened to read it of himself.
But our little town was elated. One could observe that last day a subdued but confident gayety along its streets as citizens greeted one another.
On every hand were good fellowship and kind words, the light-hearted salute, the joyous mien. It was an occasion that came near to being festal, and Solon Denney was its hero. He sought to bear his honors with the modesty that is native to him, but in his heart he knew that we now spoke of him glibly as the Boss of Little Arcady, and the consciousness of it bubbled in his manner in spite of him.
When it was all over,—though I had not once raised my voice in protest, and had frankly connived with the others,—I confess that I felt shame for us and pity for the friendless man we were sending out into the world. Something childlike in his acceptance of the proposal, a few phrases of naive enthusiasm for his new prospects, repeated to me by Solon, touched me strangely. It was, therefore, with real embarrassment that I read the Argus notice. "With profound regret," it began, "we are obliged to announce to our readers the determination of our distinguished fellow-townsman, Colonel J. Rodney Potts, to shake the dust of Little Arcady from his feet. Deaf to entreaties from our leading citizens, the gallant Colonel has resolved that in simple justice to himself he must remove to some larger field of action, where his native genius, his flawless probity, and his profound learning in the law may secure for him those richer rewards which a man of his unusual caliber commendably craves and so abundantly merits."
There followed an overflowing half-column of warmest praise, embodying felicitations to the unnamed city so fortunate as to secure this "peerless pleader and Prince of Gentlemen." It ended with the assurance that Colonel Potts would take with him the cordial good-will of every member of a community to which he had endeared himself, no less by his sterling civic virtues than by his splendid qualities of mind and heart.
The thing filled me with an indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his new field of endeavor.
CHAPTER II
I awoke the next morning under most vivid portents of calamity. I believe I am neither notional, nor given to small, vulgar superstitions, but I have learned that this peculiar sensation is never without significance. I remember that I felt it the night our wagon bridge went out by high water. I tried to read the presentiment as I dressed. But not until I was shaving did it relate itself to the going out of Potts. Then the illumination came with a speed so electric that I gashed my chin under the shock of it. Instantly I seemed to know, as well as I know to-day, that the Potts affair had, in some manner, been botched.
So apprehensive was I that I lingered an hour on my little riverside porch, dreading the events that I felt the day must unfold. Inevitably, however, I was drawn to the centre of things. Turning down Main Street at the City Hotel corner, on the way to my office, I had to pass the barber-shop of Harpin Cust, in front of which I found myself impelled to stop. Looking over the row of potted geraniums in the window, I beheld Colonel Potts in the chair, swathed to the chin in the barber's white cloth, a gaze of dignified admiration riveted upon his counterpart in the mirror. Seen thus, he was not without a similarity to pictures of the Matterhorn, his bare, rugged peak rising fearsomely above his snow-draped bulk. Harpin appeared to be putting the last snipping touches to the Colonel's too-long neglected side-whiskers. On the table lay his hat and gold-headed cane, and close at hand stood his bulging valise.
I walked hastily on. The thing was ominous. Yet, might it not merely denote that Potts wished to enter upon his new life well barbered? The bulging bag supported this possibility, and yet I was ill at ease.
Reaching my office, I sought to engage myself with the papers of an approaching suit, but it was impossible to ignore the darkling cloud of disaster which impended. I returned to the street anxiously.
On my way to the City Hotel, where I had resolved to await like a man what calamity there might be, I again passed the barber-shop.
Harpin Cust now leaned, gracefully attentive, on the back of the empty chair, absently swishing his little whisk broom. Before him was planted Potts, his left foot advanced, his head thrown back, reading to Harpin from a spread page of the Argus. I divined that he was reading Solon's comment upon himself, and I shuddered.
As I paused at the door of the hotel Potts emerged from the barber-shop. In one hand he carried his bag, in the other his cane and the Little Arcady Argus. His hat was a bit to one side, and it seemed to me that he was leaning back farther than usual. He had started briskly down the street in the opposite direction from me, but halted on meeting Eustace Eubanks. The Colonel put down his bag and they shook hands. Eustace seemed eager to pass on, but the Colonel detained him and began reading from the Argus. His voice carried well on the morning air, and various phrases, to which he gave the full meed of emphasis, floated to me on the gentle breeze. "That peerless pleader and Prince of Gentlemen," came crisply to my ears. Eustace appeared to be restive, but the Colonel, through caution, or, perhaps, mere friendliness, had moored him by a coat lapel.
The reading done, I saw that Eustace declined some urgent request of the Colonel's, drawing away the moment his coat was released. As they parted, my worst fears were confirmed, for I saw the Colonel progress flourishingly to the corner and turn in under the sign, "Barney Skeyhan; Choice Wines, Liquors, and Cigars."
"What did he say?" I asked of Eustace as he came up.
"It was exceedingly distasteful, Major." Eustace was not a little perturbed by the encounter. "He read every word of that disgusting article in the Argus and then
"And now he is reading his piece to Barney Skeyhan!" I groaned.
"Rum is the scourge of our American civilization," remarked Eustace, warmly.
"Barney Skeyhan's rum would scourge anybody's civilization," I said.
"Of course I meant all civilization," suggested Eustace, in polite help to my lame understanding.
Precisely at nine o'clock Potts issued from Skeyhan's, bearing his bag, cane, and Argus as before. He looked up and down the quiet street interestedly, then crossed over to Hermann Hoffmuller's, another establishment in which our civilization was especially menaced. He was followed cordially by five of Little Arcady's lesser citizens, who had obviously sustained the relation of guests to him at Skeyhan's. In company with Westley Keyts and Eubanks, I watched this procession from the windows of the City Hotel. Solon Denney chanced to pass at the moment, and we hailed him.
"Oh, I'll soon fix that," said Solon, confidently. "Don't you worry!"
And forthwith he sent Billy Durgin, who works in the City Hotel, to Hoffmuller's. He was to remind Colonel Potts that his train left at eleven-eight.
Billy returned with news. Potts was reading the piece to Hoffmuller and a number of his patrons. Further, he had bought, and the crowd was then consuming, the two fly-specked bottles of champagne which Hoffmuller had kept back of his bar, one on either side of a stuffed owl, since the day he began business eleven years before.
Billy also brought two messages to Solon: one from Potts that he had been mistaken about the attitude of Little Arcady toward himself—that he was seeing this more clearly every minute. The other was from Hoffmuller. Solon Denney was to know that some people might be just as good as other people who thought themselves a lot better, and would he please not take some shingles off a man's roof?
Solon, ever the incorrigible optimist, said, "Of course I might have waited till he was on the train to give him the money; but don't worry, he'll be ready enough to go when the 'bus starts."
I felt unable to share his confidence. That presentiment had for the moment corrupted my natural hopefulness.
It was a few moments after ten when Potts next appeared to our group of anxious watchers. This time he had more friends. They swarmed respectfully but enthusiastically after him out of Hoffmuller's place, a dozen at least of our ne'er-do-wells. One of these, "Big Joe" Kestril, a genial lout of a section-hand, ostentatiously carried the bag and had an arm locked tenderly through one of the Colonel's. These two led the procession. It halted at the corner, where the Colonel began to read his Argus notice to Bela Bedford, our druggist, who had been on the point of entering his store. But the newspaper had suffered. It was damp from being laid on bars, and parts of it were in tatters. The reader paused, midway of the first paragraph, to piece a tear across the column, and Bedford escaped by dashing into his store. The Colonel, suddenly discovering that he could recite the thing from memory, did so with considerable dramatic effect, seeming not to notice the defection of Bedford. The crowd cheered madly when he had finished, and followed him across the street to the bar of the City Hotel.
We could now observe better. The bar of the City Hotel is next the office. A door is open between them with a wooden screen standing before it. Inside the carouse raged, while we, who had thought to set Potts at large, listened and wondered. The taller among us could overlook the screen. We beheld Potts, one elbow resting on the bar, his other hand with the cane in it waving forward his unreluctant train, while he loudly inquired if there were drink to be had suitable for a gentleman who was prepared to spend his money like a lord.
"None of that cooking whiskey, mind—nothing but the best bottled goods, if you please!" was the next suggestion.
Again the crowd cheered. New faces were constantly appearing. The news had gone out with an incredible rapidity. Honest men, inflamed by the report, were leaving their works and speeding to the front from as far north as the fair-grounds and as far south as the depot.
"Soon," said Potts, after the first drink, "ah, too soon, I shall be miles away from your thriving little hamlet,—as pretty a spot, by the way, as God ever made,—seeing none but strange faces, longing for the old hearty hand-clasps, seeking, perhaps, in vain, for one kindly look which—which is now to be observed on every hand. But, friends, Colonel J. Rodney will not forget you. I have rare prospects, but no matter. To this little spot, the fairest in all Nature,—here among your simple, heartfelt faces, where I first got my start,—here my feelings will ever and anon return; for—why should I conceal it?—it is you, my friends, who have made me the man I am."
Here Potts put an arm over the shoulder of Big Joe and urged pleadingly: "Another verse of that sweet old song, boys. I tell you that has the true heart-stuff in it—now—"
They roared out a verse of "Auld Lang Syne," with execrable attempts at part-singing, little Dan Lefferts, a dissolute house-painter, contributing a tenor that was simply maniacal.
Potts ordered more drinks. This done, he leaned heavily upon the bar and burst into tears. The varlets crowded about him with tender, soothing words, while we in the other room anxiously watched them and the clock.
He was overcome, it seemed, by the affection which it now transpired that Little Arcady bore for him. Presently he half dried his tears and drew from an inner pocket of his coat the package of our letters.
With eyes again streaming, in a sob-riven voice, he read them all to the pleased crowd. At the end, he regained control of himself.
"Gentlemen, believe it or not, nothing has touched me like this since I bade farewell to my regiment in '65. You are getting under the heart of Jonas Rodney this time—I can't deny that."
He began on the letters again, selecting the choicest, and not forgetting at intervals to rebuke the bar-tender for alleged inactivity.
At last the clock marked ten-forty, and we heard the welcome rumble of the 'bus wheels. There was a hurried consultation with Amos Deane, the driver. He was to enter the bar in a brisk, businesslike way, seize the bag, and hustle the Colonel out before he had time to reflect. We peered over the screen, knowing the fateful moment was come.
We saw the Colonel resist the attack on his bag and listen with marked astonishment to the assertion of Amos that there was just time to catch the train.
"Time was made for slaves," said Potts.
"That there train ain't goin' to wait a minute," reminded Amos, civilly. The Colonel turned upon him with a large sweetness of manner.
"Ah, yes, my friend, but trains will be passing through your pretty little hamlet for years—I hope for ages—yet. They pass every day, but you can't have Jonas Rodney Potts every day."
Here, with a gesture, he directed the crowd's attention to Amos.
"Look at him, gentlemen. Speak to him for me—for I cannot. I ask you to note the condition he's in." Here, again, the Colonel burst into tears. "And, oh, my God!" he sobbed, "could they ask me to trust myself to a drunken rowdy of a driver, even if I was going?" Amos was not only sober, he was a shrewd observer of events, a seasoned judge of men. He turned away without further parley. Big Joe told him he ought to be in better business
As the 'bus started, the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" floated to us again, and we knew the day was lost.
"A hand of iron in a cunning little velvet glove," said Westley Keyts, in deep disgust as he left us. "It looks to me a darned sight more like a hand of mush in a glove of the same!"
I have often been brought to realize that the latent nobility in our human nature is never so effectually aroused as at the second stage of alcoholic dementia. The victim sustains a shock of illumination hardly less than divine. On a sudden he is vividly cognizant of his overwhelming spiritual worth. Dazed in the first moment of this flooding consciousness, he is presently to be heard recalling instances of his noble conduct under difficulty, of righteous fortitude under strain. Especially does he find himself endowed with the antique virtues—with courage and a rugged fidelity, a stainless purity of motive, a fond and measureless generosity.
To this stage the libations of Potts had now brought him. He began to refresh the crowd with comments upon his own worth, interspersed with kindly but hurt appreciations of the great world's lack of discernment. He besought and defied each gentleman present to recall an occasion, however trivial, when his conduct had fallen short of the loftiest standards. Especially were they begged to cite an instance when he had deviated in the least degree from a line of strictest loyalty to any friend. Big Joe Kestril was overcome at this. He broke down and wept out upon the shoulder of Potts his hopeless inability to comply with that outrageous request. The entire crowd became emotional, and a dozen lighted matches were thrust forward toward an apparently incombustible cigar with which Potts had long striven.
Recovering from these first ravages of his self-analysis, the Colonel became just a bit critical.
"But you see, boys, a man of my attributes is hampered and kept down in a one-horse place like this. Remarks have been passed about me here that I should blush to repeat. I say it in confidence, but I have again and again been made the sport of a wayward and wanton ridicule. I say, gentlemen, I have always conducted myself as only a Potts knows how to conduct himself—and yet I have been pestered by cheap flings at my personal bearing. Is this courtesy, is it common fairness, is it the boasted civilization of our nineteenth century?"