If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone theyd never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hours talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air-shaft thats about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it wont show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff.
I led a dogs life in that flat. Most all day I lay there in my corner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose but what could I do? A dog cant chew cloves.
I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didnt. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgans cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last Decembers snow on the streets where cheap people live.
One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldnt have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohns[109] wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:
What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She dont kiss you. You dont have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus[110]. You ought to be thankful youre not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone.
The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face.
Why, doggie, says he, good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie Cats?
Cats! Could speak!
But, of course, he couldnt understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.
In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation.
See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip, I says, you know that it aint the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didnt look like hed like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator[111] doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Dont tell me he likes it.
Him? says the black-and-tan. Why, he uses Natures Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out hes as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make em all jackpots. By the time weve been in eight saloons he dont care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. Ive lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors.
The pointer I got from that terrier vaudeville please copy set me to thinking.
One evening about 6 oclock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called Tweetness. I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still Lovey is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of ones self respect.
At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press dispatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.
Why, darn my eyes, says the old man, with a grin; darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade aint asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see how longs it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest? I believe Ill
I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells[112] coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home.
When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street.
Poor doggie, says he; good doggie. She shant kiss you anymore. S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.
I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old mans legs happy as a pug on a rug.
You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser, I said to him you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, cant you see that I dont want to leave you? Cant you see that were both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more?
Maybe youll say he didnt understand maybe he didnt. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.
Doggie, says he, finally, we dont live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more Im a flat, and if you do youre flatter; and thats no flattery. Im offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.
There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.
On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun:
Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.
But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured[113] son of a door mat, do you know what Im going to call you?
I thought of Lovey, and I whined dolefully.
Im going to call you Pete, says my master; and if Id had five tails I couldnt have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.
The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon[114].
The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum[115] and paregoric[116]. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé[117]. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikeys corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé[117]. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikeys corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.
Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddles two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain you must have guessed it Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum[118] of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes[119] and valerianate of ammonia[120].
The fly in Ikeys ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk McGowan.
Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no outfielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikeys friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.
One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.
Ikey, said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin[121] to a powder, get busy with your ear. Its drugs for me if youve got the line I need.