Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for him. He never pinched the girls arms when he passed them in dark corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business was dull and the girls giggled and said: Oh, pshaw! it wasnt G. Bernard they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was queer and original in other ways. He was a health crank, and believed that people should never eat anything that was good for them. He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner. And each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over.
Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the store.
And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay one purple and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were going to have dresses too, but they didnt count. Very likely theyd wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs nothing as resplendent as purple or red.
Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress ready-made. Oh, whats the use of bothering with a tailor when youve got a figger its easy to get a fit the ready-made are intended for a perfect figger except I have to have em all taken in at the waist the average figger is so large waisted.
The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of purple, but they were white themselves the joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would become her, and for the thousandth time she tried to assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself.
Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above Maidas.
At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landladys tongue clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in buttermilk. And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as red as any dress.
She says Ive got to get out, said Grace. The old beast. Because I owe her $4. Shes put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I cant go anywhere else. I havent got a cent of money.
You had some yesterday, said Maida.
I paid it on my dress, said Grace. I thought shed wait till next week for the rent.
Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle.
Out came out it had to come Maidas $4.
You blessed darling, cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. Ill pay the mean old thing and then Im going to try on my dress. I think its heavenly. Come up and look at it. Ill pay the money back, a dollar a week honest I will.
Thanksgiving.
The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched into Maidas room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot[327] skirt and blue waist darning a st . Oh, doing fancy work.
Why, goodness me! aint you dressed yet? shrilled the red one. How does it fit in the back? Dont you think these velvet tabs look awful swell? Why aint you dressed, Maida?
My dress didnt get finished in time, said Maida. Im not going to the dinner.
Thats too bad. Why, Im awfully sorry, Maida. Why dont you put on anything and come along its just the store folks, you know, and they wont mind.
I was set on my purple, said Maida. If I cant have it I wont go at all. Dont bother about me. Run along or youll be late. You look awful nice in red.
At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachmans roar over his own deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman, who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of all.
At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless air she slowly made her way to Schlegels shop and told him she could not pay the $4 due on the dress.
Gott! cried Schlegel, angrily. For what do you look so glum? Take him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do not know how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when you can. Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in him all right. So. Pay me when you can.
Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it.
Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose wardrobes are charged to the old mans account, you cannot begin to comprehend you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold dash of the Thanksgiving rain.
At five oclock she went out upon the street wearing her purple dress. The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed girl in the purple dress walking through the storm as though she were strolling in a garden under summer skies.
I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing for pretty things to starve eight months in order to bring a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned?
Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped from her fingers.
Someone turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. Ramsays eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest.
Why, Miss Maida, said he, you look simply magnificent in your new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?
And Maida blushed and sneezed.
The Foreign Policy of Company 99
John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis[328].
Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news in the daily papers.
Wherever the Japs[329] won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would hear him yell: Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat em up, you little sleight-o-hand, bow-legged bull terriers give em another of them Yalu looloos[330], and youll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians say, wouldnt they give you a painsky when it comes to a scrapovitch?
Not even on the fair island of Nippon[331] was there a more enthusiastic champion of the Mikados[332] men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99.
Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrness head. That was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his drivers seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus[333] and Joe[334], the finest team in the whole department according to the crew of 99.
Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these the code of King Arthurs Knights of the Round Table[335], the Constitution of the United States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffriess new punch trying for place and show.
Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these the code of King Arthurs Knights of the Round Table[335], the Constitution of the United States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffriess new punch trying for place and show.
The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of the S. P. C. A.
One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island[336] a lump of protozoa[337] which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty perhaps, theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few coins denarii[338] scudi[339] kopecks[340] pfennigs[341] pilasters[342] whatever the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.