Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His PeopleCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
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Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
He turned into the Richland House, with the darky following him with his
valises and us following the darky; and after he had registered, old Mr.
Dudley Dunn, the clerk, let us look at the register. But two or three
grown men looked first; the coming of one who was so plainly a personage
had made some stir among the adult population. None there present,
though, could read the name the stranger had left upon the book. Old Mr.
Dunn, who was an expert at that sort of thing, couldn't decide himself
whether it was O. O. Driscoll or A. A. Davent. The man must have spent
years practicing to be able to produce a signature that would bother any
hotel clerk. I have subsequently ascertained that there are many abroad
gifted as he was--mainly traveling salesmen. But if you couldn't read
his name, all who ran might read the nature of his calling, for 'twas
there set forth in two colors--he had borrowed the red-ink bottle from
Mr. Dunn to help out the customary violet--and done in heavy shaded
letters--“Representing Daniel the Mystic”--with an ornamental flourish
of scrolls and feathery beaded lines following after. The whole took up
a good fourth of one of Mr. Dudley Dunn's blue-ruled pages.
Inside of an hour we were to know, too, who Daniel the Mystic might
be, for in the hotel office and in sundry store windows were big bills
showing a likeness of a man of magnificent mien, with long hair and his
face in his hand, or rather in the thumb and forefinger of his hand,
with the thumb under the chin and the finger running up alongside the
cheek. Underneath were lines to the effect that Daniel the Mystic,
Prince of Mesmerism and Seer of the Unseen, was Coming, Coming! Also
that night the Daily Evening News had a piece about him. He had rented
St. Clair Hall for two nights hand-running and would give a mysterious,
edifying and educational entertainment dealing with the wonders of
science and baffling human description. The preliminaries, one learned,
had been arranged by his affable and courteous personal representative
now in our midst, Mr. D. C. Davello--so old Mr. Dudley Dunn was wrong in
both of his guesses.
Next morning Daniel the Mystic was on hand, looking enough like his
pictured likeness to be recognized almost immediately. True, his
features were not quite so massive and majestic as we had been led to
expect, and he rather disappointed us by not carrying his face in his
hand, but he was tall and slim enough for all purposes and wore his hair
long and was dressed all in black. He had long, slender hands, and eyes
that, we agreed, could seem to look right through you and tell what you
were thinking about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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