"There ain't nothing a Stevens student can't do--nothing calling for
brains," said Mr. Stuffer. "They get chock full of mathematics up there,
so's they can engineer anything from a turbine plant to a pin where it's
most needed, or a marriage factory. Anything that calls for brains is
right in their line. If I ever get into any kind of trouble at all I'll
get a Stevens engineer to rig me up some kind of a derrick to pull me
out of it."
At his leisure, Mr. Tescheron now marvels at the great ability of
Stevens men. He feels that he is a competent judge.
It was evident that the Stevens students who crowded the Stuffer House
had duly impressed the present proprietor with their ability to overcome
every obstacle in life's path with special machinery to fit each case.
"Why, one of those students told me some years ago," continued Mr.
Stuffer, "that he once provided plans and specifications to supply a
girl with beaus."
None of the company now seemed to doubt, so Mr. Stuffer proceeded to
prove his proposition that a technical education at Stevens comprehends
the repairing of difficult cases of side-stepped heart.
"Yes, I remember, now, it was the case of little Mary Schwarz," he
continued. "And she never knew, doesn't to this day probably, how it all
came about that suddenly she had more beaus than she could attend to.
They fairly froze her in ice cream--"
Mrs. Tescheron had recovered and was ringing three times for hot water
as per the card of instructions tacked near the push-button in her room.
"They are not remarkably prompt here," she murmured. "I wonder what can
be the matter every evening."
Mr. Stuffer, who was supposed to be on duty at the annunciator, in his
dual capacity of hall boy and host, heard not its alarm, for he was well
under way with a yarn.
He continued:
"She got so she didn't care for Hoboken, Mary didn't. The beaus then
took her to every theatre in New York. And they were a fine lot of
chaps--Stevens students, bachelor professors, leading merchants'
sons--all the best people in town. Before that Stevens student started
up the necessary machinery to repair this case, she had no beaus at all;
but he fixed things so's she had a regular monopoly because she
controlled the raw material. They teach just enough of political economy
on the side up there at the institute to bring that in; that you can't
have a monopoly unless you control the raw material; so he figured to
have her control it. But when she lost it the thing was off."
"What became of it?" asked Mr. Tescheron, who, I am informed, was
fearful that the narrator might be interrupted by the ringing of the
bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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