Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child. — John Shaqi
Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.Toohey, John Peter
General
Fresh Every Hour: Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.
Toohey, John Peter
Press agents -- Fiction
“Maybe if we whistled at him, Dinny,” observed one of these sagely,
“they might come down.”
The three guardians of the law proceeded to pucker up their lips and to
emit a series of plaintive whistles which so startled the one-time
denizens of the jungle that all of them, as if swayed by some common
impulse, swung lightly to places ten or twelve feet higher.
“Sing ’em a little song,” shouted at ribald youth and the crowd once
more chortled with glee.
At this juncture a police lieutenant arrived on the scene, attracted
from a distance by the great congestion of traffic. More than two
thousand persons were now gathered on the promenade and vehicular
progress in both directions was clogged. A long line of trolley cars was
strung out to the east and the west, and several hundred motor cars and
trucks were stalled while their drivers crowded forward to enjoy the
fun. The lieutenant sized up the seriousness of the situation instantly.
He dispatched one of the patrolmen to telephone for the reserves and to
send in a still alarm for the fire department, and then turned to
Jimmy’s willing tool, the driver. That individual, still registering
dazed bewilderment, shrugged his shoulders when asked to assist in
bringing down the escaped monkeys, who were now festooned in irregular
formation along the interlocking cables for a distance of several
hundred feet. Most of them were swinging by their tails and otherwise
comporting themselves with a supreme disregard for law and order.
“I can’t do a thing, boss,” persisted the driver. “I don’t know the
first name of a single one of the bunch. Maybe if some one telephoned
for the gink that owns ’em he might be able to bring ’em down.”
And so it further came to pass that Signor Antonio Amado was reached on
the telephone at Jollyland; that he swore lustily in three languages in
simulation of great consternation and that he promised to come to the
scene of hostilities as rapidly as his touring car could bring him. When
he arrived forty minutes later; the crowd had grown to ten thousand and
the greatest tie-up of traffic in the history of the bridge was in
progress. The firemen from two hook and ladder companies were making
ineffectual efforts to bring down the innocent disturbers of the great
city’s peace and dignity and a certain press agent, watching the
proceedings from a discreet distance, was enjoying the biggest emotional
experience of a somewhat checkered and not altogether drab career. He
was getting the same sort of thrill that comes to the playwright as he
stands in the rear of a theatre during a tense scene in a play of his
writing and watches a great audience swayed by something he has
originated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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