Gibb Ogle, the other member of our leisure class, is a very different
kind of a bird. His art is more sublime than DeLancey's because he has
no one to support him. He has worked down to his present state from
nothing at all. He is a self-unmade man. With no resources, not even a
loving wife with a wash tub, he lives a life of perfect ease and
idleness. He doesn't even have to hunt for means of killing time, as
DeLancey does. Time with him dies a natural death. He is not implicated
in the sad event in any way. All he does is to watch its demise. He
watches whole hours pass away while leaning against the door-frame of
the Delmonico Hotel. Chet Frazier and Sim Bone got into an argument one
day, and to settle it they went over and took Gibb away from the
building. It didn't fall, and Sim won. Gibb has watched several thousand
hours expire while propping up the Q. B. & C. depot. He is the chief
spectator at every fire, runaway, dog fight and public event. He is a
movable landmark, as permanent as the Republican flagpole in the city
park. I have never yet gone down-town in the morning without seeing Gibb
on the street. And very seldom have I gone home at night, even in the
howling blizzards of winter, without passing Gibb leaning against the
warm bright show window of the last open place of business, and waiting
with placid greediness for one final event of some kind to transpire
before going to his well-earned repose.
Beside Gibb's leisure, DeLancey's is poor amateurish stuff. Gibb's total
income during the year would hardly exceed twenty-five dollars, and it
doesn't do him much good at that. When he gets any money, he eats it up
in the most determined and hasty fashion. I have seen him eat a dollar's
worth of ham sandwiches in an afternoon--because he had the dollar. What
he does between dollars is a town mystery. He doesn't beg. He is
believed by some to absorb sustenance from the air, like a plant. But I
happen to know that he absorbs a good deal of sustenance from the
Delmonico Hotel. He has attached himself to this hotel as a sort of
retainer, and through all its changes of ownership he has hung on. He
will not work, but he gives the place his moral support and speaks
highly of it to all comers. He will even carry a satchel across to the
depot, but only as an accommodation to the hotel. In return he asks
nothing and thus saves his proud spirit from the insult of a refusal.
But I think he has first pick of the scattered remains of the dinners
that leave the kitchen door whenever the cook is good-natured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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