The genii also had to break poor Casper Herdicker's heart--and he had
one, and a big one, despite his desire for blood and plunder; and they
broke it when his wife Brunhilde deserted the hearthstone back of the
shoe-shop, rented a vacant store room on Market Street and went into the
millinery way of life. And it wasn't enough that the tired genii had to
gouge out the streets of Harvey; to fill in the gulleys and ravines; to
dab in scores of new houses; to toil and moil over the new hotel,
witching up four bleak stories upon the prairie. It wasn't enough that
they had to cast a spell on people all over the earth, dragging
strangers to Harvey by trainloads; it wasn't enough that the overworked
genii should have to bring big George Brotherton to town with the
railroad--and he was load enough for any engine; his heart itself
weighed ten stone; it wasn't enough that they had to find various and
innumerable contraptions for Captain Morton to peddle, but there was Tom
Van Dorn's new black silk mustache to grow, and to be oiled and curled
daily; so he had to go to the Palace Hotel barber shop at least once
every day, and passing the cigar counter, he had to pass by Violet
Mauling--pretty, empty-faced, doll-eyed Violet Mauling at the cigar
stand. And all the long night and all the long day, the genii, working
on the Harvey job, cast spells, put on charms, and did their deepest
sorcery to take off the power of the magic runes that young Tom's black
art were putting upon her; and day after day the genii felt their
highest potencies fail. So no wonder they mumbled and grumbled as they
bent over their chores. For a time, the genii had tried to work on Tom
Van Dorn's heart after he dropped Lizzie Coulter and sent her away on a
weary life pilgrimage with Jared Thurston, as the wife of an itinerant
editor; but they found nothing to work on under Tom's cigar holder--that
is, nothing in the way of a heart. There was only a kind of public
policy. So the genii made the public policy as broad and generous as
they could and let it go at that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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