Miss Mink's Soldier and Other StoriesRice, Alice Caldwell Hegan
General
Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories
Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan
Fiction; Short stories
It was a moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or
whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity
admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his
lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under
better control, and his sentimentality tempered with humor, the analogy
would have been more complete. In taste, they were one. By birth,
predilection, and instinct both were philosophers of the open,
preferring an untrammeled life in Vagabondia to the collars and
conventions of society. Both delighted in exquisite leisure, and spent
it in pleased acquiescence with things as they are.
Some twenty-five years before, Phelan had opened his eyes upon a
half-circle of blue sky, seen through the end of a canvas-covered wagon
on a Western prairie, and having first conceived life to be a
free-and-easy affair on a long, open road, he thereafter declined to
consider it in any other light.
The only break in his nomadic existence was when a benevolent old
gentleman found him, a friendless lad in a Nashville hospital, cursed
him through a fever, and elected to educate him. Those were years of
black captivity for Phelan, and after being crammed and coached for what
seemed an interminable time, he was proudly entered at the University,
where he promptly failed in every subject and was dropped at the
mid-year term.
The old gentleman, fortunately, was spared all disappointment in regard
to his irresponsible protege, for he died before the catastrophe,
leaving Phelan Harrihan a legacy of fifteen dollars a month and the
memory of a kind, but misguided, old man who was not quite right in his
head.
Being thus provided with a sum more than adequate to meet all his
earthly needs, Phelan joyously abandoned the straight and narrow path of
learning, and once more betook himself to the open road.
The call of blue skies and green fields, the excitement of each day's
encounter, the dramatic possibilities of every passing incident, the
opportunity for quick and intimate fellowship, and above all an
inherited and chronic disinclination for work, made Phelan an easy
victim to that malady called by the casual tourist "wanderlust," but
known in Hoboland as "railroad fever."
Only once a year did he return to civilization, don a stiff collar, and
recognize an institution. During his meteoric career at the University
he had been made a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, in recognition
of his varied accomplishments. Not only could he sing and dance and tell
a tale with the best, but he was also a mimic and a ventriloquist, gifts
which had proven invaluable in crucial conflicts with the faculty, and
had constituted him a hero in several escapades. Of such material is
college history made, and the Alpha Delta, recognizing the distinction
of possessing this unique member, refused to accept his resignation, but
unanimously demanded his presence at each annual reunion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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