A Young Man who had made a Sudden Winning, and was beginning to act as
Shawl-Holder and Emergency Errand-Boy for the Society Queens, seemed to
have a great deal of Trouble with his Memory. If he met Any One who had
started with him a few Years before, and who used to Stake him to a
Meal-Ticket now and then, or let him have a Scarf-Pin when he had to go
out and make a Front, he could not appear to remember the Man's Name or
tell where he had seen him before. When he was in a Loge at the
Play-House with Exclusive Ethel and her Friends, he might look down in
the Parquette and see the Landlady who had carried him through a Hard
Winter and accepted a Graceful Wave of the Hand when she really needed
the Board Money, but he found it impossible to Place her. Even the
People who came from his own Town, and who knew him when he was getting
Five a Week and wearing Celluloid Cuffs, and who could relate the Family
History if they wanted to Knock, they couldn't make him Remember, even
when they stopped him on the Street and recalled such Humiliations as
the Time he used to pick Cherries on the Shares, and how Odd he looked
in his Brother's Made-Over Clothes.
[Illustration: AFFECTIONATE MASSAGE]
This Young Man buried the Dead Past until his Memory was a Blank for the
whole Period up to the Time that the President of the Fidelity National
invited him to Dinner and he got his first Peek at a sure-enough Butler.
He had been a Genuine Aristocrat for about Eighteen Months, when he made
a Mis-step and landed with his Face in the Gravel. The Gigantic
Enterprise which he had been Promoting got into the Public Prints as a
Pipe Dream. There was no more Capital coming from the Angels. He was
back at the Post, with nothing to Show for his Bold Dash except a
Wardrobe and an Appetite for French Cooking. Society gave him the Frozen
Face, and all those who had been speaking of him as a Young Napoleon
agreed that he was a Dub. The Banks were trying to Collect on a lot of
Slow Notes that he had floated in his Palmy Days, and they had a Proud
Chance to Collect. He went into the Bankruptcy Court and Scheduled
$73,000 of Liabilities, the Assets being a Hat-Box and a Set of
Theatrical Posters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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