PEOPLE YOU KNOW [Illustration] [Illustration] PEOPLE YOU KNOW _BY_ GEORGE ADE _ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN T. MCCUTCHEON AND OTHERS_ MCMIV _PREFACE_ This little book is not supposed to contain any new information. It is made up of plain observations concerning people who live just around the corner. If the reader will bear in mind that _only_ the people who live around the corner are discussed in this volume, there will be no chance for painful misunderstandings. I have no desire to rub the wrong way anyone who proves his true friendship by purchasing a copy of this Work. It may be advisable to explain that these Fables are written in the colloquial American language. The vocabulary employed is one that has become familiar to the ear, although it is seldom seen on the printed page. In other words, this volume contains a shameless amount of slang. If any part of it is unintelligible to the reader, he should be glad that he has escaped what seems to be an epidemic. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS The Periodical Souse, the Never-Again Feeling and the Ride On the Sprinkling Cart, 13 The Kind of Music That Is Too Good for Household Use, 23 The One or Two Points of Difference Between Learning and Learning How, 26 The Night-Watch and the Would-Be Something Awful, 37 The Attenuated Attorney Who Rang In the Associate Counsel, 46 What Father Bumped Into at the Culture Factory, 54 The Search for the Right House and How Mrs. Jump Had Her Annual Attack, 65 The Batch of Letters, or One Day With a Busy Man, 72 The Sickly Dream and How It Was Doctored Up, 81 The Two Old Pals and the Call for Help, 90 The Regular Kind of a Place and the Usual Way It Turned Out, 99 The Man Who Had a True Friend to Steer Him Along, 107 The Young Napoleon Who Went Back to the Store On Monday Morning, 110 The High Art That Was a Little Too High for the Vulgarian Who Paid the Bills, 119 The Patient Toiler Who Got It in the Usual Place, 129 The Summer Vacation That Was Too Good to Last, 133 How an Humble Beginner Moved from one Pinnacle to Another and Played the Entire Circuit, 142 The Maneuvers of Joel and the Disappointed Orphan Asylum, 149 Two Young People, Two Photographers and the Corresponding School of Wooing, 158 The Married Couple That Went to Housekeeping and Began to Find Out Things, 167 The Samaritan Who Got Paralysis of the Helping Hand, 175 The Effort to Convert the Work Horse Into a High-Stepper, 185 The Self-Made Hezekiah and His Message of Hope to This Year's Crop of Graduates, 194 The Girl Who Took Notes and Got Wise and Then Fell Down, 203 What They Had Laid Out for Their Vacation, 212 The Experimental Couple and the Three Off-Shoots, 215 * * * * * _THE PERIODICAL SOUSE, THE NEVER-AGAIN FEELING AND THE RIDE ON THE SPRINKLING CART_ Once there was an Indian who had a Way of putting on all his Feathers and breaking out of the Reservation.