American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
“‘I feel like I’d known you always,’ says I. ‘Now there was just one
more—are you doing right well with the caffy, now?’
“‘Pretty well,’ he says. ‘I’m putting away a little money.’
“‘Glad to hear it,’ says I. ‘Now go back to your work and get
civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless you’re ready to
follow it up in a personal manner, It’s a subject that naturally
belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see
it handed out in small change in a town like this.’
“So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from
New York City.”
For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire,
and then all hands began to disperse for bed.
As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man
saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice:
“As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about
this night. The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear
air unite in making it wonderfully attractive.”
“Yes,” said Bud, “it’s a nice night.”
VIII.
MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his
time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before
taking anything else.
The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and
untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was
sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a
yachting cap that no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely
heart. He knew by the light in the third-story front windows, and by
the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come home,
and would soon extinguish his light and retire. For it was September of
the year and of the soul, in which season the house’s good man comes to
consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities, and to desire the
return of his mate and the more durable blessings of decorum and the
moral excellencies.
The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match
illuminated his salient points for a moment. He belonged to the third
type of burglars.
This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police
have made us familiar with the first and second. Their classification
is simple. The collar is the distinguishing mark.
When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described as
a degenerate of the lowest type, singularly vicious and depraved, and
is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs
out of Patrolman Hennessy’s pocket in 1878 and walked away to escape
arrest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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