Humorous stories; Mistaken identity -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also. Everybody was
grateful for Allen’s reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation
from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them. The young girls,
of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy,
particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady’s daughter.
She said to him, very sweetly,
“I think you’re ever so nice.”
And when he said, “I’m glad you think so, Miss Hattie,” she said, still
more sweetly,
“Don’t call me Miss Hattie—call me Puss.”
Ah, here was promotion! He had struck the summit. There were no higher
heights to climb in that boarding house. His popularity was complete.
In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his
heart was being eaten out of him by distress and despair.
In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he
do? He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from
that stranger’s store. He found it impossible to sleep. A single
torturing, terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head,
wearing a groove in his brain: What should he do—What was to become of
him? And along with it began to intrude a something presently which was
very like a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of
martyrdom, but had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl
and nothing better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful
sort than an earl finds to do. But he smothered that part of his
thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and
with fair success, but he couldn’t keep it from intruding a little now
and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a
bite, a sting, a burn. He recognized that thought by the peculiar
sharpness of its pang. The others were painful enough, but that one cut
to the quick when it came. Night after night he lay tossing to the
music of the hideous snoring of the honest bread-winners until two and
three o’clock in the morning, then got up and took refuge on the roof,
where he sometimes got a nap and sometimes failed entirely. His
appetite was leaving him and the zest of life was going along with it.
Finally, one day, being near the imminent verge of total
discouragement, he said to himself—and took occasion to blush privately
when he said it, “If my father knew what my American name is,—he—well,
my duty to my father rather _requires_ that I furnish him my name. I
have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do enough
unhappiness for the family all by myself. Really he ought to know what
my American name is.” He thought over it a while and framed a cablegram
in his mind to this effect:
“My American name is Howard Tracy.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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