Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
And now new days dawned for Archie--days of association with Mason,
Jackson, Keenan and Mandell. The Market Place gang had no standing among
professional criminals, though it had furnished recruits, and now Archie
became a recruit, and soon approved himself. It was not long until he
could speak their language; he called a safe a "peter" and nitroglycerin
"soup," a freight-train was a "John O’Brien"; he spoke of a man
convicted as a "fall man", conveying thus subtly a sense of vicarious
sacrifice; he called policemen "bulls", and jails "pogeys"; the
penitentiary where all these men had been was the "stir", and the little
packages of buttered bread and pie that were handed out to them from
kitchen doors were "lumps". And he learned the distinctions between the
classes of men who defy society and its laws; he knew what gay cats
were, and guns and dips, lifters, moll-buzzers, hoisters, tools,
scratchers, stalls, damper-getters, housemen, gopher-men, peter-men,
lush-touchers, super-twisters, penny-weighters, and so forth. And after
that he was seen at home but seldom; his absences grew long and
mysterious.
XVIII
Elizabeth did not go often to the Country Club, and almost never for any
pleasure she herself could find; now and then she went with her father,
in order to lure him out of doors; but to-day she had come with Dick,
who wanted some fitting destination for his new touring car. She was
finding on a deserted end of the veranda a relief from the summer heat
that for a week had smothered the city. A breeze was blowing off the
river, and she lay back languidly in her wicker chair and let it play
upon her brow. In her lap lay an open book, but she was not reading it
nor meditating on it; she held it in readiness to ward off interruption;
her reputation as a reader of books, while it made her formidable to
many and gave her an unpopularity that was more and more grieving her
mother, had its compensations--people would not often intrude upon a
book. She looked off across the river. On its smooth surface tiny
sail-boats were moving; on the opposite bank there was the picturesque
windmill of a farm-house, white against the bright green. The slender
young oak trees were rustling in the wind; the links were dotted with
players in white, and the distant flags and fluttering guidons that
marked hidden putting greens. Then suddenly Marriott was before her.
He had come in from the links, and he stood now bareheaded, glowing from
his exercise, folding his arms on the veranda rail. His forearms were
blazing red from their first burning of the season, and his nose was
burned red, giving him a merry look that made Elizabeth smile.
"My! but you’re burned!" she exclaimed.
"Am I?" said Marriott, pleased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account