Humorous stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Private secretaries -- Fiction
"Still getting on well with your job?" asked Mr. Robert.
"Oh, I've chucked that," says Hallam airy. "No more of that degrading
grind for me. I've arrived, you know."
"Eh?" gasps Mr. Robert. "Where?"
"Why," says F. Hallam, "don't you understand what has happened during
these last two weeks? Fame has found me out. I am known as the founder
of a new school of art--the original Revertist. My name has become a
household word. And before this absurd libel suit is finished I shall be
painting the portraits of all the leading society people. They are
already asking about me, and as soon as I find a suitable studio--I'm
considering one on West 59th Street, facing Central Park--I shall be
overwhelmed with orders. It's bound to come."
"You're quite sure this is fame, are you?" asks Mr. Robert.
F. Hallam smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "Quite," says he.
And Mr. Robert can't tell him it's anything else. Hasn't he got his
pockets full of newspaper clippings to prove it? Don't people turn and
stare after him in the street and nudge each other in the subway cars?
Aren't his artist friends giving him a banquet at the Purple Pup? So why
should he work for wages any more, or save up any of the easy money
that's coming his way? And he sails out indignant, with his cape
overcoat swayin' grand from his narrow shoulders.
"I give him up, Torchy," says Mr. Robert. "That is, unless you can
suggest some way of making him see what an ass he is. Come, now!"
"All right," says I, gettin a sudden hunch. "I don't know as it will
work in his case, for he's got it bad, but suppose we tow him out for a
look at Private Ben Riggs?"
"By George!" says Mr. Robert, slappin' his knee. "The very thing.
Sunday, eh?"
It was easy enough stagin' the affair. All he had to do was to ask the
Beans out for the week-end, and then after Sunday dinner load 'em into
the tourin' car, collect me, and drive off about 20 miles or so to the
south shore of Long Island.
Maybe, though, you don't remember about Private Ben Riggs? Oh, of course
the name still sticks. It's that kind of a name. But just what was it he
did? Uh-huh! Scratchin' your head, ain't you? And yet it was less than
two years ago that he was figurin' more prominent in the headlines than
anybody else you could name, not barrin' Wilson or Von Hindenburg.
One of our first war heroes, Ben Riggs was, and for nearly two weeks
there he had the great American people shoutin' themselves hoarse in his
honor, as you might say. There was editorials, comparin' his stunt to
what Dewey did at Manila Bay, or Hobson at Santiago, and showin' how
Private Ben had a shade the best of it, after all. The Sunday
illustrated sections had enlarged snapshots of him, of his boyhood home
in Whositville; of his dear old mother who made that classic remark,
"Now, wasn't that just like Ben"; and of his girlish sweetheart, who was
cashier at the Acme Lunch and who admitted that "she always had known
Ben was going to be a great man some day."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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