United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Dead silence. Nobody had ever heard Andrew P. Hill swear before; nobody
had supposed that he could. But the unlooked-for, the impossible had
happened.
To Little O'Grady this profanity was no more than the profanity of
anybody else. It did not stop him.
"To advertise your business?" he mocked. "Then why didn't you say so
before? It ain't too late to do so yet, is it? I'll do it for you myself.
I'll advertise you and your business and your building fit to make you
dizzy. I'll make you celebrated. I'll make you talked about. You won't
have to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for it, either. Nor four. Nor
one. Just give me a week's time and a scaffolding--I worked on a panorama
once--and I'll see that you're advertised. I'll do it with my eyes
bandaged and with one hand--either one--tied behind me. I'll see to it
that you get the Merry Laugh. I'll see that you get the Broad Grin. I'll
see that you get the Unrestrained Cachinnation. I'll get you into the
guide-books and the art journals--nit! Why, you poor creatures"--Little
O'Grady's liberal glance took in the entire assembly--"who do you think
bestow the sort of celebrity you have presumed to hope for? _Your_ kind?
Not on your life. The cheap twaddlers of cheap daily stuff for cheap
people? Never imagine it. Who, then? The few, wherever they may be, who
_know_. Good work by good men; and then a single word from the right
source, however distant, starts the ball rolling and the stream running.
The city feels proud of your taste and liberality, travelling strangers
turn aside to see the fruit of it, and you get praise and celebrity
indeed. But nothing of that kind will ever happen to you, whether you
think yourselves art patrons or not;"--here O'Grady dealt a deadly look
at Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. "Do what you like; people will snicker and
guffaw and hold their sides and pant for somebody to fan them and bring
them to. As for me, I utterly scorn and loathe the whole pack of you. I
curse you; I rue the day when first I----"
Little O'Grady thrust out his angry hands to rend his garment, but found
that he had left it behind. Balked here, he was about to let them loose
on his hair, when the Morrell Twins, at a sign from Andrew P. Hill, now
speechless with anger, sprang up and seized Little O'Grady by both
shoulders and hustled him out of the room. Robin Morrell gave him a cuff
on the ear to boot--a cuff that was to cost him dearer than any other
action of his life. Little O'Grady paused on the other side of the
partition to curse the board again, but the watchman hustled him out into
the street. He paused on the curbstone to curse the bank, but a policeman
told him to move along. On his way back to the Warren, Little O'Grady
went a block out of his road to curse the new building, now almost ready
for occupancy. He lifted up his arm against it and anathematized it, and
a passing patrol-wagon almost paused, as if wondering whether he were not
best picked up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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