Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million
John Stuart Mill · en
When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he
returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling
the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway
rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest
of the “gags” that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly
impossible, so ultra rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish
products of the barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that
he excited only weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his
hair was so genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so
clamorously rural that even a shell-game man would have put up his peas
and folded his table at the sight of it.
Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more
exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a
twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy.
“Son,” said he, “run somewhere and get this changed for me. I’m mighty
nigh out of chicken feed. I guess you’ll get a nickel if you’ll hurry
up.”
A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy’s face.
“Aw, watchert’ink! G’wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey
ain’t no farm clothes yer got on. G’wan wit yer stage money.”
On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-house. He saw
Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous.
“Mister,” said the rural one. “I’ve heard of places in this here town
where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at
keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see
the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on about $9 or $10?
I’m goin’ to have some sport, and then maybe I’ll buy out a business of
some kind.”
The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left
forefinger nail.
“Cheese it, old man,” he murmured, reproachfully. “The Central Office
must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You
couldn’t get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony
Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat
a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan scenery and mechanical
accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no gilded
halls where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace.”
Rebuffed once again by the great city that is so swift to detect
artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his thoughts
to hold a conference.
“It’s my clothes,” said he; “durned if it ain’t. They think I’m a
hayseed and won’t have nothin’ to do with me. Nobody never made fun of
this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in
New York you must dress up like they do.”