You Should Worry Says John Henry
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George V. Hobart >> You Should Worry Says John Henry
Then I went home and told friend wife about it. She approved eagerly
because she felt that it might solve the servant problem.
Since we started housekeeping about eight months ago we've averaged two
cooks a week. Tuesdays and Fridays are our days for changing chefs. The
old cook leaves Monday evening and the new cook arrives Tuesday morning.
Then the new cook leaves on Thursday evening and the newest cook arrives
on Friday, and so on, world without end.
Friend wife decided she could herself dip a few parsnips in boiling
water without the aid of a European kitchen mechanician.
Vegetarians! What a great idea!
Now she could get out into the sunlight once in a while, instead of
standing forever at the hall door as a perpetual reception committee to
a frowsy-headed Slavonian exile demanding $35 per and nix on the
washing.
But it was Friday and our latest cook was at that moment annoying the
gas range in the kitchen, so why not experiment and find out what merit
there is in a vegetarian menu?
The ayes have it--send for the Duchess of Dishwater.
Enter the Duchess, so proud and haughty, with a rolling pin in one hand
and a guide to the city of New York in the other. During her idle
moments she studied the guide. Even now, and only three weeks from Ellis
Island, she knew the city so well that she could go from one situation
to another with her eyes closed.
"Ollie," said friend wife, "do you know how to cook vegetables in an
appetizing manner?"
[Illustration]
"Of course," answered Ollie, her lips curling disdainfully.
Then I chipped in with, "Very well, Ollie; the members of this household
are vegetarians, for the time being. All of us vegetarians, including
the dog, so please govern yourself accordingly."
Ollie smiled in a broad Hungarian manner and whispered that
vegetarianisms was where she lived.
She confided to us that she could cook vegetables so artistically that
the palate would believe them to be _filet mignon_, with champagne
sauce.
Then she shook the rolling pin at a picture of friend wife's
grandfather, and started in to fool the Beef Trust and put all the
butchers out of business.
Dinner time came and we were all expectancy.
The first course was potato soup. Filling but not fascinating.
The second course was potato chips, which we nibbled slightly while we
looked eagerly at the butler's pantry.
The next course was French fried potatoes with some shoestring potatoes
on the side, and I began to get nervous.
This was followed by a dish of German fried potatoes, some hash-browned
potatoes and some potato _saute_, whereupon my appetite got up and left
the room.
The next course was plain boiled potatoes with the jackets on, and baked
potatoes with the jackets open at the throat, and then some roasted
potatoes with Bolero jackets.
I was beginning to see that a man must have in his veins the blood of
martyrs and of heroes to be a vegetarian and at the same time I could
feel myself fixing my fingers to choke Ollie.
The next course was a large plate of potato salad, and then I fainted.
When I got back Ollie was standing near the table with a sweet smile on
each side of her face, waiting for the applause of those present.
"Have you anything else?" I inquired hungrily.
"Oh, yes!" said Ollie. "I have some potato pudding for dessert."
When I got through swearing Ollie was under the stove, my wife was
under the table, the dog was under the bed, and I was under the
influence of liquor.
I'm cured.
After this my digestive tract will have to fight a sirloin steak every
time I get hungry.
Besides, I don't want to live as long as Methuselah. If I did I'd have
to learn to tango some time in the 875 years to come--then I'd be just
the same as everybody else in the world.
Can you get a flash of Methuselah at the age of 64 taking Tango lessons
from Baldy Sloane up at Weisenfeffer's pedal parlors? And then having to
survive for 850 years with the dance bug in his dome!
Close the door, Delia; there's a draft.
When Peaches recovered from the shock of my outburst over the potato
pudding she said the only way I could square myself was to take her to
the very latest up-to-datest hotel in New York for dinner.
That is some task if you live up town, believe me, because they open new
hotels in New York now the same as they open oysters--by the dozen.
However, after stuffing my pockets with all my earthly possessions, we
hiked forth and steered for the Builtfast--the very latest thing in
expensive beaneries.
Directly we entered its polished portals we could see from the faces of
the clerks and the clocks that a lot of money changed hands before the
Builtfast finally became an assessment center.
In the lobby the furniture was covered with men about town, who sat
around with a checkbook in each hand and made faces at the cash
register.
There are more bellboys than bedrooms in the hotel. They use them for
change. Every time you give the cashier $15 he hands you back $1.50 and
six bellboys.
We took a peep at the diamond-backed dining-room, and when I saw the
waiters refusing everything but certified checks in the way of a tip, I
said to Peaches, "This is no place for us!" But she wouldn't let go,
and we filed into the appetite killery.
A very polite lieutenant waiter, with a sergeant waiter and two corporal
waiters, greeted us and we gave the countersign, "Abandon health, all ye
who enter here."
Then the lieutenant waiter and his army corps deployed by columns of
four and escorted us to the most expensive looking trough I ever saw in
a dining-room.
"Peaches," I said to friend wife, "I'm doing this to please you, but
after I pay the check it's me to file a petition in bankruptcy."
She just grinned, picked up the point-lace napkin and began to admire
the onyx furniture.
"_Que souhaitez vous?_" said the waiter, bowing so low that I could feel
a chill running through my little bank account.
"I guess he means you," I whispered to Peaches, but she looked very
solemnly at the menu card and began to bite her lips.
"_Je suis tout a votre service,_" the waiter cross-countered before I
could recover, and he had me gasping. It never struck me that I had to
take a course in French before entering the Builtfast hunger foundry,
and there I sat making funny faces at the tablecloth, while friend wife
blushed crimson and the waiter kept on bowing like an animated
jackknife.
"Say, Mike!" I ventured after a bit, "tip us off to a quiet bunch of
eating that will fit a couple of appetites just out seeing the sights.
Nothing that will put a kink in a year's income, you know, Bo; just
suggest some little thing that looks better than it tastes, but is not
too expensive to keep down."
"_Oui, oui!_" His Marseillaise came back at me, "_un diner comfortable
doit se composer de potage, de volaille bouillie ou rotie, chaude ou
froide, de gibier, de plats rares et distingues, de poissons, de
sucreries, de patisseries et de fruits!_"
I looked at my wife, she looked at me, then we both looked out the
window and wished we had never been born.
"Say, Garsong," I said, after we came to, "my wife is a daughter of the
American Revolution and she's so patriotic she eats only in United
States, so cut out the Moulin Rouge lyrics and let's get down to cases.
How much will it set me back if I order a plain steak--just enough to
flirt with two very polite appetites?"
"Nine dollars and seventy cents," said Joan of Arc's brother Bill; "the
seventy cents is for the steak and the nine dollars will help some to
pay for the Looey the Fifteenth furniture in the bridal chamber."
"Save the money, John," whispered Peaches, "and we'll buy a pianola with
it."
"How about a sliver of roast beef with some simple vegetable," I said
to the waiter. "Is it a bull market for an order like that?"
"Three dollars and forty-two cents," answered Henri of Navarre;
"forty-two cents for the order and three dollars to help pay for the
French velvet curtains in the golden suite on the second floor."
"Keep on guessing, John; you'll wear him out," Peaches whispered.
"Possibly a little cold lamb with a suggestion of potato salad on the
side might satisfy us," I said; "make me an estimate."
"Four dollars and eighteen cents," replied Patsey Boulanger; "eighteen
cents for the lamb and salad and the four dollars for the Looey the
Fifteenth draperies in the drawing-room."
"Ask him if there's a bargain counter anywhere in the dining-room,"
whispered Peaches.
"My dear," I said to friend wife, "we have already displaced about sixty
dollars' worth of space in this dyspepsia emporium, and we must,
therefore, behave like gentlemen and order something, no matter what the
cost. What are the savings of a lifetime compared with our honor!"
The waiter bowed so low that his shoulder blades cracked like a whip.
"Bring us," I said, "a plain omelet and one dish of prunes."
I waited till Peter Girofla translated this into French and then I
added, "And on the side, please, two glasses of water and three
toothpicks. Have the prunes fricasseed, wash the water on both corners,
and bring the toothpicks rare."
The waiter rushed away and all around us we could hear money talking to
itself.
Fair women sat at the tables picking dishes out of the bill of fare
which brought the blush of sorrow to the faces of their escorts. It was
a wonderful sight, especially for those who have a nervous chill every
time the gas bill comes in.
When we ate our modest little dinner the waiter presented a check which
called for three dollars and thirty-three cents.
"The thirty-three cents is for what you ordered," Alexander J. Dumas
explained, "and the three dollars is for the French hangings in the
parlor."
"Holy Smoke!" I cried; "that fellow Looey the Fifteenth has been doing a
lot of work around here, hasn't he?" But the waiter was so busy watching
the finish of the change he handed me that he didn't crack a smile.
Then I got reckless and handed him a fifty-cent tip.
The waiter looked at the fifty cents and turned pale.
Then he looked at me and turned paler.
He tried to thank me, but he caught another flash of that plebeian fifty
and it choked him.
Then he took a long look at the half-dollar and with a low moan he
passed away.
In the excitement I grabbed Peaches and we flew for home.
The next time I go to one of those expensive shacks it will be just
after I've had a hearty dinner.
Even at that I may change my mind and go to a moving picture show.
CHAPTER IV
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT GETTING A GOAT
Hep Hardy's goat belongs to the chamois branch of that famous family.
When it gets out it wants to leap from crag to crag.
Hep's chamois got loose recently and, believe me, I never saw a goat
perform to better advantage.
For a long time Hep has been in love with Clarissa Goober, the daughter
of Pop Goober, who made millions out of the Flower-pot Trust. Of late,
however, Hep's course of true love has been running for Sweeney, and my
old pal has been staring at the furniture and conversing with himself a
great deal.
[Illustration]
On our way home night before last Hep and I dropped into the Saint
Astormore for a cocktail, and at a table near us sat Pop Goober and
something else which afterwards turned out to be a Prussian
nobleman--the Count Cheese von Cheese.
When Hep got a flash of these two his goat kicked down the door of its
box-stall and began cavorting all over the Western Hemisphere.
"Pipe!" he whispered hoarsely, "pipe Pop Goober and the human germ with
him! It's a titled foreigner--honest it is! It can walk and say, 'Papa!'
And it is trained to pick out a millionaire father-in-law at fifty
paces!"
"Why, what's the matter, Hep?" I inquired after the waiter had vamped.
"Oh, I'm wise to these guys with the Gorgonzola titles all wrapped up in
pink tissue paper and only $8 in the jeans," Hep rumbled, with a glare
in the direction of the Count Cheese von Cheese.
"Pop Goober certainly does make both ends meet in the lemon industry,"
he continued. "That old gink is the original Onion collector and he
spends his waking hours falling for dead ones."
Hep paused to bite the froth off a Bronx. His goat was at the post.
"That driblet is over here to pick out an heiress and fall in love with
her because he needs the money," Hep growled as his goat got away in the
lead. "Every steamer brings them over, John, some _incognito_, some in
dress suits, and some in _hoc signo vinces_, but all of them able to
pick out a lady with a bank account as far as the naked eye can see.
"It's getting so now, John, that an open-face, stem-winding American has
to kick four Dukes, eight Earls, seven Counts and a couple of Princes
off the front steps every time he goes to call on his sweetheart--if she
has money.
"When I go down into Wall Street, John, I find rich men with the tears
streaming down their faces while they are calling up on the telephone to
see if their daughter, Gladys, is still safe at home, where they left
her before they came down to business.
"Walk through a peachy palace of the rich on Fifth Avenue, and what will
you find?
"Answer: You will find a proud mother bowed with a great grief, and
holding onto a rope which is tied to her daughter's ankle to prevent the
latter from running out on the front piazza, and throwing kisses at the
titled foreigners.
"You will find these cheap skates everywhere, John, rushing hither and
thither, and sniffing the air for the odor of burning money."
Hep's goat at the quarter and going strong.
"They're all over the place, John," he rushed on; "the street cars are
full of Earls and Baronets, traveling on transfers. There they are,
John, sitting in the best seats and reading the newspapers until an
heiress jumps aboard and hands them her address, with a memorandum of
her papa's bank account.
"Then they arise with the true nobility of motion and ask that a day be
set for the wedding.
"Why should it be thus, John? We have laws in this country to protect
the birds and the trees, the squirrels and all animals except those that
can be reached by an automobile, but why don't we have a law to protect
the heiresses?
"Why are these titled zimboes permitted to borrow carfare, and come over
here and give this fair land a fit of indigestion?
"Why are they permitted to set their proud and large feet on the soil
for which our forefathers fought and bled for their country, and for
which some of us are still fighting and bleeding the country? Why? Why
do these fat-heads come over here with a silver cigarette case and a
society directory and make every rich man in the country fasten a
burglar alarm to his checkbook?"
Hep's goat at the half by a length.
"A few days ago, John, one of these mutts with an Edam title jumped off
an ocean liner, and immediately the price of padlocks rose to the
highest point ever known on the Stock Exchange.
"All over the country rich men with romantic daughters rushed to and fro
and then rushed back again. They were up against a crisis. If you could
get near enough to the long-distance telephone, John, you could hear
one rich old American guy shrieking the battle-cry to another captain of
industry out in Indianapolis: 'To arms! The foe! The foe! He comes with
nothing but his full dress suit and a blank marriage license! To arms!
To arms!'"
Hep's goat at the three-quarters by two lengths.
"Why, John," he exploded again, "every telegraph wire in the country is
sizzling with excitement. Despatches which would make your blood curdle
with anguish and sorrow for the rich are flying all over the country.
Something like this:
"'Boston. To-day.
"'At ten-thirty this morning Rudolph Oscar Grabbitall, the
millionaire stone-breaker, read the startling news that a foreign
Count had just landed in New York. His suffering was pathetic. His
daughter, Gasolene Panatella, who will inherit $19,000,000, mostly
in bonds, stocks and newspaper talk, was in the dental parlor five
blocks away from home when the blow fell. Calling his household
about him, Mr. Grabbitall rushed into the dental parlor, beat the
dentist down with his bill, dragged Gasolene Panatella home and
locked her up in the rear cupboard of the spare room on the second
floor of the mansion. Her teeth suffered somewhat, but, thank
Heaven! her money will remain in this country. The community
breathes easier, but all the incoming trains are being watched.'
"Are you wise, John, to what the panhandling nobility of Europe are
doing to our dear United States?
"They are putting all our millionaires on the fritz, that's what they're
doing."
Hep's goat in the stretch, under wraps.
"Le'me tell you something, John; it will soon come to pass that the
heiress will have to be locked up in the safe deposit vaults with papa's
bank book. Here is an item from one of our most prominent newspapers.
Get this, John:
"'Long Island City. Now.
"'Pinchem Shortface, the millionaire who made a fortune by
inventing a way to open clams by steam, has determined that no
foreign Count will marry his daughter, Sudsetta. She will inherit
about $193,000,000, about $18 of which is loose enough to spend.
The unhappy father is building a spite fence around his mansion,
which will be about twenty-two feet high, and all the unmarried
millionaires without daughters, to speak of, will contribute broken
champagne bottles to put on top of the fence. If the Count gets
Sudsetta he is more of a sparrow than her father thinks he is.'
"It's pitiful, John, that's what it is, pitiful! All over the country
rich men are dropping their beloved daughters in the cyclone cellars and
hiding mamma's stocking with the money in it out in the hay loft.
"I am glad, John, that I am not a rich man with a daughter who is eating
her heart out for a moth-covered title and a castle on the Rhinewine.
"You can bet, John, that no daughter of mine can ever marry a tall gent
with a nose like the rear end of an observation car and a knowledge of
the English language which doesn't get beyond I O U--do you get me?"
Hep's goat wins in a walk.
"Are you all through, Hep?" I inquired feebly.
"I'm not through--but I'll take a recess," he snapped back at me.
"By the way," I said, offhand like, "is Clarissa Goober in town?"
"Yes, but she sails for Europe to-morrow on the _Imperator_," he
answered sullenly.
"Oh," I said; "who's going with her?"
"The Count Cheese von Cheese."
"Oh!"
Long pause.
"Let's have another Bronx," I suggested.
Hep took six--one for himself and five for the goat.
Can you blame him?
CHAPTER V
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT BEING IN LOVE
Say! have you ever noticed that when a gink with an aluminum headpiece
is handed the "This-Way-Out" signal by his adored one, he either hikes
for a pickle parlor and begins to festoon his system with hops, or he
stands in front of a hardware store and gazes gloomily at the guns?
You haven't noticed it! Why, you astonish me.
Friend wife met me by appointment to take dinner at the Saint Astormore
the other evening and with her was her little brother, Stephen, aged
nine.
"I brought Stevie with me because I had some shopping to do and he's so
much company," Peaches explained as we sat down in the restaurant.
"Stevie is always pleasant company," I agreed, politely, but with a
watchful eye on my youthful brother-in-law all the while.
That kid was born with an abnormal bump of mischief and, by painstaking
endeavor, he has won the world's championship as an organizer of
impromptu riots.
"Oh, John!" said Peaches, when I began to make faces at the menu card,
"I didn't notice until now how pale you look. Have you had a busy day?"
"Busy!" I repeated; "well, rather. I've been giving imitations of a
bull fight. Everybody I met was the bull and I was the fight. Nominate
your eats! What'll it be, Stevie?"
"Sponge cake," said Stephen, promptly.
"What else?" asked Peaches.
"More sponge cake," the youth replied, and just then the smiling and
sympathetic waiter stooped down to pick up a fork Stephen had dropped.
In his anxiety not to miss anything, Stevie rubbered acrobatically with
the result that he upset a glass of ice water down the waiter's neck,
and three seconds later the tray-trotter had issued an Extra and was
saying things in French that would sound scandalous if translated.
It cost me a dollar to bring the dish-dragger back to earth, and Stevie
said I could break his bank open when we got home and take all the money
if I'd let him do it again.
Just then I got a flash of Dike Lawrence bearing down in our direction
under a full head of benzine.
Dike was escorting a three days' jag and whispering words of
encouragement to it.
A good fellow, Dike, but he shouldn't permit a distillery to use his
thirst as a testing station--he's too temperamental.
"H'ar'ye, Mrs. John?" he gurgled as the waiter pushed an extra chair
under him. "Howdy, John? How de do, little man! 'Scuse me for
int'rupting a perf'ly splendid family party--my mistake!--I'm all
in--that's it--I'm all in and it's your fault, John; all your fault!"
"What's wrong, Dike?" I inquired.
"Ev'thing!" he martinied; "ev'thing all wrong--lesh have drink--my
mistake--didn't think of it before. Your little son growing to be a
splendid boy, Mrs. John!"
"This is Stephen, my little brother, not my little son," Peaches
explained; "we haven't any children," she added nervously.
Dike carefully closed one eye and focussed the other on her. "Haven't
any little son--my mistake!" Then he turned the open gig-lamp on me and
began again. "S'prised at you, John; little son is the most won'erful
thing any father and mother could possess with the possible 'ception of
a li'l daughter--ain't that so, Mrs. John? Little brother is all right,
but don't compare with little son. Look at me, Mrs. John; can't ever
have little son--when I think about it I could bust right out
cryin'--Grief has made me almost hystalical, hystorical, hystollified--I
mean, I'm nervous--lesh have drink!"
"What's gone wrong, Dike?" I asked; "each minute you look more and more
like Mona Lisa without the smile--what's the trouble?"
"All your fault, John," he plunged on again. "Most bew'ful girl she was,
Mrs. John; perf'ly bew'ful, with won'erful gray hair and golden eyes,
perf'ly bew'ful girl. I told your husban' all about her--I made
confession that I was madly in love with this bew'ful girl, and your
husban' told me to go and propose to her and drag her off to a
minister--and I did propose--my mistake. After I made my speech she said
to me, this bew'ful girl said to me, 'That's all right; no doubt you do
love me, but are you eugenic?' and I said, 'No, I'm Presbyterian.'"
Dike paused to let the horror of the scene sink in and then he fell
overboard again with a moist splash.
"That bew'ful girl jus' glanced at me coldly--jus' merely indicated the
door, that bew'ful girl, and I passed out of her life f'rever. Two days
later I found out jus' what eugenic meant, and, b'lieve me, from my
heart, my sincere regret is that I was not college bred before I met
that bew'ful girl!"
Saying this he grabbed a wine-glass from the table and held it close to
his heart in order to illustrate the intensity of his feeling.
The next instant a thick, reddish liquid began to flow sluggishly over
the bosom of his immaculate white shirt and was lost in the region of
his equator, seeing which Dike gave vent to a yell that brought the
waiters on the hot foot.
"I'm stabbed; stabbed!" groaned the startled jag-carpenter, clutching
wildly at his shirt-front as the plate-passers bore him away to a haven
of rest.
"It's my clam cocktail," whispered Stephen to me; "I poured it in his
wine-glass 'cause they was too much tobascum sauce in it for me!"
"Brave boy!" I answered. "It was a kindly deed."
Then we finished our dinner in all the refined silence the Saint
Astormore so carefully furnishes.
Dike's sad story of misplaced affection and an unused dictionary puts us
wise to the fact that in these changeful days even the old-fashioned
idea of courtship has been chased to the woods.
It used to be that on a Saturday evening the Young Gent would draw down
his six dollars worth of salary and chase himself to the barber shop,
where the Bolivian lawn trimmer would put a crimp in his mustache and
plaster his forehead with three cents worth of hair and a dollar's worth
of axle-grease.
Then the Young Gent would go out and spread 40 cents around among the
tradesmen for a mess of water-lilies and a bag of peanut brittle.
The lilies of the valley were to put on the dining-table so mother would
be pleased, and with the peanut brittle he intended to fill in the weary
moments when he and his little geisha girl were not making goo-goo eyes
at each other.
But nowadays it is different.
What with eugenics and the high speed of living Dan Cupid spends most of
his time on the hot foot between the coroner's office and the divorce
court.