Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1913 — WAS A QUIET MAN [ARTICLE]

WAS A QUIET MAN

But He Babbled in His Dreams About the Plot for a Story. By MICHAEL J. PORTER. , J. Harrington Beach had an Income irom an estate. It wasn’t a terrible Income, but it did very well for a man of quiet tastes. it, Harrington had reached the age ■of twenty-three when he fell In love. He was ready to marry and would have married the girl of his choice had she not run away with an animal trainer. When the news reached the young man that his true love had gone to be trained he jumped into the river, but was rescued by a man with a large and growing family, who charged one dollar for working over time. These things happened in a village, and the friends of J. Harrington got together in convention and resolved that he ought to depart from pastoral acenes to the mad bustle of the city. His heart had been wrenched and his brain given a jar, and if permitted to brood over it he would surely fetch up In a lunatic asylum. In the city J. Harrington would meet up with free lunch palaces, confidence men, grafters, chorus girls and investigating committees, and would soon regain his confidence in human nature and fall in love again. It was suggested to him that while he was waiting to regain he take up the writing of stories for magazines. It would be a little sideline that would comfort him and add to his shekels. Amanda Penrose Phillips had an income from an estate. It provided her with food and raiment and three nights a week at the moving picture shows. She had got along in years to somewhere between twenty-two and forty-five when a gentleman who owned a mineral spring warranted to cure rheumatism if taken according to directions (barrel per day) asked her hand in marriage. After an interval of three or four seconds she gave it to him. Everything was lovely and the wedding day was approaching with the speed of the state senate whitewashing a grafter when a dreadful thing happened. A man who had come to the spring to be cured of rheumatism, was not helped of that trouble in the least, but what did the capricious water do but cure him of a backache that he had been drawing a government pension on for 24 years. He at once instituted a suit for $50,900, and the owner of the spring fled the country and left the waters bubbling behind him. leaving the country included leaving Amanda Penrose Phillips. She had attended every bargain sale for two months to get her bridal outfit together, and had written as far west as Kansas, that she was going to be married and have mineral water on the table three times a day. The blow fell as suddenly as a hired girl missing the top step of the cellar stairs. At the very moment that the news was broken the poor girl was buying her third pair of 48-cent stockings, reduced from 96 cents to make room for the fall stock of potatoes. It was awful. It came so near killing Amanda Penrose on the spot that the village undertaker bought a new hat on the chance that his luck had turned. For eighteen hours Amanda remained In. a comatose condition. Then she rallied and took chicken soup, and in a few days could walk down to the post office again. Her friends said she must go to the city to get over what was gnawing at her heart-strings. She would see sky--scrapers and trolley cars and Brooklyn bridges and Coney islands, and In time she would smile and cavort ggaln. Meanwhile, as she had once had a ' poem published in a weekly paper,, she should turn to writing stories for' the magazines. It was something warranted to turn the troubled mind into a new channel. Behold the rooming house of Mrs. Aiken. Behold J. Harrington Beach an inmate. Behold Amanda Penrose Phillips another. Behold them seated at their respective tables engaged at their literary labors. The two had been introduced, but they had not cared for more. Their bleeding hearts still bled, and they were selfish in their grief and loneliness. It was J. Harrington who first got a page of his story completed and read it to the chambermaid for her criticism. She said it was a hummer thus far, and if he could keep up the interest of It it would jump from a hummer to a thriller. It was to be the story of a millionaire’s daughter who fell in love with her table waiter at a summer hotel. He was a count in disguise, and she alone had penetrated the disguise. She' loved him for the way he carved the lobster and mixed the salad. Of course her father caught on to the racket after a bit and ordered her home, but while waiting for the hotel bus to take her to the depot the waiter sneaked up and 'suggested suicide, and hand in hand they sprang over a cliff into the briny. C; It was a story that J. Harrington Beach had read in an old magazine, and he was simply changing names and the color of hair and eyes. The next day Amanda Penrose Phillips had the first page of her story done, and she read it to the chambermaid and* asked her opinion. She got tit. •, | "Why, that’s the very same story i |Mr. Beach is writing!’* was the com.ment. - "It can’t bo!” "But it is, except that where he jcalls the girl Dora, you call her Daisy." , Amanda had read the same story in

the same old magazine, and she thought a change of names was quite sufficient “Mr. Beach is a literary thief!” she exclaimed with set jaw, “and he shall know that I know it The scoundrel who steals other people’s brains shall be exposed!*’ And she wrote and sent by the maid: “If' the bearer has told me right you are stealing the plot of my story, and unless you drop It at once the public shall be made aware of what sort of a ‘genius’ you are!” - • The note was delivered, and the chambermaid added: “Is this what is called a curious coincidence?” “Not at all,” was the reply. "The woman must have heard me talking in my sleep. I often go over my plots in my sleep, and anyone with an ear to the ? keyhole can hear me. Take this dime, Mid you may carry my answer to the person whom is mean enough to take advantage of a man babbling in his dreams. If she can’t originate a plot for herself she had better stop trying to be literary.” The note was delivered and the girl added: “If you had the lovers jump Into a duck-pond Mr. Beach could not say you stole his plot could her* "A duck-pond!” was contemptuously exclaimed. “Do you think I would make use of such a common thing as that in writing" a romance! Beach or no Beach, it shall never be a duckpond with x me. It shall be a cliff a hundred feet high. Let the literary thief use a duck-pond if he will. I must ask you to carry another note for me.” * “But I have five rooms yet to do up.” “But I have been grelvously insulted, and as one of my sex you must stand by me.” And she wrote and. dispatched: “You cannot have one single attribute of the gentleman in your composition. In addition to stealing my plot, even to the color of the hotel bus, you say that you babble in your dreams, and that I must have caught some of the babble. That, sir, places me on my knees In the hall at midnight with my ear at the keyhole of your door! I retuse to be so placed. I demand the most ample apology. Further, I demand that you either surrender my plot to me or change it over so as to have the lovers blow themselves up with a bomb. Not hearing from you in a reasonable -time, I may resort to the protection the law grants to the most helpless.” J. Harrington Beach did not reply to this note. The chambermaid was otherwise busy, and he felt like walking and thinking matters over. Amanda Penrose Phillips waited for an hour with glaring eyes, and then also concluded to -take a walk. It is always well to take a walk before consulting a lawyer. Mr. Beach strolled up the avenue. Miss Phillips strolled after him. Mr. Beach halted to look at a billboard on which were depicted many Chorus girls, and Miss Phillips was about to overtake him, but not even to glance at a single chorus' girl when a grocer’s runaway horse took to the sidewalk to bring down the high cost of living. He was sweeping all before him, and was getting ready to sweep Amanda Penrose Phillips when J. Harrington Beach gave a spring and caught her and twitched her into the middle of the street. The hat was twitched from the woman’s head, and one shoe from a foot, but she had the sense to realise that it was better thus than to be a mangled corpse. Mr. Beach led her home very gently. Not a word about babbling and the stolen plot. Nothing said about a suit for slander, with damages laid at fifty thousand dollars, good and lawful money. As he left her at the door he pressed her hand. She returned the press. “You did not steal my plot!” she softly said next day. “Nor you mine!” A month later, as they were married in the parlor, the chambermaid said to herself: “Gee, but I knew that story would turn out to be a hummer!’’ (Copyright, 1913. by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)