Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1913 — The Basement Philosopher [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Basement Philosopher

By KENNETT HARRIS

( Copyright, 1913. byW. G. Chatman)

“I take notice that you’ve quit shaving yourself with the tinner’s shears. Nels, my friend,” remarked the Janitor to his Scandinavian assistant "You must have sprung yourself for a razor lately. And that four-in-hand danger signal you’re sporting is another thing that gives me food for thought, as the feller, says, not to mention the rhinestone collar button. Is it the spring season in a general Way, or is it the primrose blonde In 18 in special? Well, it ain’t no business of mine, only you’ll do well to be careful. Keep your eyes open and look about you before you make up your mind. “You see, Nels,” the Janitor went on, as he hoisted himself to a seat on the basement railing, “you see you’ve got opportunities, owing to the job that you’re holding down here, that most men ain’t got You don’t have to take the chances that you’d have to take if you was on the section or working in a livery stable. The gink who’s digging sewers or driving a dray for a living has to take risks that makes me shudder when I think of them. He goes to a dance, we'll say, or a picnic. He ain’t in no frame of mind to use sense. He’s too full of ham sandwiches, hot dogs, chowder and high spirits to have any room for reason and judgment, and while he’s In that there condition of tempry insanity he runs up against a bunch of skirts, and the next thing he knows one of ’em is cashing his pay checks at the corner grocery regular every Saturday night. Just like that! “They all look good to him. Sure thing! That’s what they’re there for. They’ve got on their longeree waists with the narrow pink ribbon showing

through from underneath and they’re wearing their blue beads and their bright smiles, and what more would a man want? Can she mop a floor or wash a shirt or cook a tater the way It ought to be cooked? Who cares? Ain’t she got on her silk stockings and low-cut shoes? That’e the way to look at it Well, you don’t have to go to no pictures, Nels. All you’ve got to do Is what Bill Mudge done. “Who was Bill Mudge? Why, Bill was a feller that worked for me here last spring a year ago; that’s who Bill was. Bill had sense, Bill had. No bugs in Bill’s bean; he’d tell you so himself. First thing Bill would do was to be sure he was right; then he’d go ahead. Sometimes he’d go just a little ahead of the toe of my boot, but anyway he’d be right 'I ain’t agoing to jump afore I look,’ he’d say; and he wouldn’t—not unless I stuck the point of an awl in a soft part of him when he wasn’t looking. But be was great on keeping his eyes open and taking time to make up bls mind. I’ve known a thirty-car train of mixed freight made up quicker than Bill took to get that mind of his ready, and with less switching. But that’s the kind of a feller he was.

"Well, pay attention now! Bill took a notion that it wasn’t good for a man to live alone and that two could live just about as cheap as one and he used to come and talk to me about it 'There’s from sixteen to eighteen girls In this here building that might do,’ he says to me. 'l've made up my mind that when I find the right one I’ll marry her, but I’m agoing to be dead sure that she is the right one. I ain’t agoing Into It blindfold. I don't buy no pig in no sack, me.’ , ‘“That sounds like sense,’ j I says. 1 don’t say that it is sense, but it sounds like it. How are ybtit agoing to find out?’ “’By using my eyes and my judgment,’ he sajrs. ‘I ain’t been applying of then! in that direction afore, but I’m going to. It’s a pipe! Ain’t lat every kitchen door all times o’ day? Well, here’s the way I’ll find out She’s got to be neat and clean herself, to begin with. I don’t want no sloppy wife. Well, it ain’t going to take me no time to find that much out. Same way with the way she keeps things. I step in to fix a winder ketch or something and I take notice whether the floor is scrubbed an* whether there’s grease on the gas range. I throw my eye on the sink and squint up at the ceiling for cobwebs. If the look of things ain’t satisfactory, I cross her off right there and don’t waste no more time. " ‘The next question is whether she’s’a bustler,’ says Bill. 'lf she's np and busy bright and early it don't

take me long to get hep. IT the shades is down at her bedroom winder at half-past seven, count me out right on that proposition. If she's singing at her work she’s got a cheerful disposition: If I see the cat scooting every time she picks up a broom, vlx on that Not any! Then I’ve got *• o find out how she stacks up on thu eats. How? Easy! I notice the garbage can when I go to empty itj If ’ here’s a mess of scorched cakes and raaybe the half of a roast and a lot rc stale bread and a peck or so of oattneal like there is in some, it don’t take no Sherlock Holmes to Agger out that she’ll .waste about as much as her in iband can make and send him to th < hospital with stummick trouble, b o sir, the less garbage there is, the letter her chances’ll bp,’ says Bill. ’Not when you’ve got the opportunity j that you've got around a flat bulldin, -.* '* ‘Well,’ says I, that sure »»unds like sense.* And it is sense. 'ihat’e why I’m giving you the tip, Nek You take a little less notice of HL la or Helga or whatever her name is ind a little more of what she sets o it for you to empty. You’ve got ih« same opportunities that Bill had. "What kind of a woman db* Bill get? Why, I forgot to tell you about that. One day he come to m* looking pleased and told me that he’d found the right one. A fine, good-look-ing girl she was. Cook and general in 11, where the Greenwalls are now. Always had on a clean drets and apron, Bill said; kitchen as neat as a pip, up at six sharp, sang like a blessed lark and no waste. ‘Me for her,’ says Bill. ‘lt’s just as easy to pick a good one as a poor one,* he says. " 'Go to her,’ says L And he did, the very next day. The only trouble was, though, that she didn’t fancy Bill, and in fact she throwed a dipper of hot water over him and told the iceman and the iceman wiped up the alley with him and Bill got so mad that just to spite 'em he manled a girl that was just leaving her ph ice at 13 that he hadn’t ipvestlgated. Now he says the best thing a feller can

do is to keep his eyes shut. /Then he’s married, anyway. “So there it is, Nels,” concluded the janitor, as he got down from the railing. “It’s all very well fcr a man to be careful about taking his pick, but he’s got to be in shape to stand inspection himself.”

“YOU’VE GOT OPPORTUNITIES MOST MEN AIN’T GOT."