Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1913 — The Basement Philosopher [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Basement Philosopher

By KENNETT HARRIS

(Copyright 1913, by W. G. Chapman) “The agent blew in this morning to rubber,” the janitor informed his assistant. “He was disguised in a fur coat with the collar turned up and a fur cap with the peak pulled down, but I spotted him by the tip of his nose as soon as I laid eyes on him. You can’t mistake an agent’s nose. I seen him pushing it into all the entrances as he come along the street and then take it into the court, and he was getting it smutted up around the coal bins when I snook up behind him and coughed. He thought it was a tenant at first and started to run, but he come back and we hid behind the furnace while I made my report. “ ‘Well, Mr. McCarthy,’ says he, ‘l’ve no fault to find on the whole,’ he says. ’There’s been complaints made about you, of course,’ he says, 'bprt I don’t think that you’re much to blame. Just keep ’em smoothed down, that’s all. Don’t Jtry to bluff ’em. Smooth ’em down. Well, I must be going,’ he says. ‘Tell that gink in 32 that you’re expecting me around any day and that youlre quite sure I’ll fix up things satisfactorily. Tell ’em all the same.’ “So off he goes and makes his report to the estate and draws his fine, elegant salary for the work that I’m doing, and then drops in on the coal dealer and makes a little deal, which is a good deal; and I wrastle with the slate and slag that’s in the coal and stand for the kicks that the tenants make about the heat. It’s a wonder that gazabo doesn’t make me collect the rents. He sure would if he wasn’t scared I’d find out a way to hold out on him. > “Agents are ness’ry evils, I suppose. There!s all kinds, of course—book agents, insurance agents, station agents and road agents, but whether they use an order book or blank leases

or Winchester rifles and bad language, there ain’t much to choose between ’em. 'l'hey’ve all got the same idee—to get your money away from you and play both ends against the middle, which is themselves. In a general way, if you hire an agent, he’ll hire somebody else to do what you want done and they won’t do it—unless they happen to be honest, high-minded janitors. The only good piece of work an agent turns out with his own hands is his expense account. “What’s been the curse of Ireland for generations? Agentß. If it hadn’t been for an agent and a quick finger on the trigger, my old father would have stayed in Connaught, where he wanted to stay, and not broke his heart and the heads of respectable citizens on the New York police force. I don’t say that I’d have been as well off in some respects, but I wouldn’t have had sixty-five families to humor and keep up to their right temperatures, to say nothing of the responsibility of teaching a square head like you the difference between the vacuum cleaner and the sprinkling hose. To think you’d go to work and flood a dollar-and-a-half-a-yard Wilton stair carpet with city water and then drag up the grass rootß outside by electric suction! What’s that? Well, you would have If I hadn’t stopped you in time. And don’t give me any back talk. “As for the book agents, there’s my 'Lives and Public Speeches of the Vice-Presidents of the United States,’ in sixteen volumes, half morocco, to speak for themselves. Go ask my old woman to show ’em to you and get her to tell you what she thinks of agents. It’s one of the easiest things she does and you’ll learn more English than you would at night school — more and different. And was I to blame for wanting to improve my mind and qualify myself for the highest and best paid positions? Didn’t that blasted agent as good as guarantee that them books would land me in the United States senate? And am I in the senate? Say, they wouldn’t give mo the nomination for dog pelter in this district, as long as I’ve worked ■to r the party and for all I’ve read aM remembered about the meteoric career of Charlie Fairbanks. No, Nels, my friend, them books certainly did not make my fortune. If I hadn’t claimed my exemptions, they’d have made a financial wreck of me. “There’s one good thlpg came out of that. It gave the old woman something to kick about We’d been married close on to fifteen years, and in all that time she hadn’t had no fault

to find with me, and it was hurtht* bar a considerable. Here was I, steady, sober, hard working, soft spoken, good natured, loving and kind, neat and orderly, fond of home, sensible and liberal and fair minded, and sbe had to sit away back and keep her mouth shut when the neighbor women was holding a knockfeat on their husbands. Well, then I bought them books. “She’s a changed woman now. There’s a light in her eyes and a spring in her step that hadn’t been there for years before I signed that agent’s contract. It was sure a surprise to me, the gift of eloquence she showed. We used to sit together evenings, she darning Bocks and me reading the paper, and hardly a word between us till I went to bank up the fire for the night. Now she'll talk by the hour if I bring the conversation around to ‘Lives and Public Speeches,’ and it makes her happy. Now that she’s got sixteen volumes of evidence to prove I’m a chuckle headed Idiot and an improvident spendthrift and a selfish skate that won’t deny himself nothing while his wife’s sickenin’ for a decent hat, she’s beginning to appreciate me. She’s a whole lot more affectionate than when she couldn’t lay her finger on a flaw in me, That’s the way with women every time. "Anyway, I don’t see what in thunder you’re a-standing around here for with your hands in your pockets and your mouth open. Get busy with that brass work, you flat faced loafer, and when you’ve done that, go and fix up that radiator in 62, and then come and report to me in Mike’s Place. I’m going to do a little agency business, myßelf, b’jiminy!”

“USED TO SIT TOGETHER EVENINGS, SHE DARNING SOCKS, AND ME READING THE PAPER.”