I
As everybody knows, the great majority
of Americans, upon reaching the age of natural selection, are elected to
the American Institute of Arts and Ethics, which is, so to speak,
the Ellis Island of the Academy.
Occasionally a general mobilization of the Academy is ordered and, from
the teeming population of the Institute, a new Immortal is selected
for the American Academy of Moral
Endeavor by the simple process of blindfolded selection from Who’s Which.
The motto of this most stately of earthly institutions is a peculiarly
modest, truthful, and unintentional epigram by Tupper:
“Unknown, I became Famous; Famous, I remain Unknown.”
And so I found it to be the case; for, when at last I was privileged to
write my name, “Smith, Academician,” I discovered to my surprise that I
knew none of my brother
Immortals, and, more amazing still,
none of them had ever heard of me. This latter fact became the more astonishing
to me as I learned the identity of the other Immortals.
Even the President of our great republic was numbered among these Olympians.
I had every right to suppose that he had heard of me. I had happened to
hear of him, because his Secretary of State once mentioned him at Chautauqua.
It was a wonderfully meaningless sensation to know nobody and to discover
myself equally unknown amid that matchless companionship. We were like
a mixed bunch
of gods, Greek, Norse, Hindu, Hottentot—all
gathered on Olympus, having never heard of each other but taking it for
granted that we were all gods together and all members
of this club.
My initiation into the Academy had been fixed for April first, and I was
much worried concerning the address which I was of course expected to deliver
on that occasion
before my fellow members.
It had to be an exciting address because slumber was not an infrequent
phenomenon among the Immortals on such solemn occasions. Like dozens of
dozing Joves a dull discourse always set them nodding.
But always under such circumstances the pretty ushers from Barnard College
passed around refreshments; a suffragette orchestra struck up; the ushers
uprooted the seated Immortals and fox-trotted them into comparative consciousness.
But I didn’t wish to have my inaugural address interrupted, therefore I
was at my wits’ ends to discover a subject of such exciting scientific
interest that my august audience
could not choose but listen as
attentively as they would listen from the front row to some deathless stunt
in vaudeville.
That morning I had left the Bronx rather early, hoping that a long walk
might compose my thoughts and enable me to think of some sufficiently entertaining
and unusual
subject for my inaugural address.
I walked as far as Columbia University, gazed with rapture upon its magnificent
architecture until I was as satiated as though I had arisen from a banquet
at Childs’.
To aid mental digestion I strolled over to the noble home of the Academy
and Institute adjoining Mr. Huntington’s Hispano-Moresque Museum. It was
a fine, sunny
morning, and the Immortals were
being exercised by a number of pretty ushers from Barnard.
I gazed upon the impressive procession with pride unutterable; very soon
I also should walk two and two in the sunshine, my dome crowned with figurative
laurels, cracking scientific witticisms with my fellow inmates, or, perhaps,
squeezing the pretty fingers of some— But let that pass.
I was, as I say, gazing upon this inspiring scene on a beautiful morning
in February, when I became aware of a short and visibly vulgar person beside
me, plucking
persistently at my elbow.
“Are you the great Academician, Perfessor Smith?” he asked, tipping his
pearl-coloured and somewhat soiled bowler.
“Yes,” I said condescendingly. “Your description of me precludes further
doubt. What can I do for you, my good man?”
“Are you this here Perfessor Smith of the Department of Anthropology in
the
Bronx Park Zoölogical Society?” he persisted.
“What do you desire of me ?” I repeated, taking another look at him. He
was exceedingly ordinary.
“Prof, old sport,” he said cordially, “I took a slant at the papers yesterday,
an’
I seen all about the big time these guys had when you rode the goat—”
“Rode— what?”
“When you was elected. Get me?”
I stared at him. He grinned in a friendly way.
“The privacy of those solemn proceedings should remain sacred. It were
unfit to discuss such matters with the world at large,” I said coldly.
“I get you,” he rejoined cheerfully.
“What do you desire of me?” I repeated. “Why this unseemly apropos?”
“I was comin’ to it. Perfessor, I’ll be frank. I need money—”
“You need brains!”
“No,” he said good-humouredly, “I’ve got ‘em; plenty of ‘em; I’m overstocked
with idees. What I want to do is to sell you a few—”
“Do you know you are impudent!”
“Listen, friend. I seen a piece in the papers as how you was to make the
speech of your life when you ride the goat for these here guys on April
first—”
‘“I decline to listen—”
“One minute, friend! I want to ask you one thing! What are you going to
talk about?”
I was already moving away but I stopped and stared at him.
“That’s the question,” he nodded with unimpaired cheerfulness, “what are
you going to talk about on April the first? Remember it’s the hot-air party
of your life. Ree-
member that each an’ every paper
in the United States will print what you say. Now, how about it, friend?
Are you up in your lines?”
Swallowing my repulsion for him I said: “Why are you concerned as to what
may be the subject of my approaching address?”
“There you are, Prof!” he exclaimed delightedly; “I want to do business
with you. That’s me! I’m frank about it. Say, there ought to be a wad of
the joyful in it for us both—”
“What?”
“Sure. We can work it any old way. Take Tyng, Tyng and Company, the typewriter
people. I’d be ashamed to tell you what I can get out o’ them if you’ll
mention the Tyng-Tyng typewriter in your speech—”
“What you suggest is infamous!” I said haughtily.
“Believe me there’s enough in it to make it a financial coup, and I ask
you, Prof, isn’t a financial coup respectable?”
“You seem to be morally unfitted to comprehend—”
“Pardon me! I’m fitted up regardless with all kinds of fixtures. I’m fixed
to undertake anything. Now if you’d prefer the Bunsen Baby Biscuit bunch—why
old man Bunsen
would come across—”
“I won’t do such things!” I said angrily.
“Very well, very well. Dont get riled, sir. That’s only one way to build
on Fifth Avenoo. I’ve got one hundred thousand other ways—”
“I don’t want to talk to you—”
“They’re honest—some of them. Say, if you want a stric’ly honest deal I’ve
got the goods. Only it ain’t as easy and the money ain’t as big—”
“I don’t want to talk to you—”
“Yes you do. You don’t reelize it but you do. Why you’re fixin’ to make
the holler of your life, ain’t you? What are you goin’ to say? Hey? What
you aimin’ to say to make
those guys set up? What’s the use
of up-stagin’? Ain’t you willin’ to pay me a few plunks if I dy-vulge to
you the most startlin’ phenomena that has ever electrified civilization
sense the era of P. T. Barnum!”
I was already hurrying away when the mention of that great scientist’s
name halted me once more.
The little flashy man had been tagging along at my heels, talking cheerfully
and volubly all the while; and now, as I halted again, he struck an attitude,
legs apart, thumbs
hooked in his arm-pits, and his
head cocked knowingly on one side.
“Prof,” he said, “if you’d work in the Tyng-Tyng Company, or fix it up
with Bunsen to mention his Baby Biscuits as the most nootritious of condeements,
there’d be more in it for you an’ me. But it’s up to you.”
“Well I won’t!” I retorted.
“Very well, ve-ry well,” he said soothingly. “Then look over another line
o’ samples. No trouble to show ‘em—none at all, sir! Now if P. T. Barnum
was alive—”
I said very seriously: “The name of that great discoverer falling from
your illiterate lips has halted me a second time. His name alone invests
your somewhat suspicious
conversation with a dignity and
authority heretofore conspicuously absent. If, as you hint, you have any
scientific information for sale which P. T. Barnum might have considered
worth purchasing, you may possibly
find in me a client. Proceed, young sir.”
“Say, listen, Bo—I mean, Prof. I’ve got the goods. Don’t worry. I’ve got
information in my think-box that would make your kick-in speech the event
of the century. The question remains, do I get mine?”
“What is this scientific information?”
We had now walked as far as Riverside Drive. There were plenty of unoccupied
benches. I sat down and he seated himself beside me.
For a few moments I gazed upon the magnificent view. Even he seemed awed
by the proportions of the superb iron gas tank dominating the prospect.
I gazed at the colossal
advertisements across the Hudson,
at the freight trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that
majestic sewer which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless
flood millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which
we call “up-state,” to the sea. And, thinking of disposal plants, I thought
of that sublime
paraphrase—“From the Mohawk to
the Hudson, and from the Hudson to the Sea.”
“Bo,” he said, “I gotta hand it to you. Them guys might have got wise if
you had worked in the Tyng-Tyng Company or the Bunsen stuff. There was
big money into it,
but it might not have went.”
I waited curiously.
“But this here dope I’m startin’ in to cook for you is a straight, reelible,
an’ hones’ pill. P. T. Barnum he would have went a million miles to see
what I seen last Janooary
down in the Coquina country—”
“Where is that?”
“Say; that’s what costs money to know. When I put you wise I’m due to retire
from actyve business. Get me?”
“Go on.”
“Sure. I was down to the Coquina country, adoin’—well, I was doin’ rubes.
I gotta be hones’ with you, Prof. That’s what I was a-doin’ of— sellin’
farms under water to
suckers. Bee-u-tiful Florida! Own
your own orange grove. Seven crops o’ strawberries every winter in Gawd’s
own country—get me?”
He bestowed upon me a loathsome wink.
“Well, it went big till I made a break and got in Dutch with the Navy Department
what was surveyin’ the Everglades for a safe and sane harbor of refuge
for the navy in
time o’ war.
“Sir, they was a-dredgin’ up the farms I was sellin’, an’ the suckers heard
of it an’ squealed somethin’ fierce, an’ I had to hustle! Yes, sir, I had
to git up an’ mosey cross-lots. And what with the Federal Gov’ment
chasin’ me one way an’ them rubes an’ the sheriff of Pickalocka County
racin’ me t’other, I got lost for fair—yes, sir.”
He smiled reminiscently, produced from his pockets the cold and offensive
remains of a partly consumed cigar, and examined it critically. Then he
requested a match.
“I shall now pass over lightly or in subdood silence the painful events
of my flight,” he remarked, waving his cigar and expelling a long squirt
of smoke from his unshaven
lips. “Surfice it to say that I
got everythin’ that was comin’ to me, an’ then some, what with snakes and
murskeeters, an’ briers an’ mud, an’ hunger an’ thirst an’ heat. Wasn’t
there a wop named Pizarro or somethin’
what got lost down in Florida? Well, he’s got nothin’ on me. I never want
to see the dam’ state again. But I’ll go back if you say so!”
His small rat eyes rested musingly upon the river; he sucked thoughtfully
at his cigar, hooked one soiled thumb into the armhole of his fancy vest
and crossed his legs.
“To resoom,” he said cheerily; “I come out one day, half nood, onto the
banks of the Miami River. The rest was a pipe after what I had went through.
“I trimmed a guy at Miami, got clothes and railroad fare, an’ ducked.
“Now the valyble portion of my discourse is this here partial information
concernin’ what I seen—or rather what I run onto durin’ my crool flight
from my ree-lentless
persecutors.
“An’ these here is the facts: There is, contrary to maps, Coast Survey
guys, an’ general opinion, a range of hills in Florida, made entirely of
coquina.
“It’s a good big range, too, fifty miles long an’ anywhere from one to
five miles acrost.
“An’ what I’ve got to say is this: Into them there Coquina hills there
still
lives the expirin’ remains of the cave-men—”
“What!” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Or,” he continued calmly, “to speak more stric’ly, the few individools
of that there expirin’ race is now totally reduced to a few women.”
“Your statement is wild—”
“No; but they’re wild. I seen ‘em. Bein’ extreemly bee-utiful I approached
nearer, but they hove rocks at me, they did, an’ they run into the rocks
like squir’ls, they did,
an’ I was too much on the blink
to stick around whistlin’ for dearie.
“But I seen ‘em; they was all dolled up in the skins of wild annermals.
When I see the first one she was eatin’ onto a ear of corn, an’ I nearly
ketched her, but she run like
hellnall—yes, sir. Just like that.
“So next I looked for some cave guy to waltz up an’ paste me, but no. An’
after I had went through them dam’ Coquina mountains I reelized that there
was nary a guy left
in this here expirin’ race, only
women, an’ only about a dozen o’ them.”
He ceased, meditatively expelled a cloud of pungent smoke, and folded his
arms.
“Of course,” said I with a sneer, “you have proofs to back your pleasant
tale?”
“Sure. I made a map.”
“‘I see,” said I sarcastically. “You propose to have me pay you for that
map?”
“Sure.”
“How much, my confiding friend?”
“Ten thousand plunks.”
I began to laugh. He laughed, too: “You’ll pay ‘em if you take my map an’
go to the Coquina hills,” he said.
I stopped laughing: “Do you mean that I am to go there and investigate
before I pay you for this information?”
“Sure. If the goods ain’t up to sample the deal is off.”
“Sample? What sample?” I demanded derisively.
He made a gesture with one soiled hand as though quieting a balky horse.
“I took a snapshot, friend. You wanta take a slant at it?”
“You took a photograph of one of these alleged cave-dwellers?”
“I took ten but when these here cave-ladies hove rocks at me the fillums
was put on the blink—all excep’ this one which I dee-veloped an’ printed.”
He drew from his inner coat pocket a photograph and handed it to me the
most amazing photograph I ever gazed upon. Astounded, almost convinced
I sat looking at this
irrefutable evidence in silence.
The smoke of his cigar drifting into my face aroused me from a sort of
dazed inertia.
“Listen,” I said, half strangled, “are you willing to wait for payment
until I personally have verified the existence of these—er—creatures?”
“You betcher! When you have went there an’ have saw the goods, just let
me have mine if they’re up to sample. Is that right?”
“It seems perfectly fair.”
“It is fair. I wouldn’t try to do a scientific guy—no, sir. Me without
no eddycation, only brains? Fat chance I’d have to put one over on a Academy
sport what’s chuck-a-
block with Latin an’ Greek an’
scientific stuff an’ all like that!”
I admitted to myself that he’d stand no chance.
“Is it a go?” he asked.
“Where is the map?” I inquired, trembling internally with excitement.
“Ha—ha!” he said. “Listen to my mirth! The map is inside here, old sport!”
and he tapped his retreating forehead with one nicotine-stained finger.
“I see,” said I, trying to speak carelessly; “you desire to pilot me.”
“I don’t desire to but I gotta go with you.”
“An accurate map—”
“Can it, old sport! A accurate map is all right when it’s pasted over the
front of your head for a face. But I wear the other kind of map inside
me conk. Get me?”
“I confess that I do not.”
“Well, get this, then. It’s a cash deal. If the goods is up to sample you
hand me mine then an’ there. I don’t deliver no goods f.o.b. I shows ‘em
to you. After you have saw them it’s up to you to round ‘em up. That’s
all, as they say when our great President pulls a gun. There ain’t goin’
to be no shootin’; walk out quietly, ladies!”
After I had sat there for fully ten minutes staring at him I came to the
only logical conclusion possible to a scientific mind.
I said: “You are, admittedly’ unlettered; you are confessedly a chevalier
of industry; personally you are exceedingly distasteful to me. But it is
useless to deny that you are the most extraordinary man I ever saw....
How soon can you take me to these Coquina hills?”
“Gimme twenty-four hours to—fix things,” he said gaily.
“Is that all?”
“It’s plenty, I guess. An’—say!”
“What ?”
“It’s a stric’ly cash deal. Get me ?”
“I shall have with me a certified check for ten thousand dollars. Also
a pair of automatics.”
He laughed: “Huh!” he said, “I could loco your cabbage-palm soup if I was
that kind! I’m on the level, Perfessor. If I wasn’t I could get you in
about a hundred styles while you was blinkin’ at what you was a-thinkin’
about. But I ain’t no gun-man. You hadn’t oughta pull that stuff on me.
I’ve give you your chanst; take it or leave it.”
I pondered profoundly for another ten minutes. And at last my decision
was irrevocably reached.
“It’s a bargain,” I said firmly. “What is your name?”
“Sam Mink. Write it Samuel onto that there certyfied check—if you can spare
the extra seconds from your valooble time.”
End of PART ONE..... GO TO PART
TWO..... 
