Life — December 8, 1887 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: “*He was a lover of curious things, and I think he would. It was a combined crush hat and acoustic fan. You could use it at the opera, you know, or at a concert, for bringing the sounds nearer. And it might have served to fill up a pause in the conversation now and then.” “Ora gap in one’s information.” “*Atany rate, it would have saved him from much of the misery into which he fell had I given ittohim. 1 was his uawitting enemy, and you may imagine the feelings with which I first met Fred Bradstock after nefariously pur- loining his gift.” Miss Ernestine de Gilbert started now indeed. Mrs. Grambold endeavored, in her obscurity, to kick the narrator with her small foot, but did not succeed. “If it's Fred Bradstock you mean,” said Mr. Grambold, ‘* you haven't been troubled confronting him much lately ; he's been at the Antipodes for I don't know how long. He's at the Bermudas now, I believe, with a yachting party.” “ Happily for me, yes,” assented the narrator mournfully, ‘ but this was a good while ago. We are judged by our intentions and I felt guilty before him, though I little suspected then what genuine cause I was soon to have for the feeling.” A sound half like a sob merging into a disdainful sniff, or a sniff merging into a sob, came from the direction of Miss de Gilbert. “*The worst burden on me at first was those witnesses, who all returned to this country at once. I was like a whole corps of detectives rolled into one, in keeping them and Fred apart. _I paid the fare of one of them out of my own pocket to Florida, got another away on some plausi- ble pretext to Montreal, and let the third into such a good thing in an interest of mine in a Montana stock ranch, he couldn't possibly refuse to go there.” “Why not have given the thing up, if you felt so badly about it?” “You do not know the anfo/-apho—the persuader, when you talk like that. Will you believe that I, inheriting a nervous temperament, and almost constitutionally incapa- ble of sleeping after seven in the morning, actually culti- vated the habit of taking opiates to enjoy as much as pos- sible, and time after time, the delightful sensation of being waked up by the antol-aphobo-takistaferon.” “Are all your long names strictly necessary?” de- manded Miss Amy Goboy suspiciously, ‘are they really the names of the things ?” “They may be and they may not; Inever asked. They strike me as very good names for the things, and I give them for what they are worth, You see the case of Fred was peculiar, On the one hand, he had heart disease, and couldn't be called by any of the existing alarm clocks, the rattling metallic things that might scare almost any one into an untimely grave. On the other hand, he needed an alarm of some kind, for he could not be depended upon to wake up without assistance. These conditions show the possibilities for evil in my duplicity, in all their glaring horrors." Charlie Clinkerton, the versatile genius at the piano, was playing from time to time a slow musical accompani- ment to the narrative. At the last words he struck two or three chords, as if full of momentous import. “* began to trace constantly in Fred's record, the bane- ful influence of my theft. There was the case where he lost the grizzly bear in California. His guide inadvertently failed to call him, and the hunt was up and away three hours before he put in an appearance. It was a stuffed grizzly, it is true, but if he had been there he would have known it and saved the reputation of the party, for we had taken him in once on a stuffed deer in the Adiron- dacks.” “Grassletree, you are up to something in all this," said the hostess; ‘I can't imagine what it is, but I think I ought to throw another sofa-cushion at you.” “The entol—the musical-early - rising - without alarm — per- suader would have saved him from being left’ by the steam launch at the ocean yacht race, and again at the great Rockaway steeple- chases, and again from being late at his broker's office, the day that G. K. & Q. stock jumped up twenty points in an hour. I need not go over the list of all the other appoint- ments, for business or pleasure, that he missed, as likely as not, through the same cause. The really disastrous epi- sode was the breaking off of his engagement.” Clinkerton, at the pi- ano, signalized this by a grandcrash upon thekeys. Miss de Gilbert, who had shown’ signs of dis- tress, or extreme restless- ness, for some time past, attempted to rise from her improvised divan— not always so easy a matter, however, in the toilettes of the day. But Grassle- tree went on imperturbably. “They say the girl he was engaged to was a perfect fascinator, just too pretty for anything. She was from somewhere out of town—Spuyten Duyvil or Yonkers, or Baltimore or something that way. She was rich.” A scoff of indignation from Miss de Gilbert, “Beautiful, refined, accomplished, charming in every PT PT a ET Ie ET OE A RT IY OT comicbooks.com