Life — January 23, 1908 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

RUNNING DESIGN—SUGGESTION FOR /. FRIEZE FOR A BACHELOR’S ROOM DURING LEAP-YEAR Best Sellers Boiled Down THE SKUTTLE By Frances H-d-sn B-n-t Chapter I THE Skuttle goes back and forth intermittently between the two countries, carrying coals to Newcastle maybe, and maybe not. Sometimes it is full, sometimes it is empty. It isa wonderful Skuttle and throws coal dust in the eyes of many a marriageable daughter. Aha! Chapter IT Now Reuben S. Vanderspool was a millionaire & la multi. The grandson of the only and original American grafter, he belonged to one of the first families and was highly esteemed by Newport and Wall Street. He had a private bath in the Worldorf, owned his own newspaper and was looked up to as a great financial swell. “Rosy,” he said to his cldest daughter one day, “Sir Hikel Ansmothers, of Ansmothers Court, Worcestersauceville, has borrowed enough money to come over on the Loosemania. He will be here in a few more minutes. Get busy.” Chapter HI Betty, Rosy’s sister, although only nine years old, was a wonderful che-ild. When she saw Sir Hikel keeping unsteady company with her sister, her proud multimillionairess soul revolted. ‘Just because,” she muttered, “this man does not wear a white kid overcoat and hold a cigar butt next to the diamond ring on his right hand as he walks on the stage, is no sign that he is not a polished villain. They do things differ- ently in real swell life. Tam too young to marry him myself. Therefore I hate him. Wait! My time will come. Chapter IV “Is this Ansmothers Court?” asked Rosy, timidly, a month or so later, as they alighted from the property hack in front of the ancestral remains in Worcestersauceville. “Yes, damn you!” lightly replied Sir Hikel, kicking her gently in the face. “Do not forget,” he added, “that, fee fi fo fum, I am an Englishman.” ' Then he leveled her playfully to the ground. Chapter V Twelve frightiul years passed, fraught with hellish misery for Rosy, during which time she steadily lost weight. Although she had sent several souvenir postal cards to her family re- vealing far better than words the true condition of Ansmothers Court, Sir Hikel merely added them to his collection. Shut up in her lonely castle, where she did not have any more to eat than if she had been in a New York sanitarium, and where she slowly froze each winter before the only fire- place, Rosy grew pale and anemically wan. Her parents were too proud to come without a special invite. As for Sir Hikel, he was busy with her money establishing a belt line of harems across the Continent. But Betty had not forgotten. She was, to be correct, still on the job. Chapter VI Besides visiting Chicago and Europe, Betty had been to a Hudson River girls’ school. She was, therefore, familiar with the ways of the world. “Father,” she said one day to Reuben S. Vanderspool, “something tells me all is not well with Rosy. I have spent enough seasons in Newport to know what married life may be.” “That’s just like you,” exclaimed Reuben S. Vanderspool. “Always thinking of some charitable thing to do. Now, if you had been a boy I would have given you a trust to organize. There is no reason, therefore, why I shouldn’t let you be the leader of an exploring expedition after Rosy. Only don’t fall in the fireplace. You might freeze to death.” Putting a couple of millions in loose change in her purse, Betty engaged passage on the Loosemania, Chapter VII Naturally she attracted the attention of everybody on the steamer, including the head waiter, the purser,and Lord Mount Saint Buncum, who for reasons purely personal, was traveling second class. This gentleman was returning home after six months spent on the outskirts of Colorado, where he was learning the trade of nature faker, when the slump came in Wall Street and ruined his future. The end of our story now looms up ahead like an iceberg on the starboard bow. But have patience, gentle reader! There are only nine hundred pages more of interesting detail. Lord Mount Saint Buncum wanted to speak to Betty. He saw that she was a paying claim. And yet his proud soul, kept under for years by the thought of his ancestors, revolted at anything but the thought of love. He could not speak to her, however, being only a second- hand exhibit, without a timely accident—which now happencd. The Loosemania ran into a London fog. The shock was so comicbooks.com