Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

FATE AND EVELYN. You know it’s a funny thing, but if a fellow’s got an education—a good educa- tion, I mean—and' he thinks a lot, you know what IE mean,. thinks deep stuff—he’s always measly company until he’s had a couple of drinks. This fellow was that way. I don’t know how he come to be in the party, because I’d had a couple of drinks before he came, but after he came me and him was sitting together. And gee, was I seared: of him? Tk say so! He had a face like you see in pictures of big men that’s done something in the world. And was he serious? Oh, was he serious? And polite? You'd think I was somebody of his own class that he’d just met and didn’t know very well, the way he treated me. He was so polite he made me kind of nervous. He made me feel like he was a judge or something like that, and I had been pinched, and he was thinking how long he should give me. And then he got a couple of drinks, and you should hear the way he talked! Deep stuff. All about life and every- thing like that. book about what he talked to me about. Maybe he did write one. I don’t know. I forgot to ask him his name, and while he was talking to me about this deep stuff he kept on taking a couple of drinks now and then, and right while I was listening to him and thinking to myself this is the kind of a guy you should learn something from that could do you some good, right while I was thinking that, all of a sudden he slipped off the chair and begun to snore. Went out cold just like that. You know fellows like that, that do a lot of thinking about deep stuff they can’t drink very good. It gets to ’em quick. Goes to their heads, I guess. I don’t know. They’re more sensitive than ordi- nary people, maybe, and that’s it. Poets is that way, too. I know a couple of poets—not very good ones, you know, but poets anyhow. They wrote words for songs and things like that. You know what I mean. They didn’t write any books like for libraries, but they was poets. They could make words rime and everything like that, and they was both that way. They I bet he could write a 889 couldn’t drink anything either. A couple of drinks, and they’d pass out cold, both of them. Well, now, before this fellow I was tell- ing you about passed out, he says to me: “Tf it’s going to happen to you, it will happen! If you’re going to get rich, you’re going tc get rich, and nothing’s going to make any difference about it. If you’re going to be poor, you're going to be poor, and you can’t help yourself. It’s all laid out beforehand, and you have nothing to do with it. That’s Fate,” he says to me. And then he took another drink and passed out. A couple of guys carried him out to a taxi to take him home, and dummy like I was, I forgot to ask what was his name. The next afternoon just before dinner, when I got up to dress for the show, I telephoned to some addresses I. had that I had got the night before fram fellows who was with the party, to ask them what was this fellow’s name, and none of them was there. I don’t know if they give me phony numbers or maybe whether they had not got up yet. It was some party! But anyhow, even if I don’t know his name, EI never forgot what this fellow told me. When anything happens to me, them words ring in my ears. ‘““Tt’s Fate!” he says to me just like that. “It’s Fate!” And you know I never forgot that. No, indeedy. I suppose that influenced me a lot one way and another. You know what I mean. [I just never forgot it. It’s funny, ain’t itP Well, anyhow, I got a job once with the ‘‘ Broadway Baby,” and we started re- hearsals in August. Oh, was it hot? Hon- est, if you was rehearsing with me then in that company, and you went to a Turkish bath, you would think maybe you was at the seashore and it was nice and cool. The first day we was rehearsing I seen this girl! Marie du Claire, who was in the chorus with me, and right away when f first seen her something come over me. I don’t know what it was, but it was something. I didn’t pay no attention to it at the time, but I thought about it afterward. It’s fun- ny, ain’t it, how you feel things like that sometimes? AGIOS S CO© inn