“General business,” I responded, “and … politics.”
“Local, state, or national?” he went on, craftily ignoring the general business.
“A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I’ve been elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms.”
“Good for you!” he responded. “But I don’t see how that can be made to harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It’s been your own fault, if you haven’t been on the profitable side of the game, with the dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b’lay this rob-ee business (as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County. As a former partner in crime, I won’t squeal; and the next election is some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it’s no fair, you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good, honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates—especially in things they know all about by extrinsic evidence—and keep concealment for the great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth, and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and as the poet saith,
“ ‘Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam
Survey our empire and behold our home,’
or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your former chieftain, who doesn’t even vote in your county or state, and moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I’m ashamed of you, by George, I am!“
This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor, passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at Jim’s peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.
“No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are concerned,” said I, when we had finished our laugh, “for I go out of office January first, next.”
“Oh, well, that accounts for it, then,” said he. “I notice, say, three kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention, and post-election. Which is yours?”
“Post-convention, I’m sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary.”
“It is the cheapest; but you’re in great luck not to get licked at the polls. Altogether, you’re in great luck. You’ve been betting on a game in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you’ve won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You’ve got no kick coming: you’re in big luck. Don’t you know you are?”
I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some time in silence.
“It strikes me, Jim,” said I, at last, “that you’ve done all the cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How about you and your conduct?”
“As for my conduct,” was the prompt answer, “it’s away up in the neighborhood of G. I’ve managed to hold the confounded world up for a living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation have been brief. By practicing on the ‘Veterinarians’ Guide’ and other similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature, including county histories—”
“Sh-h-h!” said I, “somebody might hear you.”
“—and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature loose, and became a missionary.”
“A what!” I exclaimed.
“A missionary,” he responded soberly. “That is, you understand, not one of these theological, India’s-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good so far as in him lies.”
“I see,” said I, punning horribly, “ ‘in him lies.’ ”
“Eh? … Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can’t defend this foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits.”
“I perceive,” said I.
“Perfectly plain, isn’t it, to the seeing eye?” he went on. “You see it was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City Land Company, years ago, during the boom—by the way, I didn’t mention that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we’d sort of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature—hotel registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland. That’s how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention. Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept going a few years down on the farm—Springfield, or Jacksonville, or somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis. Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states.”
“How does it agree with you?” I inquired.
“Not well,” said he, “but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain, if it weren’t for the salary, I’d quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I wouldn’t. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I’m actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and—”
“Never mind!” said I with a silence-commanding gesture. “I’ve heard all that before. You’re onto the ropes thoroughly; but don’t practice your infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?”
“Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it.”
“You used to be more modest,” said I. “I remember that you once nearly broke your heart because you couldn’t summon up courage to ask Creeshy Hammond to go to the ‘Fourth’ with you; d’ye remember?”
“Well, I guess, yes!” he replied. “Wasn’t I a miserable wretch for a few days! And I’ve never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the fateful question, yet.”
We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in spite of his rather