“ ‘No man,’ says I, ‘who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it, nobody else will have any right to kick.’
“ ‘I’m not joking,’ says O’Connor. ‘And I’ve got $1,500 cash to work the scheme with. I’ve taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?’
“ ‘I’m not working,’ I told him; ‘but how is it to be? Do I eat during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a portfolio?’
-“I’ll pay all expenses,’ says O’Connor. ‘I want a man I can trust. If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the government.’
+“ ‘I’ll pay all expenses,’ says O’Connor. ‘I want a man I can trust. If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the government.’
“ ‘All right, then,’ says I. ‘You can get me a bunch of draying contracts and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench so I won’t be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can consider me on the payroll.’
“Two weeks afterward O’Connor and me took a steamer for the small, green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O’Connor said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and O’Connor handed over the twenty-one dollars.
“The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. ‘Not for me,’ says I. ‘It’ll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it. It’s a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.’
diff --git a/src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.xhtml b/src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.xhtml index b0846fc..31ec6bd 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.xhtml @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@The thoughtless boys and undeveloped men who gathered about the street services of the Army badgered Bulger incessantly. They called upon him to give oral testimony to his conversion, and criticized the technique and style of his drum performance. But the old man paid no attention whatever to their jeers. He rarely spoke to anyone except when, on coming and going, he gruffly saluted his comrades.
The sergeant had met many odd characters, and knew how to study them. He allowed the recruit to have his own silent way for a time. Every evening Bulger appeared at the hall, marched up the street with the squad and back again. Then he would place his drum in the comer where it belonged, and sit upon the last bench in the rear until the hall meeting was concluded.
But one night the sergeant followed the old man outside, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. “Comrade,” he said, “is it well with you?”
-“Not yet, sergeant,” said Bulger. “I’m only tryin.’ I’m glad you come outside. I’ve been wantin’ to ask you: Do you believe the Lord would take a man in if he come to Him late like—kind of a last resort, you know? Say a man who’d lost everything—home and property and friends and health. Wouldn’t it look mean to wait till then and try to come?”
+“Not yet, sergeant,” said Bulger. “I’m only tryin’. I’m glad you come outside. I’ve been wantin’ to ask you: Do you believe the Lord would take a man in if he come to Him late like—kind of a last resort, you know? Say a man who’d lost everything—home and property and friends and health. Wouldn’t it look mean to wait till then and try to come?”
“Bless His name—no!” said the sergeant. “Come ye that are heavy laden; that’s what He says. The poorer, the more miserable, the more unfortunate—the greater His love and forgiveness.”
“Yes, I’m poor,” said Bulger. “Awful poor and miserable. You know when I can think best, sergeant? It’s when I’m beating the drum. Other times there’s a kind of muddled roarin’ in my head. The drum seems to kind of soothe and calm it. There’s a thing I’m tryin’ to study out, but I ain’t made it yet.”
“Do you pray, comrade?” asked the sergeant.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml index 5e6f0d2..e05b47d 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml @@ -87,7 +87,7 @@“By and by I thinks I’ll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of them boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he leads me to what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the first thing I lays my eyes on when I go in is that boy that had shot Pedro Johnson. He was setting all alone at a little table, hitting a egg with a spoon like he was afraid he’d break it.
“I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks insulted and makes a move like he was going to get up.
“ ‘Keep still, son,’ says I. ‘You’re apprehended, arrested, and in charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg some more if it’s the inside of it you want. Now, what did you shoot Mr. Johnson, of Bildad, for?’
-“And may I ask who you are?’ says he.
+“ ‘And may I ask who you are?’ says he.
“ ‘You may,’ says I. ‘Go ahead.’
“ ‘I suppose you’re on,’ says this kid, without batting his eyes. ‘But what are you eating? Here, waiter!’ he calls out, raising his finger. ‘Take this gentleman’s order.
“ ‘A beefsteak,’ says I, ‘and some fried eggs and a can of peaches and a quart of coffee will about suffice.’
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@“I see the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:
“ ‘Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff of Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man as ever threw a rope or upheld the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the Union. But he—’
“The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.
-“Bud Oakley,’ says I. ‘Office deputy of the sheriff’s office of Mojada County, Texas. Representing,’ says I, ‘the Law. Luke Summers,’ I goes on, ‘represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten minutes in private talk, I’ll explain the whole thing to you, and show you the equitable and legal requisition papers which I carry in my pocket.’
+“ ‘Bud Oakley,’ says I. ‘Office deputy of the sheriff’s office of Mojada County, Texas. Representing,’ says I, ‘the Law. Luke Summers,’ I goes on, ‘represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten minutes in private talk, I’ll explain the whole thing to you, and show you the equitable and legal requisition papers which I carry in my pocket.’
“The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in his private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in such language as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces the verdict that the young man is delivered into the hands of the Texas authorities; and calls the next case.
“Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I’ll tell you how the thing wound up in Bildad.
“When we got the prisoner in the sheriff’s office, I says to Luke:
diff --git a/src/epub/text/telemachus-friend.xhtml b/src/epub/text/telemachus-friend.xhtml index 3748223..34f4a5e 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/telemachus-friend.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/telemachus-friend.xhtml @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@“Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out for the easy places in the female heart. Paisley’s scheme was to petrify ’em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea of subjugation from one of Shakespeare’s shows I see once called ‘Othello.’ There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke’s daughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst. But that style of courting don’t work well off the stage.
“Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state of affairs when she can be referred to as ‘née Jones.’ Learn how to pick up her hand and hold it, and she’s yours. It ain’t so easy. Some men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear ’em tearing off bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at arm’s length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in a bottle. And most of ’em catch hold of it and drag it right out before the lady’s eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without giving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of her arm. Them ways are all wrong.
“I’ll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn’t got a thing in his hand, and that the cat don’t see him, and that he don’t see the cat. That’s the idea. Never drag her hand out where she’ll have to take notice of it. Don’t let her know that you think she knows you have the least idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and as far as Paisley’s serenade about hostilities and misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a timetable of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
-“One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she didn’t think a H was easier to write than a J.’ In a second her head was mashing the oleander flower in my buttonhole, and I leaned over and—but I didn’t.
+“One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she didn’t think a H was easier to write than a J. In a second her head was mashing the oleander flower in my buttonhole, and I leaned over and—but I didn’t.
“ ‘If you don’t mind,’ says I, standing up, ‘we’ll wait for Paisley to come before finishing this. I’ve never done anything dishonourable yet to our friendship, and this won’t be quite fair.’
“ ‘Mr. Hicks,’ says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark, ‘if it wasn’t for but one thing, I’d ask you to hike yourself down the gulch and never disresume your visits to my house.’
“ ‘And what is that, ma’am?’ I asks.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-fifth-wheel.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-fifth-wheel.xhtml index 133a7b7..7247f8c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-fifth-wheel.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-fifth-wheel.xhtml @@ -117,7 +117,7 @@“In that purse,” said Annie decidedly, “is exactly $11.85. I shall take every cent of it tomorrow and give it to professor Cherubusco, the greatest man in the world.”
“Well,” said Thomas, “I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe off things the way he does. I’m glad his spooks told him where you could find me. If you’ll give me his address, some day I’ll go up there, myself, and shake his hand.”
Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an abrasion or two on his knees and his elbows.
-“Say, Annie,” said he confidentially, “maybe it’s one of the last dreams of booze, but I’ve a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the d.t.’s, why am I so sore?”
+“Say, Annie,” said he confidentially, “maybe it’s one of the last dreams of booze, but I’ve a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the d.t.’s, why am I so sore?”
“Shut up, you fool,” said Annie.
“If I could find that funny guy’s house,” said Thomas, in conclusion, “I’d go up there some day and punch his nose for him.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml index 8bbfd62..ee4105b 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml @@ -58,7 +58,7 @@“We was both living in a little town in the San Luis valley, running some flocks of sheep and a few cattle. We were partners, but, as usual, we didn’t live together. I had an old aunt, out from the East, visiting for the summer, so I rented a little cottage. She soon had a couple of cows and some pigs and chickens to make the place look like home. George lived alone in a little cabin half a mile out of town.
“One day a calf that we had, died. That night I broke its bones, dumped it into a coarse sack and tied it up with wire. I put on an old shirt, tore a sleeve ’most out of it, and the collar half off, tangled up my hair, put some red ink on my hands and spashed some of it over my shirt and face. I must have looked like I’d been having the fight of my life. I put the sack in a wagon and drove out to George’s cabin. When I halloed, he came out in a yellow dressing-gown, a Turkish cap and patent leather shoes. George always was a great dresser.
“I dumped the bundle to the ground.
-“Sh-sh!’ says I, kind of wild in my way. ‘Take that and bury it, George, out somewhere behind your house—bury it just like it is. And don—’
+“ ‘Sh-sh!’ says I, kind of wild in my way. ‘Take that and bury it, George, out somewhere behind your house—bury it just like it is. And don—’
“ ‘Don’t get excited,’ says George. ‘And for the Lord’s sake go and wash your hands and face and put on a clean shirt.’
“And he lights his pipe, while I drive away at a gallop. The next morning he drops around to our cottage, where my aunt was fiddling with her flowers and truck in the front yard. He bends himself and bows and makes compliments as he could do, when so disposed, and begs a rose bush from her, saying he had turned up a little land back of his cabin, and wanted to plant something on it by way of usefulness and ornament. So my aunt, flattered, pulls up one of her biggest by the roots and gives it to him. Afterward I see it growing where he planted it, in a place where the grass had been cleared off and the dirt levelled. But neither George nor me ever spoke of it to each other again.”
The moon rose higher, possibly drawing water from the sea, pixies from their dells and certainly more confidences from Simms Bell, the friend of a friend.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-missing-chord.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-missing-chord.xhtml index 6ecb6b9..a02a199 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-missing-chord.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-missing-chord.xhtml @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@“Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and cough. I stayed to supper.
“ ‘Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,’ says I to him.
“ ‘Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,’ says he. ‘She’s been hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all round this fall; and I’m going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes the price of the whole clip to do it.’
-“ ’Star wayno,’ says I. ‘The little girl deserves it.’
+“ ‘Star wayno,’ says I. ‘The little girl deserves it.’
“ ‘I’m going to San Antone on the last load of wool,’ says Uncle Cal, ‘and select an instrument for her myself.’
“ ‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ I suggests, ‘to take Marilla along and let her pick out one that she likes?’
“I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going. Of course, a man like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as a reflection on his attainments.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-shamrock-and-the-palm.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-shamrock-and-the-palm.xhtml index 41df6f3..9726255 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-shamrock-and-the-palm.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-shamrock-and-the-palm.xhtml @@ -27,13 +27,13 @@“Bein’ a Clancy, in two minutes me and the foreigner man were seated at a table in the cabin of the steamer, with a bottle between us. I could hear the heavy boxes bein’ dumped into the hold. I judged that cargo must consist of at least 2,000 Winchesters. Me and the brown man drank the bottle of stuff, and he called the steward to bring another. When you amalgamate a Clancy with the contents of a bottle you practically instigate secession. I had heard a good deal about these revolutions in them tropical localities, and I begun to want a hand in it.
“ ‘You goin’ to stir things up in your country, ain’t you, monseer?’ says I, with a wink to let him know I was on.
“ ‘Yes, yes,’ said the little man, pounding his fist on the table. ‘A change of the greatest will occur. Too long have the people been oppressed with the promises and the never-to-happen things to become. The great work it shall be carry on. Yes. Our forces shall in the capital city strike of the soonest. Carrambos!’
-“ ’Carrambos is the word,’ says I, beginning to invest myself with enthusiasm and more wine, ‘likewise veeva, as I said before. May the shamrock of old—I mean the banana-vine or the pieplant, or whatever the imperial emblem may be of your downtrodden country, wave forever.’
+“ ‘Carrambos is the word,’ says I, beginning to invest myself with enthusiasm and more wine, ‘likewise veeva, as I said before. May the shamrock of old—I mean the banana-vine or the pieplant, or whatever the imperial emblem may be of your downtrodden country, wave forever.’
“ ‘A thousand thank-yous,’ says the round man, ‘for your emission of amicable utterances. What our cause needs of the very most is mans who will the work do, to lift it along. Oh, for one thousands strong, good mans to aid the General De Vega that he shall to his country bring those success and glory! It is hard—oh, so hard to find good mans to help in the work.’
“ ‘Monseer,’ says I, leanin’ over the table and graspin’ his hand, ‘I don’t know where your country is, but me heart bleeds for it. The heart of a Clancy was never deaf to the sight of an oppressed people. The family is filibusterers by birth, and foreigners by trade. If you can use James Clancy’s arms and his blood in denudin’ your shores of the tyrant’s yoke they’re yours to command.’
“General De Vega was overcome with joy to confiscate my condolence of his conspiracies and predicaments. He tried to embrace me across the table, but his fatness, and the wine that had been in the bottles, prevented. Thus was I welcomed into the ranks of filibustery. Then the general man told me his country had the name of Guatemala, and was the greatest nation laved by any ocean whatever anywhere. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and from time to time he would emit the remark, ‘Ah! big, strong, brave mans! That is what my country need.’
“General De Vega, as was the name by which he denounced himself, brought out a document for me to sign, which I did, makin’ a fine flourish and curlicue with the tail of the ‘y.’
“ ‘Your passage-money,’ says the general, businesslike, ‘shall from your pay be deduct.’
-“ ’Twill not,’ says I, haughty. ‘I’ll pay my own passage.’ A hundred and eighty dollars I had in my inside pocket, and ’twas no common filibuster I was goin’ to be, filibusterin’ for me board and clothes.
+“ ‘ ’Twill not,’ says I, haughty. ‘I’ll pay my own passage.’ A hundred and eighty dollars I had in my inside pocket, and ’twas no common filibuster I was goin’ to be, filibusterin’ for me board and clothes.
“The steamer was to sail in two hours, and I went ashore to get some things together I’d need. When I came aboard I showed the general with pride the outfit. ’Twas a fine Chinchilla overcoat, Arctic overshoes, fur cap and earmuffs, with elegant fleece-lined gloves and woolen muffler.
“ ‘Carrambos!’ says the little general. ‘What clothes are these that shall go to the tropic?’ And then the little spalpeen laughs, and he calls the captain, and the captain calls the purser, and they pipe up the chief engineer, and the whole gang leans against the cabin and laughs at Clancy’s wardrobe for Guatemala.
“I reflects a bit, serious, and asks the general again to denominate the terms by which his country is called. He tells me, and I see then that ’twas the t’other one, Kamchatka, I had in mind. Since then I’ve had difficulty in separatin’ the two nations in name, climate and geographic disposition.
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@“ ‘How’s that, Sambo?’ says I. ‘Big battle? What battle? Who wants catchee General De Vega? I’ve been up at my old gold mines in the interior for a couple of months, and haven’t heard any news.’
“ ‘Oh,’ says the nigger-man, proud to speak the English, ‘verree great revolution in Guatemala one week ago. General De Vega, him try be president. Him raise armee—one—five—ten thousand mans for fight at the government. Those one government send five—forty—hundred thousand soldier to suppress revolution. They fight big battle yesterday at Lomagrande—that about nineteen or fifty mile in the mountain. That government soldier wheep General De Vega—oh, most bad. Five hundred—nine hundred—two thousand of his mans is kill. That revolution is smash suppress—bust—very quick. General De Vega, him r-r-run away fast on one big mule. Yes, carrambos! The general, him r-r-run away, and his armee is kill. That government soldier, they try find General De Vega verree much. They want catchee him for shoot. You think they catchee that general, señor?’
“ ‘Saints grant it!’ says I. ‘ ’Twould be the judgment of Providence for settin’ the warlike talent of a Clancy to gradin’ the tropics with a pick and shovel. But ’tis not so much a question of insurrections now, me little man, as ’tis of the hired-man problem. ’Tis anxious I am to resign a situation of responsibility and trust with the white wings department of your great and degraded country. Row me in your little boat out to that steamer, and I’ll give ye five dollars—sinker pacers—sinker pacers,’ says I, reducin’ the offer to the language and denomination of the tropic dialects.
-“ ’Cinco pesos,’ repeats the little man. ‘Five dollee, you give?’
+“ ‘Cinco pesos,’ repeats the little man. ‘Five dollee, you give?’
“ ’Twas not such a bad little man. He had hesitations at first, sayin’ that passengers leavin’ the country had to have papers and passports, but at last he took me out alongside the steamer.
“Day was just breakin’ as we struck her, and there wasn’t a soul to be seen on board. The water was very still, and the nigger-man gave me a lift from the boat, and I climbed onto the steamer where her side was sliced to the deck for loadin’ fruit. The hatches was open, and I looked down and saw the cargo of bananas that filled the hold to within six feet of the top. I thinks to myself, ‘Clancy, you better go as a stowaway. It’s safer. The steamer men might hand you back to the employment bureau. The tropic’ll get you, Clancy, if you don’t watch out.’
“So I jumps down easy among the bananas, and digs out a hole to hide in among the bunches. In an hour or so I could hear the engines goin’, and feel the steamer rockin’, and I knew we were off to sea. They left the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it was light enough in the hold to see fairly well. I got to feelin’ a bit hungry, and thought I’d have a light fruit lunch, by way of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole I’d made and stood up straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up about ten feet away and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his mouth. ’Twas a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of aspect. Yes, the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie in the funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man—De Vega, the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pickaxe importer. When he saw me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and his eyes the size of coconuts.