Trolley Folly

TROLLEY FOLLY
By HENRY WALLACE PHILLIPS Author of
Red Saunders The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch
Illustrated
INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1909 The Bobbs-Merrill Company March
PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.
It was a splendid office—mahogany, plate-glass windows and all that pertains to the uninteresting side of respectability. There was a lawyer there, sitting before his desk—a crisp, gray sort of lawyer, who looked as if when you patted him gently he would snap a finger off. One Jimmie Horgan was also there.
Now, Jimmie was a careless youth, and a cheerful habit of sending people scattering, acquired by managing the controller in the employment of the Suburban Trolley Company, gave him what might be called a cynicobenevolent view of life. He had learned that the human body was an unreliable vessel to hold so great a thing as a soul.
One bunt from his trusty car, and the greatest alderman who ever received boodle for that same franchise promptly departed for Heaven, or its suburban districts.
He had made the proud to skip ahead; ladies, that one would not suspect of either agility or pliability, had made creditable running-long-jumps merely because Jimmie did not twist the brake. Bankers, plutocrats and plumbers instantly dropped their accustomed airs of superiority and hiked out-of-that when Jimmie’s foot trod the gong. This showed him clearly that at heart all men were simple. The airs assumed were but a mask, concealing a real desire to please.
Jimmie may have belonged to one of the first families of Ireland, but his estate had fallen low—so low, in fact, that he held in his hand the incredible, and now, away from his platform of authority, he needs must tell the intrenched lawyer-man a strange tale.