BALED HAY
A NOVEL NOVELETTE
I NEVER wrote a novel, because I always thought it required more of a mashed-rasp-berry imagination than I could muster, but I was the business manager, once, for a year and a half, of a little two-bit novelette that has never been published.
I now propose to publish it, because I cannot keep it to myself any longer.
Allow me, therefore, to reminisce.
Harry Bevans was an old schoolmate of mine in the days of and although Bevans was not his sure-enough name, it will answer for the purposes herein set forth. At the time of which I now speak he was more bashful than a book agent, and was trying to promote a cream-colored mustache and buff "Donegals" on the side.
Suffice it to say that he was madly in love with Fanny Buttonhook, and too bashful to say so by telephone.
Her name wasn't Buttonhook, but I will admit it for the sake of argument. Harry lived over at Kalamazoo, we will say, and Fanny at Oshkosh. These were not the exact names of the towns, but I desire to bewilder the public a little in order to avoid any harassing disclosures in the future. It is always well enough, I find, to deal gently will those who are alive and moderately muscular.
Young Bevans was not specially afraid of old man Buttonhook, or his wife. He didn't dread the enraged parent worth a cent. He wasn't afraid of anybody under the cerulean dome, in fact, except Miss Buttonhook; but when she sailed down the main street, Harry lowered his colors and dodged into the first place he found open, whether it was a millinery store or a livery stable.
Once, in an unguarded moment, he passed so near her that the gentle south wind caught up the cherry ribbon that Miss Buttonhook wore at her throat, and slapped Mr. Bevans across the cheek with it before he knew what ailed him. There was a little vision of straw hat, brown hair, and pink-and-white cuticle, as it were, a delicate odor of violets, the "swish" of a summer silk, and my friend, Mr. Bevans, put his hand to his head, like a man who has a sun-stroke, and fell into a drug store and a state of wild mash, ruin and helpless chaos.