“You said it! I'm tellin' ya there's no more fun. Gee! I sure don't know myself these ten years. I was the kind of a fella”—here Kelly was moved in sheer admiration to do a bit of heavy cursing—“I was the kind of fella that did everything—I'm tellin' ya, everything. Bet there ain't a thing in this world I 'ain't done at least once, and most of 'em a whole lot more 'n that. An' now—look at me now! Get up at four every mornin', but Sundays, get down here at six” (Kelly was a suburbanite), “work till three, git home, monkey with my tools a bit or play with the kids, eat dinner, sit around a spell, go to bed.”
A long pause. “Ain't that a hell of a life, I'm askin' ya?”
Another pause in which Kelly mentally reviewed his glowing past. He shook his head and smiled a sad smile. “If you could 'a' seen me ten years ago!”
Kelly told me the story of his life more or less in detail some days later. I say advisedly “more or less.” Considering the reputation he had given himself, I am relieved to be able to note that he must have left some bits out, though goodness knows he put enough in. But Kelly's matrimonial romance must be told.
Kelly went with a peach of a girl in the years gone by—swellest little kid—gee! he respected that girl—never laid hands on her. She wanted to go back to the old country for a visit, so he paid her way there and back—one hundred and sixty-five dollars it had cost him. Coming home from a ball where Kelly had been manager—this at 4 A.M.—a remark of the girl's led Kelly to suspect she was not the stainless bit of perfection his love had pictured. So after three years of constant devotion Kelly felt that he had been sold out. He turned around and said then and there to his fair one, “You go to hell!” He never laid eyes on her again.
A few years later Kelly met an American girl. He went with her three years, was making seventy-five dollars a month, had saved eight hundred and seventy-six dollars, and in addition possessed one hundred and ten dollars in life insurance. So he asked the lady to marry him. Y' know w'at she said to Kelly? Kelly leaned his shaggy mop of hair my way. She said, “I won't marry nobody on seventy-five dollars a month!” Again Kelly's manhood asserted itself. Do you know w'at Kelly said to her? He says, says he, once more, “You go to hell!” He quit.
Whereupon Kelly drew out every cent he possessed and sailed for Europe. When he landed again in New York City, d' y'know how much money Kelly had in his pocket? Thirty-five cents. Then he went West for seven or eight years, and tore up the country considerable, Kelly did. He came back to New York again, again minus cash. A few days after his return the girl of eight years before met him by appointment at the Grand Central Station. What d' y'know? She asked Kelly to marry her—just like that. Heck! by that time Kelly didn't give a darn one way or the other. She bought the ring, she hired the minister, she did the whole business. Kelly married her—that's the wife he's got right now.
One of Kelly's steady, dependable waiters approached about 5 P.M. “Say, girl, I like you!” Of course, the comeback for that now, as always, was, “Aw go-an!”
“Sure, I like you. Say, how about goin' out this evening with me? We'll sure do the old town!”
“I say, you sound like as if you got all of twenty-five cents in your pocket!”