Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great

by Ellis Parker Butler

The whole West arose in its might, and sent money-orders to Silas Boggs. And Silas Boggs opened the letters as fast as he could, and smiled. He piled the blue money-orders up in stacks beside him, and smiled. Silas Boggs was one large, happy smile for one large, happy week. Then he frowned a little.

For all was not well with the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pigs. They were not as hardy as he had guaranteed them to be. They seemed to have the pip, or glanders, or boll-weevil, or something unpleasant. The Duke was not only lop-eared, but seemed to feel loppy all over. The Duchess, in keeping with her name, evinced a desire to avoid common society, and sulked in one corner of her cage. They were a pair of very effete aristocrats. Silas Boggs gave them catnip tea and bran mash, or other sterling remedies; but the far-famed lop-eared Andalusians pined away. And, as Silas Boggs sat disconsolately by their side, he could hear the mail-men relentlessly dumping more and more letters on the parlor floor.

The West was just beginning to realize the desirability of having lop-eared guinea-pigs at the moment when lop-eared guinea-pigs were on the point of becoming as extinct as the dodo and mastodon. In a day or two they became totally extinct, and the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pig existed no more. Silas Boggs wept.

But his tears did not wash away the constantly increasing heaps of orders. He ordered Perkins to withdraw his advertisement, but still the orders continued to come, and Silas Boggs, assisted by a corps of young, but industrious, ladies, began returning to the eager West the beautiful blue money-orders; and, if anything sends a pang through a man's breast, it is to be obliged to return a money-order uncashed.

By the end of the month the incoming orders had dwindled to a few thousand daily—about as many as Silas Boggs and his assistants could return. By the end of the next month they had begun to make noticeable inroads in the accumulated piles of orders; and in two months more the floor was clear, and the arriving orders had fallen to a mere dribble of ten or twelve a day, but the hair of Silas Boggs had turned gray, and his face was old and wan.

Silas Boggs gave away all his guinea-pigs—the sight of them brought on something like a fit. He could not even bear to see a lettuce leaf or cabbage-head. He will walk three blocks to avoid passing an animal store, for fear he might see a guinea-pig in the window. Only a few days ago I was praising a certain man to him, and happened to quote the line from Burns,—

“Rank is but the guinea's stamp,”

but when I came to the word “guinea,” I saw Silas Boggs turn pale, and put his hand to his forehead.

But he cannot escape the results of his injudicious advertising, even at this day, so many years after. From time to time some one in the West will unpack a trunk that has stood for years in some garret, and espying a faded newspaper laid in the bottom of the trunk, will glance at it curiously, see the advertisement of the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pigs, and send Silas Boggs ten dollars.

For an advertisement, like sin, does not end with the day, but goes on and on, down the mighty corridors of time, and, like the hall-boy in a hotel, awakes the sleeping, and calls them to catch a train that, sometimes, has long since gone, just as the lop-eared Andalusians have gone.