I was a little puzzled when, a week later, my office boy brought me a card reading Colonel Henry Augustus Bottes-Smythe, but I supposed it was some distinguished foreigner who had come to size me up so that he could round out his roast on Chicago in his new book, and I told the boy to show the General in.
I’ve got a pretty good memory for faces, and I’d bought too much store plug of Hank in my time not to know him, even with a clean shave and a plug hat. Some men dry up with success, but it was just spouting out of Hank. Told me he’d made his pile and that he was tired of living on the slag heap; that he’d spent his whole life where money hardly whispered, let alone talked, and he was going now where it would shout. Wanted to know what was the use of being a nob if a fellow wasn’t the nobbiest sort of a nob. Said he’d bought a house on Beacon Hill, in Boston, and that if I’d prick up my ears occasionally I’d hear something drop into the Back Bay. Handed me his new card four times and explained that it was the rawest sort of dog to carry a brace of names in your card holster; that it gave you the drop on the swells every time, and that they just had to throw up both hands and pass you the pot when you showed down. Said that Bottes was old English for Botts, and that Smythe was new American for Smith; the Augustus was just a fancy touch, a sort of high-card kicker.
I didn’t explain to Hank, because it was congratulations and not explanations that he wanted, and I make it a point to show a customer the line of goods that he’s looking for. And I never heard the full particulars of his experiences in the East, though, from what I learned afterward, Hank struck Boston with a bang, all right.
He located his claim on Beacon Hill, between a Mayflower descendant and a Declaration Signer’s great-grandson, breeds which believe that when the Lord made them He was through, and that the rest of us just happened. And he hadn’t been in town two hours before he started in to make improvements. There was a high wrought-iron railing in front of his house, and he had that gilded first thing, because, as he said, he wasn’t running a receiving vault and he didn’t want any mistakes. Then he bought a nice, open barouche, had the wheels painted red, hired a nigger coachman and started out in style to be sociable and get acquainted. Left his card all the way down one side of Beacon Street, and then drove back leaving it on the other. Everywhere he stopped he found that the whole family was out. Kept it up a week, on and off, but didn’t seem to have any luck. Thought that the men must be hot sports and the women great gadders to keep on the jump so much. Allowed that they were the liveliest little lot of fleas that he had ever chased. Decided to quit trying to nail ’em one at a time, and planned out something that he reckoned would round up the whole bunch.
Hank sent out a thousand invitations to his grand opening, as he called it; left one at every house within a mile. Had a brass band on the front steps and fireworks on the roof. Ordered forty kegs from the brewery and hired a fancy mixer to sling together mild snorts, as he called them, for the ladies. They tell me that, when the band got to going good on the steps and the fireworks on the roof, even Beacon Street looked out the windows to see what was doing. There must have been ten thousand people in the street and not a soul but Hank and his wife and the mixer in the house. Some one yelled speech, and then the whole crowd took it up, till Hank came out on the steps. He shut off the band with one hand and stopped the fireworks with the other. Said that speechmaking wasn’t his strangle-hold; that he’d been living on snowballs in the Klondike for so long that his gas-pipe was frozen; but that this welcome started the ice and he thought about three fingers of the plumber’s favorite prescription would cut out the frost. Would the crowd join him? He had invited a few friends in for the evening, but there seemed to be some misunderstanding about the date, and he hated to have good stuff curdle on his hands.
While this was going on, the Mayflower descendant was telephoning for the police from one side and the Signer’s great-grandson from the other, and just as the crowd yelled and broke for the house two patrol wagons full of policemen got there. But they had to turn in a riot call and bring out the reserves before they could break up Hank’s little Boston tea-party.
After all, Hank did what he started out to do with his party—rounded up all his neighbors in a bunch, though not exactly according to schedule. For next morning there were so many descendants and great-grandsons in the police court to prefer charges that it looked like a reunion of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Judge fined Hank on sixteen counts and bound him over to keep the peace for a hundred years. That afternoon he left for the West on a special, because the Limited didn’t get there quick enough. But before going he tacked on the front door of his house a sign which read:
“Neighbors paying their party calls will please not heave rocks through windows to attract attention. Not in and not going to be. Gone back to Circle City for a little quiet.
“Yours truly,
“Hank Smith.
“N.B.—Too swift for your uncle.”