He is a great banker and broker now, and directs the finances of a little world of his own, but as he looks out from his luxurious office on Broadway on the ever-busy throng on the streets, he grows reminiscent, and, suddenly scratching his nose, breaks out into a great laugh.
“You noticed me just now scratching my nose, didn’t you?” he said, and he laughed again, “and you can’t see anything to laugh about, but I remember the time when it would have cost me my life if I had attempted to do so. It is a strange story and well worth relating.”
The speaker was J. Frank Howell, the noted Broadway financier and his companion a member of the House of Morgan.
“It occurred in 1881, when I was out in Nevada, and working as a telegraph operator at Beowawa, a little station on the Central Pacific Railroad. I had acquired a complete knowledge of the Chinook language, had become a fair student of Indian poker, could eat jack rabbits like an Ogallala and considered myself quite a sport among the children of the sage brush state.
“A few weeks of this kind of existence fitted me for great and more promising fields of usefulness, and when the gold excitement broke out at Yankee Blade, 125 miles down the line, I bade goodbye to Johnson Sides, Nastyshack Jim and other of my playmates, and started on the stage for Yankee Blade in company with three other adventurous spirits.
“I will never be able to explain how it happened, but it must have been that the outlaw, Jim Slack, knew that I had drawn my month’s salary and that I was aboard the stage coach, for just as we were leaving Dogtown, we were halted by a lone highwayman, who lost no time in ordering us to throw up our hands, forming us into a line in the rear of the stage. There we were, the four passengers and ‘Stub,’ the driver, all with arms pointed skyward, while the merry Jim Slack rifled our pockets.
“The bandit cracked jokes with us, saying he was sorry he had to do it, but he needed the ‘mon,’ and he hoped that he wouldn’t overlook any small change we might still have left in our jeans.
“At this moment my nose began to itch, but I knew it was sure death to lower my hand to scratch it, and what was I to do, for I could hardly stand it? I addressed the robber: ‘I say, Mr. Highwayman, my nose itches me pretty badly, won’t you please allow me to lower my arm to scratch it?’” I asked in a most plaintive manner.
“‘Never mind, I will do that little job for you myself,’ was his reply, and taking the point of his Colt’s revolver he rubbed my nose very briskly till I told him I had enough, and thanked him for his courtesy, and the passengers and ‘Stub,’ the driver, laughed merrily.
“I never knew, till I had it done with the business end of a revolver in the hands of a stage robber, the exquisite delight of the privilege of scratching one’s own nose.”