"As one of the owners of swamp land, I am so impressed with your wisdom that I suggest that we invite Miss Truett's brother to visit us; tell him the outlook is bad, but say we'll guarantee him—well, a hundred-dollar fee to look into a matter in which we personally are interested. If your plan is practicable, I'll recover the money easily. I'll write him this afternoon—or you may do it, through his sister. Let us see what else is in the mail. Why, I didn't suspect it, the address being typewritten!—Ah, young woman, now for my revenge, for here's a letter from Caleb, and if 'tis anything like the last—yes, here it is—Miss Truett, Miss Truett, Miss Truett."
"Oh, Phil!"
"I'll be merciful, and read every word, without stopping to sentimentalize:—
"'Dear Philip: I'm in it, as Jonah thought when the whale shut his mouth. When I say "it" I mean all of New York that I can pervade while waiting for the corn-meal to come. I've been to a New York prayer-meeting and I can't say that it was any better than the Claybanks kind, except that Miss Truett went with me and joined in all the hymns as natural as if brought up on them. You ought to hear her voice. 'Tain't as loud as some, but it goes right to the heart of a hymn. Next day I went to a museum in a big park and saw more things than I can ever get straightened out in my head: I wish I could have had your wife's camera for company.
"'I went to a theatre, too. I had no more idea of doing it than you have of selling liquor, but I got into a sort of argument with Miss Truett, without meaning to, about the great amount of that kind of sin that was going on; and when she said that she didn't think it was always sinful, I felt like the man that cussed somebody in the dark for stepping on his toes, and then found it was the preacher that done the stepping. She said she really thought that some kinds of theatre would do a sight of good to a hard-working man like me, and that she'd like to see me under the influence of a good comedy for a spell; so I told her there was one way of doing it, and that was to name the comedy and then go along with me, so as to give her observing powers a fair chance. She did it, and I ain't sorry I went; though if you don't mind keeping it to yourself, there won't be some Claybanks prayers wasted on me that might be more useful if kept nearer home.
"'Who should I run against on Broadway one day but an old chum of mine in the army? He'd got a commission, after the war, in the regulars, and got retired for a bad wound he got in the Indian country, yet, for all that, he didn't look any older than he used to. He took me visiting to his post of the Grand Army of the Republic one night, and there I saw a lot of vets that looked as spruce and chipper as if they was beaus just going to see their sweethearts. "What's the matter with you fellows here, that you don't grow old?" says I to my old chum. He didn't understand me at first, but when he saw what I was driving at, he said many of the members of the post were older than I, but 'twasn't thought good sense in New York for a fellow to look older than he was, and he didn't see why 'twas good sense anywhere. I felt sort of riled, and he nagged me awhile, good-natured like, about trying to pass for my own grandfather, till I said: "Look here, Jim, if you've got any fountain of youth around New York, I'm the man that ain't afraid to take a dip." "Good boy!" says he. "I'd like the job of reconstructing you, for old times' sake." "No fooling?" says I; for in old times Jim wouldn't let anything stand in the way of a joke. "Honor bright, Cale," said he, "for I want you to look like yourself, and you can do it." Remembering some advertisements I've seen in newspapers, I says, "What do you do it with—pills or powders?" Jim coughed up a laugh from the bottom of his boots, and says he: "Neither. Come along!"
"'Well, I was skittisher than I've been since Gettysburg, not knowing what new-fangled treatment he had in his mind, and how it would agree with me; but he took me into a barber shop where he appeared to know a man, and he did some whispering, and,—well, when that barber got through, first giving me a hair-cut and then a shave, and fussing over my mustache for a spell, and I got a sight of my face in the glass, I thought 'twas somebody else I was looking at, and somebody that I'd seen before, a long time ago, and it wasn't until I tried to brush a fly off my nose that I found 'twas I. Maybe you think I was a fool, but I was so tickled that I yelled, "Whoop—ee!" right out in meeting. "There!" says Jim, when we got outside. "Don't you ever wear long hair and a beard again—not while I'm around."
"'Then he took me to a tailor shop about forty times as big as your store, and picked out a suit of clothes for me, and a hat and shirt, and the whole business. 'Twas the Hawk Howlaway business over again, with Jim instead of Jethro, only there was more of it, for he stuck a flower in the buttonhole of my new coat. I couldn't kick, for he was wearing one too, but I just tell you that if I'd met any Claybanks neighbor about then, I'd have slid down a side street like running to a fire. After that he took me to the hotel where he lived, and up in his room, and looked me over, as if I was a horse, and says he, "There's one thing more. You need a setting-up." "Not for me, Jim," says I "I keep regular hours, though I don't mind swapping yarns with you till I get sleepy to-night!" Then he let off another big laugh, and says he, "That isn't what I mean. It's something we do in the regulars, and ought to have done in the volunteers." So he made me stand up, and lift my shoulders, and hold my head high, and breathe full, at the same time making me look at myself in the glass. "There!" says he, after a spell, "you do that a few times a day, till it comes natural to you, and you'll feel better for it, all your life."