At all times an awed respecter of Irish tradition, Spider O’Toole reverenced St. Patrick’s memory in full measure, and like that venerable sainted man, could not tolerate anything that wriggled: and who could blame him. The word “cringe” was not in his encyclopaedia and as he never “crawled” himself, he abhorred spiders and snakes as the devil scowls on piety. With him they were as popular as a horse thief in Utah. His dislike for cobras, constrictors, rattlers and all that ilk that do the hesitation glide without legs, was no spasmodic, abnormal antipathy, mark you, born of flirtations with the grape when purple, for he had never been known to arrive at a condition superinduced by an over-indulgence in the bottled and popular elements of conviviality. Always a man of nerve and aggressiveness, he shunned those toy cameras and fake electric pocket flashes, concealing jumping adders as he would the wails of the family Banshee, while buggy whips and garden hose lying about in the gloaming were sure to send shivers gamboling up and down his spinal network. Naturalists tell us the sagacious elephant, big as he is, will promptly side-step a lizard—and why not?
One rainy evening after the teams of the Inter-lake League had rid themselves of Charley-horse, glass arms and proud flesh, and were schooled and whipped into tolerable fettle for the ordeal of endurance and dexterity, with the opening day a short week off, Thomas Nelson, President of the Green Sox, met Spider O’Toole with others of the clan in the Algonquin Hotel rotunda. With them were Francis Nelson, Sporting Editor of the Globe, Dick Kearns, Fitzgerald and Charlie Good, and near by in the billiard room Harry Thorley and Billy Hamilton were making some fancy shots with a party they were booking to Europe, via the L.V.R. and White Star Line. Said Thomas quite carelessly, to Claudius, as he shifted the position of an undiscernable portion of Piper Heidseick from one cheek to the other, “We think we have better than an even break with the Ottawas on dates for the season’s schedule Mr. O’Toole: in other words, my Christian friend, I have the edge on you.”
Oh, have you Mr. Sphinx—well don’t strain your diaphragm gloating over that paper advantage: I’ll dull your edge so badly that you will have your spavined free lances at the horse shoers in a month, I will, so I will and I’ll leave it to your friend Ira Thomas, Mitch. Thomas or St. Thomas.
“I trow not, Spider. We have gathered in the net as fine a cluster of brilliants as ever crossed the Giant’s Causeway since the days the Gauls hung to the branches with their tails. I hope Connie Mack is unaware of their speed.”
“Mr. McGillicudy is still a young man: too bad to have him choke to death with laughter and he in his prime,” commented Claudius O’Toole.
“The Green Stockings are a lot of limber base ball professors, bright as patent stove polish, and when your kindergarten is introduced to their science.”
At this juncture, Will. Connell and Harry Watkins with the “Great Northern”, who had just come in from the theatre after enjoying Dick Sheridan’s “School for Scandal”, naively enquired if Mr. O’Toole’s redskins would win their opening game with the Peterborough Bluejays a week hence, adding “The birds are touted tough as hickory and hard nuts to crack”.
“We’ll crack their kernels as sure as Hades is a man trap,” said the Spider, “or make them work so hard they’ll ferment and blow their heads off.”
“As a precaution, have your willie pink collegians remove their hobble skirts,” chimed in Tom the Sphinx, with a significant smile.
“If the Bluejays loom such a menace to our aspirations, gentlemen,” retorted O’Toole, with a twinkle in his eye, “my humorous contemporary of the Brantford Green Legs had better buy nine shrouds now and fix a date for the wake.”