[JOSIAH FLYNT—AN APPRECIATION]
By Alfred Hodder
What first struck me was his prodigality in talk. He scattered treasures of anecdote and observation as Aladdin of the wonderful lamp orders his slave to scatter gold pieces. The trait is not common amongst men of letters; they are the worst company in the world; they are taking, not giving; if they have not a notebook and a pencil brutally before you in their hands, they have a notebook and pencil agilely at work in their heads; your pleasure is their business; the word that comes from their lips is but a provocative to gain one more word from you; the smile that answers your smile is but a grimace; and their good stories, until they have been published, are locked behind their lips like books in a safe-deposit box. Flynt had no safe-deposit box for his good stories, and no gift for silence; the anecdotes in his books are amazing; the details of just how he got them are still more amazing; he never learned to use up his material, to economize, and he was more amazing than his material.
He invited me the night I met him to go with him on one of his wanderings. A Haroun-al-Rashed adventure it seemed to me. I closed with the offer at once and asked how I should dress. I had an idea that I must wear a false beard and at least provide myself with a stiletto and a revolver, and be ready to use them. "Why, you will do just as you are," he said. "I shall go just as I am." He did not know it, but he did not tell the truth. He did not change his clothes, but at the first turn into side streets he changed his bearing, the music of his voice, his vocabulary. I could scarce understand one word in five. He was a finished actor; Sir Richard Burton, of course, was his ideal; always in the Under World he passed unsuspected; always from the start of our tramping together he had to explain me. I could never pick up the manner, and indeed was too amused to try; his habit was to explain me in whispers as a dupe, and I had once to rescue him from a fight brought on because he would not consent to sharing with his interlocutor the picking of my pockets. I had more than once to rescue him; he had the height and body of a slim boy of fourteen, but just to see what the beast would do he would have teased my lord the elephant, and he took a drubbing as naturally as any other hardship.
A finished actor, I have written; and an actor knowing to his fingertips many parts. One instance must suffice. I figured usually—I have said it—as a dupe. I was on this night cast for the part of an accomplice, and he for the part of a bold, bad breaker of safes and doors and windows. The character was conceived in an instant. An instant before we were two very tired, very quiet men, strolling home through the Bowery in a bitter, drizzling rain at three o'clock in the morning.
"Say, mate, what's the chanst for a cup o' coffee?"
The speaker was a fully togged out A. B. for the service of the U. S., and on his cap were the letters Oregon. To me the disguise was perfect. He did a bit of the sailor's hornpipe on that slippery, glistening pavement where the rain fell and froze under electric lights.
"The chances are good," said Flynt; and he led the way into a house near by.
The front of the house was as unlighted as respectability demands a house should be at three o'clock in the morning; but there was a dim light at a side door. We went in under the dim light and found music and dancing, and little tables at which we could be served with almost anything except coffee. The "Oregon" took "Whisky straight—Hunter's if you've got it."
"Out at the Philippines?" asked Flynt.