YONKERS APPEAL POWER PRINT
Even Macaroni lent a hoof, and was led by a boy through the streets, bearing a pasteboard sandwich which reached from ears to tail. The residents of Mistletoe Avenue gazed at the ridiculous spectacle, indignantly at first; but on the return trip they crowded in open door-ways and regarded the procession of beast and tagging boys, as much as to say, "We must go and hear the donkey lecture."
Macaroni had quite recovered; his exercise did him good. My lecture promised to be a huge success. The Tuesday Morning Squib and the Evening Sunrise contained alluring advertisements of the event sure to puncture an epoch in my life.
When the hour arrived, the populace, I was secretly informed, with twenty-nine cents in one hand and their lives in the other crowded about the hotel and called loudly for admittance.
My hands trembled, my hair throbbed, and my heart leaped in the ecstacy that comes with one's first great triumph, while I stood in the butler's pantry waiting for a friend to introduce me—to bid me enter the stage—the first stage of lunacy. When I issued forth, I was so excited I could not distinguish the audience from so many chairs. Having agreed to divide the receipts with my host for the use of his house, my visions of wealth got confused with my words, and I talked for an hour with all the eloquence and enthusiasm I could muster,—though I should have said less to a smaller house,—and with a sore throat retired to the refreshment room, followed by my press agent from Brooklyn. The "Doctor" handed me just twenty-nine cents. My audience had consisted of three persons: the landlord, the head-waiter, and the Dago printer whom I owed three dollars.
Reverses are like children's diseases. If they come too late in life, they go hard with us; and if too early, they may visit us again.
I was not totally bankrupt. Not willing to begin a "three ball" business at the very outset, I resolved to rise at dawn and sell enough chromos to that unappreciative community to pay my bills, if I had to sell them at cost. I set to work. By one o'clock I had visited every shop, store and Chinese laundry, and was talking hoarsely to a corner grocer who, seated on a keg of mackerel, sampling limburger cheese, grinned with satisfaction at his fortified position and swore like a skipper. I offered a picture for fifteen cents, but the reduction in price did not disturb his physical equilibrium.
"I vant not a peakture at any price," he affirmed.
"I lack fifteen cents of the amount of my hotel bill," I urged; "I am in dire straits."
His reply was weak, but the cheese was strong enough to help him out. My mental magazine had but a single charge left, and I fired it. "Isn't it worth fifteen cents to know a fool when you see one?"