BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
X.—FROM JACK TO BOB.
Mountain House, July —, 189-.
My Dear Bob,—We fellers had that mass-meeting to complain about the eagle-eyed head-waiter that won't let us take all the nuts and raisins we want out of the hotel dining-room, but the proprietor won't discharge him because he doesn't dare to. The trouble is the head-waiter isn't like other head-waiters you meet. Head-waiting isn't his regular business. He's a college man and he pays for his education with what he makes here in the summer-time, and as he's centre rush in his college football team the proprietor's afraid of him. I knew the minute I saw him that he was something of that sort, because his hair reaches down over his collar, and he said something about me in Latin once; and I heard him tell one of his college mates that came through here on a bicycle that the place wasn't perfect. "They haven't any nats or merskeeters," he said, "but it swarms with small boys that's worse."
He isn't so bad though when he isn't on duty. He told me a lot about things you learn studying one day when I met him coming down the road. He'd been out taking a little exercize on a bicycle. I had my wheel out too, and we rode along a little ways together, and he asked me if I was going to college. I told him of course I was, and he wanted to know where, and I told him I didn't know, but I thought I'd go to Yale if she didn't stop winning everything there was going. I want to be on the winning side, I said. That's a good idea, he said, everybody ought to want to do that, but of course everybody couldn't, because if everybody was on the winning side nobody'd be on the losing side, which would be a bad thing for the world. He's a queer fellow, the way he looks at things. He said bicycling up hill was always more fun than coasting, because when you got to the top of the hill you were glad it was over, while when you had coasted to the foot of it you were sorry it was all over. It's the same way in football, he said. There's more fun in getting beaten in a stiff game than winning in a walkover. And then he told me to always take a man of my own size.
"Why don't you?" said I. "I'm not a man of your size, but you've been fighting me about those nuts and raisins I take away."
He only laughed when I said that, and then he said he took 'em away from me because he wanted me to be a man of his size some day, which I wouldn't be if I eat so many nuts and raisins, and I guess he's right, and I told him I'd quit. When I got back to the hotel I told that Chicago boy about it, and he said he didn't take any stock in head-waiters, and he wasn't going to quit for ten of 'em, but that night he wished he had, because just to be brave as he put it, he slipped three bananas, two oranges, six bunches of raisins, two handsful of nuts, and a peach into his blouse, but the head-waiter caught him and took him straight to his Pop. His Pop turned him upside down, took him by the heels and gave him a shake, and all the things tumbled out on the floor, so that now he's not allowed to have anything of the kind at all even in the dining-room.
Sandboys likes the head-waiter very much, and says there isn't very much use in boys trying to fool him, because it hadn't been very long since he was a boy himself and he's up to all their tricks, and his game of football is the finest that ever was. One time two years ago when he was in school his team had been forced back almost to the goal line, Sandboys says, when all of a sudden he got the ball and ran half way down the field with it before he was stopped, and then, with both his own and the other eleven sitting on his back he crawled the rest of the way and made a touch-down and won a goal.
"I don't see how that could be though," I said.
"Neither do I," said Sandboys, "but that's what he did."
Unfortunately Sandboys forgot what school it was he went to, and the head-waiter when I asked him about it, only laughed and said Sandboys was a great man.
There was a slight-of-hand man here last week doing tricks in the parlor, and I tell you he was fine. He could do anything with anything. He asked if some little boy in the audience wouldn't come up on the platform and let him see if he couldn't find some money in his ears. That made everybody laugh, and I thought I'd go up, but I wish now I hadn't. If I'd only gone outside and shook my head I'd have been ten dollars in, because when I got up on the platform he grabbed hold of my ear and got ten silver dollars out of it. I never was more surprised in my life, and Pop thought he'd be smart and have fun with the man. He got up and said he recognized those ten dollars by the feathers on the eagles on the back of 'em. He said he'd left them under his pillow the night before, and he supposed that they'd slipped into my ear when I climbed over into his bed. The man said all right he could have 'em, and when Pop went up to get 'em they'd disappeared into the piano, and when he went there to get 'em they'd disappeared into Sandboys' pocket, and so on until Pop gave up chasing them, and said the prestidigitter could keep 'em for himself. Everybody thought that was a great joke on Pop, and he got very red, but later on when the man passed his hat around for people to put quarters and dimes in for him, Pop told him there was a four dollar bill in my eye he could have. This made everybody laugh, which put Pop in a better humor, and I saw him give the man two dollars and a half later on.
Besides this there hasn't been anything going on here that's worth writing about. I asked Sandboys to give me some kind of an idea about what to tell you that would be interesting, and he asked me why I didn't tell you about the fourteen-pound pickerel I caught in a lake last week. Why, I said, I didn't catch any fourteen-pound pickerel. What difference does that make? he asked. You can tell him about the one you would have caught if you'd caught it, which I think was rather funny. Somehow or other I'm beginning to believe that Sandboys has lots of things happen to him that never happened, and I'm going to be careful about what I believe. I asked the proprietor about that bear story he told, and the Colonel said he'd never heard of it, and all the satisfaction I could get out of Sandboys later was that the Colonel was like all very prosperous personages. His memory was short.
Give my love to anybody you think would like to have it, and if you meet any Kings or Queens don't forget to talk right up to 'em like a real American.
Yours affectionately,
Jack.