MR. FEENY'. SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
ON the street some one had handed Mike Feeny an oblong of pasteboard. Mr. Feeny stoked with the Gulf and Mexican Transportation Line.
“Is it a ticket to a show?” he asked, removing his pipe.
“It is; go on in and enjoy yourself.” And the donor laughed. He was a pleasant-looking young fellow in evening dress, much like the young fellows Mr. Feeny sometimes saw on the awning-covered promenade deck.
“I'm beholden to you,” said he, being a person of manners when sober.
And pocketing his blackened pipe, he strode into the brilliant foyer of the Music Hall where the many lights fully disclosed him as a stoop-shouldered man of large muscular development, clothed in respectable shore-going garments recently purchased at a bargain of a Jewish gentleman on the river-front. A great shock of violently red hair formed an aureole about his long sad face, and the drooping ends of a blond mustache reached well back toward the freckled lobes of his ears. Mr. Feeny was strictly Irish, with the large potentialities of his race.
Now Mr. Feeny did not know that the International Congress of Economics had assembled there to give expert testimony, and charting a careful course in new shoes that pinched somewhat, he followed the trickle of well-dressed humanity into the building, where an usher showed him to an aisle seat in the last row of orchestra chairs. The orchestra was finishing a classic prelude. This first attracted Mr. Feeny's attention. It was displeasing to his musical tastes, and he remarked in a husky whisper to the gentleman on his left:
“Say, buddy, them fiddles is on the bum——”
“Hush!” said the gentleman, raising a warning finger.
“What for should I hush?” demanded Mr. Feeny. “Cheese it yourself!”