“What’s you hollerin’ for? _You_ don’t have to eat here.”
My friend Quimby of the Detroit _Free Press_ tells of “meeting up” with two strangers who became so friendly that soon the three were introducing themselves.
“I’m from Detroit,” said Quimby to one. “Where are you from?”
“Boston,” was the reply. The Bostonian turned enquiringly to the third, who said:
“I’m from Pawtucket. Now, d⸺mn you, laugh!”
I am indebted to hundreds of critics and other journalists for kind things they have printed about me. As to authors, one of them saved my life a few years ago, and this is how it occurred:—I had rooms in Thirty-fourth Street, in New York, next door to the late Laurence Hutton, author of many well-known books. One night, on returning home very late, I discovered that I had neglected to take my keys, so I was practically locked out. I rang the bell, but no one responded. Suddenly I noted that lights were still burning in Mr. Hutton’s house, and I recalled that he had given a dinner that night to Mr. Edwin Booth, the tragedian. Hutton was the most obliging neighbor any one could have had, so I rang him up, told him of my trouble, and asked permission to go into his yard and climb the division fence, after which I would get into my own house through a rear window.
“All right, Marshall,” Hutton replied, “and I’ll go with you, and help you over the fence.”
My only fear was of a lodger in my own house—a nervous man, apprehensive of burglars, and who kept revolvers and a quick temper ready for use at any moment he might be aroused. I said as much to Mr. Hutton, and the affair immediately changed from a neighborly courtesy to an adventure with a spice of danger to make it more attractive. Mr. Booth who had overheard the conversation, announced that he wasn’t to be left out of any fun in sight, so we three crept silently into Hutton’s back yard like three burglars, or more like three schoolboys out for mischief. Finding that he could not lift me over, as he had intended, Hutton got a chair, stood upon it and helped me to the top of the fence, which was high. Even there I was no better off, for the fence was as tall as I was not, so like Mohammed’s coffin I was poised between heaven and earth and unable to drop without breaking something. But Hutton was a man of expedients: he stood on the extreme top of the chair-back, leaned over the fence and held my cane, by its crook, as if it were a dangling rope, down which I slid safely, thanks to a running fire of tragic stage-whispers, by Mr. Booth, to the general effect, that it is always well to keep very tight hold of a good thing, until you strike a better one.