Christopher Morley - In The Sweet Dry And Dry

Bleak. The editor had been coached beforehand by Quimbleton as to the routine of the seance.

"The first requirement," said Quimbleton to the awe-struck gathering, "is to put yourselves in the proper frame of mind. For that purpose I will ask you all to stand up, placing one foot on the rung of a chair. Kindly imagine yourselves standing with one foot on a brass rail. You will then summon to mind, with all possible accuracy and vividness, the scenes of some bar-room which was once dear to you. I will also ask you to concentrate your mental faculties upon some beverage which was once your favorite.

Please rehearse in imagination the entire ritual which was once so familiar, from the inquiring look of the bartender down to the final clang of the cash-register. A visualization of the old free lunch counter is also advisable. All these details will assist the medium to trance herself."

Bleak in the meantime had carried a small table on the platform, and placed an empty glass upon it. Miss Chuff sat down at this table, and gazed intently at the glass. Quimbleton produced a white apron from somewhere, and tied it round his burly form. With

Bleak playing the role of customer he then went through a pantomime of serving imaginary drinks. His representation of the now vanished type of the bartender was so admirably realistic that it brought tears to the eyes of more than one in the gathering.

The editor, with appropriate countenance and gesture, dramatized the motions of ordering, drinking, and paying for his invisible refreshment. His pantomime was also accurate and satisfying, evidently based upon seasoned experience. The argument as to who should pay, the gesture conveying the generous sentiment "This one's on me," the spinning of a coin on the bar, the raising of the elbow, the final toss that dispatched the fluid-all these were done to the life. The audience followed suit with a will. A

whispering rustle ran through the dingy hall as each man murmured his favorite catchwords. "Give it a name," "Set 'em up again,"

"Here's luck," and such archaic phrases were faintly audible. Miss

Chuff kept her gaze fastened on the empty tumbler.

Suddenly her rigid pose relaxed. She drooped forward in her chair, with her head sunk and hands limp. Tenderly and reverently

Quimbleton bent over her. Then, his face shining with triumph, he spoke to the hushed watchers.

"She is in the trance," he said. "Gentlemen, her happy soul is in touch with the departed spirits. What'll you have? Don't all speak at once."

Fifty-nine, in hushed voices, petitioned for a Bronx. Quimbleton turned to the unconscious girl.

"Fifty-nine devotees," he said, "ask that the spirit of the Bronx cocktail vouchsafe his presence among us."

Miss Chuff's slender figure stiffened again. Her hand went out to the glass beside her, and raised it to her lips. Some of the more eagerly credulous afterwards asserted that they had seen a cloudy yellow liquid appear in the vessel, but it is not improbable that the wish was father to the vision. At any rate, the fifty-nine suppliants experienced at that instant a gush of sweet coolness down their throats, and the unmistakable subsequent tingle. They gazed at each other with a wild surmise.

"How about another?" said one in a thrilling whisper.

"Take your turn," said Quimbleton. "Who's next?"

One hundred and fifty-three nominated Scotch whiskey. The order was filled without a slip. Quimbleton's face beamed above his beard like a full-blown rose. "Magnificent!" he whispered to

Bleak, both of them having partaken in the second round. "If this keeps on we'll have a charge of the tight brigade."

The next round was ninety-five Jack Rose cocktails, but the audience was beginning to get out of hand. Those who had not yet been served grew restive. They saw their companions with brightened eyes and beaming faces, comparing notes as to this delicious revival of old sensations. In the impatience of some and the jubilation of others, the psychic concentration flagged a little. Then, just as Quimbleton was about to ask for the fourth round, the unforgiveable happened. Some one at the back shouted, "A glass of buttermilk!"

Miss Chuff shuddered, quivered, and opened her eyes with a tragic gasp. She slipped from the chair, and fell exhausted to the floor.

Bleak ran to pick her up. Quimbleton screamed out an oath.

"The spell is broken!" he roared. "There's a spy in the room!"

At that instant a battalion of armed chuffs burst into the hall.

They carried a huge hose, and in ten seconds a six-inch stream of cold water was being poured upon the bewildered psychic tipplers.

Quimbleton and Bleak, seizing the girl's helpless form, escaped by a door at the back of the platform.

"Heaven help us," cried Bleak, distraught. "What shall we do? This means the firing squad unless we can escape."

Theodolinda feebly opened her eyes.

"O horrible," she murmured. "The spirit of buttermilk-I saw himhe threatened me-"

"The horse!" cried Quimbleton, with fierce energy. "The Bishop's horse-in the stable!"

They ran wildly to the rear quarters of the Home, where they found the Bishop's famous charger whinneying in his stall. All three leaped upon his back. In the confusion, amid the screams of the tortured inmates and the cruel cries of the invading chuffs, they made good their escape.

Every one of the wretched inmates captured at the psychic carouse was immediately sentenced to six months' hard listening on the

Chautauqua circuit. But even during this brutal punishment their memories returned with tenderest reminiscence to the experience of that afternoon. As one of them said, "it was a real treat." And although Quimbleton had plainly stated the relation in which he stood to Theodolinda Chuff, she had no less than two hundred and ten proposals of marriage, by mail, from those who had attended the seance.

Through a dreary waste of devastated country a little group of refugees plodded in silence. All about them lay fields and orchards which had been torn and uprooted as though by some unbelievable whirlwind. At a watering trough along the road they halted, facing the sign:

COMPULSORY DRINKING STATION

Adults, 1 quart

Children, 1 pint

THIRST FORBIDDEN BETWEEN HERE AND THE NEXT STATION

Under the eye of an armed chuff, who watched them suspiciously, the wretched wanderers drank the water in silence, but without enthusiasm. Then they shuffled on down the road.

At the front of the small procession a slender girl, in a muchstained sports suit, rode on a tall black horse. Beside the horse trudged a bulky man in a grotesque garb of dirty lavender quilting. A matted whisk of coarse beard drooped from his chin, but his blue eyes burned brightly in his sunburnt face. Over his shoulder he carried a six foot length of brass railing, a small folding table, and a shabby knapsack.

Behind the horse limped a lean, dyspeptic-colored individual in a

Palm Beach suit that would have been a social death-warrant on the shining sands of its name-place. There is no form of sartorialism that takes on such utter humility as a Palm Beach suit gone wrong.

This particular vestment was spotted with ink, with mud, with fruit-juices, with every kind of stain; it was punctured with perforations that might have been due to fallen tobacco tinder.

The individual within this travesty of clothing was painfully propelling a wheelbarrow, in which rode (not without complaint) a substantial woman and a baby. An older child trailed from the Palm

Beach coat-tail.

These jovial vagabonds, as the reader will have suspected, were no other than Theodolinda Chuff, Virgil Quimbleton, and the family of

Bleaks.

Affairs had gone steadily from bad to worse. After the incidentor, as some blasphemously called it, the miracle-at Cana, Bishop