Sewell Ford - Odd Numbers

One of my highbrow reg’lars at the Physical Culture Studio, a gent that mixes up in charity works, like organizin’ debatin’ societies in the deaf and dumb asylums, was tellin’ me awhile back of a great scheme of his to help out the stranger in our fair village. He wants to open public information bureaus, where a jay might go and find out anything he wanted to know, from how to locate a New Thought church, to the nearest place where he could buy a fresh celluloid collar.

“Get the idea?” says he. “A public bureau where strangers in New York would be given courteous attention, friendly advice, and that sort of thing.”

“What’s the use?” says I. “Ain’t I here?”

Course, I was just gettin’ over a josh. But say, it ain’t all a funny dream, either. Don’t a lot of ’em come my way? Maybe it’s because I’m so apt to lay myself open to the confidential tackle. But somehow, when I see one of these tourist freaks sizin’ me up, and lookin’ kind of dazed and lonesome, I can’t chuck him back the frosty stare. I’ve been a stray in a strange town myself. So I gen’rally tries to seem halfway human, and if he opens up with some shot on the weather, I let him get in the follow-up questions and take the chances.

Here the other day, though, I wa’n’t lookin’ for anything of the kind. I was just joltin’ down my luncheon with a little promenade up the sunny side of Avenue V, taking in the exhibits – things in the show windows and folks on the sidewalks – as keen as if I’d paid in my dollar at some ticket office.

And say, where can you beat it? I see it ’most every day in the year, and it’s always new. There’s different flowers in the florists’ displays, new flags hung out on the big hotels, and even the chorus ladies in the limousines are changed now and then.

I can’t figure out just what it was landed me in front of this millinery window. Gen’rally I hurry by them exhibits with a shudder; for once I got gay and told Sadie to take her pick, as this one was on me; and it was months before I got over the shock of payin’ that bill. But there I finds myself, close up to the plate glass, gawpin’ at a sample of what can be done in the hat line when the Bureau of Obstructions has been bought off and nobody’s thought of applyin’ the statute of limitations.

It’s a heliotrope lid, and the foundation must have used up enough straw to bed down a circus. It has the dimensions and general outlines of a summerhouse. The scheme of decoration is simple enough, though. The top of this heliotrope summerhouse has been caught in a heliotrope fog, that’s all. There’s yards and yards of this gauzy stuff draped and puffed and looped around it, with only a wide purple ribbon showin’ here and there and keepin’ the fog in place.

Well, all that is restin’ careless in a box, the size of a quarter-mile runnin’ track, with the cover half off. And it’s a work of art in itself, that box, – all Looey Cans pictures, and a thick purple silk cord to tie it up with. Why, one glimpse of that combination was enough to make me clap my hand over my roll and back away from the spot!

Just then, though, I notices another gent steppin’ up for a squint at the monstrosity, and I can’t help lingerin’ to see if he gets the same kind of a shock. He’s sort of a queer party, too, – short, stoop shouldered, thin faced, wrinkled old chap, with a sandy mustache mixed some with gray, and a pair of shrewd little eyes peerin’ out under bushy brows. Anybody could spot him as a rutabaga delegate by the high crowned soft hat and the back number ulster that he’s still stickin’ to, though the thermometer is way up in the eighties.

But he don’t seem to shy any at the purple lid. He sticks his head out first this way and then that, like a turtle, and then all of a sudden he shoots over kind of a quizzin’ glance at me. I can’t help but give him the grin. At that his mouth corners wrinkle up and the little gray eyes begin to twinkle.

“Quite a hat, eh?” he chuckles.

“It’s goin’ some in the lid line,” says I.

“I expect that’s a mighty stylish article, though,” says he.

“That’s the bluff the store people are makin’,” says I, “and there’s no law against it.”

“What would be your guess on the price of that there, now?” says he, edging up.

“Ah, let’s leave such harrowin’ details to the man that has to pay for it,” says I. “No use in our gettin’ the chilly spine over what’s marked on the price ticket; that is, unless you’re thinking of investin’,” and as I tips him the humorous wink I starts to move off.

But this wa’n’t a case where I was to get out so easy. He comes right after me. “Excuse me, neighbor,” says he; “but – but that’s exactly what I was thinking of doing, if it wasn’t too infernally expensive.”

“What!” says I, gazin’ at him; for he ain’t the kind of citizen you’d expect to find indulgin’ in such foolishness. “Oh, well, don’t mind my remarks. Go ahead and blow yourself. You want it for the missus, eh?”

“Ye-e-es,” he drawls; “for – for my wife. Ah – er – would it be asking too much of a stranger if I should get you to step in there with me while I find out the price?”

“Why,” says I, lookin’ him over careful, – “why, I don’t know as I’d want to go as far as – Well, what’s the object?”

“You see,” says he, “I’m sort of a bashful person, – always have been, – and I don’t just like to go in there alone amongst all them women folks. But the fact is, I’ve kind of got my mind set on having that hat, and – ”

“Wife ain’t in town, then?” says I.

“No,” says he, “she’s – she isn’t.”

“Ain’t you runnin’ some risks,” says I, “loadin’ up with a lid that may not fit her partic’lar style of beauty?”

“That’s so, that’s so,” says he. “Ought to be something that would kind of jibe with her complexion and the color of her hair, hadn’t it?”

“You’ve surrounded the idea,” says I. “Maybe it would be safer to send for her to come on.”

“No,” says he; “couldn’t be done. But see here,” and he takes my arm and steers me up the avenue, “if you don’t mind talking this over, I’d like to tell you a plan I’ve just thought out.”

Well, he’d got me some int’rested in him by that time. I could see he wa’n’t no common Rube, and them twinklin’ little eyes of his kind of got me. So I tells him to reel it off.

“Maybe you never heard of me,” he goes on; “but I’m Goliah Daggett, from South Forks, Iowy.”

“Guess I’ve missed hearin’ of you,” says I.

“I suppose so,” says he, kind of disappointed, though. “The boys out there call me Gol Daggett.”

“Sounds most like a cussword,” says I.

“Yes,” says he; “that’s one reason I’m pretty well known in the State. And there may be other reasons, too.” He lets out a little chuckle at that; not loud, you know, but just as though he was swallowin’ some joke or other. It was a specialty of his, this smothered chuckle business. “Of course,” he goes on, “you needn’t tell me your name, unless – ”

“It’s a fair swap,” says I. “Mine’s McCabe; Shorty for short.”

“Yes?” says he. “I knew a McCabe once. He – er – well, he – ”

“Never mind,” says I. “It’s a big fam’ly, and there’s only a few of us that’s real credits to the name. But about this scheme of yours, Mr. Daggett?”

“Certainly,” says he. “It’s just this: If I could find a woman who looked a good deal like my wife, I could try the hat on her, couldn’t I? She’d do as well, eh?”