41 Stories Read Online Free Page B

hellions in the days of your life?”
    â€˜Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.
    On a street comer, standing under a gas-light and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.
    â€œGood-night to ye,” Tobin says to the man. The man takes out a segar and passes the compliments, sociable.
    â€œWould ye hand us your name,” asks Tobin, “and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye.”
    â€œMy name,” says the man, polite, “is Friedenhausman—Maximus G. Friedenhausman.”
    â€œ ’Tis the right length,” says Tobin. “Do you spell it with an ‘o’ anywhere down the stretch of it?”
    â€œI do not,” says the man.
    â€œCan ye spell it with an ‘o’?” inquires Tobin, turning anxious.
    â€œIf your conscience,” says the man with the nose, “is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable.”
    â€œ ’Tis well,” says Tobin. “Ye’re in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin.”
    â€œ ’Tis highly appreciated,” says the man, with a bow. “And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?”
    â€œBy the two signs,” answers Tobin, trying to explain, “which ye display according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye’ve been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled according to Hoyle.”
    The man stopped smoking and looked at me.
    â€œHave ye any amendments,” he asks, “to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in charge.”
    â€œNone,” says I to him, “except that as one horseshoe resembles another so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me friend. If not, then the lines of Danny’s hand may have been crossed, I don’t know.”
    â€œThere’s two of ye,” says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight of a policeman. “I’ve enjoyed your company immense. Good-night. ”
    With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the other.
    â€œWhat!” says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his hat; “do ye follow me? I tell ye,” he says, very loud, “I’m proud to have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home.”
    â€œDo,” says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. “Do be off to your home. And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For the dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five.”
    â€œ ’Tis a strange hallucination,” says the man, turning to me as a more reasonable lunatic. “Hadn’t ye better get him home?”
    â€œListen, man,” says I to him. “Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than following out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments, which I will explain to you.” With that I relates