Doctor Prince found his curiosity and interest engaged by Miss Rankin’s behaviour. She was in an agreeably fascinating humour. Her actions were such as might be expected from an adored child whose vacillating whims were indulged by groveling relatives. She ordered article after article from the bill of fare, petulantly countermanding nearly every one when they were set before her. Waiters flew and returned, collided, conciliated, apologized, and danced at her bidding. Her speech was quick and lively, deliciously inconsistent, abounding in contradictions, conflicting statements, “bulls,” discrepancies and nonconformities. In short, she seemed to have acquired within the space of a few days all that inconsequent, illogical frothiness that passes current among certain circles of fashionable life.
Mr. T. Ripley Ashburton showed a doting appreciation and an addled delight at the new charms of his fiancée — charms that he at once recognized as the legal tender of his set.
Later, when the party had broken up, Doctor Prince and Professor Adami stood, for a moment, at a corner, where their ways were to diverge.
“Well,” said the professor, who was genially softened by the excellent supper and wine, “this time our young lady seems to be more fortunate. The malady has been eradicated completely from her entity. Yes, sir, in good time, our school will be recognized by all.”
Doctor Prince scrutinized the handsome, refined countenance of the hypnotist. He saw nothing there to indicate that his own diagnosis was even guessed at by that gentleman.
“As you say,” he made answer, “she appears to have recovered, as far as her friends can judge.”
When he could spare the time, Doctor Prince again invaded the sanctum of the great Grumbleton Myers, and together they absorbed the poison of nicotine.
“Yes,” said the great Myers, when the door was opened and Doctor Prince began to ooze out with the smoke, “I think you have come to the right decision. As long as none of the persons concerned has any suspicion of the truth, and is happy in the present circumstances, I don’t think it necessary to inform him that the feuditis Beallorum et Rankinorum — how’s the Latin, doctor? — has only been driven to Miss Rankin’s brain.”
The Elusive Tenderloin
There is no Tenderloin. There never was. That is, none that you could run a tapeline around. The word really implies a condition or a quality — much as you would say “reprehensibility” or “cold feet.”
Metes and bounds have been assigned to it. I know. Realists have prated of “from Fourteenth to Forty-second,” and “as far west as” etc., but the larger meaning of the word remains with me.
Confirmation of my interpretation of the famous slaughter-house nounadjective came to me from Bill Jeremy, a friend out of the West. Bill lives in a town on the edge of the prairie-dog country. At times Bill yearns to maintain the tradition that “ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth.” He brought his last yearning to New York. And it devolved upon me. You know what that means.
I took Bill to see the cavity that has been drilled in the city’s tooth, soon to be filled with the new gold subway; and the Eden Musee, and the Flatiron and the crack in the front windowpane of Russell Sage’s house, and the old man that threw the stone that did it when he was a boy — and I asked Bill what he thought of New York.
“You may mean well,” said Bill, with gentle reproach, “but you’ve got in a groove. You thought I was underwear buyer for the Blue-Front Dry Goods Emporium of Pine Knob, N. C., didn’t you? Or the junior partner of Slowcoach & — Green, of Geegeewocomee, State of Goobers, come on for the fall stock of jeans, lingerie, and whetstones? Don’t treat me like a business friend.
“Do you suppose the wild, insensate longing I feel for metropolitan gayety is going to be satisfied by waxworks and razor-back architecture? Now you get out the old envelope with the itinerary on it, and cross out the Brooklyn Bridge and the cab that Morgan rides home in and the remaining objects of interest, for I am going it alone. The Tenderloin, well done, is what I shall admire for to see.”
Bill Jeremy has a way of doing as he says he will. So I did not urge upon him the bridge, or Carnegie Hall or the great Tomb — wonders that the unselfish New Yorker reserves, unseen, for his friends.
That evening Bill descended, unprotected, upon the Tenderloin. The next day he came and put his feet upon my desk and told me about it.
“This Tenderloin,” said he, “is a cross between a fake sideshow and a footrace. It’s a movable feast — somethin’ like Easter, or tryin’ to eat spaghetti with chopsticks.
“Last night I put all my money but nine dollars under a corner of the carpet and started out. I had along a bill-of-fare of this here Tenderloin; it said it begins at Fourteenth street and runs to Forty-second, with Fourth avenue and Seventh on each side of it. Well, I started up from Fourteenth so I wouldn’t miss any of it. Lots of people was travellin’ on the streets in a hurry. Thinks I, the Tenderloin’s sizzlin’ tonight; if I don’t hurry I won’t get a seat at the performance.
“Most of the crowd seemed to be goin’ up and I went up. And then they seemed to be goin’ down, and I went down. I asks a man in a light overcoat with a blue jaw leanin’ against a lamppost where was this Tenderloin.
“‘Up that way,’ he says, wavin’ his finger-ring.
“‘How’ll I know it when I get to it?’ I asks.
“‘Yah!’ says he, like he was sick. ‘Easy! Youse’ll see a flax-headed cull stakin’ a doll in a 98-cent shirtwaist to a cheese sandwich and sarsaparilla, and five Salvation Army corporals waitin’ round for de change. Dere’ll be a phonograph playin’ and nine cops gettin’ ready to raid de joint. Dat’ll be it.’
“I asked that fellow where I was then.
“‘Two blocks from de Pump,’ says he.
“I goes on uptown, and seein’ nothin’ particular in the line of sinful delight, I strikes ‘crosstown to another avenue. That was Sixth, I reckon. People was still walkin’ up and down, puttin’ first one foot in front and then the other in the irreligious and wicked manner that I suppose has given the Tenderloin its frivolous reputation. Street cars was runnin’ past, most impious and unregenerate; and the profligate Dagoes was splittin’ chestnuts to roast with a wild abandon that reminded me considerably of doings in Paris, France. The dissipated bootblacks was sleepin’ in their chairs, and the roast peanut whistles sounded gay and devilish among the mad throng that leaned ag’inst the awnin’ posts.
“A fellow with a high hat and brass buttons gets down off the top of his covered sulky, and says to me, ‘Keb, sir?’
“‘Whereabouts is this Tenderloin, Colonel?’ I asks.
“‘You’re right in the centre of it, boss,’ says he. ‘You are standin’ right now on the wickedest corner in New York. Not ten feet from here a pushcart man had his pocket picked last night; and if you’re here for a week I can show you at least two moonlight trolley parties go by on the New Amsterdam line.’
“‘Look here,’ says I, ‘I’m out for a razoo. I’ve got nine iron medallions of Liberty wearin’ holes in my pocket linin’. I want to split this Tenderloin in two if there’s anything in it.
Now put me on to something that’s real degraded and boisterous and sizzling with cultured and uproarious sin. Something in the way of metropolitan vice that I can be proud of when I go back home. Ain’t you got any civic pride about you?’
“‘This sulky driver scratched the heel of his chin.
“‘Just now, boss,’ says he, ‘everything’s layin’ low. There’s a tip out that Jerome’s cigarettes ain’t agreein’ with him. If it was any other time — say,’ says he, like