Skinner's Dress Suit Part 12

Quite a number of the other "gold bugs"--as Skinner had dubbed them--whom he had seen at the Crawford affair were in the Pullman.

They nodded to Skinner in a cordial way, which put him at once at his ease, and he soon felt quite as much at home in the Pullman as he had in the smoker.

That night he told Honey all about it.

"It only costs twenty-five cents extra," he said apologetically.

"That's nothing. I'm glad you did it, Dearie. You must do it every day."

"Very well," said Skinner.

A few days later Skinner said to Honey, as he stretched his long legs under the table and sipped his second demi-ta.s.se, "Well, Honey, I've joined the Pullman Club for keeps. It only costs a dollar and a half a week."

"It's well worth the money," said Honey.

Skinner regarded his beautiful little wife through half-closed eyes.

He was puzzled. What curious change had been wrought in this exponent--this almost symbol--of thrift that she should actually encourage him in the pursuit of the ruinous course into which he'd been thrust by the wonderful dress suit! He said nothing, but he jotted down in his little book:--

_Dress-Suit Account_

_Debit_ _Credit_

To operating expenses: $1.50 a week.

The trip into town in the Pullman each day was a social event with Skinner. He looked forward to it and what he learned was each night a subject of gossip at the dinner table.

"It's a regular 'joy ride' and I'm getting all kinds of good out of it," said he enthusiastically one evening. "By Jove, clothes are a good commercial proposition."

"Don't talk about the commercial side of it, Dearie. Tell me about the 'gold bugs.'"

"They're wonderful fellows," said Skinner, with the air of a man who had always been accustomed to traveling with such people and was now unbending to confide familiar items of special interest to some unsophisticated listener. "You'd find them fascinating."

"They 're just like other men, are n't they?"

Skinner rather pitied her inexperience. "No, they're not. They're just like great, big boys. The most natural talkers in the world--simple, direct, clear."

"Do you ever talk?"

This question brought Skinner back to earth again. He was just Dearie now.

"_Do_ I? Say, Honey, I've been isolated in that cage of mine so long that I thought I'd forgotten how to talk. But you'd be surprised to hear me--right in with the rest of them!"

"But you can't talk big things, Dearie, like them. You don't _know_ big things."

"Bless you, they don't talk big things. They tell anecdotes. And they talk about the time when they were boys--and their early struggles.

Every darned one of them came from a farm or a blacksmith shop. They all love to tell how often their fathers licked 'em. And they gossip about their old friends and things. The ride in is not business, Honey, it's social. There's one thing I've discovered in that Pullman Club," he went on. "These fellows are n't any cleverer than many a man in my position, but they've realized that it's just as easy to play with blue chips as with white ones--and they've got the nerve to do it."

"I don't catch on."

"It's just as easy to play with dollars as with dimes--just as easy to write an order for a thousand as for ten. And it's easier to do business with big men. They're more imaginative, quicker to grasp."

"That's how they got there," Honey interjected.

"But particularly, Honey, these men are all keen students of human nature. They can size a man up--gee! 'Brown's able,' says one. 'Yes, but he's tricky,' says another. 'Carpenter's honest, but he's a fool.'

With the 'gold bugs' credit is a combination of honesty and ability."

Skinner sipped his demi-ta.s.se reflectively.

"Honey, you remember what Russell Sage said in reply to Horace Greeley's, 'Go West, young man!' No? Well, this is what he said: 'If you want to make money, go where the money is.' _I 've_ begun to go where the money is. See the connection?"

"I'm glad you have," said Honey, nodding her head. "Those clerks you used to travel with never thought big thoughts or they would n't have been clerks."

"But remember, Honey, I'm only a clerk."

"But you never did belong in the clerk cla.s.s."

"You're right! I never did! I'm beginning to realize it now. Why, do you know,"--leaning over the table and counting off his words with his finger,--"I've had ideas that if I 'd only been able to carry out, ideas that I got right in that little cage of mine--"

Thus Skinner's education progressed. He took as enthusiastic a delight in studying the "gold bugs" as a naturalist would in some very ancient, but recently discovered, insect.

"I 'm finding out lots of good things in that Pullman Club, Honey,"

said Skinner a week later at the dinner table. "Every one of these 'gold bugs' has something under his skin. They may be d.i.c.k Turpins and Claude Duvals and Sam Ba.s.ses, their methods of getting things may not be ideal, but you can't beat their methods of giving. They've all got lovable qualities. They do a lot of things that show it--and they don't use a bra.s.s band accompaniment either."

"For instance?" said Honey, simply and sweetly.

"Well," said Skinner, "take old John Mackensie. He's so close that they say his grandfather was the man who chased the last Jew out of Aberdeen."

Skinner picked up the paper.

"See those initials, honey? 'D. C. D.'"

"I've noticed them."

"Old Mackensie, when he was a boy, came near starving to death. A reporter got hold of his case and printed a paragraph about it just like those you see every day. I got it on the quiet. Mackensie was saved by an anonymous friend who signed himself 'D. C. D.' He never could find out who it was. Several years pa.s.sed. He watched the papers, but these initials never appeared again. So Mackensie concluded that his unknown savior was dead.

"But he made up his mind to pa.s.s the good deed along and here's the romance of it. He wants whoever it was that helped him to get all the credit for it. He wants him to be reminded--if he happens to be alive and 'broke'--that the good thought started is being pushed along. So to-day a newspaper tells a story of an unfortunate girl--a starving boy picked up by the police--a helpless widow--a friendless old man. The next day you read, 'Rec'd from D. C. D. $20.'--'D. C. D. $50'--as the case may be. That's old man Mackensie."

"And yet they say money kills romance." Honey's eyes shone with appreciation.

"And there's Solon Wright," Skinner went on, "another 'gold bug.' For years every night he has handed a dollar to a certain shambling fellow outside the ferry gate."

"How curious!"

"Briscom told me about it. The strange thing is, it's a man Wright used to detest when he was flush. He does n't like him even now.

That's why he gives him the money. Moral discipline, the way he puts it. Can you beat it?"

As a result of these observations in the Pullman, Skinner jotted down in his little book:--