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Brickdust Row

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth
would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a
gentleman--a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked
bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of
disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who
was agent for the Blinker estate.

"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing
confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North
Woods this morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate
night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some
unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a
monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't
scratch. I hate pens that scratch."

"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst has
not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not
yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven.
You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless
nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a
haircut."

"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of
papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a
cigar, please."

"If," said Lawyer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son
gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to
take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides
the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow,
I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business--of
business, and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about
this five years ago, but you would not listen--you were in a hurry
for a coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The
property--"

"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I
think you mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose
to-morrow--signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that
smelly sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try
to remember to drop in at eleven to-morrow. Morning."

The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the
legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his
little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and
rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was
sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so
incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport
kept piling up in banks for him to spend.

In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine.
Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to
him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt.
Everybody was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy
to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were
deep.

Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward
who had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe:

"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say:
"All's off; I'm going to jump into the river."

The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of
the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees.

"Certainly, sir," he tittered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see
you at Coney, Mr. Blinker."

Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday
steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a
North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and
bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until,
at last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat staring
brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did
not intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking
that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog, and
behaved just as he did in society.

She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind
threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it
again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and
smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was
dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids
and girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry
blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from
the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul.

"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile-redeemed
severity.

"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by
extending it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you."

"I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been
introduced," she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him.
He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down
to his chair again.

"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's
magnificent self-confidence.

"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker.

"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise.
"Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in
the park?" Her drollery took the form of impertinence.

"And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker.
"Mayn't we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been
there before." "It depends," said the girl, "on how nicely you
behave. I'll consider your application until we get there."

Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his
application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his
nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of
his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete.
The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity;
and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual
plane of communication from the beginning.

He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she
trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room
with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that
a glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that
boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good
enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker."

"Well," she said. "It certainly slows that you have imagination. It
gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow."

They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human
wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland
gone into vaudeville.

With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment
Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized
delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket
parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his
feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the
booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on
the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The
publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous
attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that
could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the
air to grain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But
what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude,
the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling
itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the
ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The
vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of
repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him
strongly.

In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence
by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy
eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were
saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was
their owner not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend
and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun?

Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he
suddenly saw Coney aright.

He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now
looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their
offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish
joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep
under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and
satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the
husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the
breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the
magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though
its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer
saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic
of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned
yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver
trumpets of joy's heralds.

Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and
joined the idealists.

"You are the lady doctor," he said to Florence. "How shall we go
about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?"

"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda
on the edge of the sea, "and we will take them all in, one by one."

They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with
pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the
Italians' fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The
North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss
he had made over signing his name--pooh! he could sign it a hundred
times. And her name was as pretty as she was--"Florence," he said it
to himself a great many times.

As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled,
drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the
bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered
as if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its
speed and struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting
into it with a terrifying shock and crash.

While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling
about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the
steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for
the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage
sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead.

The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the
slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold.

Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself.
She made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped
off the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life
preservers. He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten
canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in
a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully.

"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no
good."

She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down
and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll you bet we
don't reach the pier all right?" she said and began to hum a song.

And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order.
The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the
women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The
boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make
his promise good.

"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand,
"I love you."

"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly.

"I am not one of 'they all,'" he persisted. "I never knew any one I
could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every
day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you."

"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words
into her little, reckless song.

"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at
him in frank surprise.

"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked calmly. "They all do."

"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his
existence.

"Why, the fellows I know."

"Do you know so many?"

"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest
complacency.

"Where do you see these--these men? At your home?"

"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the
boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty
good judge of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who
is likely to get fresh."

"What do you mean by 'fresh?'"

"Why, try to kiss you--me, I mean."

"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth.

"Sure. All men do. You know that."

"Do you allow them?"

"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do."

She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes
were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them,
as though she did not understand him.

"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain
your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up
Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?"

She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see
the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust
Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks
crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four
years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody
come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet
the men, hasn't she?"

"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a--has got to meet
the men."

"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I
ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good
many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the
vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a
parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker--are you really sure
it isn't 'Smith,' now?"

The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking
with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a
corner and held out her hand.

"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very
pleasant afternoon."

Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a
cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook
his fist at it through the window.

"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his
breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something
wrong; there is something wrong."

At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a
new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport.

"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily.

"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do
you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business
of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There
are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new
five-year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in
the lease provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors
of these houses should not be sub-let, but that the tenants should be
allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the
shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls.
As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of
red brick--"

Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh.

"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have I
guessed right?"

"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport.

Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes.

"Do what you please with it," he said harshly. "Remodel it, burn it,
raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late I tell you. It's too
late. It's too late. It's too late."




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