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The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

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







Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old
ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper.
Oh, very well! Pass up this _sotto voce_ autobiography of an X if
you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John
D's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all
right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the
point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a
silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read the
four words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee?

I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen
one in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of
the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions
of Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the
ends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or
Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory
plant. My references is--or are--Section 3,588, Revised Statutes.
Ten cold, hard dollars--I don't say whether silver, gold, lead or
iron--Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash
me in.

I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make--thanks,
I knew you would--got that sneaking little respect and agreeable
feeling toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill
doesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I
never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford
to hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur
Duffy to the nearest That's All! sign or delicatessen store.

For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I
guess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned
by a good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy
five-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to
it in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher.

"Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don't
you think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got
reissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight."

"Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," says
the fiver. "You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in a
thick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the
thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store."

"I never heard of a pocketbook like that," says I. "Who carried
you?"

"A shopgirl," says the five-spot.

"What's that?" I had to ask.

"You'll never know till their millennium comes," says the fiver.

Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head,
spoke up to the fiver:

"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer? If
you was under all cotton like I've been to-day, and choked up with
factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a
dozen times, you'd have some reason to complain."

That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500
package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania
correspondents--and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the
five and two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every
time.

I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands
twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for
my owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never
missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down,
while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got
in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little
straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could.
Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart
peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again,
for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth
of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one
day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was
rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He
changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap
game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, after
all, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for wine
the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad
to get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of
Charing Cross.

A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony
once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes.
They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining
whenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream
season. But it's Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the
little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse
to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour.

The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good
thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to
buy a stack of blues.

About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's
and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot
of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the
money tainters.

"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out
for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen
before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody
finds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic
supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold;
everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night."

I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to
me:

"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something
of life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg
steak."

"Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filet
mignon with the kind of sauce you serve."

"'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this
gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered
$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said
his money was tainted."

"What is a church?" I asked.

"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of
course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution
basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--a
large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each."

I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a
streak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters.

Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to
loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary.

By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the
wilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot
gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there
waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have
had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert
piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him;
and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a
few of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying
souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly
octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town for
Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind
of order.

At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When the
hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief
goal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen--twelve"
to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we
meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the
furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang
"Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the
twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused.

But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered
the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the
stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin.

Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the
outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the
proprietor.

"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused.
Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's
tainted."

"I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the
bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the
church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to
live in."

At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up
the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of
the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the
kind--black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a
cross between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of woman
that's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy
squad--and she stands there without a word and looks at the money.

Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a
bow.

"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted
bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a
gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me
the favor to accept it, it is yours."

The woman took me with a trembling hand.

"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into
packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in
the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my
position. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew--but
I won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir--thank
you--thank you."

Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a
bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery.
And I get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with
a dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine
water-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed
up in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug
store the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement
works.

A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the
baker had given the woman for change.

"Hallo, E35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in a
bakery last Saturday night?"

"Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style.

"How did the deal turn out?" I asked.

"She blew E17051431 for mills and round steak," says the one-spot.
"She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick
kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and
tincture of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed
some. Don't get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers,
where you hear one. She said something about 'who giveth to the
poor.' Oh, let's cut out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of the
company that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in society
with you tainted bills."

"Shut up," says I; "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it.
There's a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my back
and read what you see there."

"This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public
and private."

"This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I.




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