Billy Baxters Letters | Page 6

have a card in my pocket which says
I've opened up a running account of thirty-two forty at George's place. I
wonder if this George is on the level, because I'll swear I don't think I
was in there at all. I'll bet he stuck the forty on anyway. You know me,
Jim; I am one of those bright people who tries to keep up with a lot of
guys who have nothing to do but blow their coin. I stood around
yesterday and looked wise, and licked up about four high-balls; then I
kind of stretched. Whenever I give one of those little stretches and
swell up a bit that's a sign I am commencing to get wealthy. I switched
over and took a couple of gin fizzes, and then it hit me I was richer than
Jay Gould ever was; I had the Rothschilds backed clear off the board;
and I made William H. Vanderbilt look like a hundred-to-one shot. You
understand, Jim, this was yesterday. I got a little red spot in each cheek,
and then I leaned over the bar and whispered, "Mr. Bartender, break a
bottle of that Pommery." Ordinarily I call the booze clerk by his first
name, but when you are cutting into the grape at four dollars per, you
always want to say Mr. Bartender, and you should always whisper, or
just nod your head each time you open a new bottle, as it makes it
appear as though you were accustomed to ordering wine. You see, Jim,
that's where I go off my dip. That wine affair is an awful stunt for a
fellow who makes not over two thousand a year, carries ten thousand
life, and rooms in a flat that's fifteen a month stronger than he can stand.
But to continue, I lost the push I started out with, and got mixed up
with a fellow named Thorne, or Thorpe, or something like that, and we
got along great for a while. He knew a lot of fellows in Boston that I
did, and every time we struck a new mutual friend we opened another
bottle. I don't know just what the total population of Boston is, but we
must have known everybody there. Finally Thorne got to crying
because his mother had died. You know I am a good fellow, so I cried,
too. I always cry some time during a bat, and there was an opening for
your life. I cried so hard that the bartender had to ask me to stop three
different times. I made Niobe look like a two spot. Between sobs I

asked him about the sad affair, and found that his mother had died
when he was born. I guess it had just struck him. Then there were
doings.
I had wasted a wad of cries that would float the Maine, and I was sore
for fair. A fat fellow cut into the argument, and some one soaked him in
the eye, and then, as they say in Texas, "there was three minutes rough
house." In the general bustle a seedy looking man pinched the Fresh
Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much for the bat cave, and to
avoid such after-complications as patrol wagons and things, I blew the
bunch and started up street. I guess the wind must have been against me,
as I was tacking.
I met Johnny Black, and he was going to keep a date with a couple of
swell heiresses at one of the hotel dining-rooms. I saw them on the
street to-day, and they won't do. One of them wore an amethyst ring
that weighed about sixty carats, and the other had on white slippers
covered with little beads.
I don't know anything about them, but I'll gamble that they are the kind
of people that have pictures of the family and wreaths in the parlor.
They looked fine and daisy last night, though. Probably the grape. My
girl's name was Estelle. Wouldn't that scald you? Estelle handed me a
lot of talk about having seen me on the street for the last two years, and
how she had always been dying to meet me, and I got swelled up and
bought wine like a horse owner. Johnny was shaking his head and
motioning for me to chop, but what cared I? Estelle was saying, "He
done it," "I seen it," and "Usen't you?" right along, but the grape stood
for everything.
Estelle's friend was talking about her piano, and how hard it was to get
good servants nowadays, and say, Jim, I've heard knockers in my time,
but Estelle is the original leader of the anvil chorus. She just put
everybody in town on the pan and roasted them to a whisper.