Literary Lapses | Page 2

"I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now
and fifty dollars a month regularly."
The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

"Mr. Montgomery," he said unkindly loud, "this gentleman is opening
an account, he will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning."
I rose.
A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.
"Good morning," I said, and stepped into the safe.
"Come out," said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.
I went up to the accountant's wicket and poked the ball of money at him
with a quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.
My face was ghastly pale.
"Here," I said, "deposit it." The tone of the words seemed to mean, "Let
us do this painful thing while the fit is on us."
He took the money and gave it to another clerk.
He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no
longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.
"Is it deposited?" I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.
"It is," said the accountant.
"Then I want to draw a cheque."
My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave
me a chequebook through a wicket and someone else began telling me
how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I
was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust
it in at the clerk. He looked at it.
"What! are you drawing it all out again?" he asked in surprise. Then I
realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to
reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing.

All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me.
Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.
"Yes, the whole thing."
"You withdraw your money from the bank?"
"Every cent of it."
"Are you not going to deposit any more?" said the clerk, astonished.
"Never."
An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted
me while I was writing the cheque and that I had changed my mind. I
made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick
temper.
The clerk prepared to pay the money.
"How will you have it?" he said.
"What?"
"How will you have it?"
"Oh"--I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to
think--"in fifties."
He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.
"And the six?" he asked dryly.
"In sixes," I said.
He gave it me and I rushed out.
As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of

laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no
more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings
in silver dollars in a sock.

Lord Oxhead's Secret
A ROMANCE IN ONE CHAPTER
It was finished. Ruin had come. Lord Oxhead sat gazing fixedly at the
library fire. Without, the wind soughed (or sogged) around the turrets
of Oxhead Towers, the seat of the Oxhead family. But the old earl
heeded not the sogging of the wind around his seat. He was too
absorbed.
Before him lay a pile of blue papers with printed headings. From time
to time he turned them over in his hands and replaced them on the table
with a groan. To the earl they meant ruin--absolute, irretrievable ruin,
and with it the loss of his stately home that had been the pride of the
Oxheads for generations. More than that--the world would now know
the awful secret of his life.
The earl bowed his head in the bitterness of his sorrow, for he came of
a proud stock. About him hung the portraits of his ancestors. Here on
the right an Oxhead who had broken his lance at Crecy, or immediately
before it. There McWhinnie Oxhead who had ridden madly from the
stricken field of Flodden to bring to the affrighted burghers of
Edinburgh all the tidings that he had been able to gather in passing the
battlefield. Next him hung the dark half Spanish face of Sir Amyas
Oxhead of Elizabethan days whose pinnace was the first to dash to
Plymouth with the news that the English fleet, as nearly as could be
judged from a reasonable distance, seemed about to grapple with the
Spanish Armada. Below this, the two Cavalier brothers, Giles and
Everard Oxhead, who had sat in the oak with Charles II. Then to the
right again the portrait of Sir Ponsonby Oxhead who had fought with
Wellington in Spain, and been dismissed for it.

Immediately before the earl as he