Our Mr Wrenn

Our Mr Wrenn

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Title: Our Mr. Wrenn The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
Author: Sinclair Lewis
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4961] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 4,
2002]

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WRENN ***

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OUR MR. WRENN
THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIV

TO GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER


CHAPTER I
MR. WRENN IS LONELY

The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a public
personage, who stands out on Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a
gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass buttons. He nods to all the
patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot
down to Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other shows, just to
get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for
evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head
stuffy.
He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty

Company as "Our Mr. Wrenn," who would be writing you directly and
explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was
the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending
over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock-room. He
was a meek little bachlor--a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made
suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache.
To-day--historians have established the date as April 9, 1910--there had
been some confusing mixed orders from the Wisconsin retailers, and
Mr. Wrenn had been "called down" by the office manager, Mr.
Mortimer R. Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion
ticket-taker. He found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a
dusty wind that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls,
whose V-necked blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under
the elevated station he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for
here beautiful Italian boys swayed with trays of violets; a tramp
displayed crimson mechanical rabbits, which squeaked, on silvery
leading-strings; and a newsstand was heaped with the orange and green
and gold of magazine covers.
"Gee!" inarticulated Mr. Wrenn. "Lots of colors. Hope I see foreign
stuff like that in the moving pictures."
He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest pockets for a
nickel and peering around the booth at the friendly ticket-taker. But the
latter was thinking about buying Johnny's pants. Should he get them at
the Fourteenth Street Store, or Siegel-Cooper's, or over at Aronson's,
near home? So ruminating, he twiddled his wheel mechanically, and
Mr. Wrenn's pasteboard slip was indifferently received in the
plate-glass gullet of the grinder without the taker's even seeing the
clerk's bow and smile.
Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted to
turn back and rebuke this fellow, but was restrained by shyness. He had
liked the man's "Fine evenin', sir "--rain or shine--but he wouldn't stand
for being cut. Wasn't he making nineteen dollars a week, as against the
ticket-taker's ten or twelve? He shook his head with the defiance of a
cornered mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded the moving
pictures gloomily.
They helped him. After a Selig domestic drama came a stirring
Vitagraph Western scene, "The Goat of the Rancho," which depicted

with much humor and tumult the revolt of a ranch cook, a Chinaman.
Mr. Wrenn was really seeing, not cow-punchers and sage-brush, but
himself, defying the office manager's surliness and revolting against the
ticket-man's rudeness. Now he was ready for the nearly overpowering
delight of travel-pictures. He bounced slightly as a Gaumont film
presented Java.
He was a connoisseur of travel-pictures,