You Should Worry Says John Henry | Page 9

change my mind and go to a moving picture show.
CHAPTER IV
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT GETTING A GOAT
Hep Hardy's goat belongs to the chamois branch of that famous family.
When it gets out it wants to leap from crag to crag.
Hep's chamois got loose recently and, believe me, I never saw a goat
perform to better advantage.
For a long time Hep has been in love with Clarissa Goober, the
daughter of Pop Goober, who made millions out of the Flower-pot
Trust. Of late, however, Hep's course of true love has been running for
Sweeney, and my old pal has been staring at the furniture and
conversing with himself a great deal.

[Illustration]
On our way home night before last Hep and I dropped into the Saint
Astormore for a cocktail, and at a table near us sat Pop Goober and
something else which afterwards turned out to be a Prussian
nobleman--the Count Cheese von Cheese.
When Hep got a flash of these two his goat kicked down the door of its
box-stall and began cavorting all over the Western Hemisphere.
"Pipe!" he whispered hoarsely, "pipe Pop Goober and the human germ
with him! It's a titled foreigner--honest it is! It can walk and say, 'Papa!'
And it is trained to pick out a millionaire father-in-law at fifty paces!"
"Why, what's the matter, Hep?" I inquired after the waiter had vamped.
"Oh, I'm wise to these guys with the Gorgonzola titles all wrapped up
in pink tissue paper and only $8 in the jeans," Hep rumbled, with a
glare in the direction of the Count Cheese von Cheese.
"Pop Goober certainly does make both ends meet in the lemon
industry," he continued. "That old gink is the original Onion collector
and he spends his waking hours falling for dead ones."
Hep paused to bite the froth off a Bronx. His goat was at the post.
"That driblet is over here to pick out an heiress and fall in love with her
because he needs the money," Hep growled as his goat got away in the
lead. "Every steamer brings them over, John, some incognito, some in
dress suits, and some in hoc signo vinces, but all of them able to pick
out a lady with a bank account as far as the naked eye can see.
"It's getting so now, John, that an open-face, stem-winding American
has to kick four Dukes, eight Earls, seven Counts and a couple of
Princes off the front steps every time he goes to call on his
sweetheart--if she has money.
"When I go down into Wall Street, John, I find rich men with the tears

streaming down their faces while they are calling up on the telephone
to see if their daughter, Gladys, is still safe at home, where they left her
before they came down to business.
"Walk through a peachy palace of the rich on Fifth Avenue, and what
will you find?
"Answer: You will find a proud mother bowed with a great grief, and
holding onto a rope which is tied to her daughter's ankle to prevent the
latter from running out on the front piazza, and throwing kisses at the
titled foreigners.
"You will find these cheap skates everywhere, John, rushing hither and
thither, and sniffing the air for the odor of burning money."
Hep's goat at the quarter and going strong.
"They're all over the place, John," he rushed on; "the street cars are full
of Earls and Baronets, traveling on transfers. There they are, John,
sitting in the best seats and reading the newspapers until an heiress
jumps aboard and hands them her address, with a memorandum of her
papa's bank account.
"Then they arise with the true nobility of motion and ask that a day be
set for the wedding.
"Why should it be thus, John? We have laws in this country to protect
the birds and the trees, the squirrels and all animals except those that
can be reached by an automobile, but why don't we have a law to
protect the heiresses?
"Why are these titled zimboes permitted to borrow carfare, and come
over here and give this fair land a fit of indigestion?
"Why are they permitted to set their proud and large feet on the soil for
which our forefathers fought and bled for their country, and for which
some of us are still fighting and bleeding the country? Why? Why do
these fat-heads come over here with a silver cigarette case and a society

directory and make every rich man in the country fasten a burglar alarm
to his checkbook?"
Hep's goat at the half by a length.
"A few days ago, John, one of these mutts with an Edam title jumped
off an ocean liner, and immediately the price of padlocks