Mixed Faces

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

If Nature is infallible, there should be some philosophic or eugenic professor arise and explain why she made such a grievous error in the personal appearance, vocal qualities, and general gestures of the learned judge, astute politician and hopeful statesman, Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger and Mr. James Gollop, perigrinating drummer for a chocolate house. Either the Honorable Judge should have been a commercial traveler, or the commercial traveler a judge. Outwardly they could have passed for specimen twins, given handicaps to all comers, and easily won the blue ribbon. Inwardly their characteristics were as different as those of any two animals could be, the Judge having the ponderous gravity of a camel, whilst Mr. James Gollop was as sedate as a monkey and twice as ebullient. The Judge suffered from a prodigious sense of responsibility and dignity, whilst his double was given to frivolities, a distressing sense of the ridiculous and was as irresponsible and happy as a flea hurdling from one boarding house to another in a dog pound.

The first intimation the Judge had that some other person dared to look like him was when, as he strode into the lobby of the Media City hotel in the best city in his state, a grinning porter rushed up, seized his suit case and said affably, "Righto, Old Sport! Got here just in time this trip and I'll send your cases to number two sample room, and open 'em up if you'll gimme the burglar's kit. The room you kicked for last month—remember."

The Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger, who from force of habit never said anything until he had formulated the complete sentence and then edited it, and having a mind that moved with the frantic speed and wild agility of a tractor engine pulling a carload of coal, glared ponderously at the porter who took it as a joke. Gollop sometimes assumed that prodigious seriousness when about to pass out specimens of his best humor.

"Spring it! Spring it! I'm ready to laugh," the porter encouraged him.

"Young man," said the Judge, "I am not accustomed to having those in your evident station of life address me with any such familiarity. You should be old enough to know that it is unseemly. You can not succeed, even in a menial occupation, unless you cultivate that respect which is due not only to your superiors, but to those who patronize the hotel, or any other undertaking in which you are employed."

He might have gone ahead and imposed a fine for contempt of court, or sentenced the unfortunate porter to ten years in the penitentiary, had not other arrivals come surging through the door, which reminded him that perhaps it were wiser to register ahead of all newcomers and thus endeavor to secure the choicest room for himself. The Judge had the trait which is shared alike by some human beings and many hogs, that he demanded the best though every other human—or hog—has to suffer. He liked to make sure that his own feet were firmly planted in the choice end of the trough; so he hurried to the desk, leaving the jovial porter still grinning, still expectant and quite hopeful that the tip would be of its usual generous proportions. Jim tipped liberally, because his firm was what is known as "easy on the tabs." Anybody can be liberal if someone else furnishes the platinum. That's why trust magnates and drummers can't be distinguished, because somebody else always pays the bills, although there has never yet been invented any painless dentistry for extraction of the purse. The room clerk in the hotel was new to her job, and so was the boy who conducted the Judge to his room; but, sad to relate, the chambermaid winked at the Judge and blew him a kiss. She was rather pretty too. Now to have a pretty chambermaid blow one a kiss when he arrives in a fine hotel is not objectionable to most travelers....