Chapter V: Preface (5)

"I am coming to the point. O'Grady made a company--the drunkest I ever saw--to run a cable-car on the 'Frisco model from 'Wake Up an' Git Saloon' to Bow Flume. The boys put in about four thousand dollars, for Bow Flume was squirling gold then. There's nary shanty there now. O'Grady put in four thousand dollars of his own, and I was roped in for as much. O'Grady desired the concern to represent the resources of Bow Flume. We got a car built in 'Frisco for two thousand dollars, with an elegant bar at one end--nickel-plated fixings and ruby glass.

"The notion was to dispense liquor _en route_. A Bow Flume man could put himself outside two drinks in a minute and a half, the same not being pressed for urgent business. The boys graded the road for love, and we run a rope in a little trough in the middle. That rope ran swift, and any blame fool that had his foot cut off, fooling in the middle of the road, might ha' found salvation by using our Bow Flume Palace Car. The boys said that was square. O'Grady took the contract for building the engine to wind the rope. He called his show a mule--it was a crossbreed between a threshing machine and an elevator ram. I don't think he had followed the 'Frisco patterns. He put all our dollars into that blamed barroom on the car, knowing what would please the boys best. They didn't care much about the machinery, so long as the car hummed.

"We charged the boys a dollar a head per trip. One free drink included. That paid--paid like--Paradise. They liked the motion. O'Grady was engineer, and another man sort of tended to the rope engine when he wasn't otherwise engaged. Those cable-cars run by gripping on to the rope. You know that. When the grip's off the car is braked down and stands still. There ought to have been two cars by right--one to run up and the other down. But O'Grady had a blamed invention for reversing the engine, so the cable ran both ways--up to Bow Flume and down to the saloon--the terminus being in front of our door. A man could kick a friend slick from the bar into the car. The boys appreciated that. The Bow Flume Palace Car Company earned twenty on the hundred in three months, besides the profits of the drinks. We might have lasted to this day if O'Grady hadn't tinkered his blamed engine up on top of Bow Flume Hill. The boys complained the show didn't hum sufficient. They required railroad speed. O'Grady ran 'em up and down at fourteen miles an hour; and his latest improvement was to touch twenty-four. The strain on the brakes was terrible--quite terrible. But every time O'Grady raised the record, the boys gave him a testimonial. 'Twasn't in human nature not to crowd ahead after that. Testimonials demoralise the publickest of men.

"I rode on the car that memorial day. Just as we started with a double load of boys and a razzle-dazzle assortment of drinks, something went _zip_ under the car bottom. We proceeded with velocity. All the prominent members of the company were aboard. 'The grip has got snubbed on the rope,' says O'Grady quite quietly. 'Boys, this will be the biggest smash on record. Something's going to happen.' We proceeded at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour till the end of our journey. I don't know what happened there. We could get clear of the rope anyways at the point where it turned round a pulley to start up hill again. We struck--struck the stoop of the 'Wake Up an' Git Saloon'--_my_ saloon--and the next thing I knew was feeling of my legs under an assortment of matchwood and broken glass, representing liquor and fixtures to the tune of eight thousand. The car had been flicked through the saloon, bringing down the entire roof on the floor. It had then bucked out into the firmament, describing a parabola over the bluff at the back of the saloon, and was lying at the foot of that bluff, three hundred feet below, like a busted kaleidoscope--all nickel, shavings and bits of red glass. O'Grady and most of the prominent members of the company were dead--very dead--and there wasn't enough left of the saloon to pay for a drink. I took in the situation lying on my stomach at the edge of the bluff, and I suspicioned that any lawsuits that might arise would be complicated by shooting. So I quit Bow Flume by the back trail. I guess the coroner judged that there were no summons--leastways I never heard any more about it. Since that time I've had a distrust to cable-cars. The rope breaking is no great odds, bekase you can stop the car, but it's getting the grip tangled with the running rope that spreads ruin and desolation over thriving communities and prevents the development of local resources."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.]

IN PARTIBUS[20]

_The 'buses run to Battersea,
The 'buses run to Bow,
The 'buses run to Westbourne Grove,
And Nottinghill also;
But I am sick of London town,
From Shepherd's Bush to Bow._

I see the smut upon my cuff
And feel him on my nose;
I cannot leave my window wide
When gentle zephyr blows,
Because he brings disgusting things
And drops 'em on my "clo'es."

The sky, a greasy soup-toureen,
Shuts down atop my brow.
Yes, I have sighed for London town
And I have got it now:
And half of it is fog and filth,
And half is fog and row.

And when I take my nightly prowl,
'Tis passing good to meet
The pious Briton lugging home
His wife and daughter sweet,
Through four packed miles of seething vice,
Thrust out upon the street.

Earth holds no horror like to this
In any land displayed,
From Suez unto Sandy Hook,
From Calais to Port Said;
And 'twas to hide their heathendom
The beastly fog was made.

I cannot tell when dawn is near,
Or when the day is done,
Because I always see the gas
And never see the sun,
And now, methinks, I do not care
A cuss for either one.

But stay, there was an orange, or
An aged egg its yolk;
It might have been a Pears' balloon
Or Barnum's latest joke:
I took it for the sun and wept
To watch it through the smoke.

It's Oh to see the morn ablaze
Above the mango-tope,
When homeward through the dewy cane
The little jackals lope,
And half Bengal heaves into view,
New-washed--with sunlight soap.

It's Oh for one deep whisky peg
When Christmas winds are blowing,
When all the men you ever knew,
And all you've ceased from knowing,
Are "entered for the Tournament,
And everything that's going."

But I consort with long-haired things
In velvet collar-rolls,
Who talk about the Aims of Art,
And "theories" and "goals,"
And moo and coo with women-folk
About their blessed souls.

But that they call "psychology"
Is lack of liver pill,
And all that blights their tender souls
Is eating till they're ill,
And their chief way of winning goals
Consists in sitting still.

It's Oh to meet an Army man,
Set up, and trimmed and taut,
Who does not spout hashed libraries
Or think the next man's thought,
And walks as though he owned himself,
And hogs his bristles short.

Hear now, a voice across the seas
To kin beyond my ken,
If ye have ever filled an hour
With stories from my pen,
For pity's sake send some one here
To bring me news of men!

_The 'buses run to Islington,
To Highgate and Soho,
To Hammersmith and Kew therewith,
And Camberwell also,
But I can only murmur "'Bus"
From Shepherd's Bush to Bow._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.]

LETTERS ON LEAVE[21]