On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild gee honk high of nights, and when women without alskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.
A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.
Soapy's mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himlf into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.
The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruis, of soporific Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, emed to Soapy the esnce of things desirable.
For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow Ne
w Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repul the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might t out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs.
Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once t about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.表示看的四字成语
Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level a of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow tog
ether. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm.
Soapy had confidence in himlf from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been prented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would rai no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing--with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tas and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.
But as Soapy t foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trours and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.
Soapy turned off Broadway. It emed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of.
At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.
"Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer excitedly.
菠菜根可以吃吗"Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?" said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune.
The policeman's mind refud to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man half way down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.
On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetit
es and modest purs. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trours without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter be betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himlf were strangers.快节奏的歌曲
"Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. "And don't keep a gentleman waiting."
"No cop for you," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. "Hey, Con!"
Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavemen
t two waiters pitched Soapy. He aro, joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest emed but a rosy dream. The Island emed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street.
Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity prented what he fatuously termed to himlf a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing gui was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of
shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of vere demeanour leaned against a water plug.
It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.
Soapy straightened the lady missionary's readymade tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, t his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raid his hat and said:
"Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?"
The policeman was still looking. The percuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the coz妥协的意思
y warmth of the station-hou. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy's coat sleeve.
Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching."
ps如何画箭头With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He emed doomed to liberty.
At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and librettos.
Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear ized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of "disorderly conduct."
On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwi disturbed the welkin.
The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and
情何以堪是什么意思remarked to a citizen.
"'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goo egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be."
Disconsolate, Soapy cead his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island emed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.
In a cigar store he saw a well-dresd man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had t by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, cured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.
"My umbrella," he said, sternly.
"Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call a cop? There stands one on the corner."
The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewi, with a prentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously.
"Of cour," said the umbrella man--"that is--well, you know how the mistakes occur--I--if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excu me--I picked it up this morning in a restaurant--If you recogni it as yours, why--I hope you'll--"
"Of cour it's mine," said Soapy, viciously.
The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.
Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Becau he wanted to fall into their clutches, they emed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.
At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He t his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.
But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.
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The moon was above, lustrous and rene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves--for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and ros and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.
The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift ho
我没事rror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and ba motives that made up his existence.
And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An instantaneous and stron
g impul moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himlf out of the mire; he would make a man of himlf again; he would conquer the evil that had taken posssion of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Tho solemn but sweet organ notes had t up a revolution in him. To-morrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would--
Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.
"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.
"Nothin'," said Soapy.
"Then come along," said the policeman.
"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.
