Preface "In New York" is the last of the Baxter Letters for the present.
We think it well to stop before we get bad. We make but one claim for distinction--the largest circulation America has ever seen or heard of. The people, up to date, have actually demanded over three and a half million copies, or nearly five car-loads of our little books, and there is no telling where it will stop. We have Robinson Crusoe backed clear off his island, and Uncle Tom's Cabin burned to the ground. Still it would have been a different story had we asked a dollar apiece for our books; so we are not so much after all.
In New York Pittsburg, Pa., August 1, 1899.
Dear Jim:
Just got back from New York this morning. Bud Hathaway stopped off here on his way from Chicago, and coaxed Johnny Black and me to go over East with him. We went, and a pretty mess we made of it. Bud is sore on both of us, I got touched for ninety, and Johnny is lost.
Nothing of interest occurred going over on the train, excepting that when I turned in I took off my trousers without spilling my money all over the Pullman floor. This is done by sewing the human pocket shut. We landed at Twenty-third Street, in good shape, early in the morning of the day before yesterday. When we reached the Pennsylvania cab-stand some one had taken the hansom, so we had to hire a carriage. They are building another hansom, and then there will be plenty of hansoms for all. At the hotel Johnny claimed Ihad a drag because I drew a room with a window in it. Breakfast was hardly over until Bud, without consulting us at all, commenced arrangements for giving a swell dinner to a couple of heiresses who lived on Eighteenth Street and who were worth eight millions, or who lived in Eighth Street and were worth eighty millions--Johnny and I didn't know which. Bud gave us a lot of hot air about his mother's cousin standing fifteen balls in the New York Four, and how that made him a nonresident member, and if we did just as he said, he would put us in right. He told us that there were thousands of people right in New York City, any one of whom would give a cool million for our opportunity. Johnny immediately began to figure, on how he would treat certain people over in Pittsburg who had given him the eye in bygone days; and I got so struck on myself that I cut the head waiter dead, although I had known him intimately for years. Along about 11 A.M. the deal went through by 'phone for seven o'clock that evening. Bud went to get shaved, and Johnny and I retired to the bar to wait until it was time to get ready for the dinner.
Well, sir, I never met so many people in all my life as we met in that bar. There was a wine agent whom everybody called ****, and I'm for ****. He sapped up all kinds of booze except wine, like four dollars' worth of blue blotters, and every time he took a drink he raised his salary a thousand dollars a year. Once Iweakened, and went outside and watched the hotel lobby go around for a while. When I returned, Johnny Black, **** the wine agent, and a large red-faced man who looked as though he had helped to make Milwaukee famous, and who said he was from K. C., Mizzoo, were doing some close harmony that was great. The three of them were bunched with their arms resting on each others' shoulders, singing "She May Have Seen Better Days," and the way they all looked up toward heaven was something pathetic. Whenever they came to a barber-shop minor they would hold it for a full minute, and then they would all stop and tell each other how good they were. Suddenly a fellow rushed in through the street door and breathlessly exclaimed: "My goodness gracious, sakes alive! the undertow almost carried me beyond the bar." The newcomer still wore his dress suit from the evening before, and his shirt front was all spattered with egg. He was promptly named "His Chickens."His Chickens did a trick with a wine glass and a half-dollar, and finally succeeded in cutting a gash in his wrist an inch long.
Johnny Black, who was rapidly becoming normal, remarked that His Chickens was the village cut-up. I laughed so loud at Johnny's shine joke that the manager of the hotel called me, and the whole tribe got insulted and told the man his place was no good anyhow.
We started out, and the first thing we did was to strike one of those foolish cabs. We made a bargain for a dollar and a half the first hour and a dollar each succeeding hour, and then we fell in and told the pilot to take us all over New York. He said he would, and from the way I feel, he did. K. C. started an awful argument in one place by declaring that a straight should beat a flush because there were only eight chances to fill a straight, while with a flush there were nine. I never figured it out before, but K. C. is right.
In another place we met a Philadelphia-looking sort of a fellow with a soft hat, a Prince Albert coat with narrow braid on it, and a couple of those little bow-legged dogs with the long ears and their stomachs away down on the ground. They call them Dasch hounds, or something, and I can't for the life of me see what anybody would want with such fool-looking dogs. They look as though they had been born under a bureau or in a New York hotel room, where you have to close the folding bed to find your clothes, or in the Boston baseball grounds. The dog man said he used to know a George Black years ago in Johnstown, Pa., who was a puddler in the mills there. Johnny answered, "That's my father. He is manager of those mills now, and what's more, he can lick any man in Cambria County, just the same as I can lick any man in New York City." The last was announced in a tone sufficiently loud to be heard all over the place. Jim, I got it four times just from the overflow. Now, you know merely because Johnny's father can lick any man in Cambria County, is that any reason why I should land out in the middle of the car track? Not at all.
