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after that awful mix-up when the identical-appearing reminder books of the two men had apparently been lying together on the table in the teachers’ lounge, and each man had mistakenly picked up the other’s),—when he read in his own notebook:
“You are professor T. K. C. Cromwell. The T is for Thomas. You teach Provencal and Early French Literature and teach it badly, but we must eat. This is your schedule. Never deviate from it or you will be lost—”
*
Now, if he had had his own notebook all the time, he would never have made such series of silly mistakes. Most of the trouble that comes to people in this world comes from reading the wrong books.
“To think,” said Catherine, “that a grown man could make a mistake like that, if it was a mistake. There is a point beyond which absent-mindedness is no longer a joke. How did you get by with your classes?”
“I don’t know. I suspected once that I was talking total nonsense.”
“And that little Killer Diller is as bad as you are. I was never so surprised in my life as when he waltzed in here and slapped me on… why I don’t know how you men can get so confused.”
“But we’ve explained how the notebooks must have got mixed up.”
“I understand how the notebooks were mixed. I do not understand how you are so mixed. Emily is vastly amused over this. I am not so amused.”
It isn’t that professors are absent-minded. Anybody should have had sense enough not to have made the notebooks that much alike.
Adam Had Three Brothers
In the town there are many races living, each in its own enclave, some of many square miles, some of a few acres only, some of but one or two streets. Its geographers say that it has more Italians than Rome, more Irish than Dublin, more Jews than Israel, more Armenians than Yerevan.
But this overlooks the most important race of all.
There is the further fact (known only to the more intense geographers): it has more Rrequesenians than any town in the world. There are more than a hundred of them.
By the vulgar the Rrequesenians are called Wrecks, and their quarter is Wreckville. And there is this that can be said of them that cannot be said of any other race on earth: Every one of them is a genius.
These people are unique. They are not Gypsies, though they are often taken for them. They are not Semites. They are not even children of Adam.
*
Willy McGilley, the oldest of the Wrecks (they now use Gentile names) has an old baked tablet made of straw and pressed sheep dung that is eight thousand years old and gives the true story of their origin. Adam had three brothers: Etienne, Yancy, and Rreq. Etienne and Yancy were bachelors. Rreq had a small family and all his issue have had small families; until now there are about two hundred of them in all, the most who have ever been in the world at one time. They have never intermarried with the children of Adam except once. And not being of the same recension they are not under the same curse to work for a living.
So they do not.
Instead they batten on the children of Adam by clever devices that are known in police court as swindles.
Catherine O’Conneley by ordinary standards would be reckoned as the most beautiful of the Wrecks. By at least three dozen men she was considered the most beautiful girl in the world. But by Wreckian standards she was plain. Her nose was too small, only a little larger than that of ordinary women; and she was skinny as a crow, being on the slight side of a hundred and sixty. Being beautiful only by worldly standards she was reduced even more than the rest of them to living by her wits and charms.
She was a show girl and a bar girl. She gave piano lessons and drawing lessons and tap-dancing lessons. She told fortunes and sold oriental rugs and junk jewelry, and kept company with lonely old rich men. She was able to do all these things because she was one bundle of energy.
She had no family except a number of unmarried uncles, the six Petapolis brothers, the three Petersens, the five Calderons, the four Oskamans; and Charley O’Malley, nineteen in all.
*
Now it was early morning and a lady knocked at her door.
“The oil stock is no good. I checked and the place would be three hundred miles out to sea and three miles down. My brother says I’ve been took.”
“Possibly your brother isn’t up on the latest developments in offshore drilling. We have the richest undeveloped field in the world and virtually no competition. I can promise we will have any number of gushers within a week. And if your brother has any money I can still let him have stock till noon today at a hundred and seventy-five dollars a share.”
“But I only paid twenty-five a share for mine.”
“See how fast it has gone up in only two days. What other stock rises so fast?”
“Well all right, I’ll go tell him.”
*
There was another knock on the door.
“My little girl take piano lessons for six weeks and all she can play is da da da.”
“Good. It is better to learn one note thoroughly than just a little bit of all of them. She is not ready for the other notes yet. But I can tell you this: she is the most intelligent little girl I have ever seen in my life and I believe she has a positive genius for the piano. I truly believe she will blossom all at once and one of these days she will be playing complete symphonies.”
“You really think so?”
“I do indeed.”
“Well then I will pay you for six more weeks, but I do wish she could play more than da da da.”
*
There was another knock at the door.
“Honey Bun, there was something wrong. I give you ten dollars to bet on Summertime in the first race at Marine Park; you say it’s a sure thing and fifty to one. But now I find there isn’t any such track as Marine Park and nobody ever heard of the horse. Huh, Honey Bun? What you do to your best boy friend?”
“O, we use code names. What if all these hot tips ever got out? Summertime of course was Long Day and Marine Park was Jamaica. And he only lost by about six noses. Wasn’t that good for a fifty to one? And now I have an even better tip. It’s so hot I can’t even tell you the name of the horse, but I feel sure that twenty would get you a thousand.”
“All the time I give you money but never I win yet, Honey Bun. Now you give a little kiss and we talk about another bet.”
“I had surely thought our attachment was on a higher plane.”
“Words, Honey Bun, always words. But you give, um, um, um, that’s good. Now I bet again, but I bet I better win someday.”
*
There was another knock on the door.
“How come you let my brother-in-law in on a good thing and never tell me? For a hundred he’ll have two hundred and fifty in a week, and you never tell me, and I’m your friend and never persecute you when you don’t pay your bill.”
So she had to give her caller the same deal she had given his brother-in-law.
*
After that she went out to take the game out of her traps. She had set and baited them some days before. She had gone to see five hundred people, which took quite a while even for one with her excess of energy. And to each she said this:
“I have just discovered that I have an infallible gift of picking winners. Now I want you to give it a test. Here is a sure