Gullible’s Travels

Preface

“Gullible’s Travels,” the story from which this book takes its name, has to do with a trip to Palm Beach and was written in 1916. Readers who have never been to Palm Beach and who contemplate going there are warned not to base their budget on figures quoted in the story. In those days you could get a double room with bath at one of the two big hotels for a niggling $17.00 per day. That sum now is just a fair diurnal tip for the house detective. Everything has doubled or trebled in price in the past ten years, and still the influx of eager customers increases. Newspapers continue, from habit, to speak of the place as exclusive, but a person with money who can’t crash in there these days would be blackballed from the Rotary club. And for all that, Palm Beach is worth a visit if you are not deaf or blind.

The writer was there this winter for only a day, but was repaid for his trouble by the sight of a lady (a prominent society lady, too) in a bathing costume consisting of a big, floppy black silk hat, horn-rimmed spectacles, a black velvet doublet, with choking high collar and long sleeves, black silk tights and black shoes, a black silk umbrella, and white gloves. This will remain for me the ne pluribus unum in swimming comfort until some more ingenious mermaid, sacrificing looks for buoyancy, shows up for her morning plunge in the working clothes of an Eskimo traffic policeman.

I would write something prefatory to the other stories in this volume if I could find out from anybody what they are about. But it seems impossible. I just asked the madam, I said, “Do you remember the other stories in this book?” and I read her the titles and she said yes. “Well, then,” I said, “tell me what they’re about.” “About!” she drooped. “I didn’t think they were about anything.”

Carmen

We was playin’ rummy over to Hatch’s, and Hatch must of fell in a bed of four-leaf clovers on his way home the night before, because he plays rummy like he does everything else; but this night I refer to you couldn’t beat him, and besides him havin’ all the luck my Missus played like she’d been bought off, so when we come to settle up we was plain seven and a half out. You know who paid it. So Hatch says:

“They must be some game you can play.”

“No,” I says, “not and beat you. I can run two blocks w’ile you’re stoopin’ over to start, but if we was runnin’ a foot race between each other, and suppose I was leadin’ by eighty yards, a flivver’d prob’ly come up and hit you in the back and bump you over the finishin’ line ahead o’ me.”

So Mrs. Hatch thinks I’m sore on account o’ the seven-fifty, so she says:

“It don’t seem fair for us to have all the luck.”

“Sure it’s fair!” I says. “If you didn’t have the luck, what would you have?”

“I know,” she says; “but I don’t never feel right winnin’ money at cards.”

“I don’t blame you,” I says.

“I know,” she says; “but it seems like we should ought to give it back or else stand treat, either one.”

“Jim’s too old to change all his habits,” I says.

“Oh, well,” says Mrs. Hatch, “I guess if I told him to loosen up he’d loosen up. I ain’t lived with him all these years for nothin’.”

“You’d be a sucker if you did,” I says.

So they all laughed, and when they’d quieted down Mrs. Hatch says:

“I don’t suppose you’d feel like takin’ the money back?”

“Not without a gun,” I says. “Jim’s pretty husky.”

So that give them another good laugh; but finally she says:

“What do you say, Jim, to us takin’ the money they lose to us and gettin’ four tickets to some show?”

Jim managed to stay conscious, but he couldn’t answer nothin’; so my Missus says:

“That’d be grand of you to do it, but don’t think you got to.”

Well, of course, Mrs. Hatch knowed all the w’ile she didn’t have to, but from what my Missus says she could tell that if they really give us the invitation we wouldn’t start no fight. So they talked it over between themself w’ile I and Hatch went out in the kitchen and split a pint o’ beer, and Hatch done the pourin’ and his best friend couldn’t say he give himself the worst of it. So when we come back my Missus and Mrs. Hatch had it all framed that the Hatches was goin’ to take us to a show, and the next thing was what show would it be. So Hatch found the afternoon paper, that somebody’d left on the streetcar, and read us off a list o’ the shows that was in town. I spoke for the Columbia, but the Missus give me the sign to stay out; so they argued back and forth and finally Mrs. Hatch says:

“Let’s see that paper a minute.”

“What for?” says Hatch. “I didn’t hold nothin’ out on you.”

But he give her the paper and she run through the list herself, and then she says:

“You did, too, hold out on us. You didn’t say nothin’ about the Auditorium.”

“What could I say about it?” says Hatch. “I never was inside.”

“It’s time you was then,” says Mrs. Hatch.

“What’s playin’ there?” I says.