"As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside the gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian Scientists.
So, at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked in looks I must make up in eloquence.That I've done.I get what I go after.As the back-stop and still small voice of old Benavides I made all the great historical powers-behind-the-throne, such as Talleyrand, Mrs.de Pompadour, and Loeb, look as small as the minority report of a Duma.I could talk nations into or out of debt, harangue armies to sleep on the battlefield, reduce insurrections, inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few words, and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same bird-like whistle.Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and Grecian profiles in other men were never in my way.When people first look at me they shudder.Unless they are in the last stages of /angina pectoris/ they are mine in ten minutes after I begin to talk.Women and men--I win 'em as they come.
Now, you wouldn't think women would fancy a man with a face like mine, would you?"
"Oh, yes, Mr.Tate," said I."History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.There seems--"
"Pardon me," interrupted Judson Tate, "but you don't quite understand.
You have yet to hear my story.
"Fergus McMahan was a friend of mine in the capital.For a handsome man I'll admit he was the duty-free merchandise.He had blond curls and laughing blue eyes and was featured regular.They said he was a ringer for the statue they call Herr Mees, the god of speech and eloquence resting in some museum at Rome.Some German anarchist, I suppose.They are always resting and talking.
"But Fergus was no talker.He was brought up with the idea that to be beautiful was to make good.His conversation was about as edifying as listening to a leak dropping in a tin dish-pan at the head of the bed when you want to go to sleep.But he and me got to be friends--maybe because we was so opposite, don't you think? Looking at the Hallowe'en mask that I call my face when I'm shaving seemed to give Fergus pleasure; and I'm sure that whenever I heard the feeble output of throat noises that he called conversation I felt contented to be a gargoyle with a silver tongue.
"One time I found it necessary to go down to this coast town of Oratama to straighten out a lot of political unrest and chop off a few heads in the customs and military departments.Fergus, who owned the ice and sulphur-match concessions of the republic, says he'll keep me company.
"So, in a jangle of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and the town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong to Japan when T.R.is at Oyster Bay.I say us; but I mean me.Everybody for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and five archipelagoes around had heard of Judson Tate.Gentleman adventurer, they called me.I had been written up in five columns of the yellow journals, 40,000 words (with marginal decorations) in a monthly magazine, and a stickful on the twelfth page of the New York /Times/.
If the beauty of Fergus McMahan gained any part of our reception in Oratama, I'll eat the price-tag in my Panama.It was me that they hung out paper flowers and palm branches for.I am not a jealous man; I am stating facts.The people were Nebuchadnezzars; they bit the grass before me; there was no dust in the town for them to bite.They bowed down to Judson Tate.They knew that I was the power behind Sancho Benavides.A word from me was more to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else.
And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces--rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles--to what end? Looking handsome.Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on.It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that counts--the phonograph instead of the photograph.But I was going to tell you.
"The local Astors put me and Fergus up at the Centipede Club, a frame building built on posts sunk in the surf.The tide's only nine inches.
The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came around and kowtowed.Oh, it wasn't to Herr Mees.They had heard about Judson Tate.
"One afternoon me and Fergus McMahan was sitting on the seaward gallery of the Centipede, drinking iced rum and talking.
"'Judson,' says Fergus, 'there's an angel in Oratama.'
"'So long,' says I, 'as it ain't Gabriel, why talk as if you had heard a trump blow?'
"'It's the Senorita Anabela Zamora,' says Fergus.'She's--she's--she's as lovely as--as hell!'
"'Bravo!' says I, laughing heartily.'You have a true lover's eloquence to paint the beauties of your inamorata.You remind me,'
says I, 'of Faust's wooing of Marguerite--that is, if he wooed her after he went down the trap-door of the stage.'
"'Judson,' says Fergus, 'you know you are as beautiless as a rhinoceros.You can't have any interest in women.I'm awfully gone in Miss Anabela.And that's why I'm telling you.'
"'Oh, /seguramente/,' says I.'I know I have a front elevation like an Aztec god that guards a buried treasure that never did exist in Jefferson County, Yucatan.But there are compensations.For instance, I am It in this country as far as the eye can reach, and then a few perches and poles.And again,' says I, 'when I engage people in a set-
to of oral, vocal, and laryngeal utterances, I do not usually confine my side of the argument to what may be likened to a cheap phonographic reproduction of the ravings of a jellyfish.'
"'Oh, I know,' says Fergus, amiable, 'that I'm not handy at small talk.Or large, either.That's why I'm telling you.I want you to help me.'
"'How can I do it?' I asked.
