And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances.Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy.Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound springing upon a bone.I dared not trust my memory; but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I would make a note of it in my ever-present memorandum book or upon my cuff for my own future use.
My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder.I was not the same man.
Where once I had furnished them entertainment and jollity, I now preyed upon them.No jests from me ever bid for their smiles now.
They were too precious.I could not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood.
I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow's, that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that Icoveted.
Nearly every one began to avoid me.I even forgot how to smile, not even paying that much for the sayings I appropriated.
No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search of material.Even in church my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil.
Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began:
"Doxology --sockdology--sockdolager--meter--meet her."The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a ~bon mot~.
The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of soprano, tenor, and basso.
My own home became a hunting ground.My wife is a singularly feminine creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive.Once her conversation was my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure.Now Iworked her.She was a gold mine of those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind.
I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched only the sacred precincts of home.With devilish cunning Iencouraged her to talk.Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare.Upon the cold, conspicuous, common, printed page I offered it to the public gaze.
A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her.For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them dance in the market place.
Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender lamb, hearkening even to her soft words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch an idea for my next day's grind.There is worse to come.
God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my little children.
Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches.I found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnishing a regular department in a magazine with "Funny Fancies of Childhood." I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope.
I would hide behind sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes in the yard to eavesdrop while they were at play.
I had all the qualities of a harpy except remorse.
Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next mail, I covered myself in a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they intended to come to play.I cannot bring myself to believe that Guy was aware of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent.
Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest.Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: "Here comes papa," and they would gather their toys and scurry away to some safer hiding place.Miserable wretch that I was!
And yet I was doing well financially.Before the first year had passed I had saved a thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort.
But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was everything that it sounds like.I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoyment of life.The happiness of my family had been sacrificed.I was a bee, sucking sordid honey from life's fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account of my stingo.
One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile.Not in months had the thing happened.I was passing the undertaking establishment of Peter Heffelbower.Peter stood in the door and saluted me.I stopped, strangely wrung in my heart by his greeting.
He asked me inside.
The day was chill and rainy.We went into the back room, where a fire burned, in a little stove.A customer came, and Peter left me alone for a while.Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me --a sense of beautiful calm and content, I looked around the place.
There were rows of shining rosewood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade.Here was peace, order, silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections.Here, on the brink of life, was a little niche pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest.
When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door.
I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings.My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts.
A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist.Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and ease.I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the restless reach after the nimble repartee.
I had not known Heffelbower well.When he came back, I let him talk, fearful that he might prove to be a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike harmony of his establishment.
But, no.He chimed truly.I gave a long sigh of happiness.Never have I known a man's talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter's was.
