Adventure Magazine Cover — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Henery’s Literary Success entirely modern that she referred to last year as the superstitious past. She always carried an umbrella. As in all other professions, the financial stringency had caused a business depression in the righting of wrongs. Persons who had been lavishing money cheerfully to enable her to fight race-suicide or vaccination discovered suddenly that in finance ‘“‘in- vesting” and “divesting” are synonymous terms. Miss Grool found herself forced to add some new wrongs to her repertoire, and her lecture on the ‘Wrongs of Civiliza- tion’ was to launch them. Her placard, which stated that admission was free, did not mention that a collection would be taken up inside after the lecture. Many previous experiences had told her that per- sons who have wrongs are willing to pay attention, but not money. Henry was incensed when he discovered what the free admission admitted him to. His first just Impulse was to walk out. His second impulse was to take a nap. A shuffling of feet awakened him from a gratifying dream of Captain Moses and Mr. Bowsun sobbing bitterly in each other’s arms on the lonely deck of the Flying Squid. He perceived without regret that he had slumbered throughout the entire lecture and that the sordid audience was hurrying to escape the collection-box. But Miss Grool had posted collectors at all the exits. Henry Moses was entirely free from the weakness of liberality. He observed that the collectors were large and disquietingly successful. Glancing around him with the keen eye of the trained navigator, he spied a neglected side-door, hurried through it and discovered too late that it led into a room full of people. Before he could retreat, he found himself face to face with Miss Alma Grool herself, holding a levee of admirers and fellow- righters. Miss Grool pounced on all stran- gers who ventured within pouncing dis- tance, and her pouncing distance was kan- garooian. She pounced on Henry. During the next ten minutes he was men- tally hove to in a conversational fog from which he emerged to hear his own voice recounting to Miss Grool the sad history of his life. It was not a true history, but it was very interesting. Henry never had read Byron, but he could have done so with the instant appreciation of a kindred soul. He poured forth a simple, artless tale of 669 great wrongs on the seven seas that evoked gratified grief from Miss Grool and her col- leagues. “Poor boy!” said Miss Grool. “I will take up your case! Just let me have the names of the villains!” Henry’s prudence bitted the champing jaws of his Pegasus. The names of the Flying Squid and her commanders were his Secrets of State. He created a captain and mate instantly, and invented a steamship to fit his story, adding hastily that the ves- sel had sailed to Lisbon. “Let ’em go!” said he magnanimously. ‘All I want is to earn a honest living.”’ “Earning a living is ignoble,” pronounced an advanced disciple with baggy trousers and a tightly buttoned frock coat. ‘ Man- kind should work, not for a gross living, but an ideal.” ‘“T got to eat,”’ said Henry briefly. ‘‘ Earthling!” sighed a fat lady in a green dress trimmed with pink. Miss Grool raised her hand. ‘‘Come to my hearth,” said she. “Alma Grool will be your friend.”’ She hurried Henry to her hearth, which was a hearth-less flat, and as soon as she had him safe she produced pen and paper and declared herself ready. Henry gazed at her unsympathetically. ‘“‘I—we—can make a splendid series of articles about the wrongs of sailors,” said Miss Grool persuasively. “They would advert—”’ Miss Grool coughed, “help to reform the ship business. Think of the good you will do!” Henry’s face assumed the cold suspicion of a codfish examining a poorly baited hook and expressed decided disapproba- tion. Miss Grool, accustomed to angling for philanthropists, much warier fish than codfish, hastily put a new bait on. ‘‘There will be some money In it,” she hinted. “T don’t want to get in no trouble,” said Henry. “I don’t want my name to get out, nor I don’t want to give the names of the captains and ships that I had trouble with. They might try to get me back, because I run away and so I’m what they call a desert- er, at sea.” Miss Grool had not felt the least desire to destroy Henry’s value as an asset by giving his name to a world of predatory reporters. She intended to monopolize the wrongs of sailors herself. She assented graciously to the young mariner’s conditions. GomichdooksEeo 5}