Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

FORTUNE UNAWARES. 7 sound it was that had crooned him to a motherless sleep back in the prairie hills. Lord, it was in my blood, and I answered to it! Around the world I trailed, spilling my patrimony and, after that was gone, trailing on, broke, or in some service that had travel as its perquisite. Mine was the love of life, the keen desire to know all phases of it and to share them. I had ac- quired one philosophy—or, rather, I inher- ited it, for it was my own father’s. A careless creed—to get all the pleasure out of life without hurting anybody—and, in the main, I think I lived up to it; at least, I tried to. Across the States, the South Seas, New Zealand, Borneo, Bur- mah, Siam, India, and Ceylon, through the Gulf and the Canal to Cairo, and then to Europe. That was when I quit spending my own money, and began, with a certain knack of making gfriends, to earn enough to keep going. It was South Africa next— the diamond mines and the veldt—then over to Brazil. A little of the Caribbees, a job as freight clerk through the Panama Canal. San Francisco once again, and so to Japan and China. Never mind the follies, the weaknesses born of casual fellowships. I had my share of those, and have them yet. I was yet to find myself. I was a bachelor seal, roam- ing, unmindful of the morrow, still sure of a landing more through luck than any special agility, sticking to the seesaw of life for the joy of the ups and downs. Living! So I came to Shanghai, broke, and in a way discredited. I was too apt to rate my acquaintances for the good I saw in them, for their kindliness toward me and their fel- lows, rather than their weaknesses. It is not a bad trait, looking back. A man should never go back on a pal, but he should be careful how he picks them. I had fooled my way along, through college and afterward, the tag of the family, with 10 equipment for any particular profession, and the jobs I landed were not those that [ should, with my chances, have qualified for. So it happened that I fell among ‘hieves—they were actually smugglers— and when they got in wrong I, though I vas not in the deal, was tar-brushed. Now, in the outer ports of the world a man is either successful or he is set down as a present or imminent failure. I had no entrée at the clubs. The consul would have classed me as an undesirable, and I was too waty to ask either his opinion or his help. I didn’t wart to go home. I hadn’t tum- bled to the fact that I was a loose wire and the East was still calling. So I fell on very evil days and slim pickings. I was staying merely because the room was vacant, and I didn’t show up at the awful table @hote, at a water-front cara- vansary kept by a man named Verez. Whether he was Portuguese or Greek or Lascar half-breed, no one knew nor cared. I imagine he must have figured on using me nefariously when I got hungry enough. Gautama knows what smutty schemes he mixed in with. Crimp and fence and pro- curer he was, and other things. As long as I kept my chin up he left me alone, but he watched me as a spider watches the fly struggle in the web. I had one lone suit of raveling linen that grew grimier with the days. If I could have sent it to a Chinaman for laundry and stayed in bed while it was washed I could never have redeemed it. Meantime it grew more limp and baggy and soiled, and my beard sprouted. My shoes were a joke, my hat a mockery. Everything turned down instead of up, and I hung on the fact that I was a white man with every instinct of self-respect and decency, though my cheeks were beginning to get as hollow as my stomach. Attic geniuses and philosophers notwith- standing, a man’s brain grows weak with his body. A good meal stiffens all your fibers. I had lost my front. There were jobs open.- to act as supercargo for certain nefarious Chinese vessels, but it meant losing caste, not only with my race but with myself. There was one chance I had tumbled to on the Bund—a man wanted to act as store- room clerk and salesman to a schooner trading for béche-de-mer. It was owned by a blackguard named Hawkins, but he was at least white of skin. When I got the tip I was faint of food, and I looked—I’ll forget how I looked. I knew that even Hawkins would kick me out for a wastrel. He manned only efficients, and, whatever comiclboooks C©