No Snob

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Title:     No Snob
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

Let us walk down the street with Muldoon.

Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it. There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but had landed it insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment, decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off without giving the slightest thought to the matter.

Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion "mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable. Still he is spoken of among his confrérie as "a good man," and is never without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been editor--sporting editor, we believe he says--though in his own city--we should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back again--he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.

Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and "Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and the odd circumstance that most of the lady characters were named Flossie, and which was a failure financially.

We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi, Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi, Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.

We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance (of Muldoon's). "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" (or Dick, or Harry, as the case may be), cries Muldoon, then, as if in afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a moment--we had got quite past the acquaintance--goes back and engages him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says (we hear), "I would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right," cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.

We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat, jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang! Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging, staggering, now on two wheels, now on one, now on none at all--on and on and on, around corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.

A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in (we follow). He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman (who has addressed him as "Pat"), and recounts to him the details of his late illness, which are most astonishing.

When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who predicted that he (Muldoon) would come to a bad end. On the occasion of his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles, and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk about. It will be a fine revenge.

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: No Snob

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