A RULER OF MEN


[Written at the prime of his popularity and power,
this characteristic and amusing story was published
in _Everybody's Magazine_ in August, 1906.]


I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight
of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick
and alike as the grains in a sand-storm; and you grow to hate them as
you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.

And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and
Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a
scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool
that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a
button-hook, a nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler,
and an ornament to any gentleman's key-ring.

And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of
customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus
abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through
the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away
like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious
of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and
putting his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after
Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.