Part 1 (1/2)
The Fashi+onable Adventures of Joshua Craig
by David Graham Phillips
CHAPTER I
MR CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF
It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not ton's apartant way of saying rasped the obvious truth that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest frohest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in the house The ninety dollars a e in his eyes, focused to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in ”the DE LUXE district of the de luxe quarter,” to quote Mrs Senator Mulvey, that si snobbishness to be the chief distinguishi+ng mark of the Eastern upper classes, assumed it was a virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and proudly as a preacher does piety Craig's chief splendor was a sitting-roohauess at the traveling public's notion of interior opulence Next the sitting-room, and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon disheveled and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom Like the parlor, it was outfitted with furniture that had degenerated upward, floor by floor, from the spacious and luxurious first-floor suites Between the two roo, wood-inclosed pluh scuffs and sealanced frolooreen eyes paused upon a scatter of clothing, half-hiding the badly-rubbed red plush of the sofa--a htshi+rt with mothholes here and there; kneed trousers, uncannily re-jacket that, after a youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and tattered wreck, like an old traood On the radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never known trees; their soles were curved like rockers An old pipe clah it was on the table near the , the full length of the room from him Papers and books were strewn about everywhere It was difficult to believe these unkes, and the personality that had created the harbored behind the walls of the Wyandotte
”What a hole!” gru clothes, so correct in their care and in their carelessness that even a woman would have noted and admired ”What a mess! What a hole!”
”How's that?” ca that it seehened by open-air speaking ”What are you growling about?”
Arkwright raised his tone: ”Filthy hole!” said he ”Filthyth and nearly perfect proportions The fine head was carried coested the rude, fierce figure-head of a Viking galley; the huge, aggressively-ence To see Josh Craig was to have instant sense of the presence of a personality The contrast between hi half-dressed in the doorway and the man seated in fashi+onable and cynically-critical superciliousness was ht, with features carved, not hewn as were Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred extreent, superior look also But it was the look of expertness in things hardly worth the trouble of learning; it was aristocracy's highly-prized air of the dog that leads in the bench show and tails in the field He was like a firear in a connoisseur's wall-case; Josh was like a battle-tested rifle in the sinewy hands of an Indian in full war-paint Arkwright showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at the gyentlemanly sport--the kind that wins only where the rules are carefully refined and ah fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold, wet hardshi+p of the wilderness
Arkwright's first glance of aded to aof amusement and irritation The barbarian was not clad in the skins of wild beasts, which would have set hiet hi trousers, puive theht in a snobbish pretense at being silk He was buttoning a shi+rt torn straight down the left side of the bosom frolassy glaze that advertises the cheap laundry
”Didn't you write et an apartment in this house?” deht
”I can't afford anything better”
”You can't afford anything so bad”
”Bad!”
Craig looked round as pleased as a Hottentot with a string of colored glass beads ”Why, I've got a private sitting-room AND a private bath! I never was so well-off before in my life I tell you, Grant, I'et effete and worthless I begin to like this lolling in luxury, and I keep the bell-boys on the juht pointed his sli to do with that?” said he
”This? Oh!”--Josh thrust his thick backwoods-man's hand in the tear--”Very si of the vest--excuse e of the bosoht ”Superb!”