A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION
by Ambrose Bierce
Mr. Algernon Jarvis, of San Francisco, got up
cross. The world of Mr. Jarvis had gone wrong
with him overnight, as one's world is likely to
do when one sits up till morning with jovial
friends, to watch it, and he was prone to
resentment. No sooner, therefore, had he got
himself into a neat, fashionable suit of clothing
than he selected his morning walking-stick and
sallied out upon the town with a vague general
determination to attack something. His first
victim would naturally have been his breakfast;
but singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
feeble an energy that he was himself beaten--to
the grieved astonishment of the worthy rotisseur,
who had to record his hitherto puissant patron's
maiden defeat. Three or four cups of cafe noir were
the only captives that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric
chariot-wheels that morning.
He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily down
the street, so occupied with schemes of universal
retaliation that his feet had it all their own
way; in consequence of which, their owner soon
found himself in the billiard-room of the Occidental
Hotel. Nobody was there, but Mr. Jarvis was a
privileged person; so, going to the marker's
desk, he took out a little box of ivory balls,
spilled them carelessly over a table and
languidly assailed them with a long stick.
Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a
marvelous stroke. Waiting till the astonished
balls had resumed their composure, he gathered
them up, replacing them in their former position.
He tried the stroke again, and, naturally, did
not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again
he badly failed. With a vexed and humilated air
he once more put the indocile globes into position,
leaned over the table and was upon the point of
striking, when there sounded a solemn voice from
behind:
"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"
Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned about and
looked at the speaker, whom he found to be a
stranger--one that most persons would prefer
should remain a stranger. Mr. Jarvis made no reply.
In the first place, he was a man of aristocratic
taste, to whom a wager of "two bits" was simply
vulgar. Secondly, the man who had proffered it
evidently had not the money. Still it is annoying
to have one's skill questioned by one's social
inferiors, particularly when one has doubts of
it oneself, and is otherwise ill-tempered. So
Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against the table, laid
off his fashionable morning-coat, resumed his
stick, spread his fine figure upon the table
with his back to the ceiling and took deliberate
aim.
At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this history,
and is seen no more forever. Persons of the class
to which he adds lustre are sacred from the pen
of the humorist; they are ridiculous but not amusing.
So now we will dismiss this uninteresting young
aristocrat, retaining merely his outer shell, the
fashionable morning-coat, which Mr. Stenner, the
gentleman, who had offered the wager, has quietly
thrown across his arm and is conveying away for
his own advantage.
An hour later Mr. Stenner sat in his humble
lodgings at North Beach, with the pilfered garment
upon his knees. He had already taken the opinion
of an eminent pawnbroker on its value, and it only
remained to search the pockets. Mr. Stenner's
notions concerning gentlemen's coats were not so
clear as they might have been. Broadly stated,
they were that these garments abounded in secret
pockets crowded with a wealth of bank notes
interspersed with gold coins. He was therefore
disappointed when his careful quest was rewarded
with only a delicately perfumed handkerchief,
upon which he could not hope to obtain a loan of
more than ten cents; a pair of gloves too small
for use and a bit of paper that was not a cheque.
A second look at this, however, inspired hope. It
was about the size of a flounder, ruled in wide
lines, and bore in conspicuous characters the
words, "Western Union Telegraph Company."
Immediately below this interesting legend was
much other printed matter, the purport of which
was that the company did not hold itself responsible
for the verbal accuracy of "the following message,"
and did not consider itself either morally or
legally bound to forward or deliver it, nor, in
short, to render any kind of service for the money
paid by the sender.
Unfamiliar with telegraphy, Mr. Stenner naturally
supposed that a message subject to these hard
conditions must be one of not only grave importance,
but questionable character. So he determined to
decipher it at that time and place. In the course
of the day he succeeded in so doing. It ran as
follows, omitting the date and the names of persons
and places, which were, of course, quite illegible:
"Buy Sally Meeker!"
Had the full force of this remarkable adjuration
burst upon Mr. Stenner all at once it might have
carried him away, which would not have been so bad
a thing for San Francisco; but as the meaning had
to percolate slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance,
it produced no other immediate effect than the
exclamation, "Well, I'll be bust!"
In the mouths of some persons this form of expression
means a great deal. On the Stenner tongue it signified
the hopeless nature of the Stenner mental confusion.
It must be confessed--by persons outside a certain
limited and sordid circle--that the message lacks
amplification and elaboration; in its terse, bald
diction there is a ghastly suggestion of traffic
in human flesh, for which in California there is
no market since the abolition of slavery and the
importation of thoroughbred beeves. If woman
suffrage had been established all would have been
clear; Mr. Stenner would at once have understood
the kind of purchase advised; for in political
transactions he had very often changed hands
himself. But it was all a muddle, and resolving
to dismiss the matter from his thoughts, he went
to bed thinking of nothing else; for many hours
his excited imagination would do nothing but
purchase slightly damaged Sally Meekers by the
bale, and retail them to itself at an enormous
profit.
Next day, it flashed upon his memory who Sally
Meeker was--a racing mare! At this entirely
obvious solution of the problem he was overcome
with amazement at his own sagacity. Rushing into
the street he purchased, not Sally Meeker, but
a sporting paper--and in it found the notice of
a race which was to come off the following week;
and, sure enough, there it was:
"Budd Doble enters g.g. Clipper; Bob Scotty
enters b.g. Lightnin'; Staley Tupper enters
s.s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.m. Sally
Meeker."
It was clear now; the sender of the dispatch
was "in the know." Sally Meeker was to win, and
her owner, who did not know it, had offered her
for sale. At that supreme moment Mr. Stenner
would willingly have been a rich man! In fact
he resolved to be. He at once betook him to
Vallejo, where he had lived until invited away
by some influential citizens of the place.
There he immediately sought out an industrious
friend who had an amiable weakness for draw
poker, and in whom Mr. Stenner regularly
encouraged that passion by going up against
him every payday and despoiling him of his
hard earnings. He did so this time, to the
sum of one hundred dollars.
No sooner had he raked in his last pool and
refused his friend's appeal for a trifling
loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he
bought a check on the Bank of California,
enclosed it in a letter containing merely
the words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched
it by mail to the only clergyman in San Francisco
whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a vague
notion that all kinds of business requiring
strict honesty and fidelity might be profitably
intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was
the use of religion? I hope I shall not be
accused of disrespect to the cloth in thus
bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate
of the parsons, inasmuch as I do not share it.
This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent
in a week's revelry; at the end of which he
worked his passage down to San Francisco to
secure his winnings on the race, and take
charge of his peerless mare. It will be
observed that his notions concerning races
were somewhat confused; his experience of
them had hitherto been confined to that branch
of the business requiring, not technical
knowledge but manual dexterity. In short, he
had done no more than pick the pockets of the
spectators. Arrived at San Francisco he was
hastening to the dwelling of his clerical
agent, when he met an acquaintance, to whom
he put the triumphant question, "How about
Sally Meeker?"
"Sally Meeker? Sally Meeker?" was the reply.
"Oh, you mean the hoss? Why she's gone up the
flume. Broke her neck the first heat. But ole
Sim Salper is never a-goin' to fret hisself
to a shadder about it. He struck it pizen in
the mine she was named a'ter and the stock's
gone up from nothin' out o' sight. You couldn't
tech that stock with a ten-foot pole!"
Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner. He saw his
error; the message in the coat had evidently
been sent to a broker, and referred to the
stock of the "Sally Meeker" mine. And he,
Stenner, was a ruined man!
Suddenly a great, monstrous, misbegotten and
unmentionable oath rolled from Mr. Stenner's
tongue like a cannon shot hurled along an
uneven floor! Might it not be that the Rev.
Mr. Boltright had also misunderstood the
message, and had bought, not the mare, but
the stock? The thought was electrical:
Mr. Stenner ran--he flew! He tarried not at
walls and the smaller sort of houses, but
went through or over them! In five minutes
he stood before the good clergyman--and in
one more had asked, in a hoarse whisper, if
he had bought any "Sally Meeker."
"My good friend," was the bland reply--"my
fellow traveler to the bar of God, it would
better comport with your spiritual needs to
inquire what you should do to be saved. But
since you ask me, I will confess that having
received what I am compelled to regard as a
Providential intimation, accompanied with the
secular means of obedience, I did put up a
small margin and purchase largely of the stock
you mention. The venture, I am constrained
to state, was not wholly unprofitable."
Unprofitable? The good man had made a square
twenty-five thousand dollars on that small
margin! To conclude--he has it yet.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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