Page:Waifs and Strays (1917).djvu/118

E pluribus nihil. Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler, ‘Lynch him!’ he says to himself, ‘Oh, dear, I suppose I must look pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse to-morrow. This is a sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the board in the next handicap.’

“I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over to them for lynching. ‘For God’s sake, officers,’ cries the distracted wretch, ‘have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them wrest me from ye?’

“‘Sorry, Jimmy,’ says one of the policemen, ‘but it won’t do. There’s three of us—me and Darrell and the plain-clothes man; and there’s only sivin thousand of the mob. How’d we explain it at the office if they took ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrell, and we’ll be movin’ along to the station.”

“Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless,” said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride.

“I’ll admit that,” said the tall man. “A cousin of mine who was on a visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them.”

“That must have been during the Cooper Union riots,” remarked the New Yorker.

“Not the Cooper Union,” explained the tall man—“but it was a union riot—at the Vanastor wedding.”