Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

“I’d rather have a military position,” said Sam. “I’d rather be general of the army. But I’ve lost my nerve⁠—I’m not well; and perhaps it’s just as well that I should take a civilian position.”

“Civilian position! Nonsense! The President is commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and the marines, too, for that matter.”

“But he hasn’t a uniform,” said Sam sorrowfully. “And as for all this kissing, I’m sick of it. It tires me to death, and I don’t know what Marian will think of it. I’ve written to explain that I can’t help it, but she will see the reports first in the papers and she may not like it at all.”

“Oh, she’s a sensible woman,” said Cleary. “She will understand a political and military necessity. She won’t mind.”

But Marian did mind, and for once Cleary was mistaken. She was delighted at the prominence which Sam had achieved, and saw him mentioned as a candidate for President with pride and gratification, but she did not see how that excused his promiscuous osculation of the female population of the country, and she determined that it should cease. She wrote to him frequently and decidedly on the subject, and he reported her protests to Cleary, who absolutely refused to allow them.

“It won’t do,” said he, as they discussed the subject at a hotel in a small city on their line of progress. “This kissing is your strong point. The Lyre is backing you up on the strength of it. So is the Benevolent Assimilation Trust, Limited. In every city and town the girls have turned out, and you’ve captured them hands down. If you stop now it will upset the whole business. The Convention delegates are coming out for you by the dozen. Our committee is working it up so that it will be nearly unanimous. There won’t be another serious candidate, and I doubt if they put anybody up against you when you’re nominated. You’re as good as President now, but you must go on kissing. That’s all there is of it.”

Sam wrote to Marian rehearsing these arguments, and he got Cleary to write too, but the letters had no effect. At last he received a telegram from her announcing her intention of meeting him at St. Lewis. She reached that city before him and was present at the station when he arrived, although he did not know it, and from a good point of vantage she saw him kissing the young ladies of that city by wholesale to an accompaniment of “Captain Jinks.” It was more than she could stand, and when she joined her fiancé at the hotel the meeting was very different from the one he had so often pictured to himself. It was a stormy scene, intermixed with tender episodes, but she gave it as her ultimatum that the kissing must cease forthwith, and, in order to give a good reason for it, she insisted that they be married at once. Sam was willing to take this course, and Cleary was called into their counsels. At first he bitterly opposed the project, but Marian’s blandishments finally succeeded, and she gained him as an ally. He was sent as an emissary to the campaign committee and presented the case as strongly as he could for her. The proposition really seemed most plausible. Could anything help the chances of a candidate more than his marriage to a handsome young woman? The committee had doubts on the subject and waited in person on Miss Hunter, but she persuaded them as she had persuaded Cleary, and furthermore convinced them that whether they were persuaded or not the marriage would take place. Marian determined to fix the hour for the next day. She pledged the committee to secrecy, and no word of the proposed wedding got into the papers. At noon a clergyman was called into the hotel, and in Sam’s private sitting-room the pair were married with Cleary and a few of the members of the committee as witnesses. Almost before the ceremony was over they could hear the newsboys crying out the tidings of the event.

“It’s out of the question to talk about a wedding-tour,” said Sam, after the ceremony. “I can’t walk in the streets alone without being mobbed, and with Marian we could not keep the clothes on our backs. Just hear them singing ‘Captain Jinks’ now!”

“Mark my words, dear,” said his wife. “You will see when we get the papers tomorrow with the news of our marriage, that it has made you more popular than ever. Now send out word to the reporters that you will not do any more public kissing.”

In obedience to these orders Cleary, acting as go-between, conveyed the information as gently as he could to the representatives of the press, that as a married man General Jinks expected to be spared the ordeal of embracing all the young ladies of the country.

No one was prepared for the striking effect which this news, coupled with that of the marriage, had upon the newspapers and their readers. The first papers which Sam and his wife saw on the following morning were those of St. Lewis. They expressed sorrow at the fact that Captain Jinks had taken such a resolution when only a handful of the fair women of St. Lewis had had the opportunity of saluting him. Were they less beautiful and attractive than the ladies of St. Kisco who had kissed him to their hearts’ content? Marian was visibly annoyed when she saw these articles, but she advised her husband to wait till they received the papers from other cities. These journals came, but, alas! they went rapidly from bad to worse. The Eastern papers with scarcely an exception took up the strain of those of St. Lewis. Why did Captain Jinks discriminate against the women of the East? He had kissed the whole West. Probably he had also kissed all