To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 10 - Random Numbers

Pixel went away, wherever it is that he goes, with my first attempt to call for help. Now I can only keep my fingers crossed.

I once heard my beloved friend and shared husband Dr Jubal Harshaw define happiness. ‘Happiness,' Jubal stated, ‘lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing.

‘One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labour mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result.

‘Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.'

For the decade 1907-1917 I was privileged to enjoy perfect happiness by Jubal's definition. By 1916 I had borne eight children. During those years I worked harder and for longer hours than I ever have before or since, and I was bubbling with happiness the whole time save for the fact that my husband was away oftener than I liked. Even that had its compensations, as it made our marriage a series of honeymoons. We prospered, and the fact that Briney was oftenest away when business was best resulted in our never experiencing what the Bard called so aptly: ‘- the tired marriage sheets.'

Briney always tried to telephone to let me know exactly when he would be home... and then he would tell me: B.i.b.a.w.y.l.o. and I w.w.y.t.b.w.'

Day or night I would do my best to follow his instructions exactly; I would be in bed asleep with my legs open and wait for him to wake me the best way, but I always took the precaution of bathing first and my sleep might be only that I closed my eyes and held still when I heard him unlock the front door. Then as he got into bed with me he might call me by some outlandish name, ‘Mrs Krausemeyer,' or ‘Battleship Kate,' or ‘Lady Pushbottom' - and I would pretend to wake up, and call him anything but Brian - ‘Hubert' or ‘Giovanni' or ‘Fritz' - and perhaps enquire, still with my eyes closed, whether or not he had placed five dollars on the dresser... whereupon he would scold me for trying to run up the price of tail in Missouri and I would get busier than ever, trying to prove that I was so worth five dollars.

Then, sated but still coupled, we would argue over whether or not I had put on a five-dollar performance. Which could result in tickling, biting, wrestling, spanking, laughing, and another go at it, with much bawdy joking throghout. I delighted in trying to be that duchess in the drawing-room, economist in the kitchen, and whore in the bedroom that is the classic definition of the ideal wife. Perhaps I was never perfect at it, but I was happiest working hard at all three aspects of that trinity.

Brian also enjoyed singing bawdy songs while coupling, songs with plenty of rhythm to them, a beat that could be matched to the tempo of coition and speeded up or slowed down at will, songs like:

Bang away, my Lulu!

Bang away good and strong!

Oh, what'll I do for a bang away

When my Lulu's dead and gone!

Then endless verses, each bawdier than the last:

My Lulu had a chicken,

My Lulu had a duck.

She took them into bed with her

And taught them how to -

BANG! away my Lulu!

Bang away good and strong!

Until at last Briney couldn't stretch it out any longer and had to spend.

While he was resting and recovering, he might demand of me a bedtime story, wanting to know how I had improved each shining hour with a little creative adultery.

He didn't mean what I may have done with Nelson and or Betty Lou; that was all in the family and didn't count. ‘What's new, Mo? Are you getting to be a dead arse in your old age? You, the Scandal of Thebes County? Tell me it's not true!'

Now believe me, friends, between dishes and nappies, cooking and cleaning, sewing and darning, wiping poses and soothing children's tragedies, I didn't have time to commit enough adultery to interest even a young priest. After that ridiculous and embarrassing contretemps with Reverend Zeke I can't recall any illicit bed-bouncing Maureen did between 1906 and 1918 that my husband did not initiate and condone in advance... and not much of that as Briney was if anything even busier than I.

I must have been a great disappointment to Mrs Grundy (several of her lived in our block, many of her went to our church) as, during those ten years leading up to the war that eventually was called World War One or War of the Collapse, First Phase - during that decade I not only tried to simulate the perfect, conservative, Bible-belt lady and housewife, I actually was that sexless, modest, church-oriented creature - except in bed with the door locked, alone or with my husband or, on rare and utterly safe occasions, in bed with someone else but with my husband's permission and approval and usually with his chaperonage.

Besides which, only a robot can stay coupled enough hours out of the year to matter. Even Galahad, tireless as he is, spends most of his time being the leader of Ishtar's best surgical team. (Galahad... Galahad reminds me of Nelson. Not just in appearance; the two are twins in temperament and attitudes - even in body odour now that I think of it. When I get home, I must ask Ishtar and Justin how much of Galahad derives from Nelson. Since we Howards started with a limited gene pool, convergence, along with probability and chance, often comes close to physically reincarnating a remote ancestor in some descendant on Tertius or Secundus.)

Which reminds me of what I did with part of my time and how Random Numbers got his name.

I don't think there was ever a month in the first half of the twentieth century but what both Briney and I were studying something... and usually studying a language besides, which hardly counts; we had to stay ahead of our children. We usually did not study the same thing - Briney did not study shorthand or ballet; I did not study petroleum extraction methods or evaporation control in irrigation. But study we did. I studied because I had been left with a horrid feeling of intellectual coitus interruptos through not being able to go on to college at least through a bachelor's degree, and Brian studied because, well, because he was a Renaissance man with all knowledge his field. According to the Archives my first husband lasted one hundred and nineteen years. It is a cinch bet that he was studying some subject new to him the last few weeks of his life.

Sometimes we studied together. In 1906 he started in on statistics, probability and chance by mail, the ICS school - and here were the books and the lessons in our house, so Maureen did them, too, all but mailing my work in. So we were both immersed in this most fascinating field of mathematics when our kitten, Random Numbers, joined our lives, courtesy of Mr Renwick, driver salesman for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.

The kitten was an adorable mass of silver grey fluff and was at first named Fluffy Ruffles through an error in sex; she was a he. But he demonstrated such lightning changes in mood, direction, speed, and action that Brian remarked, ‘That kitten doesn't have a brain; he just has a skull full of random numbers, and whenever he bangs his head into a chair or ricochets off a wall, it shakes up the random numbers and causes him to do something else.'

So Fluffy Ruffles became Random Numbers or Random or Randie.

As soon as the snow was gore in the spring of ‘07 we installed a croquet lawn in our back yard. At first it was played by us four adults. (Over the years it was played by everyone.) Then it was four adults and Random Numbers. Every time a ball was hit that kitten would draw his sword and charge! He would overtake the ball and throw himself on it, grabbing it, all four limbs. Imagine, please, a grown man stopping a rolling hogshead by throwing himself around it. Better imagine football pads and a helmet for him.

Random wore no pads; he went into action wearing nothing but fluff and his do-or-die attitude. That ball must be stopped, and it was up to him to do it - Allah il Allah Akbar!

Only one solution - Lock up the cat while playing croquet. But Betty Lou would not permit that.

Very well, add to the roles this special ground rule: anything done to a croquet ball by a cat, good or bad, was part of the natural hazards; you played it that way.

I remember one day when Nelson picked up the cat and cradled it in his left arm, then used his mallet with one hand. Not only did it not help him - Random jumped out of his arm and landed ahead of the bail, causing Nelson to accomplish nothing - but we also convened a special session of the Supreme Croquet Court and ruled that picking up a cat in an attempt to influence the odds was unfair to cats and an offence against nature and must be punished by flogging the villain around the regimental square.

Nelson pleaded youth and inexperience and long and faithful service and got off with a suspended sentence, although a minority opinion (from Betty Lou) called for Nelson to drive to a drugstore and fetch back six ice-cream cones. Somehow the minority opinion prevailed, although Nelson complained that fifteen cents was too heavy a fine for what he had done and the cat should pay part of it.

Eventually Random Numbers grew up, became sedate, and lost his enthusiasm for croquet. But the cat rule remained and was adjudged to apply to any cat, be he resident or travelling salesman, and to puppies, birds, and children under the age of two. At a later time I introduced this rule on to the planet Tertius.

Did I mention the transaction under which I obtained Random Numbers from Mr Renwick? Perhaps I didn't. He wanted to swap a little pussy for a little pussy - that's the, way he expressed it. I walked right into that because I asked what he wanted for the kitten - expecting him to say that there was no charge as the kitten hadn't cost him anything. I did not expect anything else because, while I was aware that some pedigreed cats were bought and sold, I had never actually encountered one. In my experience kittens were always given away, free.

I had not intended ever again to let. Mr Renwick inside the house; I remembered the first time. But I was unexpectedly confronted with a fact: Mr Renwick carrying a cardboard shoebox with a kitten in it. Grab the box and shut the door in his face? Open the box on the front porch when he was warning me that the kitten was eager to escape, and scraping, scrambling sounds confirmed it? Lie to him, tell him, sorry, we have already acquired a kitten?

When the telephone rang -

I wasn't really used to having a telephone. I felt that a ringing telephone meant either bad news or Briney was calling; either way, I had to answer it at once. I said, ‘Excuse me!' and fled, leaving him standing in our open door.

He followed me in, through the central hall, and into my sewing-room/offiee/chore room, where I was on the phone. There he put the shoebox down in front of me, and opened it... and I saw this adorable grey kitten while I was talking with my husband.

Brian was on his way home and had called to ask if there was anything I wanted him to pick up.

‘I don't think so, dear. But do hurry home; I have your kitten. She's a little beauty, just the colour of a pussy willow. Mr Renwick brought her, the driver for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. He's trying to screw me, Briney, in exchange for the kitten... No, I'm quite certain. He not only said so, but he has come up behind me and put his arm around me and is now playing with my breasts... What?... No, I didn't tell him anything of the sort. So do hurry. I won't fight with him, dear, because I'm pregnant. I just give in... Yes, sir; I will. Au ‘voir.' I hung up the receiver... although I had thought of using it like a policeman's truncheon. But I truly was unwilling to fight while I had a baby inside me.

Mr Renwick did not let go of me, but when what I was saying penetrated his head, he held still. I turned around in his arms.

‘Don't try to kiss me,' I said. ‘I don't want to risk so much as a cold while I'm pregnant. Do you have a rubber? A Merry Widow?'

‘Uh... Yes.'

‘I thought you would have; I'm sure I'm not the first housewife you've tried this with. All right; do please use it, as I don't want to contract a social disease, and neither do you. Are you married?'

‘Yes. Christ, you're a cool one!'

‘Not at all. I simply won't risk being raped while I'm carrying a baby; that's all. Since you are married, you don't want to catch anything, either, so put on that rubber. How long does it take to drive from 31 st and Woodland?' (Brian had called from 12 th and Walnut, much further away.)

‘Uh... Not very long.'

‘Then you'd better hurry or my husband will catch you at it. If you really do mean to do this to me:

‘Oh, the hell with it!' He abruptly let go of me, turned away and headed for the front door.

He was fumbling with the latch when I called out, ‘You forgot your kitten!'

‘Keep the damned cat!'

That is how I ‘bought' Random Numbers.

Raising kittens is fun, but raising children is the most fun - if the children happen to be your own - if you happen to be the sort of person who enjoys bearing and rearing children. For Jubal was right; it is subjective, a matter of one's individual disposition. I had seventeen children on my first go-around and greatly enjoyed rearing all of them - each different, each individual - and I've had more since my rescue and rejuvenation, and have enjoyed them even more because Lazarus Long's household is organised so that taking care of babies is easy for everyone.

But I often find other people's children repulsive and their mothers crashing bores, especially when they talk about their disgusting offspring (instead of listening to me talking about mine). It seems to me that many of those little monsters should have been drowned at birth. They strike me as compelling arguments for birth control. As my father pointed out years ago, I am an amoral wretch... who does not necessarily regard an unfinished human being, wet and soiled and smelly at one end and yelling at the other, as ‘adorable'.

In my opinion many babies are simply bad-tempered, mean little devils who grow up to be bad-tempered, mean big devils. Look around you. The sweet innocence of children is a myth. Dean Swift had an appropriate solution for some of them in A Modest Proposal: But he should not Nave limited it to the Irish, as there are many scoundrels who are not Irish.

Now you may be so prejudiced and opinionated that you feel that my children are less than perfect - despite the overwhelming evidence that mine were born with halos and cherubs' wings. So I won't bore you with every time Nancy brought home straight A's on her report cards. Practically every time, that is. My kids are smarter than your kids. Prettier, too. Is that enough? All right, I'll drop the matter. My kids are wonderful to me, and your kids are wonderful to you, and let's leave it at that, and not bore each other.

I mentioned the Panic of 1907 when I told about Betty Lou's marriage to Nelson but at the time I had no idea that a panic was coming. Nor did Brian, or Nelson, or Betty Lou. But history does repeat itself, somewhat and in some ways, and something that happened in early 1907 reminded me of something that happened in 1893.

After the birth of Georgie on Betty Lou's wedding day, I stayed at home as usual, for a while, but as soon as I felt up to moving around, I left my brood with Betty Lou and went downtown. I planned to go by streetcar, was unsurprised when Nelson volunteered to drive me down in his Reo runabout. I accepted and bundled up warm; the Reo was rather too well ventilated; it had an open buggy somewhere in its ancestry.

My purpose was to move my savings account. I had placed it in the Missouri Savings Bank in 1899, when we married and settled in Kansas City, by a draft on the First State Bank of Butler (the booming metropolis of Thebes had no banks), where Father had helped me to open a savings account when we carne back from Chicago. By the time I was married, it had grown to more than a hundred dollars.

Footnote: if I had more than a hundred dollars in a savings account, why did I serve my family fried mush for their evening meal? Answer: do you think I am crazy? In 1906 in the American Middle West, a sure way for a wife spiritually to castrate her husband would be to suggest that he was incapable of keeping food on the table; I didn't need Dr Fraud to tell me that. Males live by pride. Kill their pride and they won't support wives and children. It would be some years before Brian and I would learn to be utterly open and easy with each other. Brian knew that I had a savings account but he never asked me how much I had in it, and I would serve fried mush or do any symbolic equivalent as often as needed before I would buy groceries with my own money. Savings were for a rainy day. We both knew this. If Brian fell ill, had to go to a hospital, I would use my savings as needed. We had no need to talk about it. Meanwhile Brian was the breadwinner; I did not intrude into his responsibility. Nor he into mine.

But what about Foundation moneys? Didn't that hurt his pride? Perhaps it did. It may be indicative to take a look into the future: in the long run every dime we received from ringing the cash register wound up with our children, as each got married. Brian never mentioned to me any such intention. In 1907 it would have been silly to do so.

By early 1907 my savings account had grown to over three hundred dollars, by nickels and pennies and tightest economies. Now that I was working at home and could no longer go to school downtown it seemed smart to me to move my account to a little neighbourhood bank near the southside post office substation. One of us four had to go to our post office box each day; whoever did it could make deposits for me. If ever I had to withdraw money, then that one could be I.

- Nelson parked his runabout on Grand Avenue and we walked around to 920 Walnut. I took my passbook to a teller - did not have to wait; the bank was not crowded - and told the teller that I wanted to withdraw my account.

I was referred to an officer of the bank, over behind the railing, a Mr Smaterine. Nelson put down the newspaper he had been glancing at, stood up. ‘Difficulty?'

‘I don't know. They don't seem to want to let me have my money. Will you come with me?'

‘Sure thing.'

Mr Smaterine greeted me politely, but raised his brows at Nelson. I introduced them. ‘This is Mr Nelson Johnson, Mr Smaterine. He is my husband's business partner.'

‘How do you do, Mr Johnson. Please sit down. Mrs Smith, our Mr Wimple tells me that you need to see me about something.'

‘I suppose I do. I attempted to withdraw my account. Ht told me that I must see you.'

Mr Smaterine gave a smile that displayed his false teeth. ‘We are always sorry to lose an old friend, Mrs Smith. Has our service been unsatisfactory?'

‘Not at all, sir. But I wish to move my account to a bank closer to my home. It is not too convenient to come all this way downtown, especially in this cold weather.'

He picked up my passbook, glanced at the address in the front, then at the current amount further on. ‘May I ask where you propose to transfer your account, Mrs Smith?'

I was about to tell him, when I caught Nelson's eye. He didn't actually shake his head... but I've known him a long time. ‘Why do you ask that, sir?'

‘It is part of a banker's professional duty to protect his customers. If you wish to move your account - fine! But I want to see you go to an equally reliable bank.'

My wild animal instincts were aroused. ‘Mr Smaterine, I have discussed this in -detail with my husband' - I had not - and I do not need to seek advice elsewhere.'

He made a tent of his fingers. ‘Very well. As you know, the bank can require three weeks notice on savings accounts.'

‘But, Mr Smaterine, you yourself were the officer I dealt with when I opened my account here. You told me that that fine print was just a formality, required by the state banking act, but that you personally assured me that any time I wanted my money, I could have it.'

‘And so you can. Let's change that three weeks to three days. Just go home and write us a written notice of intent, and three business days later you can close your account'

Nelson stood up, put his hands flat on Mr Smaterine's desk. ‘Now just one moment,' he drawled loudly, ‘did you or did you not tell Mrs Smith that she could have her money any rime she wanted it?'

‘Sit down, Mr Johnson. And lower your voice. After all, you are not a customer here. You don't belong here.'

Nelson did not sit down, did not lower his voice. ‘Just answer yes or no.'

‘I could have you evicted.'

‘Try it, just try it. My partner, Mr Brian Smith, this lady's husband, asked me to come with Mrs Smith' - Brian had not -‘because he had heard that your bank was just a leetle bit reluctant -‘

‘That's slander! That's criminal slander!'

‘- to be as polite to ladies as you are to businessmen. Now - Do you keep your promise to her? Right now? Or three days from now?'

Mr Smaterine was not smiling. ‘Wimple! Let's have a cheque for Mrs Smith's account'

We all kept quiet while it was made out; Mr Smaterine signed it, handed it to me. ‘Please see that it is correct. Check it against your passbook.'

I agreed that it was correct.

‘Very well. Just take that to your new bank and deposit it. You will have your money as soon as it clears. Say about ten days.' He smiled again, but there was no mirth in it.

‘You said I could have my money now.'

‘You have it. There's our cheque.'

I looked at it, turned it over, endorsed it, handed it to him. ‘I'll take it now.'

He stopped smiling. ‘Wimple!'

They started counting out banknotes. ‘No,' I said, ‘I want cash. Not paper issued by some other bank.'

‘You are hard to please, Madam. This is legal tender.'

‘But I deposited real money, every time. Not bank notes.' And I had nickels and dimes and quarters and sometimes pennies. Once in a while a silver cartwheel. ‘I want to be paid back in real money. Can't you pay me in real money?'

‘Of course we can,' Mr Smaterine answered stiffly. ‘But you will find, ah, over twenty-five pounds of silver dollars quite cumbersome. That's why bank certificates are used for most transactions.'

‘Can't you pay me in gold? Doesn't a great big bank like this one carry any gold in its vaults? Fifteen double eagles would be ever so much easier to carry than would be three hundred cartwheels,' I raised my voice a little and projected it. ‘Can't you pay me in gold? If not, where can I take this to change it for gold?'

They paid in gold, with the odd change in silver.

Once we were headed south Nelson said, ‘Whew! What bank, out south do you want? Troost Avenue Bank? Or Southeast State?'

‘Nellie, I want to take it home and ask Brian to take care of it.'

‘Huh? I mean, yes, Ma'am. Right away:

‘Dear, something about this reminds me of 1893. What do you remember about that year?'

‘Eighteen ninety-three... Let me see. I was nine and just beginning to notice that girls are different. Uh, you and Uncle Ira went to the Chicago Fair. When you got back I noticed that you smelled good. But it took another five years to get you to notice me, and I had to slide a pie under you to manage it?

‘You always were a bad boy. Never mind my folly in ‘98; what happened in ‘93?'

‘Hmm... Mr Cleveland started his second term. Then banks started to fail and everybody blamed it on him. Seems a bit unfair to me - it was too soon after he was sworn in. The Panic of'93, they called it'

‘So they did and my father did not lose anything in it, for reasons he described as pure dumb luck.'

‘Nor did my mother, because she always did her banking in a teapot on the top shelf.'

‘Father accidentally did something like that. He left Mother a four-month allowance, in cash, in four sealed envelopes, each with a date. He took with him cash, in gold, in a money belt. And he left money behind - whatever it was beyond what we needed - in a lockbox, again in gold.

‘Nelson, he told me later that he had not guessed that banks were about to fail; he did it just to annoy Deacon Houlihan - Deacon Hooligan, Father called him. Do you remember him? President of Buder State Bank.'

‘No, I guess he died without my permission.'

‘Father told me that the Deacon had remonstrated with him for drawing out cash. The Deacon said it was poor business practice. Just leave instructions to pay Mrs Smith - Mother I mean - so much each month. Father should leave his money where it was and use cheques - the modern way to do business.

‘Father got balky - he's good at that - and consequently the bank failures never touched him. Nelson, I don't think Father did business with any bank after that. He just kept cash in a lockbox in his surgery. I think. Although with Father one is never sure.'

We had a conference about it when we got home, Brian, me, Nelson, Betty Lou. Nelson told them what had happened. ‘Getting money out of that bank was like pulling teeth. This boiled shirt certainly did not want to part with Mo's money. I don't think he would have done so if I had not made a loud, obnoxious nuisance of myself. But that is only partly the point. Mo, tell ‘em about Uncle Ira and a similar case.'

I did so. ‘Dears, I don't claim to know anything about finance. I'm so stupid that I have never understood how a bank can print paper money and claim that it is just the same as real money. But today felt like 1893 to me... because it is just the sort of thing that happened to Father just before the banks started to fail. He didn't get caught by bank failures because he was balky and stopped using banks. I don't know, I just don't know... but I felt uneasy and decided not to put my egg money back into a bank. Brian, will you keep it for me?'

‘Here in the house it could be stolen.'

Nelson said, ‘And if it's in a bank, the bank can fail.'

‘Are you getting jumpy, Nel?'

‘Maybe. Betty Lou, what do you think?'

‘I think I'm going to draw out my thirty-five cents and find a Mason jar and bury it in the back yard.' She paused. ‘And then I'm going to write to my father and tell him what I've done and why. He won't listen - he's a Harvard man. But I'll sleep better if I tell him.'

Brian said, ‘Some others also we must tell.'

‘Who?' said Nelson.

‘Judge Sperling. And my own folks.'

‘We don't want to shout it from the house tops. That could start a run.'

‘Nel, it's our money. If the banking system can't afford to let us draw out our own money and sit on it, then maybe there is something wrong with the banking system.'

‘Tsk, tsk. You some kind of an anarchist or something? Well, let's get busy. The first ones in line always get the biggest pieces.'

Brian was so serious about it that he made a trip back to Ohio, expensive though it was for him to travel without a client to pay for it. There he talked to Judge Sperling and to his parents. I do not know details... but neither the Foundation nor Brian's parents were hurt by the Panic of 1907. Later on we all saw the United States Treasury saved by the intervention of J.P. Morgan... who was vilified for it.

In the meantime the assets of Brian Smith Associates were not buried in the back yard... but were locked up in the house, and we started keeping guns.

Correction: so far as I know, that was when we started keeping guns. I may be mistaken.

While Brian went to Ohio, Nelson and I tried a project: articles for trade journals such as Mining Journal, Modern Mining, and Gold and Silver. Brian Smith Associates ran small display advertisements in each issue. Nelson had pointed out to Brian that we could get major advertising free by Brian writing articles for these journals - each of them carried about the same number of pages of articles and editorials as it did of advertisements. So instead of a little bitty one-column three-inch display card-no, not instead of but in addition to - in addition to advertising Brian should write articles. ‘Lord knows that the stuff they print is dull as ditch water; it can't be hard to write.' So said Nelson.

So Brian tried and the result was dull as ditch water.

Nelson said, ‘Brian old man, you are my revered senior partner... Do you mind if I take a swing at this?'

‘Help yourself. I didn't want to do it, anyhow.'

‘I have the advantage of not knowing anything about mining. You supply the facts - you have; I have them in my hand - and I will slide in some mustard.'

Nelson rewrote Brian's sober factual articles about what a mining consultant's survey could accomplish in a highly irreverent style... and I drew little pictures, cartoons, styled after Bill Nye, to illustrate them. Me an artist? No. But I had taken Professor Huxley's advice (A Liberal Education) seriously and had learned to draw. I was not an artist but I was a competent draughtsman, and I stole details and tricks from Mr Nye and other professionals without a qualm without realising that I was stealing.

Nelson's first attempt retitled Brian's rewritten article as ‘How to Save Money by Skimping' and featured all sorts of grisly mining accidents - which I illustrated.

The Mining Journal not only accepted it; they actually paid for it, five dollars, which none of us had expected.

Nelson eventually worked it into a deal in which Brian's by-line (ghosted by Nelson) appeared in every issue, and a quarter-page display for Brian Smith Associates appeared in a good spot.

At a later time a twin of that article appeared in the Country Gentleman (the Saturday Evening Post's country cousin) telling how to break your neck, lose a leg, or kill your worthless son-in-law on a farm. But the Curtis Publishing Company refused to dicker. They paid for the article; Brian Smith Associates paid for their display cards.

In January 1910 a great comet appeared and soon it dominated the evening sky in the west. Many people mistook it for Halley's Comet, due that year. But it was not; Halley's Comet came later.

In March 1910 Betty Lou and Nelson set up their own household - two adults, two babies - and Random Numbers had a bad time trying to decide where he lived, at The Only House, or with his slave, Betty Lou. For a while he shuttled between the two households, riding any automobile going his way.

In April 1910 the real Halley's Comet began to be prominent in the night sky. In another month it dominated the sky, its head as bright as Venus and its tail half again as long as the Great Dipper. Then it got too close to the Sun to be seen. When it reappeared in the morning sky in May it was still more magnificent. On is May Nelson drove us out to Meyer Boulevard before dawn so that we could see the eastern horizon. The comet's great tail filled the sky, slanting up from the east to the south, pointing down at the Sun below the horizon, an incredible sight.

But. I got no joy from it. Mr Clemens had told me that he had come in with Halley's Comet and he would go out with, it... and he did, on 21 April.

When I heard - it was published in the Star- I shut myself in our room, and cried.