ONE NIGHT

A Kind of a Preface

The Baxter Letters are written in the up-to-date slang of the day, by one who has seen several of the sides of life, and who has also come in contact with a few of the corners.

We will mail "One Night" to any address in North America upon receipt of four cents* in postage. Do not lick stamps and attach to letter of request, as at some future date we may wish to use same, and the Government foolishly requires a whole stamp.

As there are several people in the United States with whom we are not personally acquainted, and not being mind-readers, we ask that all signatures be written plainly.

* This offer is superseded by the publication of this volume. Admiral Dewey's Letter

In November, 1898 we sent Admiral Dewey a copy of "One Night." The appended letter is photographed from the original reply addressed to the president of our company, which was received March 9, 1899.

Flagship Olympia Manila, Jan'y 28/99

Dear Sir,

Accept my best thanks for the book (One Night) which you were good enough to send me.

Very truly George Dewey

We also sent a copy to His Royal Highness, Albert, Prince of Wales, and, having heard nothing from him, it now looks as though Al were going to snob us. Under the circumstances, when he runs for King we can't be for him.

One Night

Pittsburg, PA., August, 189-. Dear Jim:

You remember I wrote you about a sack suit I ordered last week. Well, it came yesterday, and you know the finish. Why can't a fellow put on a new suit, make a few calls, and go home like a gentleman? The

minute I got into that suit, I fell off the water wagon with an awful bump, although I hadn't touched a drink for thirty-seven days. Oh! But I got a lovely bun on. That's the last. No more for me. There's nothing in it. If anybody says, "Have something, Billy," you'll see your Uncle Bill take to the trees.

Yesterday at 2:30 I had a hundred and ten dollars; this morning I'm there with a dollar eighty, and that's the draw out of a two-dollar touch. If there is any truth in the old saying that money talks, I am certainly deaf and dumb to-day. Besides I have a card in my pocket which says I've opened up a running account of thirty-two forty at George's place. I wonder if this George is on the level, because I'll swear I don't think I was in there at all. I'll bet he stuck the forty on anyway. You know me, Jim; I am one of those bright people who tries to keep up with a lot of guys who have nothing to do but blow their coin. I stood around yesterday and looked wise, and licked up about four high-balls; then I kind of stretched. Whenever I give one of those little stretches and swell up a bit that's a sign I am commencing to get wealthy. I switched over and took a couple of gin fizzes, and then it hit me I was richer than Jay Gould ever was; I had the Rothschilds backed clear off the board; and I made William H. Vanderbilt look like a hundred-to-one shot. You understand, Jim, this was yesterday. I got a little red spot in each cheek, and then I leaned over the bar and whispered, "Mr. Bartender, break a bottle of that Pommery." Ordinarily I call the booze clerk by his first name, but when you are cutting into the grape at four dollars per, you always want to say Mr. Bartender, and you should always whisper, or just nod your head each time you open a new bottle, as it makes it appear as though you were accustomed to ordering wine. You see, Jim, that's where I go off my dip. That wine affair is an awful stunt for a fellow who makes not over two thousand a year, carries ten thousand life, and rooms in a flat that's fifteen a month stronger than he can stand. But to continue, I lost the push I started out with, and got mixed up with a fellow named Thorne, or Thorpe, or something like that, and we got along great for a while. He knew a lot of fellows in Boston that I did, and every time we struck a new mutual friend we opened another bottle.

I don't know just what the total population of Boston is, but we must have known everybody there. Finally Thorne got to crying because his mother had died. You know I am a good fellow, so I cried, too. I always cry some time during a bat, and there was an opening for your life. I cried so hard that the bartender had to ask me to stop three different times. I made Niobe look like a two spot. Between sobs I asked him about the sad affair, and found that his mother had died when he was born. I guess it had just struck him. Then there were doings.

I had wasted a wad of cries that would float the Maine, and I was sore for fair. A fat fellow cut into the argument, and some one soaked him in the eye, and then, as they say in Texas, "there was three minutes rough house." In the general bustle a seedy looking man pinched the Fresh Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much for the bat cave, and to avoid such after-complications as patrol wagons and things, I blew the bunch and started up street. I guess the wind must have been against me, as I was tacking.

I met Johnny Black, and he was going to keep a date with a couple of swell heiresses at one of the hotel dining-rooms. I saw them on the street to-day, and they won't do. One of them wore an amethyst ring that weighed about sixty carats, and the other had on white slippers covered with little beads.

I don't know anything about them, but I'll gamble that they are the kind of people that have pictures of the family and wreaths in the parlor. They looked fine and daisy last night, though. Probably the grape. My girl's name was Estelle. Wouldn't that scald you? Estelle handed me a lot of talk about having seen me on the street for the last two years, and how she had always been dying to meet me, and I got swelled up and bought wine like a horse owner. Johnny was shaking his head and motioning for me to chop, but what cared I? Estelle was saying, "He done it," "I seen it," and "Usen't you?" right along, but the grape stood for everything.

Estelle's friend was talking about her piano, and how hard it was to get good servants nowadays, and say, Jim, I've heard knockers in my time, but Estelle is the original leader of the anvil chorus. She just put everybody in town on the pan and roasted them to a whisper. She could

build the best battleship Dewey ever saw with her little hammer. Estelle's friend, after much urging, then sang a pathetic ballad entitled, "She Should Be Scolded, but Not Turned Adrift," and I sat there with one eye shut, so that I could see single, and kept saying, "Per'fly beauf'ful."

About this time I commenced to forget. I remember getting an awful rise out of Estelle by remarking that her switch didn't match her hair. She came up like a human yeast cake. Johnny sided with the dame, and said I might at least try to act like a gentleman, even if I weren't one. Perhaps the grape wasn't getting to Johnny by this time. He was nobby and boss. He was dropping his r's like a Southerner, and you know how much of a Southerner Johnny is--Johnstown, Pa.; and he was hollering around about his little three-year-old, standard-bred, and registered bay mare out of Highland Belle, by Homer Wilkes, with a mark of twenty-one, that could out-trot any thing of her age that ever champed a bit. Did you get that, Jim? That ever champed a bit; and still he said at noon to-day that he had had two, possibly three, glasses of wine, but no more. The only way that mare of Johnny's can go a mile in twenty-one is "In the Baggage Coach Ahead."

Say, Jim, I've never said much about it, but you let any of these fellows who own horses get a soak on, and they get to be a kind of a village pest, with their talk about blowing up in the stretch, shoe blisters on the left forearm, etc. Now, since when did a horse get an arm? They have got me winging. I can't follow them at all.

But to return to last night. When Johnny threw that thing at me about champing the bit, it was all off to Buffalo with little Will. I went out of business right there.

When I got up this morning I had to ask the bellboy what hotel I was in. I'll see the fellows to-night, and they'll all tell me how dirty my face was, and what I called so and so, and make me feel as bad as they possibly can. It's a wonder a fellow doesn't get used to that, but I never do; I feel meaner each time. Guess I'll take the veil.

Don't fail to come down Saturday. Several of us are going yachting on the Ohio River. It will be lovely billiards.

Yours as ever, Billy.

P. S.--Do you know anything about that George's place? Horse Sense

Sometimes you eat too much, sometimes you drink too much, and sometimes you do both. In any event, you feel like the very old scratch the next morning. Too much liquor overheats the blood. Too much food, and the liver goes on a strike. The first remedy which should suggest itself is a purgative which will act on the liver, and cleanse the system of all the indigestible junk with which it has been overtaxed. This is positively the foundation for permanent relief. The next thing is to cool the blood. Now, isn't it common horse sense?

Think it over.

The R--R-- is the only water which acts on the liver. It's base is sodium phosphate.

The R--R-- is the only water which cools the blood, Overheated blood is what causes the pressure on the head.

The R--R-- is the only pleasant-tasting aperient water of any strength on the market to-day.

We have stumbled onto a good thing, and we've got the money to push it.

You remember the man who at breakfast said: "Waiter, bring me about ten grains of oatmeal, and put stickers on it so that it will stay down; and say, waiter, please look as pleasant as possible, for I feel like h--l."

Well, that's how a person's stomach gets some mornings.

If you are going to drink an aperient, why try to force down a water that is warm, and tastes like a lot of bad eggs, doesn't touch your liver, and won't cool your blood, when you can get the R--R--, cold and sparkling and pleasant, which will do all these things?

If you are annoyed with constipation, stomach or liver trouble, use as your system dictates, and see bow much better you feel. It can't hurt you. Best before breakfast.