A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

Street. The pool room and bowling-alleys were closed. He made up his mind to go into one of these places as soon as he could save money from the small allowance which his parents gave him and get someone to teach him to play. He had looked through the windows often enough to know what they were like. The air marbled the smoke, the broad green tables under the light bulbs shaded with green glass swinging gently, the smooth cues manipulated according to complex rules, the ivories rolling, twirling, meeting, hard cheek to cheek, with a little pure click, the men in shirt-sleeves, absent-minded, vain, and skillful; and down below in the basement the alleys of glimmering wood, waxed and exquisitely jointed, stretching away under the great growling balls to the pins in perfect order, and the only Negro in the town to set them up when they fell, his ugly face shining … Philip smiled for the first time since he had been dressed up in these rustling torn clothes. He was too young to be strong; he might never have brutal strength or direct, effective desires; he believed that he could be skillful.
    He wished that he had a luxurious house like Carl’s at the other end of town to go home to—the odor of bath-towels and tobacco mounting the wide staircase with classic banisters; and the luxury he wished for was something serviceable and severe like the felt and ivory and the waxed wood behind the shabby facades on Main Street. He wished that he had a rich mother like Carl’s to satisfy once and for all his desire for such things as the satin clothing and soft foliage, in the maple tree after sunset; and robust, indifferent brothers, not to protect him but to be imitated by him. Instead it was to Mrs. Dewey’s boarding-house that he was making his way as fast as he could.
    He opened the door cautiously. The dirty stairs were lit by a gas -jet. The room in which Mrs. Dewey slept opened off the first landing. She called, “Who’s that?” He did not answer, but mounted more quietly. By a creaking of the boards inside her door he understood that she was looking through the keyhole. She would think that one of her other boarders, the undertaker’s assistant or the patent-medicine vendor, was receiving company in the night.

Mr. Auerbach in Paris
    Almost everyone felt a greatness of some kind about old Mr. Auerbach; the feeling did not derive from his appearance. Little by little he was going blind, and his eyes, under the necessary lenses of magnifying glass, were unattractive. He had a roly-poly neck, the nape of it strewn a little with snow-white hairs. His lips pouted with no definite shape. All his features were large in proportion to the physiognomical area they occupied. It was an expressive face, waxing with enthusiasm, waning with worry; but in the least emotion, even happiness, he looked as if on the verge of tears, which in one whom you knew to be a man of power seemed absurd.
    But no matter; if you could not see you could sense that he was shrewd and honorable in business, and very strict in the more intimate aspects of morality, charitable, intellectual, and art-loving. He was a millionaire retired from a great career of finance management and speculation. In the philanthropies of the ordinary sort he was not only generous but painstaking; yet it was a poor substitute for the big business he had given up. He had also occupied himself acquiring a fine collection of paintings by old masters, working hard at it. But still he had time on his hands, money to spare, and superfluous energy; which made the loss of his eyesight especially hard for him.
    One whole year in my young manhood I was employed by him. At the start I had only to read aloud while he ate breakfast and before dinner, and occasionally, for two or three hours after dinner. Certain English and German newspapers interested him, as well as the
Times
and the
Sun
. I knew how to pronounce German and gradually learned what the recurrent words meant. In the evening we