It was a varied collection of objects that they took from the packages. There were boxes of cigars galore, enough to keep the chums in “smokes” for a year to come. There were canes and silk shirts and neckties accompanied by requests from dealers to be permitted to call their product the “Matson.” There were bottles of wine and whiskey, which met with short welcome from these clean young athletes, who took them over to the bathroom, cracked their necks and poured the contents down the drain of the washbasin, until, as Jim declared, the place smelled for all the world like a “booze parlor.”
“No merry mucilage for ours,” declared Joe, grimly. “We’ve seen what it did for Hartley, as clever a pitcher as ever twirled a ball.”
“Right you are,” affirmed Jim. “There’s none of us strong enough to down old John Barleycorn, and the only way to be safe is never to touch it.”
After they had gone through the lot and rung for a porter to carry away the litter of paper and boxes, they attacked the formidable pile of letters and telegrams.
Among the former were two offers from vaudeville managers, urging Joe to go on the stage the coming winter. They offered him a guarantee of five hundred dollars a week. They would prepare a monologue for him, or, if he preferred to pair up with a partner, they would have a sketch arranged for him.
“That sounds awfully tempting, Joe,” said Jim, as they looked up from the letters they had been reading together.
“It’s a heap of money,” agreed Joe, “and I do hate to pass it up. But I won’t accept. I’m not an actor and I know it and they know it. I’d simply be capitalizing my popularity. I’d feel like a freak in a dime museum.”
“How do you know you’re not an actor?” asked Jim. “You might have it in you. You never know till you try.”
“No,” he said, “there’s no use kidding myself. And even if I could make good, I wouldn’t do it. You know what it did for Markwith the season after he made his record of nineteen straight. He never was the same pitcher after that. The late hours, the feverish atmosphere, the irregular life don’t do a ball player any good. They take all the vim and sand out of him. No vaudeville for yours truly.”
“Well,” said Jim, “you’re the doctor. And I guess you’re right. But it certainly seems hard to let that good money get away when it’s fairly begging you to take it.”