[Illustration: “I’m waving a flag of truce, Miss Ducharme. Can’t we declare an armistice for ten minutes to bury our dead?”]
A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers—New York Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Sudden Jim Copyright 1916. by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America Published February, 1917
It is not a fact that clothespins are threshed out like beans or wheat. They are not a product of nature, but of art and machinery. A clear understanding of this is necessary before the story can begin to march; for if clothespins had grown in fields inclosed by rail fences, and were gathered by the aid of a self-binder, there never would have been an individual known from coast to coast as Clothespin Jimmy. This individual would not have had a son named James, nor would Clothespin Jimmy have started to build a new clothespin-mill in Diversity, Michigan. So it is manifest that the fact stated in the first paragraph hereof lies at the very tap-root of the whole matter.
If you studied sufficiently over the hieroglyphics appended by Clothespin Jimmy at the end of a check you discovered them to indicate the signature “James Ashe.” But it required more than a passing glance. Nobody ever quarreled with the signature, because it suited the old man and was honored by the bank.
The owner of the illegible signature was sixty-five years old, was hale, hearty, and ripe for adventure. Also he figured that fifty years of hard labor about completed his sentence and that he was entitled to play about.
Therefore he called home his son James, who had shown an early and marked distaste for the clothespin business, and took him into the library, where there lived in ease and idleness some ninety feet of assorted red, blue and black books. He opened the conversation:
“Son, what name do folks call you by when they speak to you?”
“I haven’t the least notion, father. Why should they call me anything else?”
“No reason in the world. That’s what I’m gettin’ at in my feeble way. What do folks call me?”
“Clothespin Jimmy,” replied his son, promptly.
“Yes, and when I die that’s what’s goin’ onto the headstone. It means somethin’. There hain’t no need for a verse of poetry and clasped hands. ‘Clothespin Jimmy’ tells the whole story. I don’t mind sayin’ I’m proud of it. Just like I was proud of the first dollar I ever handled—because I earned it. Folks call me Clothespin Jimmy because I’ve done things with clothespins—things that amount to somethin’. Men don’t git names like that by settin’ in one spot till their pants wear thin. Now, take you—they call you Jim, and there the matter ends. That’s where you end. You’re just Jim, like seven hundred thousand other Jims. You don’t stick up above the herd. Hain’t it about time folks was findin’ reason to hitch a descriptive name onto you?”