The Coeur D'alene Press

A Woman Collector
[Original.]

"The firm name was Shiris & Shinn," said the retired hardware dealer, "and we didn't get on from the start, I had a good trade and was obliged to be on the road most of the time. This left the buying to my partner. The trouble was that he wasn't any kind of a buyer. If a salesman came along with a cock and bull story about a sick wife and a dozen or so starving children Shinn would buy a bill of goods of him whether we wanted them or not. The consequence was that every time I came in I found the stock growing in spite of my efforts to reduce it.

"Well, the result of it all was that weeping drummers finally succeeded in turning the store into a junk shop. and we had to quit. Shinn, as he should have done, offered to stand the loss, giving up all the capital he'd put in, acknowledging that the outcome had been entirely his fault. If I could have closed up at once his money would have been just enough to square us, with no loss to me, but the very day we closed along comes a one-legged commercial traveler he called himself-consumptive, wheezing through one lung. and Shinn had to order a $500 bill of him. We closed the order out at about 60 cents on the dollar making a deficiency of $187.42. This Shinn agreed to pay as soon he was able.

"Shinn was a bachelor and removed from his rooms in an apartment house to a little shanty. I sent a man around to collect his indebtedness, but he came back empty handed. I sent another with orders to be more persistent. and he came back. reporting that the door had been slammed in his face. I used to see Shinn occasionally on the street. He looked morose and shabby. One day I saw him give a quarter to a beggar. That made me mad. If he had money to give such nuisances he had it to pay his honest debts, I hired a regular fighting collector and sent him round to Shinn's shanty. He came back with his head bandaged up. a black eye and a swelled lip, to say nothing of the loss of a suit of clothes.

"I hired several men in succession to go and get into the house and stay there till Shinn came down with the funds. The first one that came back reported he'd been thrown out. the second shared the same fate and the third and the fourth and so on likewise

"Then it occurred to me that I'd send a woman. You see, a man can't fight a woman, and there never was a woman yet that couldn't get the better of a man if she wanted to. There was no woman's collecting agency in the town. so I told several friends of mine that I'd give half the debt to any woman who'd collect it.

"About a month after making the announcement a young. good looking woman came to see me and said she'd heard I wanted a debt collected of Percy Shinn. She didn't look like a business woman at all, but I concluded to try her. So I gave her an order for the money and started her out.

"It was 3 o'clock when she left me. and I waited with a good deal of anxiety to learn how Shinn would meet this new enemy. I expected her back in about an hour. Four o'clock came, but no collector-5, 6. 7. and she didn't show up. In fact. she didn't show up that night nor the next day nor the next nor the next. A week passed, and I began to think Shinn had murdered her. Funny. wasn't it? Every man I'd sent had come back after having been thrown out; the only woman I'd sent didn't come back at all.

"Then I fancied maybe the woman had collected the money or a part of it and gone off with it. At the same time it occurred to me that I had stupidly omitted to take her address. I concluded to notify the police and started out to do so, but thought I'd take a look on the way at Shinn's house. So I went a roundabout way and brought up opposite the shanty. Somehow it didn't look so tumbledown as before. There were white holland shades in the windows and a few flowers in the yard in front.

"A woman came out of a house near where I was standing, and I asked her who lived in the house opposite. She said, 'Mr. Shinn.' Any one with him? 'His wife.' I didn't know he was married.' He wasn't a short time ago. There's a story connected with it. Mr. Shinn owed some old curmudgeon some money and sent a young woman to collect it. She was real smart. She told him she was to get half the amount collected; that she was the only support of a widowed mother and seven brothers and sisters. She gave such a pitiful picture, that Shinn, who had been a long while starving himself to pay the debt and had just saved the last penny. went and got it and gave it to her. You see somebody had told her what kind of a man Shinn was. She was so cut up by his lovable manner that she told him to keep the money for all her, and he said he would keep it til his creditor came for it himself. It was one of the quickest matches I ever heard of. They only knew each other a week before they were married."

-This was the story given out a year after I heard the true one. The woman was an old sweetheart of Shinn's who had refused him. On hearing of his condition she had gone, disguised. ostensibly to collect the money. Knowing his soft spot. she had made up the yarn. Then she threw off her disguise, and there was a circus.

"Yes, I got the money-every cent due. I went for it myself."

HERBERT DOUSMAN