The Somerset Herald

Jim Keene's Washerwoman.

"She is," said Jim Keene, the
great New York rival of Jay Gould,
as he relaxed his usual taciturnity
under the genial influence of one of
Sam Ward's dinners the other day.
"the fact is, that no matter how
clever and thorough a man's system
of stock operations may be, there is
always occurring some little unfor-
seen and apparently insignificant
circumstance that is forever knock-
ing the best laid plans into a cocked
hat."

"As how?"

"Well, for instance, about a year
ago I was doing a good deal in Lake
Shore, and counted on making a
good clean-up. I discovered, how-
ever, that there was some hidden influence in the market that was al-
ways against me. It didn't exactly
defeat my plans, but it lessened the
profits. I soon saw that there was
some operator who was kept in-
formed as to my movements in time
to make me pay for his knowledge."

"Broker gave you away?" said
several.

"Not at all I never gave an or-

order in advance, and, besides, I used
as now, half a dozen brokers, and
also gave 'cross' and dummy' or-
ders in plenty. One day, while I
was standing by the window of my
up-town place, cogitating over the
state of affairs, an elegant private
coupe drove past, and stopped just
around the corner from my door.
It contained a richly-dressed lady
and a ragged-looking girl. The latter got out, rang my basement bell
and was admitted. I sent for my
man servant, and inquired who the
girl might be."

"She comes for the wash, sir," he
said.

"Does she generally come in a
coupe?" I inquired.

"Why, no, sir," said the man,
very much surprised; "her mother,
the washerwoman, is very poor.'"

"Just then my own carriage drove
round for me, and as it passed the
other I could see the lady eagerly
sorting the soiled clothes in the
coupe on her lap. This excited my
curiosity, so I had my driver follow
along behind. Pretty soon the coupe
stopped, and the dirty little girl got
out with the bundle and went into
a brown stone front on Twenty-
ninth street. The coupe then kept
straight on down to Wall street and
stopped in front of a broker's office,
where the lady alighted with my
entire lot of soiled shirt cuffs in her
hand."

"Shirt cuffs?" cried the entire
company.

Exactly: shirt cuffs. I saw
through it all in a moment. You
see, I am—or rather was—a great
hand while at dinner, or at the the-
ater in the evening, to think over
my plans for the next day and to
make memorandums on my cuffs to
consult before starting down town
in the morning. My washerwoman
had found this out, and had been
quietly 'coppering' my game by
means of my cuffs for over a year.

"Well, by Jove!" said Sam Ward,
pausing for a single instant in the
sacred mysteries of salad dressing
"It's the cold fact," continued
Keene. "In less than eight months
she had cleaned up over $600,000
and was washing my clothes—at
least my cuffs—in an $80,000 house.
She had diamonds and horses until
you couldn't rest."

"You didn't make any more cuff
memos, after that?" laughed several.

"Well, not many—just a few,"
said the great operator, holding his
Burgundy up to the light. I be-
lieve I kept it up a month longer, at
the end of which time I had raked
in the washerwoman's bank account
and even had a mortgage on the
brown stone house. It was a queer
coincidence, wasn't it? But perhaps
the information she found on the
cuffs after that wasn't as exact as it
had been, somehow, nor as reliable."

And the "king of the streets"
emptied his glass with an indescribable wink that made Beach, who
was short on Harlem, shiver like a
cat who has just swallowed a live
mouse.—San Francisco Post