The Daily Inter Mountain

A VERY NICE PROFESSOR
By M. QUAD
Copyright, 1910, by Associated Literary Press

When Professor Watson took the stage at Ellsworth to ride over to Diamondville the innkeeper liked his looks and talk. He hadn't been in the village a day when we all liked his looks and talk. He was a little, roly poly man of fifty and gave out that he was a professor of metaphysics in a New England college. His age was about fifty, and he carried a smile on his face that would have pulled a crocus out of the ground a month ahead of time.

In Diamondville lived the Widow Steadman. She was forty years old and well off. She was being courted by the town constable, who was an old bachelor. It was said they were engaged, but the arrival of the very nice professor wrought a change. In a week he had made her acquaintance and was calling on her. In a fortnight the nose of the town constable was out of joint. The professor appeared to be in the best of health, but he claimed that metaphysics had broken him down and that he had come to the village for rest.

The constable was called stupid as an officer—good hearted, but stupid. We hadn't sized him up correctly as to the stupid part. As soon as he discovered that he was being thrown down he began to study the professor. He wrote to half a dozen colleges and was told that they had never heard of the man. By accident he got hold of a paper that put him on the right trail. He went up to the city and had a talk with the police.

One June day the stage from the railroad rolled in, and its cargo consisted of eleven women. They might have been said to be of all ages, sexes and colors. As the vehicle halted at the inn Professor Watson sat on the veranda. He was put under arrest by a detective and the constable as he sat, but he got on his feet and raised his hat eleven different times to the eleven females. Some cried out at sight of him, some smiled, and some shed tears. After replacing his hat the professor shook hands with the eleven, beginning at the head of the line and saying:

"My dear, your name is Hannah, if I remember, and, though your call is unexpected, you are nevertheless welcome."

Then he took up the case of Jane, Betsy, Mary, and so on. Every woman there was his wife, and a wife he had abandoned, and yet he carried that smile and his nerve right through it. He was taken to jail, and the jailer said he was one of the nicest men he ever met. The officers had a case against him bigger'n a house. He had practiced bigamy for twenty years. He had married girls, spinsters, widows and old women. One of the victims was sixty-five years old. He had got money from some of them, but it didn't seem as if that was his motive.

As he explained it:

"Why, I just fell in love, and she fell in love, and we were married. Really, I didn't know I had married so many."

And when the women were asked to explain they answered:

"Why, he's such a very, very nice man that we couldn't help it. He's just too sweet for anything."

And, would you believe it, the Widow Steadman, who would have made the twelfth, was the first one to send him a bouquet and her sympathies after he had been locked up!

The professor hadn't gone far afield. He had done all his marrying within a radius of 200 miles. He had made a nice, kind husband while it lasted. He had painted kitchen floors, washed dishes and whitewashed cellars. Yes, the officers thought they had him dead to rights, but they soon learned to the contrary. Only one woman out of the eleven was willing to swear against the man. The county had the whole gang on its hands to lodge and board. The wife who was willing to do it was an old maid and so bony and homely as to excite general remark.

For a time she was fierce to send the little man to a place where the dogs couldn't bite him. None of the ten others would speak to her. She was sent for by the professor. When she had arrived at the jail, determined that his cajolery should not move her, he held out his arms to her and said:

"Birdie, you can't find it in your heart to do it. You are too noble and generous. If I hadn't seen the nobility of your character in your face I should never have trusted my happiness in your keeping."

She believed him and fell on his shoulder and wept. When the trial was at last called not one of the eleven was complainant. When put on the stand as witnesses they were no good. They perjured themselves, and they wriggled and twisted and made all sorts of excuses for the man, and the jury had to strain a point to convict him. He got a sentence of three years, and before being taken to prison he had interviews with the eleven in succession, and to each one he said:

"Never mind, darling. Three years will soon pass away, and then we will be with each other again, to part never more."

And the constable didn't marry the Widow Steadman. She said he wasn't even a little bit nice and that it was none of his business how many wives the very, very nice Professor Watson has.