【英文原著类】THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN(说服者).pdf

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN
THE MAKE-BELIEVE
MAN
By Richard Harding Davis
1
THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN
I
I had made up my mind that when my vacation came I would spend it
seeking adventures. I have always wished for adventures, but, though I
am old enough--I was twenty-five last October--and have always gone
half-way to meet them, adventures avoid me. Kinney says it is my fault.
He holds that if you want adventures you must go after them.
Kinney sits next to me at Joyce & Carboy's, the woollen manufacturers,
where I am a stenographer, and Kinney is a clerk, and we both have rooms
at Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house. Kinney is only a year older than myself,
but he is always meeting with adventures. At night, when I have sat up
late reading law, so that I may fit myself for court reporting, and in the
hope that some day I may e a member of the bar, he will knock at
my door and tell me some surprising thing that has just happened to him.
Sometimes he has followed a fire-engine and helped people from a fire-
escape, or he has pulled the shield off a policeman, or at the bar of the
Hotel Knickerbocker has made friends with a stranger, who turns out to be
no less than a nobleman or an actor. And women, especially beautiful
women, are always pursuing Kinney in taxicabs and calling upon him for
assistance. Just to look at Kinney, without knowing how clever he is at
getting people out of their difficulties, he does not appear to be a man to
whom you would turn in time of trouble. You would think women in
distress would appeal to some one bigger and stronger; would sooner ask a
policeman. But, on the contrary, it is to Kinney that women always run,
especially, as I have said, beautiful women. Nothing of the sort ever
happens to me. I suppose, as Kinney says, it is because he was born and
brought up in New York City and looks and acts like a New York man,
while I, until a year ago, have always lived at Fairport. Fairport is a very
pretty harbor, but it does