Pepper Author:Holworthy Hall Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill McHENRY AND THE BLUE RIBBON AFTER he had once learned to play the banjo, McHenry played it regularly every morning and evening, and at all other times ... more »when he felt the joy of living, until dissuaded by physical violence, or moral suasion. When he remembered to lock the door, as in the present instance, the only solution to the problem of universal peace was for the man whose room was directly over his to draw a baseball bat quickly but firmly across the radiator coils, thus creating an accompaniment so immeasurably superior in tonal quality to the banjo that McHenry generally gave up in disgust, with the loud remark that the world was going to the dogs, and nobody appreciated good music. The man upstairs had just laid down his bat in grim triumph, and McHenry had once more unbarred his portal, when Monk Spinden came in with the morning papers, and helped himself to Pepper's cigarettes. " I can't tell you, old fellow," said Spinden, inhaling luxuriously, " how glad I am to see you still keep these things in your room. I Ve heard that tobacco injures the health." "Monk," said his host, "I'd brain you — if you had anything to brain! " The civilities having been accomplished, Spinden disposed himself on McHenry's divan, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. " I heard a whale of a row last night when I went past the Lampoon Building," he remarked. " What was it, another initiation ? " " It was all of that," said McHenry reminiscently. " There was a large, corpulent neophyte built on the classic lines of a hack — and the candidates gave a play, a sort of allegorical farce, in which there had to be a typhoon. Well, this two-hundred-and-sixty- pound lad was the typhoon, and, after he had about six steins of punch in him, I want to tell you that he was a prett...« less