ver showed it
in our town, they used to say that he put on a high hat when the train
whistled for Topeka. Also we heard that the first time Mrs. Handy
appeared at the political hotel in her New York regalia, adorned with
spangles and beads and cords and tassels, the "ladies of the hotel" said
that she was "fixed up like a Christmas tree"--a remark that we in the
office coupled with Colonel Morrison's reflection when he spoke of Ab's
"illustrated vests." At the meeting of the State Federation of Woman's
Clubs, Mrs. Handy first flourished her lorgnette, and came home with
her wedding ring made over on a pattern after the prevailing style.
About this time she made her famous remark to "Aunt" Martha Merrifield
that she didn't think it proper for a woman to go through her husband's
money with too sensitive a nose; she said that men must work and women
must weep, and that she for one would not make the work of her husband
any harder by criticising it with her silly morals.

As for Abner Handy, it would have made little difference to him then
whether she or anyone else had tried to check his career; for he was
cultivating a loud tone of voice and a regal sweep to his arms. He
always signed himself on hotel registers Senator Handy, and the help
about the Topeka hotels began to mark him for their hate, for he was
insolent to those whom he regarded as his inferiors. But Colonel
Morrison used to say that he wore his vest-buttons off crawling to those
in authority. He took little notice of the town. He referred to us as
"his people" in a fine feudal way, and went about town with his cigar
pointing toward his hat brim and his eyes fixed on something in the next
block. He became the attorney for a number of crooked promotion schemes,
and the diamond rings on his wife's fingers crowded the second joint. He
had telegraph and express franks, railway and Pullman passes in such
quantities that it made his coat pocket bulge to carry them. Often he
would spread out these evidences of his shame on his office table, to
awe the local politicians, and in so far as they could influence the
town opinion, they promulgated the idea that if Ab Handy was a
scoundrel--and of course he was--he was a smart scoundrel. So he came to
think this himself.

[Illustration: Went about town with his cigar pointing toward his
hat-brim]

Mrs. Handy threw herself into the work of the City Federation with
passionate zeal. Also she kept up her lodge connections, a