Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas   By: Rupert Hughes (1872-1956)

RUPERT HUGHES

[Illustration]

Colonel Crockett's Co operative Christmas

[Illustration: LAST NIGHT I ATE A HORRIBLE MOCKERY OF A CHRISTMAS DINNER IN A DESERTED RESTAURANT]

[Illustration]

Colonel Crockett's Co operative Christmas

By Rupert Hughes

Philadelphia and London George W Jacobs and Company

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY Published September, 1906

All rights reserved Printed in U. S. A.

Illustrations

Last night I ate a horrible mockery of a Christmas dinner in a deserted restaurant Frontispiece

As blue as all the swear words ever swore Facing page 14

He said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me 18

"Only one thousand plunks," says he 40

James J. James, Publicity Expert 48

Old Miss Samanthy Clay got a box of cigars meant for Judge Randolph 60

[Illustration]

Foreword

Of all the strange gatherings that have distinguished Madison Square Garden, the strangest was probably on the occasion, last Christmas, when the now well known Colonel D. A. Crockett, of Waco, rented the vast auditorium for one thousand dollars, and threw it open to the public. As he is going to do it again this coming Christmas, an account of the con , in , and re ception of his scheme may interest some of the thousands who find themselves every Christmas in the Colonel's plight. My plan to describe it was frustrated by the receipt, from his wife, of three letters he wrote her. It seems only fair, then, that the author of an achievement which is likely to become an institution should be allowed to be the author of its history. I shall, therefore, content myself with publishing verbatim two of the Colonel's own letters.

RUPERT HUGHES

LETTER ONE

New York, N. Y., Dec. 26, 1904.

FRIEND WIFE:

The miserablest night I ever spent in all my born days the solitariest, with no seconds was sure this identical Christmas night in New York City. And I've been some lonesome, too, in my time.

I've told you how, as a boy, I shipped before the mast the wrong mast and how the old tub bumped a reef and went down with all hands and feet except mine. You remember me telling how I grabbed aholt of a large wooden box and floated on to a dry spot. It knocked the wind out of my stummick considerable, but I hung on kind of unconscious till the tide went out. When I come to, I looked round to see where in Sam Hill I was at, and found I was on a little pinhead of an island about the size a freckle would be on the moon. All around was mostly sky, excepting for what was water. And me with nothing to drink it with!

I set down hard on the box and felt as blue as all the swear words ever swore. There was nothing in sight to eat, and that made me so hungry that me and the box fell over backward. As I laid there sprawled out, with my feet up on the box, I looked between my knees and read them beautiful words, "Eat Buggins' Biscuit," in plain sight before me on the end of the box.

[Illustration: AS BLUE AS ALL THE SWEAR WORDS EVER SWORE]