Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 32, No. 13, Mid-December 1987

Off and Running, Or, Bob Swillet’s Luck (Bad) by Lawrence Doorley

Maybe you missed it. It was in the News, page three (BRAVE ORPHAN PERFORMS DOUBLE HEROICS IN CENTRAL PARK; SUBSTANTIAL REWARDS IN OFFING). Shades of Horatio Alger, of gas lights and horse-drawn streetcars, of Luck and Pluck, of America, the Land of Opportunity.

Unfortunately, the News reporter missed the real story. Here is the whole sad tale (Woe and Rue, Or, It Ain’t Necessarily So).

If Bob Swillet had been someone that Horatio Alger made up, a fictitious person, he would have possessed all the necessary qualities — poverty, self-reliance, determination, up-and-at-’emness — that the real Bob Swillet possessed. Horatio could have titled Bob’s story Bob Swillet, Ball of Fire, Or, An Orphan’s Odyssey.

Early in the going young Swillet would have rescued the lovely eighteen-year-old daughter of a Pittsburgh Nut and Bolt tycoon from a foul-smelling plug-ugly, and the grateful father of the doe-eyed damsel would have rewarded young Swillet with a clerkship in the New York nut and bolt sales office. From then on it would have been Up The Ladder until The End where Bob Swillet dedicates his Newsboys Orphanage in the last paragraph. Then... “Bob Swillet, an old man now, in his late fifties, gazed at the eager faces of the brave little chaps who were devouring the sumptuous repast and a mist formed in his eyes as he thought, How I envy you fortunate young orphans. Just beginning the climb from the depths of adversity to the pinnacle of success. Oh to be an urchin again, a homeless hobbledehoy, in ragged raiment... ah, those were the dear days.”

That’s the way Horatio Alger would have handled Bob Swillet had Bob been a Horatio Alger hero. Life handled Bob Swillet differently.

Horatio Alger’s “rags to riches” theme had an enormous influence on late nineteenth and early twentieth century youth. He wrote one hundred ten books. The titles speak for themselves: Ragged Dick; Tattered Tom; Struggling Upward, Or, Luke Larkin’s Luck; Tom the Bootblack; Phil the Fiddler; Slow and Sure; Strong and Steady; Fame and Fortune.

The typical hero is thirteen years old as the story opens. He is either a total orphan (his parents are disposed of in a few opening sentences) or he has a widowed mother (she is seldom more than thirty years old). By page nine the kid heads for Lower Broadway, New York City — that’s where the action is. He is a go-getter, willing and eager to attack the most menial work for starvation wages. Evenings, in a freezing garret, are spent in study, preparing for the big chance.

In those days disreputable characters lurked — footpads, bullies, Dick Turpins, filchers, pickpockets, sneak-thieves, plus a better class of unprincipled villains such as rich wastrels, crooked lawyers, flash gentry, embezzlers, swindlers. Our young hero encounters a host of these rascals and, early on, is fleeced of his hard-earned money. He profits from these experiences and continues upward.

By page twenty-two or twenty-three — no later than page thirty — Luck shows up. Our hero performs an heroic feat. Back then the cobblestoned streets of New York were abustle with runaway steeds. Half the time the rampaging horse is about to run over a chubby little tot who has toddled out into the teeming street while his nursemaid is making goo-goo eyes at the handsome Irish cop (Terence O’Hullihan). The rest of the time there is an hysterical golden-haired heiress in a runaway buggy, or the same heiress being set upon by a pickpurse, or the same idiotic young lady (you’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now) cornered by a slimy gang of strolling riffraff (she has taken a wrong turn and ended up in a filthy alley). In all cases our hero races to the rescue. The grateful father rewards our hero with a clerkship in the brokerage house where our sharp-eyed chap soon locates the inevitable defalcater (a trusted oldtimer in his dotage, forty-five, forty-six, who has fallen prey to evil women).

It is easy going after that. To the top. All giddy golden-haired heiresses are fascinated with Horatio Alger heroes. They break their engagements to snobbish rich playboys and marry our hero. Everyone — the good, that is — lives happily ever after.

Alas, would it were so with Bob Swillet, real person, confronted with real-life ebb and flow. Bob did get an early break, being orphaned at age six when his dear father, a third floor wortman at Stotlemyer’s Brewery in Hoboken, slipped on a loose wort and went flying into the huge copper brewing kettle where he quickly sank from sight. (After the chaps dredged their drowned comrade from the kettle, two of the more belligerent fellows approached Old Man Stotlemyer and asked that he allow them to dump the batch into the sewer out of respect for their departed fellow worker. Parsimonious Stotlemyer chased them out of his office with a chair leg.)

Naturally, young Widow Swillet felt bad, losing her husband. But she had backbone. She showed her true mettle by taking in washing, hiring out at the sweatshop, a lacy-blouse factory down by the waterfront (vile hangers-on flung suggestive remarks in her direction — really, since Alger was a real prude, nothing a nowadays girl wouldn’t relish), and scrubbing the floor at Gottlieb’s Butcher Shop every night (tight-fisted Gottlieb paid her in soup bones and moldy baloney). In her spare time Widow Swillet made cute little cucumber, squash, and eggplant dolls for the rich children on Regal Row. Brave little Bob did his part by hawking early morning newspapers in the busy Erie Lackawanna Railroad Station (“All aboard for Allentown, Scranton, Binghamton, Syracuse, the Anthracite Special, departing on Track 12, ALL ABOARD!”), by delivering the washing in his little red wagon (made with parts the rich kids had thrown away), and by picking up rags, empty bottles, bits of scrap iron which he sold to Izzy the Junkman, who regularly cheated the gullible little waif.

All went well for a while as it sometimes does in the real world. Things looked good for the Swillets, mother and son. There was even the possibility that a handsome fish peddler (“Today’s special, halibut, five cents a pound, get your fresh fish today!”) would, after a suitable period of mourning, pop the question. Widow Swillet had regained the bloom in her cheeks and the mischievous twinkle in her pretty brown eyes.

Alas. It was not to be. Fate had other things in mind for the poor widow, the hardworking young widow. Too hardworking, for, bone-tired from her hectic schedule, the poor woman, hastening from five o’clock morning mass at St. Nicholas of Myra (patron saint of brewery workers), not wanting to miss the lacy-blouse factory trolley, slipped on the icy church steps and that was that.

Only tearful Bob and grumpy old Gottlieb the butcher showed up for the funeral on a cold, miserable day. Two days after the funeral the First National Benevolent Loan Association of Hoboken foreclosed on the little Swillet hovel — the mortgage was down to $87.95. It was done with extreme regret but a contract is a contract and the Widow Swillet had failed to make the regular monthly payment of $18.25 (it had been her practice to rush down to the loan company during her fifteen minute lunch break at the lacy-blouse factory) on the very day she went to her eternal reward.

A complete orphan now, just as if he had been invented by Horatio Alger, young Bob Swillet was forced to quit school only a few months before the end of the seventh grade. Mother Superior Lydia understood. It was God’s will. He knew best. She hoped and prayed that Bob would not allow this temporary setback to alter his determination to lead a good, clean life on his way to the top.

“For, Bob,” the sainted nun said, “as I have told you time and again, you have all the sterling attributes a boy needs to overcome whatever obstacles the world and the devil may fling in his path. Don’t stumble, Bob, don’t stumble.”

Sniffling, but manfully holding back the tears, Bob promised to do his level best, and he thanked her for never once having beaten him over the knuckles with the glass end of her two and a half pound ruler as she had so often beaten the other boys. This caused the starched creature to beam beatifically and she impulsively pried and tugged at her habit and came forth with a set of brown scapulars which she handed to him as a going away present. Bob was overwhelmed.

That afternoon, after school was out, five or six altar boys beckoned to Bob from behind the statue of St. Nicholas of Myra (which stood in a far corner of the playground and depicted the holy person as fat, jolly, and apparently on the verge of burping). Stupid Bob, who was well aware that his fellow altar boys despised him as Mother Superior’s pet, said to himself, How kind of them. I have misjudged them and shall have to confess to Father O’Dooleygan this Saturday at my regular weekly confession. Bob figured the chaps were planning to shake his hand and wish him well. He was wrong.

So it was with fond memories of better days plus welts, bruises, sore ribs, and one black eye that Bob Swillet bid a sad adieu to schooldays at St. Nicholas of Myra. That was in January, 1926. He was thirteen years old.

Bob’s faith in mankind was immediately restored that very evening when Old Man Gottlieb offered the homeless orphan free lodging above the butcher shop — a drafty, roach-ridden, windowless garret room once occupied by a goat herdsman. In return for the free lodging, crusty old Gottlieb expected Bob to scrub the butcher shop floor every night. In no time at all the customers were complimenting Gottlieb on his spotless shop (Bob always did things up right).

Enter Fate.

In addition to his nightly duties at Gottlieb’s, Bob put in a full day’s work as newsboy, Western Union messenger, bootblack, rags, bottles, and scrap iron scavenger, and — there was no holding Bob back — as a squeaky-voiced singer of melancholy Irish ballads on a busy street corner during evening rush hour. “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen...”

It was tough going, but one blizzardly night in early February Bob, staggering home from his full day’s work, was blown into the Hoboken Free Public Library and his life was never the same. He discovered Horatio Alger’s Whetstone Phil, Or, Sharp and Sure, a tattered copy someone had left on a table.

Enthralled, lost in time, young Bob was finally brought back to earth through the persistent efforts of Miss Minnie Watson, the spinster librarian, who kept tapping him on his tousled head — it was after closing time — first with her overshoe and then with a lead pipe that her old mother had given her long ago as a weapon against nocturnal footpads and saloon corner ruffians.

By the time a reluctant spring came back to Hoboken around April tenth, Bob Swillet had devoured every Horatio Alger novel in sight, and he gradually came to the joyous realization that he, Bob Swillet, was one lucky boy. For he possessed all the wonderful disadvantages of the basic Alger hero. He became inspired, jubilant, wild with excitement. He now knew that God was at the helm, in charge, looking out for orphans.

So it was, that late spring of 1926, before falling into bed around midnight every night, Bob Swillet said a prayer of thanks to St. Jerome Aemillian whom Miss Watson the librarian — she had grown to admire the thin waif — had looked up in the book of saints. She had suggested that since St. Jerome Aemillian was the patron saint of orphans it wouldn’t hurt to have the old boy on Bob’s side.

It worked. Prayers always do. St. Jerome, coming to Bob in a dream one night, had the following suggestion:

“Get the hell out of Hoboken. It just isn’t good orphan territory. Try McKeesport, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh; Buffalo; or the Big Town. Go where tycoons and magnates and their nincompoopish daughters abound. Get off your lazy ****** (deleted) and get moving.”

It was only a five cent ferry ride to the Big Town, so Bob figured he’d give it a try before going to McKeesport, which must be, he thought, somewhere in Indian Territory. Two weeks after St. Jerome had answered his prayer young Bob, thirteen years old, was hired at seven dollars a week as office boy (“plus other duties”) at the up and coming Wall Street law firm of Higgins, Halliburton, Whitehurst and Sweetcove in answer to their ad for “an ambitious young fellow, not afraid of hard work.” He was on his way. Look out there at the top of the ladder, here comes Swillet. He clicked his heels in sheer bliss. How lucky I am, he gloated.

Seething, churning, afire with joy and wonderment, he quickly found comfortable quarters — for eighty-five cents a week and some janitorial duties — above a waterfront mission for derelicts within eight blocks of his work. He rushed back to Hoboken. Gathered up his meager belongings. Ran into the butcher shop to say goodbye to his benefactor, Gottlieb, tell him the great news. Gottlieb, understandably disturbed at losing his ball-of-fire woefully underpaid employee, reacted as might be expected. He pummelled poor bewildered Bob Swillet over the head with a good-sized chunk of pork loin.

Out in the street, holding his poor throbbing head, Bob could only go “tish-tish, my oh my, I’ll be darned,” thinking, I’ll never understand human nature. One minute it’s all kindness and good fellowship and the next it’s thwacking behind the playground statue or a pork loin thumping; dear me.

That’s all right, Bob. These things are all part of growing up. Like people always say, someday you’ll look back on those little pummels and laugh heartily; ho, ho, ho. Anyway, up and at ’em! Full speed ahead! Here comes Swillet!

“That lad will go far,” many a prominent banker, stockbroker, attorney was heard to remark that summer and fall of 1926 as Bob came barrelling around a comer in the financial district, hellbent on some vital mission, toppling an occasional little old lady (word had gotten around and most little old ladies managed to scrounge up against the side of a building as Bob sped by). Every time he knocked a little old lady head over heels he paused momentarily to tip his cap and then sped onward, smoke pouring from his flying heels.

In August of 1927 Bob Swillet became fourteen years old, a bit long in the tooth for the average Horatio Alger hero. He was still stuck on the bottom rung of the ladder, still putting in a busy twelve hour day at the law firm and then another three or four hours of sweeping, scrubbing, and disinfecting at the derelicts’ mission. Busy as he was, the poor lad had little time to eat properly, and while he continued to grow taller he remained a skinny, spindle-shanked, skin and bones creature with large brown eyes, unruly black hair, a jumpy, jerky twitchiness that gave him a kind of Jack-in-the-box appearance. The poor boy was worried.

He was justified in worrying. For, having read and reread Horatio Alger, he was aware that things weren’t working out. Where were happenstance, Lady Luck, the big break? Where was the large manila envelope in the gutter? Where was the footpad attempting to brutally wrench the valuable necklace from the swanlike neck of the Horseshoe heiress? Where was the howling kid — scion of old money — about to be trampled under the flying hooves? And that old standby, the runaway carriage, the shrieking Thimble and Notions heiress? Where indeed. Things looked mighty uncertain for Bob Swillet that August of 1927.

But suddenly it all seemed to straighten out. Mr. Higgins called him upstairs to say that they all had their eye on him. Keep up the good work, Swillet. Oh, by the way, we are raising your wages. From now on you’ll be earning eight dollars and fifty cents a week. Poor dear Bob, weak from hunger anyway, nearly fainted from gratitude. More good news awaited him when he approached his miserable little room above the mission that night. He didn’t reach his room, for the mission had burned down. Two or three derelicts were lost, as were all of Bob’s possessions — two shoeboxes which contained his burlesque queen photos — but he was now free to seek new lodgings with no strings attached. He was finished with trying to handle two jobs. Besides, he needed time for his law studies: his dollar fifty raise would enable him to apply for admission to the WorldWide International Law and Jurisprudence Correspondence College of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he yearned for free time over the weekends to spend in Central Park where so many of Alger’s heroes — Blackie the Chimneysweep, Will Wiggins, Tinker Boy, Hobnail Harry, a whole slew of lucky urchins — had hit the jackpot by:

(1) Rushing out into the bridle path and stopping the runaway steed (two eight-year-old guttersnipes from Hell’s Kitchen had thrown a large firecracker from the boscage into the terrified steed’s path). Blackie, Will, Hobnail — thirty or forty other lucky chaps — had all been handsomely rewarded for having saved the rich maiden’s life, with Hobnail getting the best deal, an immediate partnership in the Acme Deluxe Parlor Organ Company ($27.45 F. O. B. Elkhart, Indiana) plus the right to spark the shy maiden.

(2) Leaping from a park bench and grabbing the careening perambulator as it approached the Conservatory Pond and the end of the line for the howling tot (Oswald Wellington Clamfellow IV, Clothespin heir). Stovepipe Steve, Bogboy Bill, The Erie Train Boy (a newspapers, magazine, candy salesboy on the Jersey Central), numerous others, sprang to the perambulator rescue and each was also handsomely rewarded.

Young Bob Swillet desperately desired to get in on that kind of quick leap upward. Now he could. His weekends were free (he studied law at night). In new quarters, a dollar a week, over a second-hand bookshop in Greenwich Village, embarked on his law studies, making headway at the law firm, he was at last ready to roll.

Again the seasons waxed and waned. Came and went. Sang their brief song and then vanished. Oh, wortmen still fell into vats, widows slipped on icy church steps, and spindly orphans yelled, “Hextrey, hextrey, read hall ’bout hit... Milwaukee Butter en Egg typhoon found dead in love nest on 38th Street, hextrey,” but life was pretty good for Bob Swillet.

Alas (again; too bad, but this is a true story and we cannot eliminate all alases — that’s the way life is, a hi-ho the merry-o today, an alas tomorrow), it was not to endure. The market crashed in late October, 1929. Mr. Higgins, Bob’s mentor — “we have our eye on you, Swillet” — abruptly departed via a window in his fifteenth floor office. Mr. Halliburton took charge.

“Have Swillet sweep up the glass and mop up the blood,” he ordered. A fawning flunky rushed downstairs to the mail room where Swillet was busily stamping the outgoing mail with his left hand while industriously scrubbing the ten gallon coffee urn with his right hand.

Two months later — less than that actually, it was only a few days after a somewhat sober Christmas party — Mr. Halliburton, a dapper bachelor, also departed, taking with him a little over sixty-seven point five percent of the firm’s cash and one hundred percent of vivacious Mrs. (Liz) Sweetcove, wife of Mr. (“Cities Service will go to 300, mark my words”) Sweetcove.

This came as a shock to everyone, especially to Mr. Sweetcove, who brooded for a week or ten days and then he, too, left, leaving behind a cryptic note to the effect that he was renouncing the world and was departing on the morrow for Kentucky to join a silent-monk monastery. Good God, his associates gasped, what next?

That left only Mr. Whitehurst and very little cash. Bob Swillet worried. And every night he prayed to a trio of saints who looked after lawyers, St. Ivo, St. James, St. John Bosco. Please take care of Mr. Whitehurst, he begged, please. No use. It seemed to be fate. Nothing the saints could do, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. You win some, you lose some. Mr. Whitehurst lost the big one on a lovely lazy summer afternoon in 1930 on Long Island Sound when the boom of his sailing vessel... well, naturally the firm collapsed.

Staggering home in the brooding twilight of the day the firm closed, Bob Swillet was in such a deep daze that he failed to see the huge manila envelope right in front of him, on the sidewalk, forget the gutter. He actually nearly tripped over it. Thirty seconds later a sharpeyed newsboy — a skinny orphan from Jersey City — scooped it up and the very next morning he returned it to the offices of J. P. Morgan and Co. and was given an immediate reward of five dollars plus a solemn promise of a scholarship to Harvard Law School when he was old enough, a fair exchange for having returned only seven hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars in fifty and hundred dollar bills. It paid to be honest.

More bad news awaited Bob at home. Another large envelope. This one from the mail order law college in Cedar Rapids. Thank God, the poor fellow thought jubilantly as he frantically opened the envelope. My diploma at last (he had been anxiously awaiting his sheepskin since mailing in his final exam (Mrs. Hyatt Wyatt III versus Farmer Ezra Brown, a suit in Contracts, a matter of foul eggs). Bob had found for Mrs. Wyatt III, who had contracted with Farmer Brown for two dozen white eggs a week at twelve cents a dozen. Mrs. Wyatt Ill’s complaint was that Farmer Brown was sneaking too many brown eggs into the weekly basket.

Alas, there was no diploma. Merely a brief announcement stating that the school could no longer issue law degrees under orders from the U.S. Attorney General (Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan had complained that the Cedar Rapids institution was making a mockery of the law).

Poor Bob Swillet, one blow after another. He moaned and whimpered for about a week after his double setbacks but, since he had spunk and a firm belief in Horatio Alger, he didn’t quit. With a hideous Depression gripping the land, millions out of work, he managed to get a job at three seventy-five a week as night janitor of a twenty-seven story office building in Wall Street (he only had to take care of the top twelve stories, a crew of twelve took care of the bottom fifteen floors).

Daytimes he haunted Central Park, still hoping for the lucky bounce. Time passed, the years went by.

WAR.

He was making nine fifty a week and had a helper, a young fellow on his way up, when he was drafted in April, 1941, and spent the war polishing pots and pans all over the wide world. He was the very last G. I. to leave Italy, the army having lost his records. It wasn’t until a congressional committee, on an unnecessary jaunt of some kind in July, 1948, accidentally stumbled on him in Palermo, Sicily, where he was cleaning garbage cans and he was finally discharged, honorably.

PEACE.

Back in the States he made haste to report to the office building where he had worked before being drafted. He was given short shrift, the real estate firm handling the building claiming that he had forfeited his right to be rehired by failing to appear when the war ended. His hysterical explanation that the army had lost him, left him stranded in Palermo, was dismissed as “a likely story.”

It took the poor fellow nearly a year to get a job. He was finally hired by a large Wall Street law firm at twenty-seven dollars a week as a factotum. He made coffee, ran errands (now, unlike the old days, he deliberately went out of his way to collide with little old ladies, word got around: “Look out for that skinny, mean-looking, chinless factotum,” widows on their way to their brokers warned one another), took mail around, took care of thumbtacks, carbon paper, carried office supplies from the freight elevator to the stock room. He was nothing but a superannuated office boy, and the high-faluting legal secretaries and the snippety little file clerks treated him as if he were a simpleton. He grew increasingly bitter — no wonder — and talked to himself at night in his lonely room above the hardware store.

A terrible blow smote him after the 1957 baseball season. His true love, the Brooklyn Dodgers, left for California. He became an atheist after that and took to drink, three beers a night, five on Saturdays and Sundays. The hell with it, he snarled, it’s all a fake. He wrote a scathing letter to Pope Pius XII, demanding ten thousand dollars’ damages for his mother’s death long ago on the icy steps of St. Nicholas of Myra in Hoboken. There was no answer from His Holiness, busy on a new encyclical.

Finally it was 1978. He was sixty-five, stooped, bald, sarcastic. It was his last day on the job. He was scrubbing the coffee urns when a little snippet from Personnel came around with a small blue and white coffee can.

“How about it, sport?” she said, giving him a swish of her cute hips, a jiggle of her bosom, and a quick little wink from a big brown eye. “How about a contribution?” She rattled the can under his nose.

“What’s it for?” demanded Bob Swillet, backing away from the perfumed jezebel.

“Oh, some old fuddy-duddy’s retiring,” she lisped. “Personnel forgot all about the usual retirement collection until a couple of minutes ago. It’s not one of the big shots. Just some small fry. You don’t have to go overboard. I’ll take a quarter. How about it?”

The hackles rose on Bob Swillet’s wrinkled neck. His long face turned chalk white. He grabbed the edge of a table to keep from swooning.

“What’s the matter?” the little imp said. “Something wrong? You okay?”

“This... this... this... fuddy-duddy,” stammered poor Bob Swillet, once lucky orphan, “does it... he... have a name?”

“Of course he does,” said the painted hussy, giggling nervously — what the hell’s the matter with this old bastard? “It’s... it’s... wait’ll I check the sheet... oh yeah, Spillet or Spigot, something like that. Listen, I don’t have all day. If you can’t afford a quarter, just say so. It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m the fuddy-duddy who’s retiring,” hissed Bob Swillet. “The name is Swillet, not Spillet. Now get out of here before...”

“Oh my God,” the squirt squealed. “Oh God, I’m sorry.... Gee, Mr. Spillet...”

“SWILLET,” snarled Bob Swillet, baring stained teeth.

“Squeak... squeak...” squeaked the frightened girl, racing from the cramped room, jiggling the coffee can and several parts of her anatomy behind her.

Later Mrs. Craighead, in charge of Personnel — “I’ll straighten it out” — came looking for Bob with a check for fifty-five dollars and a fifty cent “You Lucky Dog” retirement card signed by three dozen of his fellow workers. But Bob Swillet was gone.

He was up in Central Park sitting on a bench along the bridle path at the south end of the reservoir. It was summer, deep summer. A half million nursemaids supervised a half million baby buggies full of rich little brats. Squirrels scampered. People fed pigeons. The sky was blue, the breeze warm, it was hardly the time or place for bitter thoughts, thoughts about rat poison in the huge office coffee pot.

“I’ll show them, I’ll show them,” Bob Swillet was muttering, “every one of them. Treating me like dirt under their feet. Didn’t even know my name... Spillet... Spigot... ‘How about it, sport? Some old fuddy-duddy, some small fry.’ Well, enough’s enough... this is it... how dare they? I’ll...”

There was a faint shrieking sound in the distance. It intruded upon Bob Swillet’s vengeful thoughts. The cries grew louder. They were frantic feminine upper-class shrieks. The sound of racing hooves rent the air. For the second time that day the hackles rose on Bob Swillet’s neck.

It... it... it can’t be, he thought, leaping from the bench just in case it was. And it was, it really was. Round the bend came the runaway steed, the loose reins flying wildly, the golden-haired beauty in jodhpurs and other plush accoutrements screaming frantically.

Fifty years overdue, but there it was: the foaming steed, spooked by a sixty-year-old female jogger in a purple jogging outfit, the screaming rich girl, the looming doom (a copse of Chinese sycamore trees), the howling towhead in the runaway baby buggy...

The howling towhead?

“My God, my God,” gasped Bob Swillet, suddenly aware that he was at long, long last being overwhelmed by Lady Luck. My God... the careening perambulator and the runaway horse at one and the same time. Which should it be?

Onward galloped the frothing horse, louder screamed the rich girl, her arms locked around the horse’s neck. Down the long hill sped the baby buggy, the scion of old money mad as hell and giving vent to blood-curdling howls and shrieks. And the nursemaid, suddenly aware that her giggly-gaggling with the handsome Irish cop had given the little brat the chance of releasing the hand brake, began to scream to high heaven, the whole park ringing with the wild cacophony of golden-haired beauty, spoiled little brat, horrified nursemaid of buxom consistency.

The cop, a little late, saw the impending disasters and launched himself down the hill with a ringing curse.

What of Bob Swillet? Heart pounding, breath escaping in choking gasps, knees flexed, old muscles taut, left leg raised to stop the speeding buggy, both arms up to leap at the flying reins. What a break, what a wonderful opportunity... everything comes to him who waits... never give up... Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit... God Bless America.

“Help me... help me... help me,” squealed the golden-haired beauty. “Oh sir... help... help.”

“Bah, bah, howl... scream... screech...” yelled the kid (Bangington Lockstock Hawks-Welps IV, age eighteen months: “God damn it, stop this son of a bitchin’ thing... somebody’s gonna ketch hell... wait’ll my old man hears ’bout this.”)

“NOW...” shouted Bob Swillet just as the two runaways reached each other. He almost made it. He came in second. A blur zoomed by him, a blur that scooped up the towhead in one sure leftarmed scoop and used the other arm to grab the loose reins. It was over in a second.

The blur was Ebbie Vaye, a thirteen-year-old six foot four inch orphan from Hoboken who had sneaked away from the group touring the Museum of Natural History, determined to make his way in the Big City. A leaping fool who could dunk a basketball with a foot to spare, Ebbie had never heard of Horatio Alger but some instinct prompted him to grab what looked like two golden opportunities as he saw that the runaway horse and the speeding buggy were approaching simultaneous disaster. For, he thought as he flew through the summer air in heroic vigor, just how many chances do orphans from Hoboken get in this life?

It took quite a while for all of them — the cop, the nursemaid, the female jogger in the purple outfit, a little old lady with a pink parasol, and a Lebanese pretzel pushcar fellow — to subdue the enraged Bob Swillet, who had his hands in frenzied clutch around Ebbie Vaye’s neck. They finally pried him loose and heaved him, still screaming some incomprehensible gibberish about “my turn, my turn, it was my turn,” into the paddy wagon, where the bloody old maniac was carted off to Bellevue and never heard from again.

The News reporter, who had seen the item on the police blotter, ran down the story. He dismissed Bob Swillet as “probably pot-valiant on cheap wine, a sick old fellow who obviously had never heard of Horatio Alger. Had the deranged derelict read the wonderful, inspiring Alger stories, he would have been well aware that there was no provision for decrepit old has-beens. It was always — and that’s the way it should be — the brave, skinny orphan who rescued the Dust Pan and Whisk Broom magnate’s lovely daughter or leaped into the breach to stop the runaway buggy containing His Nibs III, spoiled scion of McKeesport Iron and Forge money.”

The News reporter located Ebbie back at the orphanage where he was being feted by the elated supervisors, who figured they couldn’t lose. Ebbie was mulling over two offers. First was a substantial cash reward, a trust fund for future education (probably at UCLA), a new wing on the orphanage. This from the Dust Pan and Whisk Broom tycoon, grateful father of Penelope, sixteen-year-old beauty on the runaway horse.

From the McKeesport Iron and Forge portion of the program had come also an immediate cash reward, an educational trust fund (for an Ivy League school), sole ownership of a brand new NBA franchise either in Miami or Toledo.

“What have you decided, Ebbie?” the reporter asked the six foot four inch thirteen-year-old.

“I’m let tin’ my agent handle it,” Ebbie said.

“Your agent? You have an agent?”

“Damn tootin’... I’m gonna get mine while the gettin’s good.”

So... as Horatio Alger said at the ending of Struggling Upward, Or, Luke Larkin’s Luck, “So closes an eventual passage in the life of Luke Larkin. He had struggled upward from a boyhood of privation and self-denial into a youth and manhood of prosperity and honor. There had been some luck about it, I admit, but after all he is indebted for most of his good fortune to his own good qualities.”

That’s the old fight, Horatio. TRIED AND TRUE: STRAIGHT AHEAD: RISE AND SHINE: UP BY THE BOOTSTRAPS: TRUE BLUE: THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER.