Название: The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®
Автор: Эдгар Аллан По
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Юмористическая фантастика
isbn: 9781434446541
isbn:
“Get out!” repeated the manager, rising from his desk, near which the waiting boys were seated.
“Men,” yelled Danny, “I calls a strike an’ a boycott!”
Two of the boys rose as if to follow him, but the manager was too quick. He had Danny by the collar before Danny knew what had happened, and the struggling boy was marched to the door and pushed out. The boys who had risen promptly subsided.
Danny was too astonished for words. In all his extended hearsay knowledge of strikes he never had heard of anything like this. There was nothing heroic in it at all. He had expected a conference, and, instead, he was ignominiously handled and thrust into the street.
Danny sat down on a pile of paving-stones to think it over. Without reasoning the matter out, he now regarded himself as a union. The other members had deserted him, but he was on a strike; and somehow he had absorbed the idea that the men who were striking were always the union men. So, this being a strike of one, he was an entire union. It did not take him long to decide that the first thing to do was to “picket the plant.” That was a familiar phrase, and he knew the meaning of it. Everything was nicely arranged for him, too. The street was being paved, and he was sitting on some paving-stones, with a pile of gravel beside him. He selected fifteen or twenty of the largest stones from the gravel-pile.
A woman was the first victim. As she was about to enter the messenger-office she was startled by a yell of warning from Danny.
“Hey, you!” he shouted. “Keep out!”
She backed away hastily, and looked up to see if anything were about to fall on her.
“Why should I keep out?” she asked at last.
“’Cause you’ll git hit with a rock if you don’t,” was the prompt reply.
“But, little boy—” she began.
“I ain’t a little boy,” asserted Danny. “I’m a union.”
The woman looked puzzled, but she finally decided that this was some boyish joke.
“You’d better run home,” she said, and turned to enter the messenger-office. She could not refrain from looking over her shoulder, however, and she saw that he was poised for a throw.
“Don’t do that!” she cried hastily. “You might hurt me.”
“Sure I’ll hurt you,” was the reply. “I’ll smash your block in if you don’t git a move on.”
The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.
Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.
“What’s the matter, Danny?” he asked.
“Got the plant picketed,” asserted Danny. “Nobody can’t go in or come out.”
“I’m goin’ in,” said the other boy.
“You!” exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.
“No, I ain’t, Danny,” the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.
“Sure?” asked Danny.
“Honest.”
“This here’s a strike,” explained Danny.
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” apologized the boy. “I ain’t a strike-breaker.”
Danny let him up, but made him sit on another pile of stones a short distance away. He would be all right as long as he kept still, Danny explained, but no longer.
* * * *
While Danny was continuing strike operations with rapidly growing enthusiasm, the woman he had first stopped was taking an unexpected part in the little comedy. She had gone to another of the branch offices with the message she wished delivered, and had told of the trouble she had experienced. Thereupon the manager of this office called up the manager of the other on the telephone.
“What’s the matter over there?” he asked.
“Nothing,” was the surprised reply. “Who said there was?”
“Why, a woman has just reported that she was driven away by a boy with a pile of stones.”
The manager hastened to the window, and realized at once that something was decidedly wrong. On a pile of paving-stones directly in front of the door sat the proud and happy Danny. At his feet there was a pile of smaller stones, and he held a few in his hands. On his right was a boy who had started on a trip a short time before, and on his left was one who should have reported back. A man was gesticulating excitedly, a number of others and some boys were laughing, and Danny seemed to be intimating that any one who tried to enter would be hurt.
“Jim,” said the manager to the largest messenger, “go out there and see what’s the matter with Danny Burke. Tell him I’ll have him arrested if he doesn’t get out.”
* * * *
Danny was a wise general. He wanted no prisoners that he could not handle easily, and this big boy would be dangerous to have within his lines. The big boy was a sort of star messenger, who did not fraternize with Danny anyhow. Consequently Danny fired a volley the moment he saw who it was, and the big boy hastily retreated, bearing with him one bump on the forehead.
“That’s Jim,” Danny explained to the increasing crowd. “He’s the biggest, next to the boss. Watch me nail the boss.”
“You’re the stuff!” exclaimed some of the delighted loiterers, thus proving that the loiterers are just as anxious to see trouble in a small strike as in a large one.
Danny picked out a stone considerably larger than the others, for he expected the manager to appear next, and the manager had incurred his personal enmity. In the case of his victims thus far, he had acted merely on principle—to win his point.
The manager appeared. For his own prestige (necessary to maintain discipline), the manager had to do something, but he felt reasonably sure that the dignity of his official position would make Danny less hasty and strenuous than he had been with others. The manager planned to extend the olive branch and at the same time raise the siege by beckoning Danny in, so that he might reason with him and show him how surely he would land in a police station if he would not consent to be a good boy. This would be quicker and better than summoning an officer. But the manager got the big stone in the pit of his stomach just as he had raised his hand to beckon, and he and his dignity collapsed together, with a most plebeian grunt. As he had not closed the door, he quickly rolled inside, where he lay on the floor with his hands on his stomach and listened to the joyous yelps of the crowd outside. This was too much for the manager.
“Call up police headquarters,” he said, still holding his stomach as if fearful that it might become detached, “and tell them there’s a riot here.”
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