Perverted Proverbs by Marsh Cassady

Author:Marsh Cassady [Cassady, Marsh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

Moral: A Fool and his part are soon monied.

HOW HE BEGGED TO DIFFER

Many years ago in a faraway time and place lived a beggar. Like the other beggars of the land, he took great pride in his work, arriving at his assigned post precisely at 6:59 a.m., to catch early morning commuters, and leaving precisely at 5:48 p.m., when the last worker straggled off the last commuter train.

Now Jarvis often had a young charge assigned to him by the Spare a Dime Society, the union to which all beggars belonged and which offered apprenticeships to those wishing to enter the trade.

Because he'd worked long and hard, following all the rules, rising rung by rung on the ladder of beggary, Jarvis was one of the few in Jersey City to have received the title and privilege of Master Beggar ... uh, yes, that is Master Beggar. As such, he was entitled to train young and promising hopefuls.

In his late thirties, Jarvis had risen more rapidly than any other beggar in Jersey City and faster than most in the whole vast land. Most Master Beggars received their promotions near the end of long careers, when they were in the late fifties or early sixties, after years of pleading and kowtowing.

Because Jarvis was so successful, he was deluged with requests from young men who hoped to be selected to study with this most masterful of all Master Beggars, written up time after time as an example to the youth of the land, a man whose photo had appeared not once but four times on the cover of the Spare a Dime Society Newsletter.

One evening Jarvis was poring over photos and resumes. Sure, the photos were optional and weren't ever to be used in making final choices, but what the hell, Jarvis felt he deserved to have the rules bent. Wasn't his bank account in the millions, all as a result of his own hard work?

Nearly ready to make a random choice, Jarvis suddenly came upon that one photo that stirred up his feelings. It showed a handsome lad, standing with proud parents in front of a New York brownstone. But Jarvis barely noticed the parents; he barely noticed the brownstone. His eyes were drawn to the face of the boy, whom the resume revealed as Thompkins Betterton, eighteen years old, fresh out of university. Obviously he was an intelligent young man, though in all probability not matching the intelligence of Jarvis himself, who had an I.Q. of 192 and finished his doctorate in Almsmanship at the age of twenty. But the thing that most drew Jarvis' attention was the young man's looks—his wishful eyes, his lithe body, his sculpted face.

With no further thought, Jarvis summoned his butler to ring Betterton's residence. Assured that the young man was on the line, Jarvis took the receiver. "Thompkins Betterton?" he enunciated, his voice clipped, precise.

"Yes, sir," the voice answered, every bit as cultured as his own, and obviously polite and deferential, traits Jarvis liked.

"This is Jarvis," he said, deigning to give his last name, which he considered superfluous in light of his renown.

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