Harold Macgrath

The Carpet from Bagdad Harold Macgrath

To possess two distinctly alien red corpuscles in one's blood, metaphorically if not in fact, two characters or individualities under one epidermis, is, in most cases, a peculiardisadvantage. One hears of scoundrels and saints striving to consume one another in onebody, angels and harpies; but ofttimes, quite the contrary to being a curse, these twowarring temperaments become a man's ultimate blessing: as in the case of George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, the great metropolitan Oriental rug and carpet company, all ofwhich has a dignified, sonorous sound. George was divided within himself. This he wouldnot have confessed even into the trusted if battered ear of the Egyptian Sphynx. There was, however, no demon-angel sparring for points in George's soul. The difficulty might be setforth in this manner: On one side stood inherent common sense; on the other, a boundless, roseate imagination which was likewise inherent-a kind of quixote imagination ofsuitable modern pattern. This alter ego terrified him whenever it raised its strangelybeautiful head and shouldered aside his guardian-angel (for that's what common sense is, argue to what end you will) and pleaded in that luminous rhetoric under the spell of whichour old friend Sancho often fell asleep. P. A., as they called him behind the counters, was but twenty-eight, and if he was vicepresident in his late father's shoes he didn't wabble round in them to any great extent. In acrowd he was not noticeable; he didn't stand head and shoulders above his fellow-men, norwould he have been mistaken by near-sighted persons, the myopes, for the Vatican's Apolloin the flesh. He was of medium height, beardless, slender, but tough and wiry and enduring. You may see his prototype on the streets a dozen times the day, and you may also pass himwithout turning round for a second view. Young men like P. A. must be intimately known tobe admired; you did not throw your arm across his neck, first-off. His hair was brown andclosely clipped about a head that would have gained the attention of the phrenologist, if notthat of the casual passer-by. His bumps, in the phraseology of that science, were good ones. For the rest, he observed the world through a pair of kindly, shy, blue eyes.