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It may even be doubted, by those who have read it, whether "cutting blocks with a razor" is such a Gothamite proceeding as it is sometimes held to be. For in this case the blocks are chopped as well as the homeliest bill-hook could do it; and we know that the razor was none the blunter.
He succeeded in borrowing ten thousand dollars from a millionaire who had come to New York from Cleveland to live and die a Gothamite. With sublime disregard for the thing called conscience, Courtney included this new debt in the list to be prepared for his father, and permitted the old gentleman to settle without so much as a qualm of self-reproach. He considered it high finance, I believe.
In another version a man goes to market with two bags of cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.
The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself." And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out."
I allow myself a month every year of my native heath, heather-mixture, and burr I like to do the thing up brown. The rest of the time I'm a Gothamite, of necessity. Some time, when I've made my pile, I shall revert for keeps, and settle down into a kilt and a castle." Much amused by this unsuspected histrionic gift, Mary walked on beside McEwan.
It would have proved a fine horse for their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him. A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only inferior to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in no sense examples of preeminent folly.
Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the Játakas, or Buddhist Birth-stories.
Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond, believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously disappointed.
"They don't lack for entertainers," hazarded a staff officer as soon as he could make himself heard. "The solemn-looking Gothamite who came with them must have slipped out." "It seems he knows Colonel Armstrong," said the chief thoughtfully. "I sent for him an hour ago, and he may be piloting Mr. Prime around camp, looking up the runaway."
A New York man took a run not long ago into Connecticut, to a town where he had lived as a boy. On his native heath he accosted a venerable old chap of some eighty years, who proved to be the very person the Gothamite sought to answer certain inquiries concerning the place. As the conversation proceeded the New Yorker said: "I suppose you have always lived around here?"
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