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So, when he found himself, during the melee, seated upon the kicking and roaring "Smoky's" chest, he improved the opportunity by vigorously kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary's ears, eyes and mouth, and when "Smoky" got the proper leg hold and "turned" him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the Plushvelt head against the lap of mother earth.
One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the granite gate posts of "Dolce far Niente" that's what they called the place; and it was an improvement on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you. Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors.
Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.
Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "That is he," repeated the sociologist. If he had said "him" I could have been less vindictive.
The ladies' maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island.
He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page. And the Toadies' Magazine had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton. "Wot's trouncing?" asked "Smoky," suspiciously. "I don't want your old clothes. I'm no oh, you mean to scrap! My, my!
The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The Toadies' Magazine got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs' ball illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat.
The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most important "uplift" symptom of a generation, and as an excuse for his own existence. Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting, about the diamond. "There," said the sociologist, pointing, "there is young Van Plushvelt."
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