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And it failed. So I got the chestnut roaster. I got a license." "It seems to me I've seen you before, Mottka." "Yes, yes. A policeman bring me here before when I was on Wabash Avenue with my chestnuts." "What did he bring you in for?" "Oh, because he thinks I am a crook, because I don't have enough chestnuts to sell. He says I am a lookout for crooks and he brings me in."
"Go and buy yourself some chestnuts, Mottka," said the sergeant, "so the officers won't be runnin' you in on suspicion of bein' a criminal." Now Mottka's chestnut roaster in the alley off State Street is full of chestnuts. A bright fire burns under the pan and Mottka sits watching the chestnuts brown and peel as they roast. And if you were to ask him about things he would say: "Tell something?
Since most of the great minds that have weighed the subject have arrived at the opinion that between poverty and crime there is an inevitable affinity, the suspicion with which the eye of Policeman Billings rested upon Mottka, the vender of roasted chestnuts, reflected creditably upon that good officer's grasp of the higher philosophies.
Mottka stood up and put the fire out and put the handful of chestnuts in his pocket and picked up his roaster and followed the officer. A half-hour later Mottka stood before the sergeant in the Twenty-second street station. "What's the trouble?" asked the sergeant. And Policeman Billings explained. "He claims to be selling chestnuts and roasting them.
But I never see him sell any, much less do I see him roasting any. He's got about a dozen chestnuts altogether and I think he may bear looking into." "What about it, Mottka?" asked the sergeant. Mottka shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and smiled deprecatingly. "Nothing," he said, "I got a chestnut roaster I got from a friend on the West Side. And I try to make business. I got a license."
"But the officer says you never roast any chestnuts and he thinks you're a fake." "Yes, yes," smiled Mottka; "I don't have so many chestnuts. I can't afford only a little bit at a time. Some time I buy a basket of chestnuts." "Where do you live, Mottka?" "Oh, on the West Side. On the West Side." "And what did you do before you roasted chestnuts?" "Me? Oh, I was in a business. Yes, in a business.
Policeman Billings strolling over his beat was wont to observe Mottka. There were many things demanding the philosophical attention of Policeman Billings. Not so long ago the neighborhood which he policed had been renowned to the four corners of the earth as the rendezvous of more temptations than even St. Anthony enumerated in his interesting brochure on the subject.
There is a maxim by Chateaubriand, or perhaps it was Stendhal maxims have a way of leaving home which claims that the equilibrium of society rests upon the acquiescence of its oppressed and unfortunate. In passing the battered chestnut roaster of the unfortunate Mottka, Policeman Billings was aware in his own way of the foregoing elements of social philosophy.
Mottka had chosen for his little shop an old soapbox which a wastrel providence had deposited in the alley on Twenty-second Street, a few feet west of State Street. Here Mottka sat, nursing the fire of his chestnut roaster with odd bits of refuse which seldom reached the dignity of coal or even wood. He was an old man and the world had used him poorly.
Mottka laughed softly and shrugged his shoulders. "I am no crook. Only I am too poor to buy more chestnuts." Policeman Billings frowned, but not at Mottka. "Here," said the good officer, and he handed Mottka a dollar. Three other upholders of the law were present and they too handed Mottka money.
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