chalk. Now,
I was eager to possess a cow with such a multiplication-table
attachment, and, being unable to wait even ten years before I could
tingle with the sensation of being a millionnaire ranchman. I decided to
shorten the probationary stage by half, and so I purchased two cows."

At this point, Dick rolled over upon the grass, and the major was
doubled up as with sudden pain. As for myself, I confess I could not
restrain my emotions. I had been through the same experience as had
fallen to my guest, and I appreciated the sanguine characteristics of
his temperament, which prompted him to the investment, and the humor of
the situation. I laughed till my eyes flowed with tears, and the
stillness of the foot-hills resounded with the unrestrained merriment of
the entire camp.

The humor of our guest was truly American, the humor of suggestive
restraint and exaggeration both. He narrated his experiences, which had
resulted in the loss of his fortune and the collapse of his hopes, with
a face like a deacon's, and with a quaint and most charming sense of the
ludicrousness of the position--a position of which he himself was the
cause and central object. He fairly represented that type of men who
combine in their composition that which is most practical and
imaginative alike; whose energy can subdue a continent, and whose
boastfulness would awaken contempt if it were not palliated by the
magnitude of their achievements. A humor that is often barbed, but which
is most willingly directed against one's self; but, whether directed
against the humorist or his neighbor, carries no poison upon its point
and leaves no wound to rankle.

"My financial condition," said our guest, resuming, "my financial
condition at the time I made this final investment contributed to the
hopefulness of my mood, and made me feel the excitement of a reckless
speculation, for, though my two cows only cost me seventeen dollars and
fifty cents each, nevertheless, when the purchase was concluded, and the
goods delivered, and I had made a careful inventory of my remaining
assets,--a business proceeding which the average Texan found it
necessary to go through about once in two weeks, in order that he might
know what his financial standing was, or whether he had any standing at
all,--when, I say, the purchase was consummated, and an inventory of my
remaining assets made, I discovered that the two cows had swallowed up
nearly my entire estate, and that a few