t for the
little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse
to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour.

The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good
thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to
buy a stack of blues.

About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's
and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot
of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the
money tainters.

"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out
for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen
before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody
finds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic
supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold;
everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night."

I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to
me:

"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something
of life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg
steak."

"Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filet
mignon with the kind of sauce you serve."

"'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this
gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered
$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said
his money was tainted."

"What is a church?" I asked.

"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of
course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution
basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--a
large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each."

I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a
streak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters.

Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to
loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary.

By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the
wilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot
gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there
waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have
had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert
piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him;
and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a
few of