thed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some
time, and offers to go partners.

"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find
me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your
proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw
in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great
Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."

This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony
there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;
it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.

We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.

"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
portrait canvassers for this."

Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see
Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be
the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,
patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant
ways--the kind of a lady for the place.

"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.

"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
like second-story work."

We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place
as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into
something respectable.

This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind
of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-book
maxims and psalms