good at that. When he gets any money, he eats it up
in the most determined and hasty fashion. I have seen him eat a dollar's
worth of ham sandwiches in an afternoon--because he had the dollar. What
he does between dollars is a town mystery. He doesn't beg. He is
believed by some to absorb sustenance from the air, like a plant. But I
happen to know that he absorbs a good deal of sustenance from the
Delmonico Hotel. He has attached himself to this hotel as a sort of
retainer, and through all its changes of ownership he has hung on. He
will not work, but he gives the place his moral support and speaks
highly of it to all comers. He will even carry a satchel across to the
depot, but only as an accommodation to the hotel. In return he asks
nothing and thus saves his proud spirit from the insult of a refusal.
But I think he has first pick of the scattered remains of the dinners
that leave the kitchen door whenever the cook is good-natured.

I say I think so, because few of us have seen Gibb Ogle eat. He has a
pride, and performs this humiliating act in secret. But grocers tell me
that he is always offering to dispose of broken-up crackers, stale
cheese and old mackerel. "I'll just carry that out for you," he says.
And they understand and let him do it. One night as he hurried past me,
a package dropped from under his coat and broke at my feet. It was
food--dry bread and a bologna skin with a little meat in the end. He
stopped and told me how hard it was to find food for a dog in which he
was interested. But that was a fib. With all his faults Gibb never
maintained a dog in idleness.

In summers Gibb leads a care-free, happy life, sunning himself all day
and sleeping comfortably at night in any one of a dozen places. He is
our village grasshopper, taking no thought of the chill future. How he
lives through our fierce winters is a mystery. He sleeps in barns. He
sleeps on the coal in the electric light power house. If the clerk at
the hotel happens to be a friend of his, he curls up in a chair in the
lobby. Sometimes all of these fail him. I have heard that he spent one
winter in an empty room over a store, and thawed out his toes on
several mornings. We are always afraid some crackling January dawn will
find Gibb frozen hard on the streets, and it is a relief when spring
comes and he begins to fatten up a little and drink in sunshine again.

We'd like to send Gibb to the county home. Some of us are even willing
to contribute