ve got a decree good in any State. His friends called
it heart failure. I can't because I used to settle his bar bills. You're
not shy of widows, are you?"

Now say, there's widows and widows--grass, baled hay, and other
kinds--and most of 'em I passes up on general principles, along with
chorus girls and lady demonstrators; but somehow I couldn't seem to
place Sadie Sullivan in that line. Why, her mother 'n' mine used to
borrow cupfuls of flour of each other over the back fence, and it was to
lick a feller who'd yelled "brick-top" after Sadie that started me to
takin' my first boxin' lessons in Mike Quigley's barn.

"I ain't much used to traveling in one of these rubber-tired show
windows," says I; "but for the sake of old times I'll chance it once,"
and with that I climbs in; the tiger puts on the time-lock, and we
joins the procession. "Your car's all to the giddy," I remarks. "Didn't
it leave you some short of breath after blowin' yourself to this,
Sadie?"

"I buy it by the month," says she, "including Jeems and Henri in front.
It comes higher that way; but who cares?"

"Oh," says I, "he left a barrel, then?"

"A cellarful," says Sadie.

And on the way up towards the park I gets the scenario of the acts I'd
missed. His name was Dipworthy--you've seen it on the labels,
"Dipworthy's Drowsy Drops, Younsgters Yearn for 'Em"--only he was
Dipworthy, jr., and knew as little about the "Drop" business as only
sons usually do about such things. Drops wa'n't his long suit; quarts
came nearer being his size.

It was while he was having a sober spell that he married Sadie; but that
was about the last one he ever had. She stuck to him, though; let him
chase her with guns and hammer her with the furniture, until the purple
monkeys got him for good and all. Then she cashed in the "Drop"
business, settled a life-insurance president's salary on her mother,
bought a string of runnin' ponies for her kid brother, and then hit New
York, with the notion that here was where you could get anything you had
the price to pay for.

"But I made a wrong guess, Shorty," says she. "It isn't all in having
the money; it's in knowing how to make it get you the things you want."

"There's plenty would like to give you lessons in that," says I.

"You?" says she.

"Say, do I look like a con. man?" says I.

"There, there, Shorty!" says she. "I knew better, only I've been
gold-bricked so much lately that I'd almost suspect my own grandmother