it. Your business is busted up,
your thousand dollars is gone into the kitty of this corrupt country
on that last bluff you made, you've got just fifteen Chili dollars
left, worth forty-six cents each at bedtime last night and steadily
going down. To-day you'll blow in your last cent hurrahing for that
flag, and to-morrow you'll be living on bananas from the stalk and
screwing your drinks out of your friends. What's the flag done for
you? While you were under it you worked for what you got. You wore
your finger nails down skinning suckers, and salting mines, and
driving bears and alligators off your town lot additions. How much
does patriotism count for on deposit when the little man with the
green eye-shade in the savings-bank adds up your book? Suppose
you were to get pinched over here in this irreligious country
for some little crime or other, and appealed to your country for
protection--what would it do for you? Turn your appeal over to a
committee of one railroad man, an army officer, a member of each
labour union, and a coloured man to investigate whether any of your
ancestors were ever related to a cousin of Mark Hanna, and then
file the papers in the Smithsonian Institution until after the next
election. That's the kind of a sidetrack the Stars and Stripes would
switch you onto.'

"You can see that I was feeling like an indigo plant; but after
I washed my face in some cool water, and got out my navys and
ammunition, and started up to the Saloon of the Immaculate Saints
where we were to meet, I felt better. And when I saw those other
American boys come swaggering into the trysting place--cool, easy,
conspicuous fellows, ready to risk any kind of a one-card draw, or
to fight grizzlies, fire, or extradition, I began to feel glad I was
one of 'em. So, I says to myself again: 'Billy, you've got fifteen
dollars and a country left this morning--blow in the dollars and
blow up the town as an American gentleman should on Independence
Day.'

"It is my recollection that we began the day along conventional
lines. The six of us--for Sterrett was along--made progress among
the cantinas, divesting the bars as we went of all strong drink
bearing American labels. We kept informing the atmosphere as to
the glory and preeminence of the United States and its ability to
subdue, outjump, and eradicate the other nations of the earth. And,
as the findings of American labels grew more plentiful, we became
more contaminated with patr