? Yes, maybe I do walk a little stiff jointed; but, say, I'm satisfied
to be walkin' around at all. If I hadn't had my luck with me the other
day, I'd be wearin' that left leg in splints and bein' pushed around in a
wheel chair. As it is, the meat is only a little sore, and a few more
alcohol rubs will put it in shape.

What was it come so near gettin' me on the disabled list? Toodleism! No,
I expect you didn't; but let me put you next, son: there's more 'isms and
'pathys and 'ists floatin' around these days, than any one head can keep
track of. I don't know much about the lot; but this Toodleism's a punk
proposition. Besides leavin' me with a game prop, it come near bu'stin'
up the fam'ly.

Seems like trouble was lookin' for me last week, anyway. First off, I has
a run of old timers, that panhandles me out of all the loose coin I has
in my clothes. You know how they'll come in streaks that way, sometimes?
Why, I was thinkin' of havin' 'em form a line, one while. Then along
about Thursday one of my back fletchers develops a case of jumps. What's
a fletcher? Why, a steak grinder, and this one has a ripe spot in it.
Course, it's me for the nickel plated plush chair, with the footrest and
runnin' water attached; and after the tooth doctor has explored my jaw
with a rock drill and a few other cute little tools, he says he'll kill
the nerve.

"Don't, Doc.!" says I. "That nerve's always been a friend of mine until
lately. Wouldn't dopin' it do?"

He says it wouldn't, that nothin' less'n capital punishment would reform
a nerve like that; so I tells him to blaze away. No use goin' into
details. Guess you've been there.

"Say, Doc.," says I once when he was fittin' a fresh auger into the
machine, "you ain't mistakin' me for the guilty party, are you?"

"Did I hurt?" says he.

"You don't call that ticklin', do you?" says I.

But he only grins and goes on with the excavation. After he's blasted out
a hole big enough for a terminal tunnel he jabs in a hunk of cotton
soaked with sulphuric acid, and then tamps down the concrete.

"There!" says he, handin' me a drug store drink flavored with
formaldehyde. "In the course of forty-eight hours or so that nerve will
be as dead as a piece of string. Meantime it may throb at intervals."

That's what it did, too! It dies as hard as a campaign lie. About every
so often, just when I'm forgettin', it wakes up again, takes a fresh
hold, and proceeds to give an imitation of a live wire