he's flappin' helpless
you leans over the side of the boat an jes' natchelly laffs him to
death."

"Whut-all is you mumblin'?" demands Gumbo Rollins, puzzled by these
seemingly unrelated and irrelevant mouthings. "Is you crazy?"

"Yas," concurs Jeff, "crazy lak the king of the weazels."

CHAPTER IX

PLENTIFUL VALLEY

"So this here head brakeman, the same being a large, coarse, hairy,
rectangular person with a square-toed jaw and a square-jawed toe, he up
and boots the two of us right off this here freight train."

My old and revered friend, Scandalous Doolan, is much addicted to
opening a narrative smack down the middle, as though it were an oyster,
and then, by degrees, working both ways--toward the start and the
finish. So it did not greatly surprise me that without preface,
dedication, index or chapter-heading, he should suddenly introduce a
head brakeman and a freight train into a conversation which until that
moment had dealt with topics not in the least akin to these. Indeed,
knowing him as I did, it seemed to me all the better reason why I should
promptly incline the greedy ear, for over and above his eccentricities
in the matter of launching a subject, Mr. Doolan is the only member of
his calling I ever saw who talks in real life as all the members of his
calling are fondly presumed to talk, in story-books and on the stage.

I harkened, therefore, saying nothing, and sure enough, having dealt for
a brief passage of time with the incident of a certain enforced
departure from a certain as yet unnamed common carrier, he presently
retraced his verbal footsteps and began at the beginning.

I quote in full:

"Yes, sir, that's what he does. Refusing to listen to reason, this here
head brakeman, which anybody could tell just by looking at him that he
didn't have no heart a-tall and no soul, so as you could notice it, he
just red lights us off into the peaceful and sun-lit bosom of the rooral
New York State landscape. But before reaching the landscape it becomes
necessary for us to slide down a grade of a perpendicular character, and
in passing I am much pleased to note that the right-of-way is
self-trimmed to match the prevalent style of scenery, with maybe a few
cinders interspersed for decorations. There is one class of travelers
which prefers a road-bed rock-ballasted, and these is those which goes
on trains from place to place. There's another kind which likes a
road-bed done in the matched or n