lars of his experiences in the East, though, from what I learned
afterward, Hank struck Boston with a bang, all right.

He located his claim on Beacon Hill, between a Mayflower descendant and
a Declaration Signer's great-grandson, breeds which believe that when
the Lord made them He was through, and that the rest of us just
happened. And he hadn't been in town two hours before he started in to
make improvements. There was a high wrought-iron railing in front of his
house, and he had that gilded first thing, because, as he said, he
wasn't running a receiving vault and he didn't want any mistakes. Then
he bought a nice, open barouche, had the wheels painted red, hired a
nigger coachman and started out in style to be sociable and get
acquainted. Left his card all the way down one side of Beacon Street,
and then drove back leaving it on the other. Everywhere he stopped he
found that the whole family was out. Kept it up a week, on and off, but
didn't seem to have any luck. Thought that the men must be hot sports
and the women great gadders to keep on the jump so much. Allowed that
they were the liveliest little lot of fleas that he had ever chased.
Decided to quit trying to nail 'em one at a time, and planned out
something that he reckoned would round up the whole bunch.

Hank sent out a thousand invitations to his grand opening, as he called
it; left one at every house within a mile. Had a brass band on the front
steps and fireworks on the roof. Ordered forty kegs from the brewery
and hired a fancy mixer to sling together mild snorts, as he called
them, for the ladies. They tell me that, when the band got to going good
on the steps and the fireworks on the roof, even Beacon Street looked
out the windows to see what was doing. There must have been ten thousand
people in the street and not a soul but Hank and his wife and the mixer
in the house. Some one yelled speech, and then the whole crowd took it
up, till Hank came out on the steps. He shut off the band with one hand
and stopped the fireworks with the other. Said that speechmaking wasn't
his strangle-hold; that he'd been living on snowballs in the Klondike
for so long that his gas-pipe was frozen; but that this welcome started
the ice and he thought about three fingers of the plumber's favorite
prescription would cut out the frost. Would the crowd join him? He had
invited a few friends in for the evening, but there seemed to be some
misunderstanding about the date, and h