makin' movies than Rockefeller does about oil."

Joe shakes his head and grins.

"No!" he says. "I guess I don't know much about anything!"

I pronounced him cured to myself and shook his hand. The Kid went to
the train with him and his bride. I didn't feel up to seein' that guy
goin' away with Gladys.

I met the Kid as he was comin' up from the railroad station, and seein'
he was laughin', I asked him if the happy pair got off all right.

"Yeh!" he says. "Everything went fine. Me and Miss Vincent waited
till the train was pullin' out. Gladys was inside and Joe was standin'
on the steps of the Pullman, talkin'. Just before the thing pulled
out, I shook Joe's hand and said I hoped he got past in New York,
because it was a big burg and a tough one for losers." The Kid stops
and laughs some more.

"Well," I says, "what's the joke?"

"Sweet Papa!" says the Kid, wipin' his eyes. "Joe's face lights all up
and that old glitter comes back in his eyes!

"'Make good?' he yells to me. 'Well, I ought to make good--my father
owns half the town, and I was the biggest thing in it when I left!'"

CHAPTER V.

"EXIT, LAUGHING"

Every time I see one of them big, fat, dignified guys that looks like
they have laid somebody eight to five they can go through life without
smilin' once, I wonder just how much they'd give in American money to
be able to put on a suit of pink pajamas and walk down Fifth Avenue
some crowded afternoon, leadin' a green elephant by a string!

I'll bet they's many a bank president, brigadier-general and what not,
that would part with their right eye if they could only force
themselves to let down for five minutes, can this dignity thing and
give a imitation of what a movie comedian thinks is humor. The best
proof of this is that the first chance any of them birds gets--_that's
just what they do_!

Y'know, you've seen in the papers lots of times where Archibald Van
Hesterfeld has been among the starters in the bazaar for the relief of
the heat prostration victims in Iceland, or words to that effect. Or,
if it wasn't Archibald it might have been General Galumpus or Commodore
Fedink--or all of them. Away down at the bottom of the page, if it's a
copy of the Succotash Crossing _Bugle_, or right up in the headlines,
if it's a big town sheet, after readin' what dignity and so forth the
"distinguished guests lent to the affair," you'll see that at midnight
they was large doin's on the dance