the door to the vault and jerking the combination, he
said that would be satisfactory. I was then permitted to deposit in the
bank.

I do not know why I should always be regarded with suspicion wherever I
go. I do not present the appearance of a man who is steeped in crime,
and yet when I put my trivial little two-gallon valise on the seat of a
depot-waiting-room a big man with a red moustache comes to me and hisses
through his clinched teeth: "Take yer baggage off the seat!!" It is so
everywhere. I apologize for disturbing a ticket agent long enough to
sell me a ticket, and he tries to jump through a little brass wicket and
throttle me. Other men come in and say: "Give me a ticket for Bandoline,
O., and be dam sudden about it, too," and they get their ticket and go
aboard the car and get the best seat, while I am begging for the
opportunity to buy a seat at full rates and then ride in the wood-box. I
believe that common courtesy and decency in America need protection. Go
into an hotel or a hotel, whichever suits the eyether and nyether
readers of these lines, and the commercial man who travels for a big
sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek
and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a
slippery-elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a disconnected bell, a
view of the laundry, a tin roof and $4 a day.

But I digress. I was speaking of the bank check cipher. At the First
National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorsements. It
read as follows:

DEAR SIR:--This will be your pay for chickens and other fowls
received up to the first of the present month. Time is working
wondrous changes in your chickens. They are not such chickens as we
used to get of you before the war. They may be the same chickens,
but oh! how changed by the lapse of time! How much more
indestructible! How they have learned since then to defy the
encroaching tooth of remorseless ages, or any other man! Why do you
not have them tender like your squashes? I found a blue poker chip
in your butter this week. What shall I credit myself for it? If you
would try to work your butter more and your customers less it would
be highly appreciated, especially by, yours truly,

W.

Looking at the signature on the check itself, I found it to be that of
Mrs. James Wexford, of this city. Knowing Mr. Wexford, a wealthy and
influential