Like You Ate When a Boy,' 'Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to
Crow'--there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man!
I said to myself that mother's wandering boy should munch there that
night. And so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case
of Mame Dugan.

"Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his
time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty
memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the
cooking, and Mame waited on the table.

"As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census
reports. There wasn't but one girl in the United States. When you come
to specifications it isn't easy. She was about the size of an angel,
and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a
girl she was, you'll find a belt of 'em reaching from the Brooklyn
Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They
earn their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices.
They're chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look
life straight in the eye. They've met man face to face, and discovered
that he's a poor creature. They've dropped to it that the reports in
the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation.

"Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she
passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you'd have
smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the
insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the
diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should
be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. 'Tis my opinion that the
biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical
romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So,
you'll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame.

"Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat
at irregular times when there wasn't so many around. Mame would sail
in with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: 'Hello,
Jeff--why don't you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you
can be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie'--and
so on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached.
Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used as
they came to hand. I'd eat about two meals before I left, and string