gland, and you ought to
hear them. Say, they're fighting all the time about the battle of
Bannock-Burn, a million years ago or so. I butted in one day, and
says, 'Well, ain't that battle over long ago?' and I got what was
coming to me all right, just like butters-in usually does. They got me
in a corner and talked at me for half an hour straight. When one would
stop to draw his breath, the other would go on talking. I began to
feel sick--real sick--no joking, and all of a sudden I burst out
laughing. I don't know what for, I didn't want to laugh, I felt more
like crying, but, by ginger, I couldn't stop. I laughed, and laughed,
and then some more, and the tears were running down my cheeks all the
time, and I was rolling around like I had wheels for feet. So those
two ninnies began to look solemn, and the Englishman shook me a bit,
but I couldn't stop. Then he began to snicker like a chump, and first
thing he knew he was hanging over one of Tommy's bargain bedsteads just
laughing, laughing, laughing, though it was more like crying too. The
Scotchman started next, and every time he laughed he rolled into
something until he fell on the floor and just lay there laughing.

"I suppose we'd be laughing yet or else dead of it, only Tommy came in.
He took one look around and his face got awful white. He asked me
something, but I could only sputter, then he tried the Scotchman, but
he only rolled some more--gee! it makes me giggle to think of it. So
Tommy rushed to the 'phone and called up a doctor, and then he ran out
of the store and got a cop, and when he gets him in he says to the cop,
'They're dying,' and the cop says, 'Like blazes they're dying,' he
says. So that got me going worse than ever, and the cop was beginning
to snicker too. So he pulls out his baton and he yells out, 'I'll
knock the block off the first yap that lets out another laugh,' and he
gives the Englishman a poke in the slats to show he meant it. And you
bet we quit on the spot. Me, I made a grand sneak the minute I found I
could stand straight, and just as I'm getting out, in rushes a doctor.
Tommy told me after he had to give the doctor four dollars, but the
money was nothing to the way he sweated trying to explain.

"The next time I write I hope it'll be better written. I've found a
place where I can take night lessons three times a week in history and
reading and writing, and you bet I'm taking them.

"With best wishes to everybody and