man
at last dragged him away.

"I picked up them poor mishandled treasures in the gutter, for old
acquaintance sake. And surmisin' it probably wouldn't hardly be
worth my while to wait till I got to the hotel to sample my
prize-package, I opened her on the spot.

"Well, there's no use in talkin'. Them fellers were a pair of
scoundrels. Instead of anything that looked or smelt or sounded
like money in that parcel, was nothin' but a lot of newspapers cut
into strips, with a note on top of 'em bearin' these insultin'
words:

"'_There's a sucker born every minute_.'

"Then I counted up on my fingers fourteen drinks and one
five-dollar dinner, and says I to myself:

"'Ya-a-as,' says I, 'I don't reckon but what that's true.'"

III

ST. NICHOLAS SCRAGGS

"I have read some'ers," said Mr. Scraggs, "that some man whose name
was a durned sight more important to him than it is to me, for I've
plumb forgot it, said that he never begun nothin' unless he could
see the end of it."

"His wife's family must have owned real estate," suggested Red
Saunders.

"He didn't specify which end," excused Mr. Scraggs. "Maybe 'twas
the front end he meant; then the proverb 'ud read that he never
begun anythin' unless he could see the commencement of it; which is
a wise and thoughtful statement, because had it been otherwise, and
therefore essentially different, why, how could he?"

"Of course not," assented Red.

"I s'pose," said the visitor, "that you mean what you say and
understand what you mean, but d----d if I do. Is there any right
or left bower in this game?"

"No," said Mr. Scraggs. "But this is the twenty-fourth of
December, and I was thinkin' of another twenty-fourth of December.
I began something then that come out rather different from what
you'd naturally expect. That ain't so remarkable, for nothin' I
ever had any hand in ever come out as anybody expected--barrin'
Mrs. Scraggs, who, individuool, cool, calm, and collectively,
always says, 'Just what I expected, exactly,' and any man that says
any one or all of the Mrs. Scraggses bound to me by ties of
matrimony by the Mormon Church, party of the first part, Mrs.
Scraggs, party of the second part, and E. G. W. Scraggs, party of
the third, last, and of no consequence whatsomever part--any man, I
repeat, who says Mrs. Scraggs would lie is no friend of her'n and
ought to be told so. But to restrain a nateral indignation at the
hint of such a charge and t