oice
sort o' diggin' down into the soul, sets eemotional sports like Boggs
an' Black Jack to sobbin' as though their hearts is broke. She's
certainly a jo-darter of a vocalist--the Mockin' Bird is, an' once
when she renders 'Loosiana Loo' an' Boggs's more'n common affected, he
offers to bet yellow chips as high as the ceilin' she can sing the
sights off a Colt's .45.

"'Which I enjoys one of the most mis'rable evenin's of my c'reer,'
says Boggs to Faro Nell, when she expresses sympathy at him feelin' so
cast down. 'I wouldn't have missed it for a small clay farm.'

"'_Yo tambien_' says Black Jack, who's keepin' Boggs melancholly
company while he weeps. 'Only I reckons the odd kyard in my own case
is that, before I'm a man an' in some other existence, I used to be
one of these yere ornery little fice dogs, which howls every time it
hears a pianny. It's some left-over vestiges of that life when I'm a
dog which sets me to bawlin', that a-way, whenever the Mockin' Bird
girl sings. I experiences pensive sensations, sim'lar to what comes
troopin' over a gent, who's libatin' alone, on the heels of the third
drink.'

"The Mockin' Bird looks as sweet as she sings. I mentions long ago
about the phil'sophic old stoodent who says, 'They do say love is
blind, but I'll be ding-danged if some gents can't see more in their
girls than I can.' This yere wisdom don't apply none to the Mockin'
Bird. Them wooers of hers, to say nothin' of Turkey Track, possesses
jestification for becomin' so plumb maudlin'. Lovely? She's as pretty
as a cactus flower, or a sunrise on the staked plains.

"Folks likes her, too. Take that evenin' when a barbarian from over
to'ards the Cow Springs cuts loose to disturb the exercises at the
Bird Cage Op'ry House with a measly fling or two. The public well nigh
beefs him. They'd have shore put him over the jump, only Enright
interferes.

"It's doorin' the openin' scene, when the actors is camped 'round in a
half-circle, facin' the fiddlers. Huggins, who manages the Bird Cage,
an' who's the only hooman who ever consoomes licker, drink for drink,
with Monte, an' lives to tell the tale, is in the middle. Bowin' to
the Mockin' Bird, an' as notice that she's goin' to carol some, he
announces:

"'The world-reenowned cantatrice, Mam'selle Loocinda Gildersleeve,
cel'brated in two hemispheres as the Mockin' Bird of Arizona, will now
sing the ballad wharwith she ravished the y'ears of every crowned
head of Europe,