le gloomy scheme of the temperance people breaks
down, anyway.

But I was only saying that Eliot's drug store in Mariposa on a Saturday
night is the gayest and brightest spot in the world.

And just imagine what a fool of a place to commit suicide in!

Just imagine going up to the soda-water fountain and asking for five
cents' worth of chloroform and soda! Well, you simply can't, that's all.

That's the way Pupkin found it. You see, as soon as he came in, somebody
called out: "Hello, Pete!" and one or two others called: "Hullo, Pup!"
and some said: "How goes it?" and others: "How are you toughing it?"
and so on, because you see they had all been drinking more or less and
naturally they felt jolly and glad-hearted.

So the upshot of it was that instead of taking chloroform, Pupkin
stepped up to the counter of the fountain and he had a bromo-seltzer
with cherry soda, and after that he had one of those aerated seltzers,
and then a couple of lemon seltzers and a bromo-phizzer.

I don't know if you know the mental effect of a bromo-seltzer.

But it's a hard thing to commit suicide on.

You can't.

You feel so buoyant.

Anyway, what with the phizzing of the seltzer and the lights and the
girls, Pupkin began to feel so fine that he didn't care a cuss for all
the Browning in the world, and as for the poet--oh, to blazes with him!
What's poetry, anyway?--only rhymes.

So, would you believe it, in about ten minutes Peter Pupkin was off
again and heading straight for the Pepperleighs' house, poet or no poet,
and, what was more to the point, he carried with him three great bricks
of Eliot's ice cream--in green, pink and brown layers. He struck the
verandah just at the moment when Browning was getting too stale
and dreary for words. His brain was all sizzling and jolly with the
bromo-seltzer, and when he fetched out the ice cream bricks and Zena
ran to get plates and spoons to eat it with, and Pupkin went with her
to help fetch them and they picked out the spoons together, they were so
laughing and happy that it was just a marvel. Girls, you know, need no
bromo-seltzer. They're full of it all the time.

And as for the poet--well, can you imagine how Pupkin felt when Zena
told him that the poet was married, and that the tubby little woman with
her head on sideways was his wife?

So they had the ice cream, and the poet ate it in bucketsful. Poets
always do. They need it. And after it the poet recited some stanzas of
hi