his specs you'd have seen a picture of content that
would have made Rockefeller jealous. And I was learning to pick out
"Old Zip Coon" on the banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his
remarks, and Ah Sing was messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest
smell of ham and eggs that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade.
When it got too dark to make out Buckle's nonsense and the notes in
the Instructor, me and Mack would light our pipes and talk about
science and pearl diving and sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish
and trade-winds and leather and gratitude and eagles, and a lot of
subjects that we'd never had time to explain our sentiments about
before.

One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the
habits and policies of women folks.

"Why, yes," says I, in a tone of voice; "I know 'em from Alfred to
Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude," says I, "is as plain to my
sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I'm onto all
their little side-steps and punctual discrepancies."

"I tell you, Andy," says Mack, with a kind of sigh, "I never had the
least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might
have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took
the time. I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never
seemed to get my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually
depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had," says old Mack.

"They're an adverse study," says I, "and adapted to points of view.
Although they vary in rationale, I have found 'em quite often
obviously differing from each other in divergences of contrast."

"It seems to me," goes on Mack, "that a man had better take 'em in and
secure his inspirations of the sect when he's young and so
preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I'm too old now to go
hopping into the curriculum."

"Oh, I don't know," I tells him. "Maybe you better credit yourself
with a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of
uncontent. Still, I don't regret my knowledge of 'em," I says. "It
takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks
to take care of himself in this world."

We stayed on in Pina because we liked the place. Some folks might
enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and
Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were
friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle