ays Bentley. "By ginger! I'm your man!"

So we starts out lookin' for the menagerie. It was all I could do,
though, to keep my eyes off'm that trousseau of his.

"They don't build clothes like them in Palopinto, do they?" says I.

"Oh, no," says Bentley. "I stopped off in Chicago and got this outfit.
I told them I didn't care what it cost, but I wanted the latest."

"I guess you got it," says I. "That's what I'd call a night edition,
base ball extra. You mustn't mind folks giraffin' at you. They always
do that to strangers."

Bentley didn't mind. Fact is, there wa'n't much that did seem to faze
him a whole lot. He'd never rode in the subway before, of course, but
he went to readin' the soaps ads just as natural as if he lived in
Harlem. I expect that was what egged me on to try and get a rise out
of him. You see, when they come in from the rutabaga fields and the
wheat orchards, we want 'em to open their mouths and gawp. If they do,
we give 'em the laugh; but if they don't, we feel like they was
throwin' down the place. So I lays out to astonish Bentley.

First I steers him across Mulberry Bend and into a Pell-st. chop suey
joint that wouldn't be runnin' at all if it wa'n't for the Sagadahoc
and Elmira folks the two dollar tourin' cars bring down. With all the
Chinks gabblin' around outside, though, and the funny, letterin' on the
bill of fare, I thought that would stun him some. He just looked
around casual, though, and laid into his suey and rice like it was a
plate of ham-and, not even askin' if he couldn't buy a pair of
chopsticks as a souvenir.

"There's a bunch of desperate characters," says I, pointin' to a table
where a gang of Park Row compositors was blowin' themselves to a
platter of chow-ghi-sumen.

"Yes?" says he.

"There's Chuck Connors, and Mock Duck, and Bill the Brute, and One Eyed
Mike!" I whispers.

"I'm glad I saw them," says Bentley.

"We'll take a sneak before the murderin' begins," say I. "Maybe you'll
read about how many was killed, in the mornin' papers."

"I'll look for it," says he.

Say, it was discouragin'. We takes the L up to 23rd and goes across
and up the east side of Madison Square.

"There," says I, pointin' out the Manhattan Club, that's about as
lively as the Subtreasury on a Sunday, "that's Canfield's place. We'd
go in and see 'em buck the tiger, only I got a tip that Bingham's goin'
to pull it to-night. That youngster in the straw hat just goin'