r kick-in speech the event
of the century. The question remains, do I get mine?"

[Illustration: "'Say, listen, Bo--I mean, Prof. I've got the goods.'"]

"What is this scientific information?"

We had now walked as far as Riverside Drive. There were plenty of
unoccupied benches. I sat down and he seated himself beside me.

For a few moments I gazed upon the magnificent view. Even he seemed awed
by the proportions of the superb iron gas tank dominating the prospect.

I gazed at the colossal advertisements across the Hudson, at the freight
trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that majestic sewer
which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless flood
millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which we
call "up-state," to the sea. And, thinking of disposal plants, I thought
of that sublime paraphrase--"From the Mohawk to the Hudson, and from the
Hudson to the Sea."

"Bo," he said, "I gotta hand it to you. Them guys might have got wise if
you had worked in the Tyng-Tyng Company or the Bunsen stuff. There was
big money into it, but it might not have went."

I waited curiously.

"But this here dope I'm startin' in to cook for you is a straight,
reelible, an' hones' pill. P.T. Barnum he would have went a million miles
to see what I seen last Janooary down in the Coquina country--"

"Where is that?"

"Say; that's what costs money to know. When I put you wise I'm due to
retire from actyve business. Get me?"

"Go on."

"Sure. I was down to the Coquina country, a-doin'--well, I was doin'
rubes. I gotta be hones' with _you_, Prof. That's what I was a-doin'
of--sellin' farms under water to suckers. Bee-u-tiful Florida! Own your
own orange grove. Seven crops o' strawberries every winter in Gawd's own
country--get me?"

He bestowed upon me a loathsome wink.

"Well, it went big till I made a break and got in Dutch with the Navy
Department what was surveyin' the Everglades for a safe and sane harbor
of refuge for the navy in time o' war.

"Sir, they was a-dredgin' up the farms I was sellin', an' the suckers
heard of it an' squealed somethin' fierce, an' I had to hustle! Yes, sir,
I had to git up an' mosey cross-lots. And what with the Federal Gov'ment
chasin' me one way an' them rubes an' the sheriff of Pickalocka County
racin' me t'other, I got lost for fair--yes, sir."

He smiled reminiscently, produced from his pockets the cold and offensive
remains of a partly consum