ovely blue jewel." He dangles
the chain and its rich glass pendant, and it certainly does look fine.
"That'd cost you $2.50 at the store. How'd that strike you?"

"Hpm. I want a collar-button."

"Well, now, you hold on a minute. Lemme look again. Ah, here's a package
'at orta have some in it. Yes, sir, here's four of 'em, enough to last
you a lifetime; front, back, and both sleeves, the kind that flips and
don't tear the buttonholes. Well, by ginger! Now, how'd that git in
here, I want to know? That gold ring? Well, I don't care. It'll have to
go with the collar-buttons. Tell you what I'll do with you: I'll let you
have this elegant solid gold rolled-plate watch-chain and jewel, this
elegant, solid gold ring to git married with--Hay? How about it?--and
these four collar-buttons for--for--twenty-five cents, or a quarter of a
dollar."

That boy never took that quarter out of his breeches pocket. It just
jumped out of itself. But I see that you are getting the fidgets. You're
hoping that I'll come to the horse-racing pretty soon. You want to
have it all brought back to you, the big, big race-track which, as you
remember it now, must have been about the next size smaller than the
earth's orbit around the sun. You want me to tell about the old farmer
with the bunch of timothy whiskers under his chin that gets his old
jingling wagon on the track just before a heat is to be trotted, and
all the people yell at him: "Take him out!" You want me to tell how
the trotters looked walking around in their dusters, with the eye-holes
bound with red braid, and how the drivers of the sulkies sat with the
tails of their horses tucked under one leg. Well, I'm not going to
do anything of the kind, and if you don't like it, you can go to the
box-office and demand your money back. I hope you'll get it. First
place, I don't know anything about racing, and consequently I don't
believe it's a good thing for the country. All I know is, that some
horses can go faster than others, but which are the fastest ones I can't
tell by the looks, though I have tried several times.... I did not walk
back. I bought a round-trip ticket. They will tell you that these events
at the County Fair tend to improve the breed of horses. So they do--of
fast horses. But the fast horses are no good. They can't any of them go
as fast as a nickel trolley-car when it gets out where there aren't any
houses. And they not only are no good; they're a positive harm. You know
an