and feed the slot machine on good hard
earned nickels of my own, but waited until the countrymen and tenderfeet
had fed it on nickels until it was too full for utterance. When the
machine swelled out like it was blowed up, and it kind of wheezed, like
it was ready to cough up, and was only waiting for an excuse, I put a
cough lozenger about the size of a nickel in the slot and turned the
diaphram. The machine shuddered a minute and then had a regular
hemorrhage, and coughed up a tin cupful of nickels into my hand, and the
machine seemed to rest easy, and take nourishment again from the silly
fellows, who thought they could beat it.

Well, sir, the whole crowd was so excited they could hardly wait to find
a slot machine, and finally they bought nearly all my cough lozengers,
and went out into the night, and pa and I went along, 'cause pa said he
understood all the slot machines were owned by Rockefeller, and he made
more money on them than he did on Standard oil, and the money that he
gave away to schools and churches was from his rake-off on his slot
machines. Pa said it would be a good thing if someone could break up the
reprehensible practice by beating the blasted machines to a finish.

So pa he got a bag to bring back the nickels in, and a bunch of us went
to a store where one whole side of the place was filled with slot
machines, and the way the people were playing the game was scandalous.
Pa watched a machine until the players had fed it so it seemed as though
it would die unless it got air, and he stepped up and put in a lozenger
and turned the wheel, and held the bag under the spout for the coin, but
it didn't come. Some more fellows put in nickels, and the machine gave
little hacking coughs and coughed up three or four nickels, but nothing
that seemed at all in the nature of a financial hemorrhage, when pa took
another lozenger and put it in, and by ginger the machine began to heave
up nickels like it was in the trough of the sea.

Pa was so excited he forgot to hold the bag, and nickels went all over
the floor, and everybody made a grab for them, and pa was shoved aside,
and he swore he would have the place pulled, and just then a law officer
took pa in charge because he had put a cough lozenger in the slot
machine, and he searched pa and found a lot more bronchial trochees, and
pa was in for it on a charge of malpractice, for giving cough medicine
for the stomach trouble of the slot machine, instead of pepsi