aking of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him
to you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an
Englishman gets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs
of other nations don't drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And
if he's a Liverpool Englishman, why, fire-damp is what he's got to
look out for. Being a natural American, that's my personal view. But
Liverpool and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes
or ways and means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery
certainly does enjoy the society of accomplices.

"Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks
and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native
dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA
sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up on the
beach.

"You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller at
seven A. M. It's like being lost behind the scenes at one of these
mushroom musical shows. You can't see the sky for the foliage above
you; and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still
that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop 'em down.

"At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge
of a lagoon with the red, yellow, and black employes of Don Jaime.
There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys
squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon
until daylight with only snatches of sleep between times.

"We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It's just
about eighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at
midnight and election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains
more than at others, and that's all the difference you notice. A
man is liable to live along there without noticing any fugiting of
tempus until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he's
beginning to think about cutting out the gang and saving up a little
to invest in real estate.

"I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two
or three rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of three
pairs of sail-cloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and
tobacco; but we ate, and that was something.

"All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of committing
surgical operations on banana stalks turning to aloes and quinine in
our mouths. It's a