“Well, as I was sayin’, after I’d been there three or four days we was down to the pits one night tendin’ to the fires, and we got to talkin’ and tellin’ stories to pass the time away, and at last he asked me where I was from, and I said St. Louis. He said he was from the north too; I didn’t ask him where he’d come from, but he told me Chicago. I was almost scart to death when he mentioned the place. I didn’t ask no questions nor say a word, but he kep’ on talkin’ so I kind of moved’ round a little and leaned up against a pine tree so’s the light couldn’t shine right in my face, for I didn’t know what he might say. He told me that he come down here every winter for his health; that Chicago was so cold and changeable in the winter; that he worked in the stock-yards when he was there and he always went back just as soon as he dared, that there wa’n’t no place in the world like Chicago, and he was always awful lonesome when he was away, and he wouldn’t ever leave it if he could only stand the climate. He said there was always somethin’ goin’ on in Chicago; a feller could get a run for his money no matter what kind of a game he played; that if he wanted to have a little sport, there was the pool-rooms and plenty of other places; that if he didn’t have much money he could get a little game in the back end of a cigar store, or he could shoot craps; if he wanted a bigger game there was Powers’ & O’Brien’s and O’Leary’s, and if that wa’n’t enough, then there was the Board of Trade. There was always lots of excitement in Chicago, too. There was races and elections and always strikes, and ever’thing goin’ on. Then there was more murders and hangin’s in Chicago than in any other city. Take that car-barn case; it couldn’t never have happened anywhere except in Chicago. And the Luetgert case, where the feller boiled his wife up in the sausage-vat so that there wa’n’t nothin’ left but one or two toe-nails, but one doctor identified her by them, and swore they was toe-nails and belonged to a woman about her size; one of ‘em had seen her over at a picnic and remembered her, and he was pretty sure that the toe-nails was hers. Then that Jackson case was the latest; that happened just a little while before he left, and the papers was full of that one. Jackson was a peddler and he went ‘round all day and drunk at all the saloons just so he could get up nerve enough to kill her. He thought she had some property and he’d get it if she was out of the way, so he killed her and took her off and put her in a hole where he thought no one could find her; but they did, and now one of the papers had offered a thousand dollars reward for him, and they were lookin’ for him all over the United States. He said as how he took a Chicago paper and kep’ posted on everything and read it every day and wouldn’t be without it for a minute. And then he asked me if I hadn’t never been to Chicago, and why I didn’t go. I told him mebbe I would some time, but I’d always