"So you see, William, that if a man is a great scholar, he is generally dyspeptic; if he's a big preacher, they tie a scandal to his coat-tail, and if he's an eminent murderer, he has insomnia and loss of appetite. I almost wish sometimes that I had remained in obscurity. Its a big thing to be a public man, with your name in the papers and everybody afraid to collect a bill of you, for fear you'll let the glad sunlight into their thorax; but when you can't eat nor sleep, and you're liable to wake up with your bosom full of buckshot, or your neck pulled out like a turkey-gobler's, and your tongue hanging out of your mouth in a ludicrous manner, and your overshoes failing to touch the ground by about ten feet, you begin to look back on your childhood and wish you could again be put there, sleepy and sinless, hungry and happy." SPEECH OF RED SHIRT, THE FIGHTING CHIEF OF THE SIOUX NATION |IT HAD been a day of triumph at Erastina. Buffalo Bill, returning from Marlborough House, had amused the populace with the sports of an amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. A mighty multitude of people from Perth Amboy and New York had been present to watch the attack on the Dead wood coach and view with bated breath the conflict in the arena. The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the bleaching boards and the lights in the palace of the cowboy band were extinguished. The moon piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters about Constable Hook with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier, wearing an umbrella belonging to Imre Kiralfy, wabbled slowly homeward, the proud possessor of a large rectangular "jag." No sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring wave as it told its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach, or the lower sob of some gentleman who had just sought to bed down a brand-new bucking bronco from Ogallalla and decided to escape violently through the roof of the tent; then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the smoke-tanned Cheyenne snore would steal in upon the silence and then die away like the sough of a summer breeze. In the green-room of the amphitheatre a little band of warriors had assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their classic profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them. The night wynd blew chill and the warrior had added to his moss-agate ear-bobs a heavy coat of maroon-colored roof paint. There was an embarrassing silence of a little spell and then Red Shirt, fighting chief of the Sioux Nation borrowed a chew of tobacco from Aurelius Poor Doe, stepped forth and thus addressed them: