Well, sir, I never met so many people in all my life as we met
in that bar. There was a wine agent whom everybody called Dick,
and I'm for Dick. He sapped up all kinds of booze except wine,
like four dollars' worth of blue blotters, and every time he took
a drink he raised his salary a thousand dollars a year. Once I
weakened, and went outside and watched the hotel lobby go around
for a while. When I returned, Johnny Black, Dick the wine agent,
and a large red-faced man who looked as though he had helped to
make Milwaukee famous, and who said he was from K. C., Mizzoo,
were doing some close harmony that was great. The three of them
were bunched with their arms resting on each others' shoulders,
singing "She May Have Seen Better Days," and the way they all
looked up toward heaven was something pathetic. Whenever they
came to a barber-shop minor they would hold it for a full minute,
and then they would all stop and tell each other how good they
were. Suddenly a fellow rushed in through the street door and
breathlessly exclaimed: "My goodness gracious, sakes alive! the
undertow almost carried me beyond the bar." The newcomer still
wore his dress suit from the evening before, and his shirt front
was all spattered with egg. He was promptly named "His Chickens."
His Chickens did a trick with a wine glass and a half-dollar, and
finally succeeded in cutting a gash in his wrist an inch long.
Johnny Black, who was rapidly becoming normal, remarked that His
Chickens was the village cut-up. I laughed so loud at Johnny's
shine joke that the manager of the hotel called me, and the whole
tribe got insulted and told the man his place was no good anyhow.
We started out, and the first thing we did was to strike one of
those foolish cabs. We made a bargain for a dollar and a half
the first hour and a dollar each succeeding hour, and then we
fell in and told the pilot to take us all over New York. He said
he would, and from the way I feel, he did. K. C. started an awful
argument in one place by declaring that a straight should beat a
flush because there were only eight chances to fill a straight,
while with a flush there were nine. I never figured it out before,
but K. C. is right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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