After an all day’s travel which wore me into a frazzle, I reached my destination at 8.30 P.M. It was a cold, drizzling evening. The skies were leaking spray, and in the language of Mrs. Partington, the street was a perfect “lullaby” of soft and sticky mud. The little freckle-faced dreamer who had bought me for a hundred and fifty caught me by the arm with one hand as I stepped off the cars and seized my grip with the other and literally pushed me head foremost into a Jim Crow hack drawn by one old spavined horse, With one eye out and t’other blind, He racked before and paced behind, until we reached the hall where I was to lecture. I found a little cold and shivering crowd seated there, waiting to be warmed by my eloquence, and without a chance to make my toilet and don my little “swallow tail,” I was ushered on the stage and introduced as the greatest orator, philosopher, poet, musician, statesman, scientist, actor and artist that ever came down the pike, whereupon I began to shake my jaw and pour out my metaphors; but somehow or other my eagle wouldn’t soar that night. He flopped his cold and flabby wings and rose and fell for an hour and a quarter. The audience departed like mourners from a funeral; but one good old lady lingered in the hall till I came off the stage and in her pity she sidled up to me and whispered, “I liked your little talk right well.” I found the freckled-face dreamer waiting at the door, and, cold as it was, the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. His face was the picture of despair when he handed me a hundred dollar bill and ten fives. I knew that his castle in the air had fallen. “How did you come out?” I asked. “Well, Governor,” he said, with a tremulous voice, “I’m out just eighteen dollars.” I took the roll he had given me out of my pocket and skinned off four bills in the light of the lamp dimly burning and said, “There are twenty dollars, my boy, and my blessing upon you.” He almost shouted and pressed my hand continuously as we walked through the mud to the little hotel on the starvation plan. Then there were a brief sleep and an easy conscience. I crossed the Father of Waters in triumph next morning and tarried in Memphis till the next train out. I went to the bank to buy New York exchange, took out my roll and lo! I had given old freckle-face the one hundred dollar bill and three fives. Then again there was a laugh and a lull—he laughed and I lulled. I pocketed my laugh and my loss and climbed into the pouch of a Southern Kangaroo on wheels and with a single hop I cleared the state of Mississippi and lit in Alabama. I climbed out and got into the ’bus in a beautiful little town among the blushing hills. Before I had washed the dust of travel from my brow, a spider-legged dude, with ambrosial locks curled and parted in the middle, came strutting like a clean-shaven and musk-scented dream into the dingy and time-honored little room where my valise and I were safely deposited,