Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)Riley, James Whitcomb
General
Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)
Riley, James Whitcomb
American wit and humor
"No, sir; I do not."
"Well, then, there is no use in disturbing her. Do you know any of the
other crowned heads?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then, do you know President Cleveland, or any of the Cabinet, or
the Senate or members of the House?"
"No."
"That's it, you see. I move in one set and you in another. What
respectable people do you know?"
[Illustration]
"I'll have to ask you to stand aside, I guess, and give that string of
people a chance. You have no right to take up my time in this way. The
rules of the bank are inflexible. We must know who you are, even before
we accept your deposit."
I then drew from my pocket a copy of the Sunday World, which contained a
voluptuous picture of myself. Removing my hat and making a court salaam
by letting out four additional joints in my lithe and versatile limbs, I
asked if any further identification would be necessary.
[Illustration]
Hastily closing the door to the vault and jerking the combination, he
said that would be satisfactory. I was then permitted to deposit in the
bank.
I do not know why I should always be regarded with suspicion wherever I
go. I do not present the appearance of a man who is steeped in crime,
and yet when I put my trivial little two-gallon valise on the seat of a
depot-waiting-room a big man with a red moustache comes to me and hisses
through his clinched teeth: "Take yer baggage off the seat!!" It is so
everywhere. I apologize for disturbing a ticket agent long enough to
sell me a ticket, and he tries to jump through a little brass wicket and
throttle me. Other men come in and say: "Give me a ticket for Bandoline,
O., and be dam sudden about it, too," and they get their ticket and go
aboard the car and get the best seat, while I am begging for the
opportunity to buy a seat at full rates and then ride in the wood-box. I
believe that common courtesy and decency in America need protection. Go
into an hotel or a hotel, whichever suits the eyether and nyether
readers of these lines, and the commercial man who travels for a big
sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek
and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a
slippery-elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a disconnected bell, a
view of the laundry, a tin roof and $4 a day.
But I digress. I was speaking of the bank check cipher. At the First
National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorsements. It
read as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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