American fiction -- 19th century; American poetry -- 19th century; American wit and humor; Short stories, American
"And I'm getting a head in the world," said the piece of sensation
news.
"I'm dead in it," said the spoiled bivalve at the clambake.
"I think I shall get along well," said the artesian water company.
"And my work is all being cut out for me," said the grape seed.
Speaking of Big Winds
The man with the bronzed face and distinguished air was a great
traveler, and had just returned from a tour around the world. He sat
around the stove at the Lamlor, and four or five drummers and men
about town listened with much interest to his tales.
He was speaking of the fierce wind storms that occur in South America,
when the long grass of the pampas is interlaced and blown so flat by
the hurricanes that it is cut into strips and sold for the finest
straw matting.
He spoke also of the great intelligence of the wild cattle which, he
said, although blown about by the furious hurricanes and compelled to
drift for days before the drenching floods of the rainy season, never
lost their direction by day or night.
"How do they guide themselves?" asked the Topeka flour drummer.
"Oh, by their udders, of course," said the traveler.
"I don't see anything to laugh about," said the Kansas man, "but
speaking of big winds we have something of the kind in our state.
You've all heard of the Kansas cyclones, but very few of you know what
they are. We have plenty of them and some are pretty hard ones, too,
but most of the stories you read about them are exaggerated. Still a
good, full-grown cyclone can carry things pretty high sometimes. About
the only thing they spend their fury upon in vain is a real estate
agent. I know a fellow, named Bob Long, who was a real estate hustler
from away back. Bob had bought up a lot of prairie land cheap, and was
trying to sell it in small tracts for farms and truck patches. One day
he took a man in his buggy out to this land and was showing it to him.
'Just look at it,' he said. 'It is the finest, richest piece of ground
in Kansas. Now it's worth more, but to start things off, and get
improvements to going, I'll sell you 160 acres of this land at $40
per--!'
"Before Bob could say 'acre,' a cyclone came along, and the edge of it
took Bob up straight into the air. He went up till he was nothing but
a black speck and the man stood there and watched him till he was out
of sight.
"The man liked the land, so he bought it from Bob's heirs, and pretty
soon a railroad cut across it, and a fine flourishing town sprang up
on the spot.
"Well, this man was standing on the sidewalk one day thinking of how
lucky he had been, and about Bob's unfortunate fate, when he happened
to look up and saw something falling. It grew larger and larger, and
finally it turned out to be a man.
"He came tumbling down, struck the sidewalk with a sound you could
have heard four blocks away, bounded up at least ten feet, came down
on his feet and shouted 'Front foot!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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