“Gentlemans, I kain't neffer like dot squealinks and dot kaind of a tings,
and you fellers mit dot ledder pantses on and dot funny glose and such a
tings like dot, better keep kaind of quiet, or I shall call up the
policemen mit my delephone.”
Then they laughed at him, and cried yet again with a loud voice.
This annoyed the ice-cream agriculturist, and he took the old axe-handle
that he used to jam the ice down around the freezer with, and peeled a
large area of scalp off the leader's dome of thought, and it hung down
over his eyes, so that he could not see to shoot with any degree of
accuracy.
After he had yelled “Murder!” three or four times, he fell under an
ice-cream table, and the mild-eyed Scandinavian broke a silver-plated
castor over the organ of self-esteem, and poured red pepper, and salt, and
vinegar, and Halford sauce and other relishes, on the place where the
scalp was loose.
This revived the brave but murderous cow-gentleman, and he begged that he
might be allowed to go away.
The gentle Y.M.C.A. superintendent of the ten-stamp ice-cream freezers
then took the revolvers away from the bold buccaneer, and kicked him out
through a show-case, and saluted him with a bouquet of July oysters that
suffered severely from malaria.
All cow-boys are not sanguinary; but out of twenty you will generally find
one who is brave when he has his revolvers with him; but when he forgot
and left his shooters at home on the piano, the most tropical violet-eyed
dude can climb him with the butt-end of a sunflower, and beat his brains
out and spatter them all over that school district.
In the wild, unfettered West, beware of the man who never carries arms,
never gets drunk and always minds his own business. He don't go around
shooting out the gas, or intimidating a kindergarten school; but when a
brave frontiersman, with a revolver in each boot and a bowie down the back
of his neck, insults a modest young lady, and needs to be thrown through a
plate-glass window and then walked over by the populace, call on the
silent man who dares to wear a clean shirt and human clothes.
Stirring Incidents at a Fire.
Last night I was awakened by the cry of fire. It was a loud, hoarse cry,
such as a large, adult man might emit from his window on the night air.
The town was not large, and the fire department, I had been told, was not
so effective as it should have been.
For that reason I arose and carefully dressed myself, in order to assist,
if possible. I carefully lowered myself from my room, by means of a
staircase which I found concealed in a dark and mysterious corner of the
passage.
On the streets all was confusion. The hoarse cry of fire had been taken up
by others, passed around from one to another, till it had swollen into a
dull roar. The cry of fire in a small town is always a grand sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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