“Oh, I saw the blue-nosed baboon from Farther India, and the red-eyed
sandhill crane from Maddygasker, I think it was, and the sacred
Jack-rabbit from Scandihoovia, and the lop-eared layme from South America.
Then there was the female acrobat with her hair tied up with red ribbon.
It's funny about them acrobat wimmen. They get big pay, but they never buy
cloze with their money. Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day,
for all I know, coming out there before 2,000 total strangers, wearing a
pair of Indian war clubs and a red ribbon in her hair. I tell you,
pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, or
else they're mighty economical with their cloze.”
“Did you go into the side show?”
“No, sir. I studied the oil paintings on the outside, but I didn't go in,
I met a handsome looking man there near the side show, though, that seemed
to take an interest in me. There was a lottery along with the show and he
wanted me to go and throw for him.”
“Capper, probably?”
“Perhaps so. Anyhow, he gave me a dollar and told me to go and throw for
him.”
“Why didn't he throw for himself?”
“O, he said the lottery man knew him and wouldn't let him throw.”
“Of course. Same old story. He saw you were a greeney and got you to throw
for him. He stood in with the game so that you drew a big prize for the
capper, created a big excitement, and you and the crowd sailed in and lost
all the money you had. I'll bet he was a man with a velvet coat, and a
moustache dyed a dead black and waxed as sharp as a cambric needle.”
“Yes; that's his description to a dot. I wonder if he really did do that
a-purpose.”
“Well, tell us about it. It does me good to hear a blamed fool tell how he
lost his money. Don't you see that your awkward ways and general greenness
struck the capper the first thing, and you not only threw away your own
money, but two or three hundred other wappy-jawed pelicans saw you draw a
big prize and thought it was yours, then they deposited what little they
had and everything was lovely.”
“Well, I'll tell you how it was, if it'll do any good and save other young
men in the future. You see this capper, as you call him, gave me a $1 bill
to throw for him, and I put it into my vest pocket so, along with the
dollar bill father gave me. I always carry my money in my right hand vest
pocket. Well, I sailed up to the game, big as old Jumbo himself, and put a
dollar into the game. As you say, I drawed a big prize, $20 and a silver
cup. The man offered me $5 for the cup and I took it.”
“Then it flashed over my mind that I might have got my dollar and the
other feller's mixed, so I says to the proprietor, 'I will now invest a
dollar for a gent who asked me to draw for him.'
“Thereupon I took out the other dollar, and I'll be eternally chastised if
I didn't draw a brass locket worth about two bits a bushel.”
I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I asked him how the capper
acted when he got his brass locket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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