“'Mr. Williams,' says I, 'I cal'late I'll tell you a little story, if you want to hear it. 'Tain't much of a yarn, as yarns go, but maybe it'll interest you. The start of it goes back to consider'ble many year ago, when I was poorer'n I be now, and a mighty sight younger. At that time me and another feller, a partner of mine, had a fish weir out in the bay here. The mackerel struck in and we done well, unusual well. At the end of the season, not countin' what we'd spent for livin' and expenses, we had a balance owin' us at our fish dealer's up to Boston of five hundred dollars--two fifty apiece. My partner was goin' to be married in the spring and was cal'latin' to use his share to buy furniture for the new house with. So we decided we'd take a trip up to Boston and collect the money, stick it into some savin's bank where 'twould draw interest until spring and then haul it out and use it. 'Twas about every cent we had in the world. “'So to Boston we went, collected our money, got the address of a safe bank and started out to find it. But on the way my partner's hat blowed off and the bank address, which was on a slip of paper inside of it, got lost. So we see a sign on a buildin', along with a lot of others, that kind of suggested bankin', and so we stepped into the buildin' and went upstairs to ask the way again. “'The place wa'n't very big, but 'twas fixed up fancy and there was a kind of blackboard along the end of the room where a boy was markin' up figgers in chalk. A nice, smilin' lookin' man met us and, when we told him what we wanted, he asked us to set down. Then, afore we knowed it almost, we'd told him the whole story--about the five hundred and all. The feller said to hold on a spell and he'd go along with us and show us where the savin's bank was himself. “'So we waited and all the time the figgers kept goin' up on the board, under signs of “Pork” and “Wheat” and “Cotton” and such, and we'd hear how so and so's account was makin' a thousand a day, and the like of that. After a while the nice man, who it turned out was one of the bosses of the concern, told us what it meant. Seemed there was a big “rise” in the market and them that bought now was bound to get rich quick. Consequent we said we wished we could buy and get rich, too. And the smilin' chap says, “Let's go have some lunch.”' “Williams laughed. 'Ho, ho!' says he. 'Expensive lunch, was it?' “'Most extravagant meal of vittles ever I got away with,' I says. 'Cost me and my partner two hundred and fifty apiece, that lunch did. We stayed in Boston two days, and on the afternoon of the second day we was on our way back totin' a couple of neat but expensive slips of paper signifyin' that we'd bought December and May wheat on a one per cent margin. We was a hundred ahead already, 'cordin' to the blackboard, and was figgerin' what sort of palaces we'd build when we cashed in.'