Shakespeare says that "what the declined is he will as soon read in the eyes of others as feel in his own fall." I was beginning to read in the eyes of others, those who knew that I had been in this roaring Baker City almost a fortnight and was still idle, contempt for my incapacity. Really, I do not believe now that any of them looked on me with contempt; it was only my own inward self-reproach which I imagined there, for men and women are kindlier than we think them in our own dark days. But on that and at that moment it seemed to me as though the very parrot jeered at me. "You don’t savvy this country," said the landlord. "You want always to say, when they ask you: ’Do you understand the work?’ ’why sure! I’m experienced all right; I never done nothing else in my life.’ You want to say that, no matter what the job is you ’re offered. If you want ever to make enough money to be able to get a pack-horse and a outfit and go prospectin’ on your own, that’s what you want to say." "But that would be to tell a downright lie," said I. "Well," drawled the landlord, lifting his soft hat between his thumb and his first finger and scratching his head on the little bald part of the crown with the third finger, the little finger cocked in the air; "well, now that you put it that way—well, I guess it would. I never looked at it that way before. You see, they all ask you first pop: ’Did you ever do it before?’ You says: ’Yes, never did anything else since I left the cradle.’ It’s just a form of words when you strike a man for a job." I broke into a feeble laugh, which the parrot took up with such a raucous voice that the landlord turned and yelled to it: "Shut up!" "I don’t have to!" shrieked the parrot, promptly, and you could have thought that his little eyes sparkled with real indignation. Just then the landlord’s wife appeared at the door. "See here," cried Mr. Laughlin, turning to her, "there ’s that parrot o’ yourn, I told him to shut up his row just now, and he rips back at me, ’I don’t have to!’ What you make o’ that? Are you goin’ to permit that? Everything connected with you seems conspirin’ agin’ me to cheapen me—you and your relations what come here and put up for months on end, and your—your—your derned old grey parrot!" "Abraham Laughlin," said the lady, her green eyes flashing, "you bin drinkin’ ag’in, and ef you ain’t sober to-morrow I go back east home to my mother."