Our Optimist directed us to a nearby sports’-goods shop, recommending us to the care of a certain “Reggi,” who, he guaranteed, would not try to sell us the entire store. Confidently we sought the place,--a paradise where elk-skin boots, fleecy mufflers, sleeping bags, leather coats, pink hunting habits and folding stoves lure the very pocketbooks out of one’s hands. We asked for Mr. Reggi, who did not look as Italian as his name. He proved a sympathetic guide, steering us to the camping department. He restrained himself from selling the most expensive outfits he had. At the price of a fascinating morning and fifty-odd dollars, we parted from him, owners of a silk tent, mosquito and snake proof, which folded into an infinitesimal canvas bag, a tin lantern, which folded flat, a tin biscuit baker which collapsed into nothing, a nest of cooking and eating utensils, which folded and fitted into one two-gallon pail, a can opener, a hunting knife, doomed to be our most cherished treasure, a flashlight, six giant safety-pins, and a folding stove. The charm of an article which collapses and becomes something else than it seems I cannot analyze nor resist. Others feel it too; I know a man who once stopped a South American revolution by stepping into the Plaza and opening and shutting his opera hat. Only one incident marred our satisfaction with the morning’s work; we discovered, on saying farewell to Reggi, that we had been calling him by his first name! CHAPTER II FROM NEW YORK TO ANTOINE’S There were, we found, three ways to transport an automobile from New York to Texas; to drive it ourselves, and become mired in Southern “gumbo,” to ship it by rail, and become bankrupt while waiting weeks for delivery, or, cheaper and altogether more satisfactory, to send it by freight steamer to Galveston. By this means we avoided the need of crating our lumbering vehicle; we also could calculate definitely its date of arrival, and by taking a passenger boat to New Orleans, and going thence by rail, be at the port to meet it.