"'Me?' says the old party, stabbin' at his shirt bosom with his thumb; 'me? I'm a scientist.' "'Which the news is exhilaratin' an' interestin',' I says; 'shake ag'in! If thar's one thin-I regyards high, it's a scientist. Whatever partic'lar wagon-track do you-all follow off, may I ask?' "It's then this old gent an' I la'nches into a gen'ral discussion onder the head of mes'lancous business, I reckons, an' lie puts it up his long suit, as he calls it, is `moral epidemics.' He says he's wrote one book onto 'em, an' sw'ar:; he'll write another if nobody heads him off; the same bein' on-likely. As he sees how I'm interested, the old sport sets down an' lays it out to me how sentiments goes in herds an' droves, same as weather an' things like that. "'Oneday you rolls out in the mornin',' this old gent declar's, `an' thar you reads how everybody commits sooicide. Then some other day it's murder, then robbery, an' ag'in, the whole round-up goes to holdin' them church meetin's an' gettin' religion. Them's waves; moral epidemics,' he says. "Which this don't look so egreegious none as a statement, neither, an' so after pow-wowin' a lot, all complacent an' genial, I tells the old gent he's got a good game, an' I thinks myse'f his system has p'ints. At this, he admits he's flattered; an' then, as we're gettin' to the ends of our lariats, we tips our sombreros to each other an' lets it go at that. To-morry he's goin' to confer on me his book; which I means to read it, an' then I'll savey more about his little play. "But," continued my friend, warm with his new philosophy, "this yere is all preelim'nary, an' brings me back to what I remarks at the jump; that what that old gent urges recalls this dumb an' deef man incident; which it sort o' backs his play. It's a time when a passel of us gets overcome by waves of sentiment that a-way, an' not only turns a hoss-thief loose entire, after the felon's done been run down, but Boggs waxes that sloppy he lavishes a hoss an' saddle onto him; likewise sympathy, an' wishes him luck. "The whole racket's that onnacheral I never does quit wonderin' about it; but now this old science sharp expounds his theory of 'moral epidemics,' it gets cl'ared up in my mind, an' I reckons, as he says, it's shorely one of them waves. "Tell the story? Thar's nothin' much to said yarn, only the onpreecedented leeniency wherewith we winds it up. In the first place, I don't know what this hoss-thief's name is, for he's plum deef an' dumb, an' ain't sayin' a word. I sees him hoverin' 'round, but I don't say nothin' to him. I observes him once or twice write things to folks he has to talk with on a piece of paper, but it's too slow a racket for me, too much like conversin' by freight that a-way, an' I declines to stand in on it. I don't like to write well enough to go openin' a correspondence with strangers who's deef an' dumb.