Mr. Scraggs | Page 9

pigtail, will industrusly manufacture that same per schedule out of common, ordinary lead, and, by exercisin' the art of gildin', almost whip-saw people by the name of Scraggs, if so it hadn't 'a' been their gardeen angel moved 'em to try a sample with the edge of a knife.'
"Was I warned? Well, I dunno, anyhow, I trotted myself out to the street to see what this here Metropolus business had to offer different from just plain St. Looey.
"And I found out. Dear friends and brothers, I wonder have you ever seen a man reachin', reachin' for a playin'-card layin' prostrate on the table before him, when his last chip is in the pile, his last cent in the chip, all manners and kinds of bills comin' due tomorrow, the house to close in fifteen minutes, and hopin' that card is just one more little two-spot? Are you familiar with the lines of anggwish on his face? Well, of all the hullabaloo, skippin', flyin', pushin', haulin', rompin', tearin', maulin' and scratchin' messes I ever got into, that street was the worst. At the end of fifteen minutes I had no life in me above my feet, and they was simply slidin', the one before the other, without any aim or purpose. I stood on a corner clawin' hunks of fog off my intellect. In two minutes more I'd ha' yearned for Mrs. Scraggs and Home. I lost all intention of drawin' sustenance out of the inhabitants, when all of a suddent up steps one of these brisk, smart, zippee-zippee-zizoo-ketch-me-if-you-kin young city fellers, the kind of lu-lu joker to go through a countryman like a lightnin' express through a tunnel, leavin' nothin' but the hole and a little smoke, and says he, in a hurry:
"'Sorry to have kept you waitin', Mr. Johnson, but knowin' how much it meant to both of us, I----Oh, I beg your pardon!' says he; 'I mistook you for a friend of mine--no offense, I hope?'
"Now, this same person had on a soup-pot hat that looked borrowed, and he wore his clothes like he used 'em for a hiding-place, but how was a plain jaybird like me to notice that? I was almighty lonesome, too, so I told him there weren't no offense at all. Well, he apologized again, and then he begun to laugh, it was so ridiklus, his mistakin' me for Johnson, that he'd knew all his life, and he says, 'I'll tell you what I'll do; we'll step across the street and tone up our systems at my expense, thereby wipin' out any animosity.' So, of course, rather than be peevish, I done it. Then I tried to wipe out some animosity, but he wouldn't have it. Nobody must buy but him. I explained--givin' myself dead away--that I was a stranger, with nothin' to do but hate myself to death, and he was defraudin' me of a rightful joy. But no, says he. I might be a stranger, or I might not. Personally he thought I'd resided some time in New York City, by my looks; if that was so I knew perfectly well he was only follerin' the customs of the place, and if I was a stranger it was up to him to do right by me, anyhow. So we grew one degree stronger with no cost to Utah. And we stayed there, gettin' powerful as anything, and kind of confidential, too, till finally he felt called upon to explain his business with this man Johnson. He took me into a back room to do it.
"'Mr. Scraggs,' says he, 'there's things betwixt Heaven and Earth that ain't dreamt of on your velocipede, Horatio.'
"'Ya-a-as,' says I.
"'Sh-h-h,' says he, 'not so loud. Here's the opportunity of a lifetime goin' on the loose for want of a man. That durn Johnson has lost his golden show. It's a very strange story,' says he.
"'Ya-a-as,' says I. He looked at me a minute, but Lord! How was a poor Mormon to hold suspicions? So he goes on.
"'At first,' he says, 'you might git the idee there was somethin' jubeeous in these preceedin's, but there ain't. I knew a man that once upon a time was the honestest man ever lived. Honest? Why, I've known that man to go to bed weepin', he felt so bad to learn George Washington stole a march on the enemy. "I never would have believed it of George if it hadn't been in the book," he says. That's the kind of a man he was--just your sort to a dot. Well, sir, he has an honest claim agin these United States for damage and raisin' the divil with his farm durin' the Civil War. And do you suppose these here United States, _E Pluribus Unum_, In God We Trust, paid that bill? Not