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reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary
table in the "Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they used
to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two
stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about
their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the
Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper
folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that
that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial
satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless
son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the
bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the
guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.
Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to
take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face
lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he
broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato
cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it
occasionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still
more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and
rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of
concentrated awe:
"Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if I
want any breakfast!"
And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend
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