, then from her to her forlorn child, who, however, enjoyed
the mud-puddle, and finally commenced a conversation.

"How old is that young one of yours?"

"Pretty near a year--why, let me see--what day is it?--why, I'll be
bound if he ain't _just_ a year old this very day."

"Birthday, eh? You ought to celebrate."

"Humph," said the mother, with a darkening face, "we shall likely; we do
most generally. His loving father will get drunk, and if he don't pitch
Tode head over heels out here on the stones, in honor of his birthday,
I'll be thankful. Tode Mall, you stop crawling out to that gutter, or
I'll shake you within an inch of your life!"

This last, in a louder and most threatening tone, to the ambitious baby.
But poor Tode didn't understand, or forgot, or something, for while his
mother talked with her companion, out he traveled toward the inviting
gutter again, and tumbled into it, from whence he was carried, dripping
and screaming, by his angry mother, who bestowed the promised shake, and
added a vigorous slapping, whereat Tode kicked and yelled in a manner
that proved him to be without doubt a near relative of Master Pliny
Hastings himself. Three brothers they were, Messrs. Pliny, Bennie and
Tode, opening their wondrous eyes on the world on precisely the same day
of time, though under such different circumstances, and amid such
different surroundings, that I doubt if it looked equally round to them
all. Besides, they hadn't the least idea each of the existence of the
other; but no matter for that, they were brothers, linked together in
many a way.

Perhaps you wouldn't have had an idea that their fathers were each
occupied in the same business; but such was the case. Pliny L. Hastings,
the millionaire, owned and kept in motion two of the hotels in a western
city where the bar-rooms were supplied with marble counters, and the
customers were served from cut-glass goblets, resting on silver salvers.
Besides he was a wholesale liquor dealer, and kept great warehouses
constantly supplied with the precious stuff. Bennie Phillips'
good-natured father was a grocer, on a modest and unpretending scale;
but he had a back room in his store where he kept a few barrels of
liquor for medicinal purposes, and a clerk in attendance. Tode Mall's
father kept an unmitigated grog-shop, or rum hole, or whatever name you
are pleased to call it, without any cut glass or medicinal purposes
about it, and sold vile whisky at so much a d