e box-office receipts for one evening. I saw it
stated in the papers at $10,000. Anyway, I will let that go. That is
near enough. When I see anything in the papers I ask no more questions.
I do not think it is right. Patti and I have both made it a rule to put
in at least one evening as an investment where we happen to be. We are
almost sure to do well out of it, and we also get better notices in the
papers.

Patti is not looking so well as she did when my father took me to see
her in the prime of her life. Though getting quite plain, it costs as
much to see her as ever it did. Her voice has a metallic, or rather
bi-metallic, ring to it nowadays, and she misses it by not working in
more topical songs and bright Italian gags.

I asked her about an old singer who used to be with her. She said: "He
was remova to ze ocean, where he keepa ze lighthouse. He learn to
himself how to manage ze lighthouse one seasong; then he try by himself
to star."

Now, if she would do some of those things on the stage it would pay her
first rate.

When I was in Wyoming on that trip I met many old friends, all of whom
shook me warmly by the hand as soon as they saw me. I visited the
Capitol, and both houses adjourned for an hour out of respect to my
memory. I will never again say anything mean of a member of the
legislature. A speech of welcome was made by the gentleman from Crook
county, Mr. Kellogg, the Demosthenes of the coming state. He made
statements about me that day which in the paper read almost as good and
truthful as an epitaph.

Going over the hill, at Crow Creek, whose perfumed waters kiss the
livery stables and abattoirs at Camp Carlin, three slender Sarah
Bernhardt coyotes came towards the train, looking wistfully at me as if
to say: "Why, partner, how you have fleshed up!" Answering them from the
platform of the car, I said: "Go East, young men, and flesh up with the
country." Honestly and seriously, I do think that if the coyote would
change off and try the soft-shell crab diet for a while, he would pick
right up.

When I got to Laramie City the welcome was so warm that it almost wiped
out the memory of my shabby reception in New York harbor last summer,
on my return from Europe, when even my band went back on me and got
drunk at Coney Island on the very money I had given them to use in
welcoming me home again.

Winter had been a little severe along the cattle ranges, and deceased
cattle might be seen extending their