afternoon about 6
or 7,' says he, 'and we'll have dinner together. Be good.'

"After Whiskers had gone Andy looked at me curious and doubtful.

"'Well, Jeff,' says he, 'it looks like the ravens are trying to feed
us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to
have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside
too often. I know this is something like paternalism, but don't you
think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about enough knocking at
our door?'

"I put my feet up on the table and my hands in my pockets, which is an
attitude unfavorable to frivolous thoughts.

"'Andy,' says I, 'this man with the hirsute whiskers has got us in a
predicament. We can't move hand or foot with his money. You and me
have got a gentleman's agreement with Fortune that we can't break.
We've done business in the West where it's more of a fair game. Out
there the people we skin are trying to skin us, even the farmers and
the remittance men that the magazines send out to write up Goldfields.
But there's little sport in New York city for rod, reel or gun. They
hunt here with either one of two things--a slungshot or a letter of
introduction. The town has been stocked so full of carp that the game
fish are all gone. If you spread a net here, do you catch legitimate
suckers in it, such as the Lord intended to be caught--fresh guys who
know it all, sports with a little coin and the nerve to play another
man's game, street crowds out for the fun of dropping a dollar or
two and village smarties who know just where the little pea is? No,
sir,' says I. 'What the grafters live on here is widows and orphans,
and foreigners who save up a bag of money and hand it out over the
first counter they see with an iron railing to it, and factory girls
and little shopkeepers that never leave the block they do business
on. That's what they call suckers here. They're nothing but canned
sardines, and all the bait you need to catch 'em is a pocketknife and
a soda cracker.

"'Now, this cigar man,' I went on, 'is one of the types. He's lived
twenty years on one street without learning as much as you would
in getting a once-over shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas
crossroads town. But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all
the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of
street cars or paying out money to wire-tappers or standing under a
safe that's being hoisted into a skyscraper. When a