r
question. Finally, they persuaded me to take the gold cure.'

"'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I, 'why
not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me
there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go and
disincorporate himself of his windy numbers along the seashore.'

"'No,' says Andy, 'I must have an audience. I feel like if I once
turned loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the Grand
Young Sphinx of the Wabash. I've got to get an audience together,
Jeff, and get this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on me
and I'd go about feeling like a deckle-edge edition de luxe of Mrs. E.
D. E. N. Southworth.'

"'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desire
for vocality seem to be connected with?' I asks.

"'I ain't particular,' says Andy. 'I am equally good and varicose on
all subjects. I can take up the matter of Russian immigration, or
the poetry of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature,
or drainage, and make my audience weep, cry, sob and shed tears by
turns.'

"'Well, Andy,' says I, 'if you are bound to get rid of this
accumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work it
on some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the
business. Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork
and beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 more
by midnight.'

"So Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men on
the street and talking to 'em. By and by he has half a dozen in a
bunch listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms and
elocuting at a good-sized crowd on a corner. When he walks away they
string out after him, talking all the time; and he leads 'em down the
main street of Bird City with more men joining the procession as they
go. It reminded me of the old legerdemain that I'd read in books about
the Pied Piper of Heidsieck charming the children away from the town.

[Illustration: "And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City."]

"One o'clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire for
place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets were
deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There
was only a light drizzle falling then.

"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to
scrape the mud off his boots.

"'Pardner,' says I, 'what has happened? This m