orning there was hectic
gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of
Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main
port-cullis.'
"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool
warehouse listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is some
gravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and
conclusions,' says the man.
"'Well, I hope he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for
trade languishes.'
"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two
Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.
We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his
hands and feet.
"Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. I
met a man who told me all about it. Andy had made the finest two hour
speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in
the world.
"'What was it about?' I asked.
"'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every man in Bird
City signed the pledge for a year.'"
JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET
Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as
there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S.C.
Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold
liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth,
heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune
for his last coin.
"I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw," said he, "in a buckskin suit,
moccasins, long hair and a thirty-carat diamond ring that I got from
an actor in Texarkana. I don't know what he ever did with the pocket
knife I swapped him for it.
"I was Dr. Waugh-hoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried
only one best bet just then, and that was Resurrection Bitters. It
was made of life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by
Ta-qua-la, the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while
gathering truck to garnish a platter of boiled dog for the annual corn
dance.
"Business hadn't been good in the last town, so I only had five
dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for
half a gross of eight-ounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and
ingredients in my valise, left over from the last town. Life began to
look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running
from the tap, and the Resurrection Bitters lining up on t
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