pick the shell the
ball's under now."

"'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He only
had $860 cash in the house. When I left he followed me to the gate.
There was tears in his eyes when he shook hands.

"'"Bunk," says he, "thank you for the only real pleasure I've had in
years. It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an
agriculturalist. God bless you."'"

Here Jeff Peters ceased, and I inferred that his story was done.

"Then you think"--I began.

"Yes," said Jeff. "Something like that. You let the farmers go ahead
and amuse themselves with politics. Farming's a lonesome life; and
they've been against the shell game before."

THE CHAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS

"I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of
more than fifty millions of dollars," said I.

I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff
Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut.

"Which same," said Jeff, "calls for a new deck, and a recitation by
the entire class in philanthromathematics."

"Is that an allusion?" I asked.

"It is," said Jeff. "I never told you about the time when me and Andy
Tucker was philanthropists, did I? It was eight years ago in Arizona.
Andy and me was out in the Gila mountains with a two-horse wagon
prospecting for silver. We struck it, and sold out to parties in
Tucson for $25,000. They paid our check at the bank in silver--a
thousand dollars in a sack. We loaded it in our wagon and drove
east a hundred miles before we recovered our presence of intellect.
Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn't sound like so much when you're
reading the annual report of the Pennsylvania Railroad or listening to
an actor talking about his salary; but when you can raise up a wagon
sheet and kick around your bootheel and hear every one of 'em ring
against another it makes you feel like you was a night-and-day bank
with the clock striking twelve.

"The third day out we drove into one of the most specious and tidy
little towns that Nature or Rand and McNally ever turned out. It was
in the foothills, and mitigated with trees and flowers and about 2,000
head of cordial and dilatory inhabitants. The town seemed to be called
Floresville, and Nature had not contaminated it with many railroads,
fleas or Eastern tourists.

"Me and Andy deposited our money to the credit of Peters and Tucker in
the Esperanza Savings Bank, and got rooms at the Skyview Hote