grade between Custer and Rocky Point. Well, sir, Clarence
wound his head 'round one brake wheel and his tail around the other,
and held that train together to the bottom of the grade. But it
stretched him twenty-eight feet and they had to advertise him as a
boa-constrictor."

Windy Bill's story of the faithful bullsnake aroused to reminiscence
the grizzled stranger, who thereupon held forth as follows:

Wall, I've see things and I've heerd things, some of them ornery, and
some you'd love to believe, they was that gorgeous and improbable.
Nat'ral history was always my hobby and sportin' events my special
pleasure and this yarn of Windy's reminds me of the only chanst I ever
had to ring in business and pleasure and hobby all in one grand
merry-go-round of joy. It come about like this:

One day, a few year back, I was sittin' on the beach at Santa Barbara
watchin' the sky stay up, and wonderin' what to do with my year's
wages, when a little squinch-eye round-face with big bow spectacles
came and plumped down beside me.

"Did you ever stop to think," says he, shovin' back his hat, "that if
the horsepower delivered by them waves on this beach in one single hour
could be concentrated behind washin' machines, it would be enough to
wash all the shirts for a city of four hundred and fifty-one thousand
one hundred and thirty-six people?"

"Can't say I ever did," says I, squintin' at him sideways.

"Fact," says he, "and did it ever occur to you that if all the food a
man eats in the course of a natural life could be gathered together at
one time, it would fill a wagon-train twelve miles long?"

"You make me hungry," says I.

"And ain't it interestin' to reflect," he goes on, "that if all the
finger-nail parin's of the human race for one year was to be collected
and subjected to hydraulic pressure it would equal in size the pyramid
of Cheops?"

"Look yere," says I, sittin' up, "did YOU ever pause to excogitate that
if all the hot air you is dispensin' was to be collected together it
would fill a balloon big enough to waft you and me over that Bullyvard
of Palms to yonder gin mill on the corner?"

He didn't say nothin' to that--just yanked me to my feet, faced me
towards the gin mill above mentioned, and exerted considerable pressure
on my arm in urgin' of me forward.

"You ain't so much of a dreamer, after all," thinks I. "In important
matters you are plumb decisive."

We sat down at little tables, and my frien