to
complate your costume, but barrin' clothes, I'm entangled in the thrid
of your discourse. Bein' a Boston man meself, it appeals to me, that I
detict the refinemint of the East in yer voice. Now these, me frinds,
that I've just been tratin', are men of these parts; but we of the
middle East don't set up to equal the culture of the extreme East. So,
Mr. O'Khayam, solely for the benefit you might be to us, I'm askin' you
to join me and me frinds in the momenchous initiation of me new milk
pail."

Jimmy lifted a brimming glass, and offered it to the Thread Man. "Do
you transmute?" he asked. Now if the Boston man had looked Jimmy in the
eye, and said "I do," this book would not have been written. But he did
not. He looked at the milk pail, and the glass, which had passed
through the hands of a dozen men in a little country saloon away out in
the wilds of Indiana, and said: "I do not care to partake of further
refreshment; if I can be of intellectual benefit, I might remain for a
time."

For a flash Jimmy lifted the five feet ten of his height to six; but in
another he shrank below normal. What appeared to the Thread Man to be a
humble, deferential seeker after wisdom, led him to one of the chairs
around the big coal base burner. But the boys who knew Jimmy were
watching the whites of his eyes, as they drank the second round. At
this stage Jimmy was on velvet. How long he remained there depended on
the depth of Melwood in the milk pail between his knees. He smiled
winningly on the Thread Man.

"Ye know, Mister O'Khayam," he said, "at the present time you are
located in one of the wooliest parts of the wild East. I don't suppose
anything woolier could be found on the plains of Nebraska where I am
reliably informed they've stuck up a pole and labeled it the cinter of
the United States. Being a thousand miles closer that pole than you are
in Boston, naturally we come by that distance closer to the great wool
industry. Most of our wool here grows on our tongues, and we shear it
by this transmutin' process, concerning which you have discoursed so
beautiful. But barrin' the shearin' of our wool, we are the mildest,
most sheepish fellows you could imagine. I don't reckon now there is a
man among us who could be induced to blat or to butt, under the most
tryin' circumstances. My Mary's got a little lamb, and all the rist of
the boys are lambs. But all the lambs are waned, and clusterin' round
the milk pail. Ain't that touchin'