the poor, He didn't tell him to
be careful about making them paupers. And Mr. Gabriel Carnine,
Esquire, having the aroma of one large morning's drink on my breath
emboldens me to say, that if you rich men will do your part in giving,
the Lord will manage to keep His side of the traces from scraping on
the wheel. And if I had one more good nip, I'd say, which Heaven
forbid, that you fellows are asking more of the Lord by expecting Him
to save your shrivelled selfish little souls from hell-fire because of
your squeeze-penny charities, than you would be asking by expecting
Him to keep the poor from becoming paupers by the dribs you give them.
And if Mart Culpepper can give his time and his money every day
helping them poor devils down by the track, niggers and whites, good
and bad, male and female, I guess the Lord will put in lick for lick
with Mart and see that his helping doesn't hurt them." Dolan shook his
head at the banker, and then smiled at him good-naturedly as he
finished, "Put that in your knapsack, you son of a gun, and chew on it
till I see you again." Whereupon he turned a corner and went his way.

Carnine laughed rather unnaturally and said to McHurdie, "That's why
he's never got on like the other boys. Whiskey's a bad partner."

McHurdie agreed, and went chuckling to his work, when Carnine turned
into the bank. Later in the forenoon Bailiff Dolan came in grinning,
and took a seat by the stove in McHurdie's shop and said as he reached
into the waste-basket for a scrap of harness leather, and began
whittling it, "What did Gabe say when I left you this morning?" and
without waiting for a reply, went on, "I've thought for some time Gabe
needed a little something for what ails him, and I gave it to him, out
of the goodness of my heart."

McHurdie looked at Dolan over his glasses and replied, "Speech is
silver, but silence is golden."

"The same," answered Dolan, "the same it is, and by the same authority
apples of gold in pictures of silver is a word fitly spoken to a man
like Gabe Gamine." He whittled for a few minutes while the harness
maker worked, and then sticking his pocket-knife into the chair
between his legs, said: "But what I came in to tell you was about Lige
Bemis; did you know he's in town? Well, he is. Johnnie Barclay wired
him to leave the dump up in the City and come down here, and what for,
do you think? 'Tis this. The council was going to change the name of
Ellen Avenue out by the college