t. The thing was as heavy as two
dollars' worth of corn beef and cabbage. However, I figured I'd get
back at Alex the minute he asked me for a job. I was all set for this
bird, believe me!

"So this is New York, hey?" he pipes through his nose the minute we get
outside the station. He stops dead in the street, gazin' up at the big
buildin's and then down at the crowds like a guy in a trance. All he
needed was a streamer of hay in his mouth and the first seven guys that
passed would of offered to sell him the Bronx. He gasps a couple of
times and wipes his eyes.

"Well, Alex," I says, tryin' hard not to laugh in his face, "what d'ye
think of New York? Considerable burg, eh?"

He shakes his head kinda sad and sighs.

"I'll speak plain to you, cousin," he says. "Of all the rube burgs I
ever seen, this here's the limit!"

I liked to fell down one of them Subway holes!

"Rube town?" I yells. "Where d'ye get that stuff? Are you seekin' to
kid me?"

He grabs me by the shoulders and swings me around.

"Just you look at that crowd of folks on the corner there!" he tells
me. He points over to where half New York is bein' held up in a
traffic jam--wagons, autos, surface cars and guys usin' rubber heels as
a means of locomotion, all waitin' for the cop to say, "Go!"

"Just look at 'em!" repeats Alex, sneering at me. "From the reports
that have reached me, this here's the town where all the brains in the
world is gathered. There's a couple hundred of them brains on the
corner there now, I reckon, and they can't go nowheres till that
constabule gives the word! Huh!" he snorts, turnin' away. "All just a
lot of rubes, that's all!"

We get in a taxi and all the way up Alex kept lookin' out the window,
shakin' his head and mutterin' somethin' about Manhattan bein' a
well-advertised bunk and all the inhabitants thereof bein' hicks. I
don't know whether he was after my goat or not, but in a few minutes he
had it.

"Listen, gentle stranger," I says, when nature could stand no more, "I
realize that New York is nothin' but a flag station and that we're all
Reubens and chew hay, but we have, amongst other things, six million
merry villagers, the biggest buildings in the world, the subway,
gunmen, cabarets, Broadway, and--well, a lot of things that you gotta
admit ain't hit dear old Vermont as yet!"

"And I most sincerely hope and trust they never will!" pipes Alex. "We
don't need 'em! We got good, clean mounta