answer, O Beloved of the Short Arm Jab!

Ponder thereon, ye Little Brothers of the Knock-Out Drops, Five Hundred
and Seventy-five Thousand books sold (and mine is twelve per cent. of
the gross) while you are STILL drawing your little $18 per and STILL
singing second tenor in the Anvil Chorus.

Now O, sweet-scented Companions of the Crimp, and Brethren of the
Double-Cross, ask your weazened little souls what's the use?

Skiddoo for yours!

G. V. H.

SKIDDOO

CHAPTER I

JOHN HENRY ON UPPER BERTHS

I was down on the card to make a quick jump to Pittsburg a few nights
ago, and I'm a lemon if I didn't draw an upper berth in the sleeping
car thing!

Say! I'll be one of a party of six to go before Congress and tell all
I know about an upper berth.

And I'd like to tell it right now while I'm good and hot around the
collar.

The upper berth in a sleeping car is the same relation to comfort that
a carpet tack is to a bare foot.

As a place to tie up a small bundle of sleep a boiler factory has it
beat to a whimper.

Strong men weep every time the ticket agent says, "Nothing left but an
upper," and lovely women have hysterics and begin to make faces at the
general public when the colored porter points up in the air and says,
"Madam, your eagle's nest is ready far up the mountain side."

The sleeping car I butted into a few nights ago was crowded from the
cellar to the attic and everybody present bumped into everybody else,
and when they weren't bumping into each other they were over in a
corner somewhere biting their nails.

While the porter was cooking up my attack of insomnia I went out in the
smoking-room to drown my sorrow, but I found such a bunch of sorrow
killers out there ahead of me that I had to hold the comb and brush in
my lap and sit up on the towel rack while I took a little smoke.

Did you ever notice on your travels that peculiar hog on the train who
pays two dollars for a berth and always displaces eight dollars' worth
of space in the smoking car?

If he would bite the end of a piece of rope and light up occasionally
it wouldn't be so bad, but nix on the smoke for him.

He simply sits there with a face like a fish and keeps George Nicotine
and all the real rag burners from enjoying a smoke.

If ever a statue is needed of the patriot Buttinski I would suggest a
model in the person of the smokeless smoker who always travels in the
smoking-car.

Two busy gazabes were discussing p