e to fool around. I
want their promise before I go to bed--I ain't the talking kind, I'm the
DOING kind!"

"Yes ... you've come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?"

"Just an hour ago."

"When are you intending to leave?"

"For New York tomorrow evening--for San Francisco next morning."

"Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?"

"DO! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition and the
delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?"

"Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?"

"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.--got to get the appointment
confirmed--I reckon you'll grant that?"

"Yes ... yes," said Riley, meditatively, "you are right again. Then
you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San
Francisco next morning?"

"That's it--that's the way I map it out!"

Riley considered a while, and then said:

"You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?"

"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man to go fooling
around--I'm a man that DOES things, I tell you."

The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood
silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he
looked up and said:

"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, once? ...
But I see you haven't."

He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened
him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold
his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched
comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a
wintry midnight tempest:

"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time. Gadsby's was
the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee
about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid
four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond
of and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the
landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said,
'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait--

said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim
against the government to collect, would run across the way, to
the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to
Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.

"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed