m_ and _Stock Grower's Guardian_ over the
top.

He slumbered on in a rambling sort of way, snoring all the time in
monosyllables, except when he erroneously swallowed his tonsils, and
then he would struggle awhile and get black in the face, while the
passengers vainly hoped that he had strangled.

While he was thus slumbering, with all the eloquence and enthusiasm of a
man in the full meridian of life, the train stopped with a lurch, and
the brakeman touched his shoulder.

"Here's your town," he said. "We only stop a minute. You'll have to
hustle."

The man, who had been far away, wrestling with Morpheus, had removed his
hat, coat, and boots, and when he awoke his feet absolutely refused to
go back into the same quarters.

[Illustration]

At first he looked around reproachfully at the people in the car. Then
he reached up and got his oilcloth grip from the bracket. The bag was
tied together with a string, and as he took it down the string untied.
Then we all discovered that this man had been on the road for a long
time, with no object, apparently, except to evade laundries. All kinds
of articles fell out in the aisle. I remember seeing a chest-protector
and a linen coat, a slab of seal-brown gingerbread and a pair of stoga
boots, a hairbrush and a bologna sausage, a plug of tobacco and a porous
plaster.

He gathered up what he could in both arms, made two trips to the door
and threw out all he could, tried again to put his number eleven feet
into his number nine boots, gave it up, and socked himself out of the
car as it began to move, while the brakeman bombarded him through the
window for two miles with personal property, groceries, dry-goods, boots
and shoes, gents' furnishing goods, hardward, notions, _bric-a-brac_,
red herrings, clothing, doughnuts, vinegar bitters, and facetious
remarks.

Then he picked up the retired snorer's railroad check from the seat, and
I heard him say: "Why, dog on it, that wasn't his town after all."

Good-bye er Howdy-do

[Illustration]

Say good-bye er howdy-do--
What's the odds betwixt the two?
Comin'--goin'--every day
Best friends first to go away--
Grasp of hands you druther hold
Than their weight in solid gold,
Slips their grip while greetin' you.--
Say good-bye er howdy-do?

Howdy-do, and then, good-bye--
Mixes jest like laugh and cry;
Deaths and births, and worst and best
Tangled their contrar