ecause he has two bottles of rye whiskey under his
linen duster. You know, I think, the peculiar walk of a man with two
bottles of whiskey in the inside pockets of a linen coat. In Mariposa,
you see, to bring beer to an excursion is quite in keeping with public
opinion. But, whiskey,--well, one has to be a little careful.

Do I say that Mr. Smith is here? Why, everybody's here. There's Hussell
the editor of the Newspacket, wearing a blue ribbon on his coat, for
the Mariposa Knights of Pythias are, by their constitution, dedicated to
temperance; and there's Henry Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank,
also a Knight of Pythias, with a small flask of Pogram's Special in his
hip pocket as a sort of amendment to the constitution. And there's Dean
Drone, the Chaplain of the Order, with a fishing-rod (you never saw
such green bass as lie among the rocks at Indian's Island), and with
a trolling line in case of maskinonge, and a landing net in case of
pickerel, and with his eldest daughter, Lilian Drone, in case of young
men. There never was such a fisherman as the Rev. Rupert Drone.

Perhaps I ought to explain that when I speak of the excursion as being
of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any
narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the Knights
of Pythias just as they do to everything else. That's the great thing
about the town and that's what makes it so different from the city.
Everybody is in everything.

You should see them on the seventeenth of March, for example, when
everybody wears a green ribbon and they're all laughing and glad,--you
know what the Celtic nature is,--and talking about Home Rule.

On St. Andrew's Day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands
with everybody else, and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming out
of their eyes.

And on St. George's Day!--well, there's no heartiness like the good old
English spirit, after all; why shouldn't a man feel glad that he's an
Englishman?

Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and stripes flying over half
the stores in town, and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars,
and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and the Philippine Islands.
Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe's people came from
Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at Bunker Hill (it must have
been Bunker Hill,--anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all
right enough); and you find that George Duff h