ked over my shoulder as I was reading a novel. "Well, son,"
said he, "what they doing now, KISSING OR KILLING?"

Nor are the complete phrases behind in aptness. I have space for only
a few examples, but they will illustrate what I mean. Speaking of a
companion who was "putting on too much dog," I was informed, "He walks
like a man with a new suit of WOODEN UNDERWEAR!" Or again, in answer
to my inquiry as to a mutual acquaintance, "Jim? Oh, poor old Jim!
For the last week or so he's been nothing but an insignificant atom of
humanity hitched to a boil."

But to observe the riot of imagination turned loose with the bridle
off, you must assist at a burst of anger on the part of one of these
men. It is mostly unprintable, but you will get an entirely new idea
of what profanity means. Also you will come to the conclusion that
you, with your trifling DAMNS, and the like, have been a very good boy
indeed. The remotest, most obscure, and unheard of conceptions are
dragged forth from earth, heaven, and hell, and linked together in a
sequence so original, so gaudy, and so utterly blasphemous, that you
gasp and are stricken with the most devoted admiration. It is genius.

Of course I can give you no idea here of what these truly magnificent
oaths are like. It is a pity, for it would liberalize your education.
Occasionally, like a trickle of clear water into an alkali torrent, a
straight English sentence will drop into the flood. It is refreshing
by contrast, but weak.

"If your brains were all made of dynamite, you couldn't blow the top of
your head off."

"I wouldn't speak to him if I met him in hell carrying a lump of ice in
his hand."

"That little horse'll throw you so high the blackbirds will build nests
in your hair before you come down."

These are ingenious and amusing, but need the blazing settings from
which I have ravished them to give them their due force.

In Arizona a number of us were sitting around the feeble camp-fire the
desert scarcity of fuel permits, smoking our pipes. We were all
contemplative and comfortably silent with the exception of one very
youthful person who had a lot to say. It was mainly about himself.
After he had bragged awhile without molestation, one of the older
cow-punchers grew very tired of it. He removed his pipe deliberately,
and spat in the fire.

"Say, son," he drawled, "if you want to say something big, why don't
you say 'elephant'?"

The young fellow subsided.