you know or not.

He said with great assurance that the little, low, yellow bush was
"Mexican saddle blanket" or "Tinder bush," this last because it burns
like tinder in the fall of the year.

"Why, that bush is so dry," he said, "that once when I lighted it to
cook my bacon for breakfast it traveled so fast that by the time my
bacon was cooked I was five miles from camp."

I laughed--I couldn't help it when I imagined that six-footer traveling
across the desert with a frying pan over that low bush. I laughed
because it was so real to me, but he misunderstood, and said so sort of
hurt, "Don't you believe me?"

And I told him I did. And I did. And I do. Five miles isn't a great
distance to travel over the desert after one's bacon.

Mr. Mazzini and Dante

Mr. Mazzini will never be rich. He takes too much time for philosophy
and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his
heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is old,
Theocritus knew him well.

"You pick me out some good cantaloupes," I said with deadly tact, and
Mr. Mazzini answered that it couldn't be done and that melons were like
men, that there was no sure way of picking them out for their kindness
of heart. Then he took time over the melons to tell me how his mother in
Italy, who was evidently something of a match-maker, had gotten fooled
on a young man who was both "laze" and "steenge" in his youth but who
made a very good husband.

One day it was figs, and I was strong for the nice appearing ones, but
Mr. Mazzini told me a lot about figs and chose me some that were
lop-sided from packing. What delicious figs they were, all stored with
sunshine and sweetness and flavor just as he had told me. Mr. Mazzini
owns his own store, and yet when he throws in a few extra, as he always
does, because they are soft or a little specked, he will wink and glance
slyly around just as though he were putting one over on the boss.

One morning I saw him sweeping out his store and he wore a woman's
sweeping cap with the strings tied under his grisly old chin. When I saw
him I just stood and laughed aloud, and he asked me why not, and said
that a sweeping cap was just as good for a man as for a woman, and then
he stopped his sweeping and gave me quite a male feminist talk. And he
has a horse, Mr. Mazzini has, a fat old plug that peeks around his
blinders as humorously as his master. Oh, I could just keep on talking
about Mr