s individuality. If you seen Ben's figure once
you'd know that nothing could make him look like any one else, him being
built on the lines of a grain elevator and having individuality no
clothes on earth could stifle. He's the very last man on earth that
should have coloured braid on his check suits. However!

My trunk is packed in a hurry and I'm down to the 6:10 on time. Lon is
very scared and jubilant over deserting Henrietta in this furtive way,
and Ben is all ebullient in a new suit that looks like a lodge regalia
and Jeff Tuttle in plain clothes is as happy as a child. When I get
there he's already begun to give his imitation of a Sioux squaw with a
hare lip reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night" in her native
language, which he pulls on all occasions when he's feeling too good.
It's some imitation. The Sioux language, even when spoken by a trained
elocutionist, can't be anything dulcet. Jeff's stunt makes it sound like
grinding coffee and shovelling coal into a cellar at the same time.
Anyway, our journey begun happily and proved to be a good one, the days
passing pleasantly while we talked over old times and played ten-cent
limit in my stateroom, though Jeff Tuttle is so untravelled that he'll
actually complain about the food and service in a dining-car. The poor
puzzled old cow-man still thinks you ought to get a good meal in one,
like the pretty bill of fare says you can.

Then one morning we was in New York and Ben Sutton got his first shock.
He believed he was still on the other side of the river because he
hadn't rid in a ferryboat yet. He had to be told sharply by parties in
uniform. But we got him safe to a nice tall hotel on Broadway at last.
Talk about your hicks from the brush--Ben was it, coming back to this
here birthplace of his. He fell into a daze on the short ride to the
hotel--after insisting hotly that we should go to one that was pulled
down ten years ago--and he never did get out of it all that day.

Lon and Jeff was dazed, too. The city filled 'em with awe and they made
no pretense to the contrary. About all they did that day was to buy
picture cards and a few drinks. They was afraid to wander very far from
the hotel for fear they'd get run over or arrested or fall into the new
subway or something calamitous like that. Of course New York was looking
as usual, the streets being full of tired voters tearing up the
car-tracks and digging first-line trenches and so forth.

It was a quiet d