d chewing
tobacco. It's a gift with me not to be penurious with my conversation.

"But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemiousness
in regard to the parts of speech. At the end of three weeks nobody in
the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the
waiter in the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of
syntax wasn't nothing but plagiarisms from the bill of fare, he never
satisfied my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood
next to a man at a bar he'd edge off and give a Baldwin-Ziegler look
as if he suspected me of having the North Pole concealed on my person.
I began to wish that I'd gone to Abilene or Waco for my _paseado_; for
the mayor of them places will drink with you, and the first citizen
you meet will tell you his middle name and ask you to take a chance
in a raffle for a music box.

"Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious
with something more loquacious than a lamp post, a fellow in a caffy
says to me, says he:

"'Nice day!'

"He was a kind of a manager of the place, and I reckon he'd seen me
in there a good many times. He had a face like a fish and an eye like
Judas, but I got up and put one arm around his neck.

"'Pardner,' I says, 'sure it's a nice day. You're the first gentleman
in all New York to observe that the intricacies of human speech might
not be altogether wasted on William Kingsbury. But don't you think,'
says I, 'that 'twas a little cool early in the morning; and ain't
there a feeling of rain in the air to-night? But along about noon it
sure was gallupsious weather. How's all up to the house? You doing
right well with the caffy, now?'

"Well, sir, that galoot just turns his back and walks off stiff,
without a word, after all my trying to be agreeable! I didn't know
what to make of it. That night I finds a note from Summers, who'd
been away from town, giving the address of his camp. I goes up to
his house and has a good, old-time talk with his folks. And I tells
Summers about the actions of this coyote in the caffy, and desires
interpretation.

"'Oh,' says Summers, 'he wasn't intending to strike up a conversation
with you. That's just the New York style. He'd seen you was a regular
customer and he spoke a word or two just to show you he appreciated
your custom. You oughtn't to have followed it up. That's about as far
as we care to go with a stranger. A word or so about the weather may
be ventur