bag of nuggets in the gutter and he raised up his hands, and just
as sure as I sit here tellin' you about it, friends and brothers,
he made a Fourth-of-July speech five minutes long, and never
repeated himself once! I wouldn't go near him, feelin' in his
excited state of mind it might lead to trouble. The little old man
at last dragged him away.

"I picked up them poor mishandled treasures in the gutter, for old
acquaintance sake. And surmisin' it probably wouldn't hardly be
worth my while to wait till I got to the hotel to sample my
prize-package, I opened her on the spot.

"Well, there's no use in talkin'. Them fellers were a pair of
scoundrels. Instead of anything that looked or smelt or sounded
like money in that parcel, was nothin' but a lot of newspapers cut
into strips, with a note on top of 'em bearin' these insultin'
words:

"'_There's a sucker born every minute_.'

"Then I counted up on my fingers fourteen drinks and one
five-dollar dinner, and says I to myself:

"'Ya-a-as,' says I, 'I don't reckon but what that's true.'"




III