"Just drop your bag on her feet and come into the smoker. She's got
your game beat," and he passed on down the aisle of that car. I acted
upon that very kind advice and I am glad that from the weight of the
bag I got at least a small action from the stiff lady if only a groan
and a glare. Also I should have been grateful that she had so
discourteously treated me so that I was fortunate to receive the
attention of Mr. George Slade of Detroit as my first experience in
American manhood.

That Mr. Slade of Detroit is a man of remarkable adventures, and he
related to me many of them as he sat with me in the place reserved for
the smoking of gentlemen. They were all about ladies who resided in
the different towns to which he traveled in the pursuit of selling
cigars, and he called them all by the name of "skirts."

"I tell you, Mr. Dago, there is a skirt in Louisville, Kentucky, that
is such a peach that you'd call for the cream jug on sight. It would
pay you to stop off and see her. She's on the level all right, but any
friend that took a line from me would be nuts to her. See?" And he
bestowed upon me a pleasant wink from his eye. To that I made no
response. I could make none.

"Now, Mr. Robert Carruthers," I had said to myself at the beginning of
the first story of "skirts," "you will find yourself obliged to be in
the presence of men as one of their kind and not throw scalding tea in
their faces when they speak of ladies. You are of a great ignorance
about the brute that is known as man and you must learn to know him as
you do the wild hog in hunting." But even for the sake of a larger
education I could not remain, and I fled from that Mr. Slade of