for the winter, with plenty to send a mess round to the neighbours now
and then.

And knocking beef, you understand, till you'd think no one but criminals
and idiots would ever touch a real steak again, on account of its being
so poor in food values, like this Washington scientist says that gets a
dollar a year salary and earns every cent of it. It made me mad, the
slanderous things they said about beef; but I read the piece over pretty
carefully and I really couldn't see where the whale was going to put me
out of business, at least for a couple years yet. It looked like I'd have
time, anyway, to make a clean-up before you'd be able to go into any
butcher shop and get a rib roast of young whale for six cents, with a
bushel or two of scraps thrown in for the dog.

Then this Sunday paper goes out to the bunk house and the boys find the
whale piece and get excited about it. Looks like if it's true that most
of 'em will be driving ice wagons or something for a living. They want
me to send down for a mess of whale meat so they can see if it tastes
like regular food. They don't hardly believe these pictures where people
dressed up like they had money are going into spasms of delight about it.
Still, they don't know--poor credulous dubs! They think things you see in
a Sunday paper might be true now and then, even if it is most always a
pack of lies thought up by dissipated newspaper men.

I tell 'em they can send for a whole whale if they want to pay for it,
but none of my money goes that way so long as stall-fed beef retains its
present flavour; and furthermore I expect to be doing business right here
for years after the whale fad has died out--doing the best I can with
about ten silly cowhands taking the rest cure at my expense the minute I
step off the place. I said there was no doubt they should all be added to