"No, you don't," he answered, squirming around. "You said you wouldn't
if I held on tight."

"That's all right," I said, "but I'm going to, just the same. The
fellows who go up in balloons are bad, unprincipled men, and I'm going
to give you a lesson right now to make you stay away from them, and from
balloons, too."

And then I gave it to him, and if it wasn't the greatest thrashing in
the world, it was the greatest he ever got.

But it took all the grit out of me, left me nerve-broken, that
experience. I canceled the engagement with the street railway company,
and later on went in for gas. Gas is much the safer, anyway.




BALD-FACE


"Talkin' of bear----"

The Klondike King paused meditatively, and the group on the hotel porch
hitched their chairs up closer.

"Talkin' of bear," he went on, "now up in the Northern Country there are
various kinds. On the Little Pelly, for instance, they come down that
thick in the summer to feed on the salmon that you can't get an Indian