and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,' he says,
`an' try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.'

"Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked
her under m' arm, and we hit it up across the ocean.
Went t' Germany, knowin' that it would feel homelike
there, an' we took in all the swell baden, and chased up
the Jungfrau -- sa-a-ay, that's a classy little mountain,
that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess.
She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture
postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, girl, was I lonesome! Maybe
that trip done me good. Anyway, I'm livin' yet. I stuck it
out for four months, an' that ain't so rotten for a guy who
just grew up on printer's ink ever since he was old
enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well,
one day mother an' me was sittin' out on one of them
veranda cafes they run to over there, w'en somebody hits
me a crack on the shoulder, an' there stands old Ryan who
used t' do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for
some big New York syndicate papers over there.

"`Well if it ain't Blackie!' he says. `What in Sam
Hill are you doing out of your own cell when Milwaukee's
just got four more games t' win the pennant?'

"Sa-a-a-ay, girl, w'en I got through huggin' him
around the neck an' buyin' him drinks I knew it was me
for the big ship. `Mother,' I says, `if you got anybody
on your mind that you neglected t' send picture postals
to, now's' your last chance. 'F I got to die I'm going