couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'We've got too much money to be implicated in
plain charity; and we haven't got enough to make restitution. So,
we'll look about for something that's about half way between the two.'

"The next day in walking around Floresville we see on a hill a big red
brick building that appears to be disinhabited. The citizens speak up
and tell us that it was begun for a residence several years before by
a mine owner. After running up the house he finds he only had $2.80
left to furnish it with, so he invests that in whiskey and jumps off
the roof on a spot where he now requiescats in pieces.

"As soon as me and Andy saw that building the same idea struck both of
us. We would fix it up with lights and pen wipers and professors, and
put an iron dog and statues of Hercules and Father John on the lawn,
and start one of the finest free educational institutions in the world
right there.

"So we talks it over to the prominent citizens of Floresville, who
falls in fine with the idea. They give a banquet in the engine house
to us, and we make our bow for the first time as benefactors to the
cause of progress and enlightenment. Andy makes an hour-and-a-half
speech on the subject of irrigation in Lower Egypt, and we have a
moral tune on the phonograph and pineapple sherbet.

"Andy and me didn't lose any time in philanthropping. We put every man
in town that could tell a hammer from a step ladder to work on the
building, dividing it up into class rooms and lecture halls. We wire
to Frisco for a car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders,