Mr. Kelley choked again.

"Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it that
you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she
make?"





III

BABES IN THE JUNGLE


Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says
to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get
too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the
West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in
chunks of roe--you can't count 'em!"

Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the
Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I
knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.

I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And
I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of
haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his
nails with a silk handkerchief.