a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in
their hair, and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms.
They don't look easy to me."

"You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emigrants have it. New York's
bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll
be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because
they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicide
sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears
the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and
Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a
blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break
the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of
twenties."

"I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had
been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of farmers
is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 'em to sign
a petition for a new post office that you can discount for $200 at
the county bank. The people here appear to possess instincts of
self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are not cultured
enough to tackle this game."

"Don't worry," says Silver. "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown
correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East River
ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broadway
who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives!
A good, live hustling Western man ought to get conspicuous enough here
inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's
displeasure."