And he took a step forward. At this point I interfered. A Bit of
Chivalry.

At Woodward's Garden, in the city of San Francisco, is a rather
badly chiselled statue of Pandora pulling open her casket of ills.
Pandora's raiment, I grieve to state, has slipped down about her
waist in a manner exceedingly reprehensible. One evening about
twilight, I was passing that way, and saw a long gaunt miner,
evidently just down from the mountains, and whom I had seen before,
standing rather unsteadily in front of Pandora, admiring her shapely
figure, but seemingly afraid to approach her. Seeing me advance, he
turned to me with a queer, puzzled expression in his funny eyes, and
said with an earnestness that came near defeating its purpose, "Good
ev'n'n t'ye, stranger." "Good evening, sir," I replied, after having
analyzed his salutation and extracted the sense of it. Lowering his
voice to what was intended for a whisper, the miner, with a jerk of
his thumb Pandoraward, continued: "Stranger, d'ye hap'n t'know 'er?"
"Certainly; that is Bridget Pandora, a Greek maiden, in the pay of
the Board of Supervisors."

He straightened himself up with a jerk that threatened the integrity
of his neck and made his teeth snap, lurched heavily to the other
side, oscillated critically for a few moments, and muttered:
"Brdgtpnd--." It was too much for him; he went down into his
pocket, fumbled feebly round, and finally drawing out a paper of
purely hypothetical tobacco, conveyed it to his mouth and bit off
about two-thirds of it, which he masticated with much apparent
benefit to his understanding, offering what was left to me. He then
resumed the conversation with the easy familiarity of one who has