"O nut'n'; only I thing you make me luck; nine, h-eighteen, fawty-fo'--I
play me doze number' in de lott'ree to-day."

"Why, pshaw! you don't play the lottery, do you?"

"Yass. I play her; why not? She make me reech some of doze day'. Win fifty
dollah one time las' year."

The soft voice of the wife spoke up--"And spend it all to the wife of my
dead brother. What use him be reech? I think he don't stoff bird' no
betteh."

But the husband responded more than half to himself,

"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh."

When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much
fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier
generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign
over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back
room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might
stand for.

"Doze? Ah, doze make only Pas-Trop-Bon."


I appealed to his wife; but she, with her placid laugh, would only confirm
him:

"Yass; Pastropbon; he like that name. Tha's all de way I call him--