a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman."

"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is
his first trip West."

"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo--let me see--in 1878
or '79."

"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as
Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?"

Shepler grinned again.

"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in
one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and
talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon."

"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been
born there the same year I was--in the Ninth ward--and he remembered as
well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I
liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say
Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park.
The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them
again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the
old town as he was doing."

"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest
as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he _has_ to play.
One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town.
Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him