Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the dock. It was great!
That night we sat around, and Sarpo and his sons told some funny stories. My, but they were to the saddings! I told one of my best, and nobody filtered but Teddy.
The next morning at five we took the dogs and started out after deer. They have what they call run-ways or deer passes, and the deer always go the same route. They ought to have better sense, although as far as I am concerned they are perfectly safe. They put me on one of the passes, behind a lot of underbrush. Well, I sat and sat until I went to sleep, but I slept with one eye open. Deadwood Dick and all the great scouts and trappers had the one-eye-open habit. I was awakened by hearing something crack, and there standing about twenty feet away with its side turned to me was a deer. It must have belonged to the fair sex, as it had no horns. Talk about shaking! I would have shaken my best friend. I finally pulled myself together, and remembering the ducks, I let her have both barrels at once. She kicked her feet up in the air, turned her head, and on the level, she gave me the laugh and cut into the woods. I believe she saw me all the time, and knew I was a lobster.
On the way back, I met the half-breed, and we walked together.
On reaching the house we happened to glance through the window, and there was Teddy with his arm around the young wife's waist.
Teddy always was a rubber. It was lovely cards for a while, and Teddy worked the old gag that he was showing her how they did in a play, but she wasn't wise enough to follow it up, so we had to leave.
While returning on the train I made the horrible discovery that I had been using my buckshot on the ducks and my birdshot on the deer. I can see how the deer got away, but I'll say one thing, and that is, that if a passing duck had ever reached his mitt out for one of those buckshot he would have thought Rusie was doing the pitching. He would have got it fine and daisy.
I am not for the country. They have ticks, jiggers, and gnats, all doing a nice conservative business at once. You never had a tick on you, did you, Jim? Well, a tick is a very busy little cup of tea. First, he'll crawl all over you, and then select a spot on the back directly between the shoulder blades, where you can't reach him. I talked to a man who was up on ticks, and he said a tick was wiser than a bedbug. Now, you take a bedbug whose head is perfectly clear, and who hasn't been drinking or smoking too much, and there won't be many men on Wall Street much wiser than he is. Well, after a tick gets his place picked out he burrows in under the skin, then dies and festers. You wouldn't catch a bedbug standing for that martyr game.
There should be some kind of a law against gnats. About two hundred of them will stay right in front of your eyes until one of them gets an opening; then he'll cut in and land a jab, and the other hundred and ninety-nine will give you the Big Minnehaha.
I had so many lumps on me when I got back to St. Paul that they called me Pneumatic Willie.
Talk about your sylvan dells and sweet-scented fragrance! Why, an asphalt street has a sylvan dell skinned to death, and a twelve-percent soap factory is sweet enough for me.
Yours as ever, Billy.
P. S.--Good night. I'm for the sleeps.
