"'All right, Mr. Biddle, says the mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo, he goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?
"'Come on, officer, says I, dignified. 'I may as well make the best of it. And then I turns to old Banks and rattles my chains.
"'Mr. Mayor, says I, 'the time will come soon when you'll believe that personal magnetism is a success. And you'll be sure that it succeeded in this case, too.
"And I guess it did.
"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet somebody now, Andy. I reckon you better take 'em off, and— Hey? Why, of course it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that's how we got the capital to go into business together."
Modern Rural Sports
Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly, for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will divulge. Therefore I cast many and divers flies upon the current of his thoughts before I feel a nibble.
"I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their prosperity, are running after their old populistic idols again."
"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees and the Connemaugh river. I know something about farmers. I thought I struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved to me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker, said Andy. 'He's the man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots and the ballet. He's the funny-bone and gristle of the country, said Andy, 'and I don't know who we would do without him.
"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents between us in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the pre-digested hoe-cake belt of Southern Indiana.