The American Claimant

the witness resulted in a circumstantial history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to and fro in the far West during the previous fifteen years. There was a message, no

it couldn't change its way of using him

believe that,

mself-not the least little bit in th

that plai

, hopeful, no-account failure he always was, and still everybo

omething about him that made it kind of easy to ask help of him, or favors-you didn't feel sh

m any more. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because he shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it-and so I used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more

patience pretty

e. I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway. I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I reckon I'd do

s a failure," said H

rved. Straight off, he loads up the house with cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor wrecks that other people don't want an

they had come straight down from heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we can't have them-we've nothing for ourselves-we can't feed them.' He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?-and they've come to me just as confident and trusting as-as-why Polly, I must have bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my note, so to speak-you don't get such things as a gift-and how am I going to go back

they do you

rrand; and sometimes you'll see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here-but that's because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble into. And they're al

o be tolerably happ

a kind of a free-thinker-and they play and sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled wa

and hoping he'll mak

again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that and more. No, Washington

here's hoping he'll never lack for friends-and I don't reckon

man to refuse anything to a body ever saw. Mulberry Sellers with an office! laws goodness, you know what that would be like. Why, they'd come from the ends of the earth to see a circus like that. I'd just as lieves be married to Niagara Falls, and done with it." After a reflective pause she added-having wandered back, in the interval, to the remar

!" he

es, a many and

slanting flamefront that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies with smoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographically ignorant alien experiences every da

Grant laugh-and that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lights up and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery. You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudiced that he fits in anywhere and

remarkable man-and he alw

subject than any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes a

s his r

o in thinking, then she said, with simplicity, "I

listen to no excuses; their house must be his home during the session. The Colonel returne

aid the Colonel,

it for,

trifle. Toy to am

ton exa

s to be

Pigs in the Clover. Put them in-s

ington succeeded, and wa

so clever and interesting-why, I could play wi

Patent it and

g of the kind. There'

veled over the Colonel's

couple of hundred thous

on's eye

housand dollars! do yo

m, closed a door that was slightly ajar, tip-toed hi

keep a

s affirmative, he wa

ialization-materializati

n had hea

their tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration of protoplasm and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybody you want, grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton, Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such frantic nonsense

mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more ge

then-let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels. Washington, within three days-ten at the outside-you shall see me call the dead of any cen

it does take on

ee the money

-not really su

me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages,

-o-u-r thousand dollars a day. Now I do beg

hey-up to

you put it

won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of toughs that ambuscade them on l

u can furnish police

and year out on materialized horses, and cost never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost two billions a year now-I will replace them all for a billion. I will dig up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain-a thing that's never happened yet, since the Declaratio

this is true, there's m

nd, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that if a man were to come to me now and say, Col

ustled in with a big pocket-book in his hand, took a

ith that three dollars and forty cents this

ket and that one, and feel here an

see-um-not here, not there -Oh, I must have

t where you are. And you're go

red to go and look. When h

your indulgence just this once more, Suggs

s-it's too stale-it

ll and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo with his handkerchief. The

see it go. It's the sole

e damned, it

e only really great original, the only suprem

e sickest loo

bringing another horror

of my collection-the only

is. Give it here-good day-people will t

ind him the Colonel shoute

let the damp get at them. The d

man wa

vants, but in vain; and went on to say he wished he could get his eye on a certain man about

at

here-out in the Cherokee country I

ve banks in

got away with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a rewa

s tha

struck the railroad, that answered the description pr

him arrested and

sition, of course. But I meant to

el

e train during th

it, that's

very bad

hy

hough I didn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I

atch him. Let'

ion to the Bal

ng about? No. Do you wan

all we d

onel re

ersonal in the Baltimor

ME A LI

hich arm ha

rig

. Now

rite with your left hand. Address X. Y. Z., Gen

hat'll f

n't know w

l want to kno

't think of that. What

uriosity. Strong trai

out and enclose a dollar and tell t