"Don't care for't. Take back your choo, I'll keep me honor,—your plug, I mean, sonny. A gentleman of my eminence, sir, a natural-born navigator on the high seas of social life,—are you on, me bye?—a gentleman, I repeat, sir, whose canoe the mutations of all that is human have chucked on this here dry, thrice damned dry latitude, sir, this nocuous plague-spot of civilization,—say, kid, what t' hell am I talkin' about? Damn if I ain't clean forgot."
"I'm sure I don't know, Red."
"Like hell you don't! It's your glad duds, kid. Offerin' me a ch-aw tob-b-bac-co! Christ, I'm dyin' for a drop of booze. This magnificent occasion deserves a wetting, sir. And, say, Aleck, it won't hurt your beauty to stretch them sleeves of yours a bit. You look like a scarecrow in them high-water pants. Ain't old Sandy the king of skinners, though!"
"Whom do you mean, Red?"
"Who I mean, you idjot! Who but that skunk of a Warden, the Honorable Captain Edward S. Wright, if you please, sir. Captain of rotten old punks, that's what he is. You ask th' screws. He's never smelt powder; why, he's been here most o' his life. But some o' th' screws been here longer, borned here, damn 'em; couldn't pull 'em out o' here with a steam engine, you couldn't. They can tell you all 'bout the Cap, though. Old Sandy didn' have a plugged nickel to his name when he come 'ere, an' now the damn stomach-robber is rich. Reg'lar gold mine this dump's for 'im. Only gets a lousy five thousan' per year. Got big fam'ly an' keeps carriages an' servants, see, an' can 'ford t' go to Europe every year, an' got a big pile in th' bank to boot, all on a scurvy five thousan' a year. Good manager, ain't he? A reg'lar church member, too, damn his rotten soul to hell!"
"Is he as bad as all that, Red?"
"Is he? A hypocrite dyed in th' wool, that's what he is. Plays the humanitarian racket. He had a great deal t' say t' the papers why he didn't believe in the brutal way Iams was punished by that Homestead colonel—er—what's 'is name?"
"Colonel Streator, of the Tenth Pennsylvania."
"That's the cur. He hung up Private Iams by the thumbs till th' poor boy was almost dead. For nothin', too. Suppose you remember, don't you? Iams had called for 'three cheers for the man who shot Frick,' an' they pretty near killed 'im for 't, an' then drummed 'im out of th' regiment with 'is head half shaved."
"It was a most barbarous thing."