McCartney gazed solemnly down from the small rostrum upon which he was standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been received.
"Dot's goot!" shouted an abdominal "Dutchman," pounding the table with his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"
"Ya!" exclaimed his confrère. "Dot feller, he was a corker, eh?" He put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney: "Here, kommen sie unt haf a glass bier mit us!"
Three teamsters, a card sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen unclassables nodded their heads and stamped, while the bartender passed up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed with easy grace to the assembled company, and drank. Then he descended to the table occupied by the Germans.
"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven for climate—hell for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"
The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.
"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"
The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles, to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not distinguished, guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of transparent dice.
"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet table. The first German examined them with approval.
"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbor. "I trow you for die Schnapps, eh?"