“Hoogan,” he cried, “you redeem me. Not know him! Look here—his vain, empty, strutting, intolerable self-importance! Isn’t it all there to the life? The very manner of the creature that imposed so abominably upon the Mayor of Bantam.”
Cries and cheers greeted him as the laughter subsided.
“Your reverence, your reverence! Tell us who was the Mayor of Bantam.”
“Why, he was the Mayor of Bantam, to be sure, and so puffed up with pride and good living, that when he sat down, I tell you for a fact, he couldn’t see his own lap. He could only see, resting on it, what he loved best in the world; and you may guess what that was. Anyhow, there are two ways of running to waste, and his wasn’t the consumption of the stomach one.
“Well, one Christmas, when he was at the height of his glory and appetite, he conceived the happy idea of making that part of himself a present of the primest and most promising bird which money could procure. ‘It’s no less than a duty,’ thinks he, ‘to so faithful a servant; and I’ll go to Huggins myself this day about it.’
“Now, this Huggins bred turkeys; and what he didn’t know about ’em wasn’t worth knowing. He knew their pride and their self-sufficiency; he knew that of all the fowls that came strutting out of the ark they were the vainest about their election; he knew how a little flattery, properly administered, would serve them for food and drink till they came near bursting; and he had a grudge against this Mayor of Bantam for having once fined him for being incapable when he had never felt so powerful drunk in his life. So, ‘Ho-ho!’ says he to himself, when the mayor comes upon his quest, ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, my friend; and fine pickings you shall have!’
“‘You want such a turkey as never was, my lord?’ says he. ‘And you want to take and fatten him, and watch him fattening, and enjoy him in anticipation, do you?’ he says. ‘But turkeys is queer beasts,’ says he; ‘and whited sepulchres to them as doesn’t know their tricks.’
“‘How do you mean “whited sepulchres?”’ asks the Mayor of Bantam.
“‘Bones, when all’s told,’ says Huggins, shaking his head darkly, ‘if you don’t know the trick of inducing of ’em to swell.’
“‘Well, what is the trick?’ says the mayor.