I just learned recently that he and the Benders used to be very thick in an early day, but after awhile the Benders said they guessed they would have to be excused. Even the Benders had to draw the line somewhere.
Later I bought property in Salt Lake. Not a heavy venture, you understand. Just the box-office receipts for one evening. I saw it stated in the papers at $10,000. Anyway, I will let that go. That is near enough. When I see anything in the papers I ask no more questions. I do not think it is right. Patti and I have both made it a rule to put in at least one evening as an investment where we happen to be. We are almost sure to do well out of it, and we also get better notices in the papers.
Patti is not looking so well as she did when my father took me to see her in the prime of her life. Though getting quite plain, it costs as much to see her as ever it did. Her voice has a metallic, or rather bi-metallic, ring to it nowadays, and she misses it by not working in more topical songs and bright Italian gags.
I asked her about an old singer who used to be with her. She said: "He was remova to ze ocean, where he keepa ze lighthouse. He learn to himself how to manage ze lighthouse one seasong; then he try by himself to star."
Now, if she would do some of those things on the stage it would pay her first rate.
When I was in Wyoming on that trip I met many old friends, all of whom shook me warmly by the hand as soon as they saw me. I visited the Capitol, and both houses adjourned for an hour out of respect to my memory. I will never again say anything mean of a member of the legislature. A speech of welcome was made by the gentleman from Crook county, Mr. Kellogg, the Demosthenes of the coming state. He made statements about me that day which in the paper read almost as good and truthful as an epitaph.
Going over the hill, at Crow Creek, whose perfumed waters kiss the livery stables and abattoirs at Camp Carlin, three slender Sarah Bernhardt coyotes came towards the train, looking wistfully at me as if to say: "Why, partner, how you have fleshed up!" Answering them from the platform of the car, I said: "Go East, young men, and flesh up with the country." Honestly and seriously, I do think that if the coyote would change off and try the soft-shell crab diet for a while, he would pick right up.
When I got to Laramie City the welcome was so warm that it almost wiped out the memory of my shabby reception in New York harbor last summer, on my return from Europe, when even my band went back on me and got drunk at Coney Island on the very money I had given them to use in welcoming me home again.
Winter had been a little severe along the cattle ranges, and deceased cattle might be seen extending their swollen carcasses into the bright, crisp air as the train whirled one along at the rate of seven to eight miles per hour. The skinning of a frozen steer is a diverting and unusual proceeding. Col. Buffalo Bill, who served under Washington and killed buffalo and baby elephants at Valley Forge, according to an Italian paper, should put this feature into his show. Maybe he will when he reads this. The cow gentleman first selects a quick yet steady-going mule; then he looks for a dead steer. He does not have to look very far. He now fastens one end of the deceased to some permanent object. This is harder to find than the steer, however. He then attaches his rope to the hide of the remains, having cut it with his knife first. He next starts the mule off, and a mile or so away he discovers that the hide is entirely free from the cold and pulseless corps.
Sometimes a cowboy tries to skin a steer before the animal is entirely dead, and when the former gets back to the place from which he was kicked, he finds that he has a brand new set of whiskers with which to surprise his friends.