SITTING ON ON A VENERABLE JOKE.
Near St. Paul, on the Sioux City road, I met the ever-present man from Leadville again.
I had met him before on every division of every railroad that I had traveled over, but I nodded to him, and he began to tell me all about Leadville.
He saw that I looked sad, and he cheered me up with little prehistoric jokes that an antiquarian had given him years ago. Finally he said:
"Leadville is mighty cold; it has such an all fired altitude, The summer is very short and unreliable, and the winter long and severe.
"An old miner over in California gulch got off a pretty good joke about the climate there. A friend asked him about the seasons at Leadville, and he said that there they had nine months winter and three months late in the fall."
Then he looked around to see me fall to pieces with mirth, but I restrained myself and said:
"You will please excuse me for not laughing at that joke. I cannot do it. It is too sacred.