A movement is on foot to give a literary and musical entertainment at Burley's Hall to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the "fire laddies," at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the Robins Nest Again," and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Joe," a selection which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents for each offence. Let there be a full house.
BIG STEVE
YOU think, no doubt, William, that I am happy, but I cannot say that I am. I will tell you my little reminiscence if you don't mind, and you can judge for yourself." These were the words of Big Steve, as we sat together one evening, watching the dealer slide the cards out of his little tin photograph album, while the crowd bought chips of the banker and corded them up out the green table.
"You look on me as a great man to inaugurate a funeral, and wish that you had a miscellaneous cemetery yourself to look back on; but greatness always has its drawbacks. We cannot be great unless we pay the price. What we call genius is after all only industry and perseverance. When my father undertook to clean me out, in our own St. Lawrence County home, I filed his coat-tails full of bird-shot and fled. Father afterwards said that he could have overlooked it so far as the coat was concerned, but he didn't want it shot to pieces while he had it on.
"Then I went to Kansas City and shot a colored man. That was a good many years ago, and you could kill a colored man then as you can a Chinaman now, with impunity, or any other weapon you can get your hands onto. Still the colored man had friends and I had to go further West. I went to Nevada then, and lived under a cloud and a nom de plume, as you fellers say.
"I really didn't want to thin out the population of Nevada, but I had to protect myself. They say that after a feller has killed his man, he has a thirst for blood and can't stop, but that ain't so. You 'justifiable-homicide' a man and get clear, and then you have to look out for friends of the late lamented. You see them everywhere. If your stomach gets out of order you see the air full of vengeance, and you drink too much and that don't help it. Then you kill a man on suspicion that he is follering you up, and after that you shoot in an extemporaneous, way, that makes life in your neighborhood a little uncertain.
"That's the way it was with me. I've got where I don't sleep good any more, and the fun of life has kind of pinched out, as we say in the mines. It's a big thing to run a school-meeting or an election, but it hardly pays me for the free spectacular show I see when I'm trying to sleep. You know if you've ever killed a man—"
"No, I never killed one right out," I said apologetically. "I shot one once, but he gained seventy-five pounds in less than six months."