Bill Terry—“Those hairs, sir, are just as natural to Washoe butter as butter is a natural product of milk. They are just as good and just as clean as the butter.”
Stranger—“Impossible!”
Bill Terry—“Not at all, sir. All our butter comes from the great valley of our State where flourishes that most nutritious and truly wonderful plant, the white sage. On this white sage our cattle feed and fatten. The plant has many virtues. It is of an oleaginous nature and is good in lung diseases, and from it is also manufactured a most wonderful and very popular hair restorative.”
Stranger—“Ah, yes; I’ve heard something of the kind.”
Bill Terry—“Well, then, sir, in a country where all the cows feed on the white sage, do you think it likely that the butter will be bald-headed.”
Promontory is a new place out on the Central Pacific Railroad. Out there they have no “Hotel and Restaurant-keepers’ Mutual Protection Association,” as they have in Virginia City. The place is too small and scattering for the advanced ideas that rule in the more metropolitan towns. A Comstocker went out to Promontory to prospect and look around for a time. He stopped at the principal hotel, which stood at the edge of the town. Our Comstocker liked the looks of things. The landlord seemed a very agreeable and friendly sort of man, and he thought he would stop and board with him a while.
When dinner was ready the landlord took a double-barrelled shot-gun from behind the bar, and, stepping out in front of his house, fired off one of the barrels.
The Comstocker, who had followed him to the door to see what was up, said to him: “What did you do that for?”
“To call my boarders to dinner,” said the landlord.
“I see,” said the Comstocker, “but why don’t you fire off both barrels?”