"Vel, I don'd know. I vas neffer there, but I hear id vas a nice place. You see, I vas goin' there on pizness—I—I—don'd know off I stay long or not."
Little more was said during the overland trip to the ocean.
The young woman did not appear inclined to talk, and Fritz finally excused himself, and moved to another seat.
"Der ish somedings vot don'd vas right apoud dot vimmens," he soliloquized. "She ish not goin' to der sea-shore for vone object alone, I'll bet a half-dollar."
Just ahead of him, in the next seat, sat two old ladies, who were discussing that topic uppermost in their minds—spiritualism. One was a believer—the other an unbeliever.
"Pooh! you can't stuff such nonsense into my head, Marier," the unbeliever declared, taking a pinch of snuff. "Speerits don't trouble me."
"But, that is because you have no faith, Mehitable. Now, my Sammy's speerit converses with me, every day and night, and keeps me posted about the realms of eternal bliss, and when I ax him to appear, he comes before me as natural as life."
"Has he got that wart behind his left ear yet?" apparently asked a man in front of the ladies, though Ventriloquist Fritz was of course the author of the question.
"Sir-r-rh!" the spiritualist cried, indignantly, "I'll have you know my Samuel had no wart upon his person!"
"But he had bunions, though!" a portly old gent across the aisle seemed to declare.