“There’s a pair of Shanghais,” said he as he went out, pointing with one hand while he tightened the gate-strap with the other, “that I’ll sell you for five dollars. Or I’ll sell you half a dozen eggs for six dollars.”
I told him I couldn’t trade that day, but would certainly come and see him when I wanted to buy any fancy hens.
“If you see anybody,” said he, as we parted, “that wants a nice pair of Shanghais reasonable, you tell ’em where I live.”
“I will,” said I, and pushed on.
“Money in hens, eh?” said I to myself. “Then if they belonged to me, I’d kill them, and get it out of them at once, notwithstanding the proverb about the goose.”
After some further journeying I came to a roadside tavern. A large, square sign, with a faded picture of a horse, and the words Schuyler’s Hotel, faintly legible, hung from an arm that extended over the road from a high post by the pump.
I sat down on the steps, below a group of men who were tilted back in chairs on the piazza. One, who wore a red shirt, and chewed a very large quid of tobacco, was just saying,—
“Take it by and through, a man can make wages at the mines, and that’s all he can make.”
“Unless he strikes a big nugget,” said a little man with one eye.
“He might be there a hundred years, and not do that,” said Red Shirt. “I never struck one.”