“If yer say——”
“I do say it, sir. Look at this exquisite title page with a vignette portrait of the gifted author. Here you see a genealogical abstract chart in which you can write the names of your illustrious ancestors and beloved family—births, marriages, deaths and——”
“Stop!” shrieked the bandit, as the agent grasped him by the buttonhole.
“You may well say ‘stop,’ sir; I’ve said enough to make you ache to possess this beautiful volume, but I haven’t begun to——”
“Sit down!” the robber roared in a voice that made the puffs of the engine sound like the sighs of a sick zephyr, and loosened all the joints of Jones’s limbs.
“Biographical sketches of eminent men, glowing obituary, with an original poem on death, agricultural statistics, tables of mortality, valuable notes on immigration, trade reports, all the geological——”
“Lemme go, or I’ll blow the roof of yer head off,” shrieked the robber, as he wrested himself from the agent’s grasp and dropped off the rear car into the gathering gloom of the coming night.
Then Robinson drew from his pocket his faithful revolver and looked big. Jones rolled his sleeves up and asked where the villain was gone to. Brown fished from under the spittoon a roll of bills and hoped they didn’t think he had been scared. But the agent sank wearily to his seat, and for the first time in all that long journey was silent for nearly four consecutive minutes.
—Evansville Argus.