The Medicine Ship
Old Bill Green was comin' out of Spiegel's Caffy, meanin' a place where a man can have somethin' to eat while he's havin' a drink, an' he had folded over his arm what looked like a pretty swell coat for old Bill to be wearin'.
Noticin' me, "Hulloh, Hiker!" says Bill, an' we stroll along till we come opposite to Wallie Whelan's father's store on South Street, where Bill stops. "I do like that little Whelan kid," says Bill. "I wonder is he in?"
Wallie was in, an' "Hulloh, Hiker!" an' "How do you do, Mr. Green!" he says, an' comes runnin' out when he sees us.
An' old Bill says, "Oh-h, driftin' by—driftin' by," an' spreads out to the air the coat he's carryin' on his arm. All wrinkled up it was, like somebody's slept in it, but a pretty swell coat just the same, like the kind hackmen wear to a funeral or a weddin' with a stovepipe hat. There's a pocket in one o' the coat-tails, an' old Bill slides his hand into it and out comes a case, an' when he springs open the case there's a shiny black pipe.
"Well, well," says Bill, lookin' at the pipe like he was wonderin' how it come there.
"Where did y' ever get that fine pipe, Mr. Green?" asks Wallie.
"Oh, a souveneer, a little souveneer of other days—of days I'd 'most forgot," says Bill.
"A handsome pipe!" says Wallie.
"Yes," says Bill, "if on'y I had the fillin' of it once in a while!"