One of these good fellows several years ago enlivened me for many weary hours on a tedious journey from Kansas City to Minneapolis. The journey was full of annoying mishaps, thanks to a habit some of our Southern and Western railway people have, lacking roses and other fresh flowers, of strewing freight wrecks in my path. It is an expensive tribute; but I would willingly go without it.
On this occasion my friend and I dined together, breakfasted together, characterized our luck in a beautiful commingling of strong language together, and together we watched the painfully slow operations of the train wreckers removing that tributary debris from the tracks. He was buoyant and undismayed by trial, and for hours he orated eloquently upon his subject, which happened to be straw hats. When he got through, had I taken notes, I could have qualified for a University degree upon that subject if I had sought an S. T. D. (Doctor of Straw Tiling).
The vast gulf that separates the near-Panama from the real thing became perfectly clear to me then, if it had never been so before, and I knew how it had come about that a New Yorker could buy a Panama hat for two dollars and fifty cents on Eighth avenue which on Fifth avenue would cost him ten dollars; and why a three-dollar Leghorn purchased in Chicago was inferior to a ninety-five dollar Leghorn manufactured in Newark, New Jersey, was made so obvious that I have worn neither since. His discourse was lucid, picturesque, convincing, and so completely comprehensive that women's hats became no more of a mystery to me than are those which our truck horses wear in midsummer with their ears sticking up through holes in the crown. As we drew near our destination I suddenly observed a smile breaking out on his lips, and a decided twinkle in his eye.
"Good Lord!" said he. "I've only just realized that I have been talking you deaf, dumb, and blind for nearly twenty-four straight hours, without giving you a chance to slide in a word edge-wise. I hope I haven't made you think life's nothing but a hat to me?"
"On the contrary," said I, "I've learned a lot. You've made life worth living."
"I get so infernally interested in my business," said he apologetically, "that sometimes I don't realize that maybe the other fellow has something to say too. I meant to have asked you this morning, but I forgot. What's your line?"
I was seized with a jocular impulse, and I answered instantly "Natural gas."
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Natural gas?" he repeated. "That's a queer business. How do you make deliveries?"
"When he got through I could have qualified for a college degree on the subject of straw hats."