There was a man in Indiana who had a way of taking his own advice, though he generally had to do things afterward to get even with himself. He was a hog dealer, and one season he drove a lot of hogs to Indianapolis, about a hundred miles distant, though he could get nearly as good a price at a town much nearer home. Arrived at Indianapolis, he learned that prices had gone down, so he held on for a rise, but when offered a good price he stood out for more, and insisted that if he did not get it he would drive the hogs back home, which he finally did, and sold them for less than was offered him in the city. When one of his friends asked him why he had acted so unwisely he replied:
“I wanted to get even with them city hog-buyers.”
“But did you?”
“Well, they didn’t get my hogs.”
“But what did you get out of the transaction?”
“Get? Why, bless your thick skull, I got the society of the hogs all the way back home.”
I had long been puzzled as to the origin of the word “jay,” as applied to “easy marks” among countrymen, and I told the president so. He modestly admitted that I had come to the right shop for information; then he told me this story:
“Winter was coming on and a blue jay made up his mind that he would prepare for it. He found a vacant hut with a knot-hole in the roof, and he said to himself, ‘Here’s a good place to store my winter supplies,’ so he began to collect provender. His acquaintances who passed by saw what he was doing; then they laughed and took a rest, for they knew how to get in by the side door. Whenever he dropped a nut or a bit of meat through the knot-hole they would hop in below and gobble it. So, Marshall, next time you hear any one called a ‘jay’ I’m sure you’ll know what it means.”
The next morning, when we all met on the president’s special train en route to Saratoga, my newspaper friends twitted me anew on not having made the president laugh, but I said: “Now, boys, you wait.” Then I was so impudent as to approach the president and say: