“Oh, you go to h⸺ll!” growled the bunco-man with a glare.
To get back to journalists, with whom I began, I believe I have said elsewhere that Henry Watterson is the most quoted editor in the United States. Yet a lot of his best things do not appear over his signature; he says so many that only a phonograph could keep tally of them. One evening at the Riggs House in Washington he found his friend Col. Dick Wintersmith, the poet lobbyist, in a gastronomic quandary, for the colonel longed for a dinner of beefsteak and onions but dreaded to carry the perfume of onions in his breath. Watterson said:
“Colonel Dick, I’ll tell you how to avoid it.”
“Do!”
“Why, go to John Chamberlin’s for your beefsteak and onions; when you get your bill it will take your breath entirely away.”
Opie Reid, editor and author, frequently appears on the platform, to the delight of every one who listens to him. One night he was greatly puzzled, for although his audience laughed heartily no one applauded. He learned afterward that he had been engaged to entertain the inmates of a home for disabled railway employees, and his audience was composed of switchmen, each of whom had lost an arm, perhaps two. He got a laugh even on one of the dreadful eating-houses peculiar to southern railroad stations. Most of his fellow passengers were commercial travelers, and knew by experience what to expect at such places, so they got off of the train with sullen looks, as if sorry rather than glad that they were to dine, and their complainings began before they reached the table. A negro was walking to and fro on the station platform ringing a dinner-bell, and near him was a small dog howling so piteously that the darky stopped and exclaimed:
“What’s you hollerin’ for? You don’t have to eat here.”
My friend Quimby of the Detroit Free Press tells of “meeting up” with two strangers who became so friendly that soon the three were introducing themselves.
“I’m from Detroit,” said Quimby to one. “Where are you from?”
“Boston,” was the reply. The Bostonian turned enquiringly to the third, who said: