Sir:—I’m through being a fool actor. The money’s all right if I needed it, which I doant, but I doant like makin’ a fool of myself twict a day to please a lot of citty foalks I doant give a dam about annie way, I doant like livin’ in a blamed hotel either, for there aint annie wheres to set and smoak and see the sun come up. I’d ruther be on my old bote, and that’s whare I’m goin’. You needn’t try to find me and git me to come back for I wont. You couldn’t git me to act on that staige agin, ever. It’s foolish.

Yours, Todd Spiller.

“Now what in the name of all that’s woolly,” says Chunk, “would you say to a thing like that?”

“Me?” says I. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d start in by admittin’ that to card index the minds of the whole human race was a good deal of a job for one party to tackle, even with a mighty intellect like yours. Also, if it was put up to me flat, I might agree with Spiller.”


CHAPTER IX

HANDING BOBBY A BLANK

Say, what do you make out of this plute huntin’ business, anyway? Has the big money bunch got us down on the mat with our wind shut off and our pockets inside out; or is it just campaign piffle? Are we ghost dancin’, or waltz dreamin’, or what? It sure has me twisted up for fair, and I don’t know whether I stand with the criminal rich or the predatory poor.

That’s all on account of a little mix-up I was rung into at the hotel Perzazzer the other day. No, we ain’t livin’ there reg’lar again. This was just a little fall vacation we was takin’ in town, so Sadie can catch up with her shoppin’, and of course the Perzazzer seems more or less like home to us.