A KODAKER CAUGHT.
When I looked around for it, my camera was missing. I tell you, I felt pretty mean. At first I didn’t know what to do. I asked the ticket-taker about it, but he hadn’t seen any one take it. Then I thought, quick, what a man would do who had picked up a camera like that, and I made up my mind that he would want to get out of Cairo Street as fast as he could. Of course, most of the people there were sight-seeing, and just moved along slowly. So I hopped up on top of the camp-chair, and looked over the crowd. Luckily, I caught sight of a man with a brown felt hat, who was moving fast through the slow-moving people. I made up my mind that it was my last chance for my kodak, and I went through the crowd like a snowplow through a drift. I kept my eye on that brown felt hat, and pretty soon I caught up to the man. Once I thought I had lost him, for a camel came by, and I had to get out of the way; but I found him again, and, as I said, I got near to him.
I saw at once that he had a camera in his hand, and I was pretty sure it was mine. But just as I was going to catch hold of it, I happened to think it was a serious matter to tell a man he was a thief, and I stopped to make sure what I ought to do. The man was pushing through the crowd so fast that I had no good chance to take a real square look at the camera, so I concluded I would just keep after him till he thought he was clear away. He kept looking behind him at first, but now he began to go slower, as if he thought everything was all right. [“Little dreaming,” Harry put in, “that a sleuth-hound wearing magnifying-glasses was upon his tr-rail!”]
I kept off to his left, and he didn’t see me. Pretty soon he came out into the Fair Grounds, and there weren’t so many people there. He turned toward one of the north entrances, and I kept a sharp lookout for a Columbian Guard. I didn’t take the first one I saw, because he looked sleepy and stupid, and I was afraid he would arrest me; but the next was a soldierly-looking fellow, and after seeing my man was taking it easy, I went to this guard and said:
“That man with the brown felt hat, there, picked up my camera when I wasn’t looking, and walked off with it. I want you to get it back for me.”
“Sure, young fellow?” he said, looking at me hard.
“Sure,” I said; for by that time I had seen a bruise on one corner of the camera where I dropped it once.
“All right,” said he. “Come along. You go after the man, and don’t lose sight of him, and I’ll go around this little building and meet him.”
So we did. And it worked first-rate. The guard was a fly sort of a fellow, and instead of asking the man whether that was his camera, he asked him whether he had a permit for it.