Jennings: By God, I don’t know whether you’re joking or not, you old pudding-bag!
Porter: Gentlemen, gentlemen, remember the spirit of this hallowed hour. Ten million pairs of parents in the United States are hanging up stockings for their little ones; at such a moment the hardest heart turns to sentimentality, the trigger-finger of the grimmest killer is stayed, the burglar becomes sociable—
Raidler: Yea, Bill! Did I ever tell you how Jersey Pete ran into the fellow that had rheumatism?
Porter: If the story be in fit spirit for Christmas, let us have it.
Raidler: Jersey Pete was helping himself in a rich man’s bedroom, when the guy woke up, and Pete covered him with a gun and told him to hoist his hands. The guy raised his right hand, but he says, “I can’t raise my left, I got inflammatory rheumatism.” “Hell,” says Pete, “I’m sorry for you. It hits me in the same place.” “Did you ever try rattlesnake oil?” says the guy. “Gallons of it,” says Pete; “if all the snakes I’ve used the oil of was strung out in a row they’d reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back.” “Some use Chiselum’s pills,” says the guy. “Fudge,” says Pete, “I took ’em five months. No good. I had some relief the year I tried Finkelham’s Extract, Balm of Gilead Poultices, and Potts’ Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my pocket that done the trick.” So then they got to be friends, and Pete helped the guy to get his duds on, and took him out and blew him to a drink.
Jennings: Bill will make a story out of that and I’ll swipe a few stamps from the State of Ohio, and the editors will eat it up. They love these sympathetic gunmen and soft-hearted bandits.
Raidler: The story reminds me! When do we get taken to get a drink?
Judge: Suh, the wassail waits! (brings steaming saucepan of punch to the table)
Jennings: Hurrah! Hurrah!
Raidler: Lead me to it!