Delacour: Ah’ll see about it. There are ways, and ways. (exit right)
Raidler: There’s graft for you! His money can get anything, any time.
Judge: You’ll manage to forgive his liquor, suh!
Raidler: Oh, I’ll drink liquor any time I can get it; but all the same, it’s a rotten graft. They’d put me in the hole if they knew I was taking the stamps to mail out Bill’s stories to the magazines, but the men that run this prison will let the big contractors steal tens of thousands of dollars, and take their share of the rake-off. Oh, yes, this is the sweet land of liberty—for the money-squeezers that live in Bankers’ Row—
Judge: Mr. Raidler has mounted his soap-box again!
Porter: Gentlemen, gentlemen; you are mixing your occasions. This is not an election campaign, nor yet the grand and glorious Fourth of July. Colonel, do you remember Hop-along Bibb, that charming person we met in San Salvador, and how he mixed his celebrations when he got liquor on board?
Jennings: Tell the story, and cheer them up!
Porter: A short tale and a merry one. Hop-along Bibb was down and out, so he married himself to a snuff-brown lady who kept a rum-shop in the Calle de los Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When his credit was played out there, he went to work on a banana-plantation, along with an English tramp by the name of Liverpool Sam. If you’ve never been in a banana grove, gentlemen, it will be hard to imagine what that means. The place is as solemn as a Rathskeller at seven a. m. You can’t see the sky for the foliage about you, and the ground is knee deep in rotting leaves. Hop-along and Liverpool slept in a grass hut, along with red, yellow, and black employes, and there they’d lie all night fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon. After they had been there a few months they had lost all sense of the fugiting of tempus—there was nothing to tell them about the seasons, so when they came back to town, and found the American consulate all decorated with flowers and flags, they weren’t sure what it meant. A preacher man took pity on their penniless estate, and gave Hop-along two dollars and told him to celebrate the day; so they bought a quart of rum, and got drunk under a cocoanut tree, and then Hop-along decided to celebrate proper and patriotic, so he jumped onto Liverpool and licked him to a frazzle and then dragged the remains back to the preacher. “Look at this, sir,” says he—“look at this thing that was once a proud Britisher. You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the day. The star-spangled banner still waves! Hurrah for the stars and eagles!” To which the preacher answers: “Dear me! Fighting on this day of days! On Christmas day, when peace on earth—” “Christmas day?” says Hop-along. “Hell, man! I thought it was the Fourth of July!”
(a burst of laughter; they pound on the table)
Joe: Haw, haw, haw! (then, discovering that he has attracted attention to himself, he shrinks back abashed)