Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/371

 is in the habit of hopping around. We talk a lot about forming this company to put my drink on the market, about what we'll call it, how much we'll soak the thirsty public for a swallow of it and this, that and the other. Excitement reaches and passes fever heat and there's plenty demands for me to make a speech, but I am no W. Jennings Bryan on a rostrum and that's a fact. I'm satisfied that public speakers is born and not made, yet never the less I am going to take a course in orating along with my other studies, because now that I am set to be a big man in the business world I will doubtless have to bound around to banquets and the like making speeches and I don't want to act like a clown when I do.

The next day I am around to Stubbs's drug store earlier than I ever was when I had to be there to jerk soda in days of yore. As far as my coming brush with Battling Long is concerned I got no more interest in it than I am interested in who killed cock robin. What I am interested in is mixing up a batch of my beauteous beverage to have it all ready for the early trade in Ajariah's store so's to see how it gets across with the general public. No presidential candidate ever waited for the returns with half the interest with which I waited for 'em that day in the old drug store.

Well, long before noon my worst fears was realized—my drink was a howling success!

I stood back of that fountain with Ajariah and his lieutenant soda man and watched a fair to middling fountain trade jump in a few hours to a business which would make a guy peddling rain storms in a drought