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 of various railroaders, running them over lazily in his mind with slow, easy effort in keeping with the movement of his thumb on the crystal of his watch. It was an elusive question; he could not conjoin anybody in railroad circles with that aromatic dish.

Was there any ham on the pantry shelf at home? Baldy wondered, swallowing the anticipatory juices which gushed from his digestive springs with the desire for a plate of that pink delicacy. If there was not, and his wife hadn't already hammered a steak for his breakfast, one of the children could run down to Schauffler's market and get a layer or two of ham.

From that point Baldy began to reflect, according to the philosophical habit that had grown on him during 'his many years of solitary nights, that nothing among all the appetizing delights a woman could stand on a stove reached out and took hold of a man with such a pull as ham. Coffee and cabbage had their sensuous beguilements; onions and liver quickened a man's feet as he drew near home on a frosty autumn morning. Yet all these were only mild stimulants compared to the irresistible desire that laid hold of a hungry man with the first sniff of ham.

Baldy thought he should like to have a farm, where he would raise nothing but hams, although he had little notion whether each ham was a corporeal entity, or merely an adjunct of some creature that must be provided with corn and hay. He did not trouble over any question of biology or anatomy when he thought of ham; only that he had an insatiable appetite for it, and