Page:The Gentle Grafter (1908).djvu/58

 intellect. Twenty-five thousand dollars don’t sound like so much when you’re reading the annual report of the Pennsylvania Railroad or listening to an actor talking about his salary; but when you can raise up a wagon sheet and kick around with your bootheel and hear every one of ’em ring against another it makes you feel like you was a night-and-day bank with the clock striking twelve.

“The third day out we drove into one of the most specious and tidy little towns that Nature or Rand and McNally ever turned out. It was in the foothills, and mitigated with trees and flowers and about 2,000 head of cordial and dilatory inhabitants. The town seemed to be called Floresville, and Nature had not contaminated it with many railroads, fleas or Eastern tourists.

“Me and Andy deposited our money to the credit of Peters and Tucker in the Esperanza Savings Bank, and got rooms at the Skyview Hotel. After supper we lit up, and sat out on the gallery and smoked. Then was when the philanthropy idea struck me. I suppose every grafter gets it sometime.

“When a man swindles the public out of a certain amount he begins to get scared and wants to return part of it. And if you’ll watch close and notice the 46