Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Espanol. He found the
General behind the desk adding up accounts.
"I have decide," said the General, "to buy not guns. I have to-day buy
the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General
Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon with la Madame O'Brien."
Mr. Kelley almost strangled.
"Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're
a swindler--that's what you are! You've bought a boarding house with
money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is."
"Ah," said the General, footing up a column, "that is what you call
politics. War and revolution they are not nice. Yes. It is not best that
one shall always follow Minerva. No. It is of quite desirable to keep
hotels and be with that Juno--that ox-eyed Juno. Ah! what hair of the
gold it is that she have!"
Mr. Kelley choked again.
"Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it that
you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she
make?"
III
BABES IN THE JUNGLE
Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says
to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get
too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York.
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