James
stood all day at an electric machine that turned hats around faster than
the best brands of champagne ever could have done. Overlooking your mild
impertinence in feeling a curiosity about the personal appearance of a
stranger, I will give you a modified description of him. Weight, 118;
complexion, hair and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about
twenty-three; dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge; pockets
containing two keys and sixty-three cents in change.
But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a General
Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one.
_Allons!_
James stood all day at his work. His feet were tender and extremely
susceptible to impositions being put upon or below them. All day long
they burned and smarted, causing him much suffering and inconvenience.
But he was earning twelve dollars per week, which he needed to support
his feet whether his feet would support him or not.
James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just as you
and I have ours. Your delight is to gad about the world in yachts and
motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke a pipe at
evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their
common prairie home one by one.
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