still wiping their faces with their handkerchiefs. With that refinement which is characteristic of true gentlemen, and which seeks concealment of any extraordinary emotion, they had considerately retired to indulge their laughter.

"I am delighted," continued our guest, after Dick and the major had resumed their seats, "I am delighted to find myself in company with men of experience. I feel that you will not question the veracity of my story, or fail to appreciate the outcome of my enterprises. At the end of two years, my property was distributed promiscuously throughout the State, and I was reduced to the necessity of making one final venture to recoup myself for the losses which, to the astonishment of the entire Texan community, I assured them I had met. I was the only man, as they asserted, 'that had ever failed to make a magnificent success in Texas.'

"You can readily conceive, gentlemen, that I was determined to make no mistake in my final venture. There were other reasons, beside the one of caution, which persuaded me to begin with a moderate investment; so I bought one cow. It was impossible for me to make a mistake from such a beginning. Every person in Texas that had rapidly risen to financial eminence had started with one cow. Many a time had a Texan ranchman swept his hand with a royal gesture over a landscape of flowers and Mesquite brush, dotted with thousands of cattle, and exclaimed, 'Stranger, I started this yer ranch with one cow.' And then he would take out a piece of chalk and figure out to me on his saddle how that one cow had multiplied herself into seven thousand five hundred and twenty-three other cows, which had proceeded to promptly multiply themselves, 'regular as the seasons come round, sir,' in the same reckless manner, until it was evident that the number of her progeny was actually curtailed by the size of the saddle and the lack of chalk. Now, I was eager to possess a cow with such a multiplication-table attachment, and, being unable to wait even ten years before I could tingle with the sensation of being a millionnaire ranchman. I decided to shorten the probationary stage by half, and so I purchased two cows."

At this point, Dick rolled over upon the grass, and the major was doubled up as with sudden pain. As for myself, I confess I could not restrain my emotions. I had been through the same experience as had fallen to my guest, and I appreciated the sanguine characteristics of his temperament, which prompted him to the investment, and the humor of the situation. I laughed till my eyes flowed with tears, and the stillness of the foot-hills resounded with the unrestrained merriment of the entire camp.

The humor of our guest was truly American, the humor of suggestive restraint and exaggeration both. He narrated his experiences, which had resulted in the loss of his fortune and the collapse of his hopes, with a face like a deacon's, and with a quaint and most charming sense of the ludicrousness of the position—a position of which he himself was the cause and central object. He fairly represented that type of men who combine in their composition that which is most practical and imaginative alike; whose energy can subdue a continent, and whose boastfulness would awaken contempt if it were not palliated by the magnitude of their achievements. A humor that is often barbed, but which is most willingly directed against one's self; but, whether directed against the humorist or his neighbor, carries no poison upon its point and leaves no wound to rankle.

"My financial condition," said our guest, resuming, "my financial condition at the time I made this final investment contributed to the hopefulness of my mood, and made me feel the excitement of a reckless speculation, for, though my two cows only cost me seventeen dollars and fifty cents each, nevertheless, when the purchase was concluded, and the goods delivered, and I had made a careful inventory of my remaining assets,—a business proceeding which the average Texan found it necessary to go through about once in two weeks, in order that he might know what his financial standing was, or whether he had any standing at all,—when, I say, the purchase was consummated, and an inventory of my remaining assets made, I discovered that the two cows had swallowed up nearly my entire estate, and that a few dollars of farther expenditure would plunge me into bottomless insolvency. I must confess that this disclosure of my financial condition added zest to the undertaking, and filled me with that fine excitement which accompanies a desperate speculation. I have always felt that another cow would have made a financier of me, and that I could have taken my place among my brethren in Wall Street without a tremor of the muscles or the least sense of inferiority.

"The cows were both black in color; so black that they would make a spot in the darkness of the blackest night that ever gloomed under the cypresses of the Guadaloupe. 'If those cows,' I said to myself as I looked them over, 'if those cows ever do bring forth calves at the rate that the Texan of whom I purchased them figured out on his saddle, they'll put the whole State under an eclipse.'

"I cannot say,—speaking with that restraint which I have always cultivated,—I cannot say, ladies and gentlemen, that I regarded either cow with any great affection. There were peculiarities about them, which checked the outgoing of my emotional nature. They had a way of looking at me through the wire fence, that made me feel grateful to the inventor of barbed wire. I cannot describe the look exactly. It was a direct, earnest, steady, intense inspection of my person, that made me feel out of place, as it were, and caused me to remember that I had duties at home, which required me to get there as rapidly as possible.

"One morning, seeing that the basis of my speculation was near the centre of the field, and busily feeding on the bountiful growths of nature, I crept softly through the wires of the fence that I might gather some pecan nuts under a big tree that stood some twenty rods away. I reached the tree in safety, and proceeded to pick up the nuts. I had filled one pocket only when I heard a noise behind me, and, looking up, I saw that all the profits of my stock speculation, and all my stock itself, were coming toward me on a jump. I was never more collected in my life. My mind instantly reached the conclusion that the pecan crop that year was so large in Texas that it would not pay to pick up another nut under that tree; that the whole thing should stand over, as it were, until another fall, and that, the sooner I retired from that field, the better it would be for me and the few pecans I had about me.

"Acting in harmony with this conclusion,—which to my mind carried with it the force of a demonstration,—I started for the wire fence. I have no doubt but that the line of my movement was absolutely straight. I assure you, gentlemen, that if cows had multiplied in my business connection as rapidly as they did in my imagination during the next sixty seconds of time, I should have been in Texas to this day. The whole field was actually alive with cows. I reached the fence just one jump ahead of the oldest cow, and, seeing no reason why I should take time to crawl through between the wires, I lifted myself over the airy obstruction in a manner that must have convinced that old animated bit of blackness that I had absolute ownership in every nut about me. This little episode supplied me with material for reflection for at least a week, and made me realize that any northern man that