"So here come the concert, with every seat sold and the hall draped
pretty with flags and cut flowers. Some of the boys was down from the
ranch, and you bet I made 'em all come across for tickets, and old
Safety First--Chet's father--I stuck him for a dollar one, though he had
an evil look in his eyes. That's how the boys got so crazy about this
here song. They brought that record back with 'em. And Buck Devine, that
I met on the street that very day of the concert, he give me another
kind of a little jolt. He'd been gossiping round town, the vicious way
men do, and he says to me:
"'That Chester lad is taking awful chances for a man that needs his two
hands at his work. Of course if he was a foot-racer or something like
that, where he didn't need hands--' 'What's all this?' I asks. 'Why,'
says Buck, 'he's had his nails rasped down to the quick till he almost
screams if they touch anything, and he goes back for more every single
day. It's a wonder they ain't mortified on him already; and say, it
costs him six bits a throw and, of course, he don't take no change from
a dollar--he leaves the extra two bits for a tip.
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