We had our specialties in this contest of wits. One was
distinguished as a sleuth. He fed on detective mysteries as a cat
on a chicken-bone. He thought them out by day and dreamed them out
by night, to the great exasperation of the official detectives,
with whom their solution was a commercial, not in the least an
intellectual, affair. They solved them on the plane of the proverbial
lack of honor among thieves, by the formula, "You scratch my back,
and I'll scratch yours."
Another came out strong on fires. He knew the history of every house
in town that ran any risk of being burned; knew every fireman; and
could tell within a thousand dollars, more or less, what was the
value of the goods stored in any building in the dry-goods district,
and for how much they were insured. If he couldn't, he did anyhow,
and his guesses often came near the fact, as shown in the final
adjustment. He sniffed a firebug from afar, and knew without
asking how much salvage there was in a bale of cotton after being
twenty-four hours in the fire. He is dead, poor fellow.
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