Then he sits still, lookin' at me for about half
a minute, till I begin t' feel uncomfortable. Then he
says, slow: `Young man, how old are you?'
"`O, twenty-eight or so,' I says, airy.
"`My Gawd!' said he. `You've crammed twice those
years into your life, and you'll have to pay for it. Now
you listen t' me. You got t' quit workin', an' smokin',
and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,' he says,
`an' try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.'
"Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked
her under m' arm, and we hit it up across the ocean.
Went t' Germany, knowin' that it would feel homelike
there, an' we took in all the swell baden, and chased up
the Jungfrau -- sa-a-ay, that's a classy little mountain,
that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess.
She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture
postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, girl, was I lonesome! Maybe
that trip done me good. Anyway, I'm livin' yet. I stuck it
out for four months, an' that ain't so rotten for a guy who
just grew up on printer's ink ever since he was old
enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well,
one day mother an' me was sittin' out on one of them
veranda cafes they run to over there, w'en somebody hits
me a crack on the shoulder, an' there stands old Ryan who
used t' do A.
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