I
asked one of the boys standin' on the outer edge of the
circle what the fellow's name was, but he only says:
`Shut up Black! An' listen. He's seen every darn thing
in the world.' Well, I listened. He wasn't braggin'.
He wasn't talkin' big. He was just talkin'. Seems like
he'd been war correspondent in the Boer war, and the
Spanish-American, an' Gawd knows where. He spoke low,
not usin' any big words, either, an' I thought his eyes
looked somethin' like those of the Black Cat up on the
mantel just over his head--you know what I
mean, when the electric lights is turned on
in-inside{sic} the ugly thing. Well, every time he
showed signs of stoppin', one of the boys would up with
a question, and start him goin' again. He knew
everybody, an' everything, an' everywhere. All of a
sudden one of the boys points to the Roosevelt signature
on the wall--the one he scrawled up there along with all
the other celebrities first time he was entertained by
the Press Club boys. Well this guy, he looked at the
name for a minute. `Roosevelt?' he says, slow. `Oh, yes.
Seems t' me I've heard of him.' Well, at that the boys
yelled. Thought it was a good joke, seein' that Ted had
been smeared all over the first page of everything for
years.
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