I didn't follow his arguments with
any special collocation of international intelligibility; but he had Mr.
Gomez's attention glued and riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks
the white linen tablecloth all over with figures and estimates and
deductions. He speaks more or less disrespectfully of import and export
duties and custom-house receipts and taxes and treaties and budgets and
concessions and such truck that politics and government require; and
when he gets through the Gomez man hops up and shakes his hand and says
he's saved the country and the people.
"'You shall be rewarded,' says the president.
"'Might I suggest another--rum?' says Wainwright.
"'Cigar for me--darker brand,' says I.
"Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in a
victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers--but the best the
country afforded.
"I found out afterward that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber--the
smartest man on the whole coast, but kept down by rum. I liked him.
"One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the
village, where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river.
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