"Then look over another line
o' samples. No trouble to show 'em--none at all, sir! Now if P.T.
Barnum was alive--"
I said very seriously: "The name of that great discoverer falling from
your illiterate lips has halted me a second time. His name alone invests
your somewhat suspicious conversation with a dignity and authority
heretofore conspicuously absent. If, as you hint, you have any scientific
information for sale which P.T. Barnum might have considered worth
purchasing, you may possibly find in me a client. Proceed, young sir."
"Say, listen, Bo--I mean, Prof. I've got the goods. Don't worry. I've got
information in my think-box that would make your kick-in speech the event
of the century. The question remains, do I get mine?"
[Illustration: "'Say, listen, Bo--I mean, Prof. I've got the goods.'"]
"What is this scientific information?"
We had now walked as far as Riverside Drive. There were plenty of
unoccupied benches. I sat down and he seated himself beside me.
For a few moments I gazed upon the magnificent view. Even he seemed awed
by the proportions of the superb iron gas tank dominating the prospect.
I gazed at the colossal advertisements across the Hudson, at the freight
trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that majestic sewer
which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless flood
millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which we
call "up-state," to the sea.
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