"
Jimmy lifted a brimming glass, and offered it to the Thread Man.
"Do you transmute?" he asked. Now if the Boston man had looked
Jimmy in the eye, and said "I do," this book would not have been
written. But he did not. He looked at the milk pail, and the
glass, which had passed through the hands of a dozen men in a
little country saloon away out in the wilds of Indiana, and said:
"I do not care to partake of further refreshment; if I can be of
intellectual benefit, I might remain for a time."
For a flash Jimmy lifted the five feet ten of his height to six;
but in another he shrank below normal. What appeared to the
Thread Man to be a humble, deferential seeker after wisdom, led
him to one of the chairs around the big coal base burner. But the
boys who knew Jimmy were watching the whites of his eyes, as they
drank the second round. At this stage Jimmy was on velvet. How
long he remained there depended on the depth of Melwood in the
milk pail between his knees. He smiled winningly on the Thread
Man.
"Ye know, Mister O'Khayam," he said, "at the present time you are
located in one of the wooliest parts of the wild East. I don't
suppose anything woolier could be found on the plains of Nebraska
where I am reliably informed they've stuck up a pole and labeled
it the cinter of the United States.
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