"The theatre with Lawrence Barrett! I wish they might see anything so
elevating. Perhaps _Othello_ might make some impression on them, such a
stupendous temperance lecture it is!" I groaned.
"If _you_ would leave the theatre alone you wouldn't be quite so short
as you are now," asserted Uncle Nate, almost popping open with
contempt.
"'Short,' man! 'Short' in your throat!" shouted I, forgetting myself.
"Yes, short; and it's my opinion you've shorted me in this business."
I could not kick our uncle out of his premises, so I got out myself,
not to return; and I left in debt to him as well as to the rest of the
world. I went homeward. Though it was August, a cold wind blew from the
lake, whipping the large, flapping leaves of the castor-bean plants in
the front yards to rags. I quaffed the lake in the wet wind. "No
wonder," I thought, "we're three parts water: our world is." A young
fellow on the street-car platform smoked a cigar that smelled like
pigweed, cabbage-stalks and other garden rubbish burning, and made me
sick. He enjoyed it, though: in fact, all, including the street-car
driver himself, were on that day more than usually engaged in the
intense enjoyment of being Chicagoans.
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