“It took us just three minutes to get out of that street around to military headquarters, where Mellinger had things his own way. A colonel and a battalion of bare-toed infantry turned out and went back to the scene of the musicale with us, but the conspirator gang was gone. But we recaptured the phonograph with honours of war, and marched back to the cuartel with it playing ‘All Coons Look Alike to Me.’
“The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side, and begins to shed tens and twenties.
“I want to buy that phonograph,’ says he. ‘I liked that last tune it played at the soirée.’
“‘This is more money than the machine is worth,’ says I.
“‘’Tis government expense money,’ says Mellinger. ‘The government pays for it, and it’s getting the tune-grinder cheap.’
“Me and Henry knew that pretty well. We knew that it had saved Homer P. Mellinger’s graft when he was on the point of losing it; but we never let him know we knew it.
“‘Now you boys better slide off further down the
