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"Oh, I don't know," Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely, began to counsel. "Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day. Why, I can remember when there wasn't any unions in California, Look at us now wages, an' hours, an' everything." "You talk like an organizer," Bert sneered, "shovin' the bull con on the boneheads. But we know different.
"Thanks for all the favors," he growled dryly. "Now keep still, and be real thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for you other two naive boneheads..." Open space, like open, scarcely touched country, had produced its outlaws. But the distances were far greater. The pressures of need were infinitely harsher.
To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose I've always been a Practical Business Man. Probably I've told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for it you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress boneheads. But this is the first time I've ever had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps.
We'd have stayed and been part of the happy crowd. But it isn't. Honest! It's dead and narrow and one-horse and the people are boneheads." Mary Rose could not believe it. She stared at him and her lip quivered. "Jimmie," she said at last and her voice was very low and shaky, "is that what you want me to think of Mifflin? It's always been a wonderful place to me.
"Mifflin!" jeered Jimmie. "Mifflin! You can be mighty good and glad it isn't. I don't know where you got your idea of Mifflin, Mary Rose, for it's about the deadest one-horse town I ever ran across. And the people. Huh! A collection of boneheads." "Why, Jimmie Bronson!" gasped Mary Rose. "Mifflin's the friendliest town " "Friendly!" Jimmie elevated his nose at the word.
"I mean," he explained, "the way these four-flushers come in here and attempt to work their graft right under our eyes. Did you hear about this man Worth getting that franchise out of the council? I did my level best, but what's the use. It's all as plain as day but you can't hammer an idea into the boneheads that run this town. I had a little talk with Burk over the matter this morning.
One should, by an effort of mind, put oneself into one's characters and not create them after oneself. That is the method at least; a method which amounts to this: try to have a great deal of talent and even of genius if you can. How vain are all the poetic theories and criticisms! and the nerve of the gentlemen who compose them sickens me. Oh! nothing restrains them, those boneheads!
They left Boston by stage and one evening in early April, traveling afoot, they saw the familiar boneheads around the pasture lands above Albany where the farmers had crowned their fence stakes with the skeleton heads of deer, moose, sheep and cattle in which birds had the habit of building their nests. It had been thawing for days, but the night had fallen clear and cold.
I tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the world we can do. The country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had the power to do it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it.
"Yeah we will," Gimp said. "Couple of times I forgot J. John. But I lost my shirt on those loads that were lifted off you boneheads. The Kuzaks reimbursed me for half. Do you two want to cover the other half? Aw forget it! Who's got time to figure all this? That old coot doped himself out a nice catch-dollar scheme, making us promise.
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