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"You're an old sour-dough miner, and we-all agree we'd like to have you throw-in with us. What say?" The old miner's answer was direct but not flattering. "What do I want to go on a wild-goose mush with a bunch of bums for?" he shrilled. Bill Macy scratched his hook nose and looked reproachfully at his host. At least Holt thought he was looking at him.

Like the Investigating Committee's pursuit of the question of the crudeoil's adulteration, they wanted to know if the tanks were firstline vehicles or some surplus palmed off by the War Department; if the weedburners were properly accredited graminicides or just a bunch of bums taken from the reliefrolls.

The audience grunted and he went on. "Every tap of it was for broken-down bums trying to get out of town skinned by the simple Red man. Horses shod, tires set, bolts fixed, all kinds of cripplements. All they want is help to get out, get out; at any price get out. Well, it'll do you good, the whole caboodle of ye. Ye started out to do, and got done everlastingly soaked." The blacksmith chuckled.

Long since they had sunk their manhood in the intoxicating cup, and henceforth lived only to gratify their unnatural craving for what would sooner or later bring them to a drunkard's grave. As they left the saloon, the colonel turned to Tim, and said: "I like whiskey, sir; but I'll be hanged if I can respect such men as those." "They're bums, colonel, that's what they are!" "How do they live?"

"It is only a question of observation and inquiry," laughed Nestor. "There is no Sherlock Holmes business about it." "And you think this man in evening dress will come down here and mix with these ragged bums?" "I think he will come down here," was the reply. Frank watched the small camp-fire below, just touching with red light the tents Nestor had so successfully entered a short time before.

Nor had she long to wait. There was a shuffling of feet out in the passage, and, the next moment, the door of her room was unceremoniously flung open and the indignant woman staggered in. "Well, of all the impidence, of all the sass, of all the ignorant bums that ever I !" She exploded, and stood panting under the strain of her furious emotions. But Joan felt she really must assert herself.

The whole affair was pretty well hushed up, but it produced bad feeling between the Special Order Squadrons and the spacemen. "Trigger happy space bums," the spacemen called them, and much worse besides. The men of the Special Order Squadrons, searching for a handy nickname, had called themselves Planeteers, because most of their work was on the planets.

We don't want any more of your Soup-House Sarahs, Hallelujah Johns nor decorative bums testifying here to the power of miracles, while we wonder whether our overcoats will be on the rack when we recover from the spell of their eloquence. It's a big world, there's room for us all, but there's not room for any more new wrinkles in this church."

As he looked from his own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned, "McGoun's a good stenog., smart's a whip, but Stan Graff and all those bums " The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office air.

They pretend to be one of us, and say they've just got in on the blind baggage from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here all day and watch the people go by. I can size up anybody who walks past my bench in a way that would surprise you." "Well," I said, "go on and tell me. How do you size me up?"