“Americans for two-and-a-half and the money up!  Hey?”

The Reverend winced, but said mildly: 

“Yes—­we are Americans.”

“Lord love you, you can just bet that’s what I am, every time!  Put it there!”

He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burst under it.

“Say, didn’t I put you up right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Sho!  I spotted you for my kind the minute I heard your clack.  You been over here long?”

“About four months.  Have you been over long?”

“Long?  Well, I should say so!  Going on two years, by geeminy!  Say, are you homesick?”

“No, I can’t say that I am.  Are you?”

“Oh, hell, yes!” This with immense enthusiasm.

The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distress to us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy.

The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend’s, now, with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother-tongue—­and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose—­and with such a relish!  Some of his words were not Sunday-school words, so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur.

“Yes indeedy!  If I ain’t an American there ain’t any Americans, that’s all.  And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good old American language, I’m ------ if it wasn’t all I could do to keep from hugging you!  My tongue’s all warped with trying to curl it around these ------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here; now I tell you it’s awful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it.  I’m from western New York.  My name is Cholley Adams.  I’m a student, you know.  Been here going on two years.  I’m learning to be a horse-doctor!  I like that part of it, you know, but ------these people, they won’t learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in German; so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this miserable language.

“First off, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don’t mind now.  I’ve got it where the hair’s short, I think; and dontchuknow, they made me learn Latin, too.  Now between you and me, I wouldn’t give a ------for all the Latin that was ever jabbered; and the first thing I calculate to do when I get through, is to just sit down and forget it.  ’Twon’t take me long, and I don’t mind the time, anyway.  And I tell you what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder and school-teaching over here—­sho!  We don’t know anything about it!  Here