We wondered why it was called Palm Tree Inn cause there wasn’t a palm in sight, but when we showed the color of our coin, then everybody in the joint showed us a palm.  The people here move slowly, and believe you me Julie a spider slower than a fifth avenoo handsome cab would have a cinch spinnin a web around all of ’em.  Skinny says most of ’em has a long line of ancestors; but let me slip you the “info” derie, that some of ’em must be sinkers on the end of the line.  I wish that I knowed as much as they think they do.

Yours till someone counts all the flivvers,

Barney.

P.S.  Tomorrow night, Skinny wants me to go to the Opera with him.  I’m not goin—­cause I always sleep better at home.  I’d rather here a soubrette dolled up in a costume that would barely pass the bord of sensers sing a song like “Mother don’t bother with the rolls, father’s coming with a bun.”

[Illustration:  Skinny got one lamp at her, and immediately forgot what he joined the army for]

Dere Julie: 

These cockney birds sure chirp some language.  Believe you me, a guy had orto carry an interpreter around with him.  Me and Skinny went out to a swell English camp today to take a peep at English trainin methods; outside we sees a tipical Tommy Atkins settin down fixin sumpin wrong with his kicks; as we heaved along side of him, he yells out to us, “I say, ol’ top, have ye any lices?” Skinny, thinkin he ment did we have seam squirrels commenced to bawl him out in jig time, telling him there was no such things in the good ol’ U.S.A. when he came back with, “Oh, I say ol’ top, I didn’t mean the lousy lices, I meant shoe lices.”  What they say over here about these cooties wouldn’t look well in print, and makes me think they are harder to get rid of than a flivver.

If there’s one thing in life that Skinny loves its sumpin good to eat.  Honestly, Julie, I believe he thinks of eating when he’s asleep.  We goes into a feedin place yesterday in White Chapel to satisfy what the poets call, an inner longing.  I was so hungry my stomak tho’t my throat was cut, Skinny slips the female “biscuit shooter” a tip and sez, “Now suggest a good dinner for me;” and she whispered in his listener “Go to some other restaurant.”  Serves Skinny right about losing the tip for he’s such a tight wad that when the company sings “Old Hundred” at chapel Skinny sings the “Ninety and Nine” just to save a cent.  Honest Julie, I don’t believe he would give two bits to see the statue of Liberty do the hoo-chama-cooch.  Speaking of the hoochy-koochy reminds me that we saw the Ol’ Curiosity shop that Charlie Dickens wrote about, and desiring to become acquainted with how much Skinny knowed about books, plays, and etcetery, I asked him did he ever see Oliver Twist?  He says “no but I’ve seen Fatima wiggle.”  He would miss a point if he sat down on a tack, and it would take a vaccum cleaner to sweep the cob-webs from his noodle; someday I’m gonna hang a peece of crape on his nose, for I think his brain is dead.