“And, as I live without oats, while I sat there, homesick for money and without a cent to my ambition, there came on the breeze the most beautiful smell my nose had entered for a year.  God knows where it came from in that backyard of a country—­it was a bouquet of soaked lemon peel, cigar stumps, and stale beer—­exactly the smell of Goldbrick Charley’s place on Fourteenth Street where I used to play pinochle of afternoons with the third-rate actors.  And that smell drove my troubles through me and clinched ’em at the back.  I began to long for my country and feel sentiments about it; and I said words about Salvador that you wouldn’t think could come legitimate out of an ice factory.

“And while I was sitting there, down through the blazing sunshine in his clean, white clothes comes Maximilian Jones, an American interested in rubber and rosewood.

“‘Great carrambos!’ says I, when he stepped in, for I was in a bad temper, ’didn’t I have catastrophes enough?  I know what you want.  You want to tell me that story again about Johnny Ammiger and the widow on the train.  You’ve told it nine times already this month.’

“‘It must be the heat,’ says Jones, stopping in at the door, amazed.  ’Poor Billy.  He’s got bugs.  Sitting on ice, and calling his best friends pseudonyms.  Hi!—­muchacho!’ Jones called my force of employees, who was sitting in the sun, playing with his toes, and told him to put on his trousers and run for the doctor.

“‘Come back,’ says I.  ’Sit down, Maxy, and forget it.  ’Tis not ice you see, nor a lunatic upon it.  ’Tis only an exile full of homesickness sitting on a lump of glass that’s just cost him a thousand dollars.  Now, what was it Johnny said to the widow first?  I’d like to hear it again, Maxy—­honest.  Don’t mind what I said.’

“Maximilian Jones and I sat down and talked.  He was about as sick of the country as I was, for the grafters were squeezing him for half the profits of his rosewood and rubber.  Down in the bottom of a tank of water I had a dozen bottles of sticky Frisco beer; and I fished these up, and we fell to talking about home and the flag and Hail Columbia and home-fried potatoes; and the drivel we contributed would have sickened any man enjoying those blessings.  But at that time we were out of ’em.  You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

“And sitting there me and Maximilian Jones, scratching at our prickly heat and kicking at the lizards on the floor, became afflicted with a dose of patriotism and affection for our country.  There was me, Billy Casparis, reduced from a capitalist to a pauper by over-addiction to my glass (in the lump), declares my troubles off for the present and myself to be an uncrowned sovereign of the greatest country on earth.  And Maximilian Jones pours out