a stick. There was a rush at the door, and a friend of Whitney, half breathless, crowded in and announced that Frank was elected. At that, Little Zeke, struggling wonderfully to suppress the sobs which rose in his throat and would choke his utterance in spite of him, exclaimed:
"Well, boys, I (sob) am dead busted—have treated away all my money, but this eye cost (sob) fifty dollars (sob, sob), and I'II put that tip agin twenty-five that Jim Nuttman wins, after all!"
As he said that, he ran his finger under his glass eye, and slipping it out of the socket, laid it defiantly down on the counter, glaring around at the crowd with a single optic and an unsightly hole in his head. One of the opposition was just hauling out his money to see Little Zeke on the glass eye bet, when one of Nuttman's friends came in and said: "We give it up—Jim's beaten!" Whereupon, Little Zeke snatched up his eye, slipped it back into the socket, and started out on the run, while yells of laughter from the crowd made the building fairly shake.
Such are some of the eccentricities of Californians.
