The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-08-18
OLD oRNrLEMAN,s MUSINGS
BY GEORGE ". PECK.

and have seen . good many mad men. was a chap I had in my employ a good many years ego. If there ever was q chronic kicker, be was one. Nothing ever went right with him. The world was all wrong, and his only regret was that he couldn't run the world as 1t ought to be run. Of oourse, he would like to have made the world in the first place, because he had some original Ideas .hcnt hniliing a world that had never occurred to God. But, since he couldn't make . new world, he would have tried to make the old one do, if he could have been allowed to run 1t as it ought to be run. Never having been invited to run it, he con- tented himself by kicking about the way it was run. If he bought any thing, the man he bought it of was . highway robber. He could take pencil and . piece of paper and show how dollar tea could be sold for thirty cents, and a good profit realized. A successful man was his enemy, on gen. eral principles, and for a fellow who
 wanted money bad, he did hate any
 body that had 1t. Railroads were his abomination, except when he wanted a pass, and railroad men were robbers generally. He had great ideas of econ- omy. He wanted to dress well, but
 he would not have 6 suit of clothes made by tailor. The idea of paying forty dollars for a suit of clothes,
 when he could go to 6 ready made place and get just as good looking suit for fifteen, was ridiculous, and
 tailors were highway robbers, while
 the ready made store man was the
 poor mans friend, until the clothes
 began to wear out, when the ready-
 made man was highway robber. My
 man was awfully near being an anarch-
 ist, but anarchists were unknown then, so he was a plain. every day
 kicker. l remember once had blue summer suit made of yacht cloth, and
 he admired it very much. It fit frs,
 rate, and was pretty slick. When he asked me what 1t cost, and said forty dollars, he was mad. He said it might
 be plain talk but I was d-d fool for allowing any tailor on earth to rob me. He said l ought to have & guar dian appointed over me, or I would
 not have cent left in five years. He said he had been looking at blue suits at clothing store, and could get as
 fine suit as mine, in every way, for eleven dollars, and pair of sus penders
 thrown in. l advised him to buy it, and he did. When he came in the
 office with his new suit on he was tri-
 umphant. To look at the suit across
 the room, one would not see much
 difference, but to size them up close to
 you, his was pretty coarse, and I
 knew it would fade, but didn't say SO.
 l told him that he had saved twenty
 nine dollars, and he was just as happy
 as he could be. His coat did not fit
 him very well, and the pants looked
 bad, and the vest hunched up on his
 neck, and tried to chew his ears, but
 on the whole the suit was worth the
 money. He laughed at me a good
 deal, but when, after a week, the
 shoulders of his blue coat began to
 turn brown from the sunlight, I did
 not gay anything. He looked at tn.
 shoulders of my coat one day, and asked me if my coat did not fade, and
 told him guessed not. He said he would not try to disguise the fact that
 his coat was gradually turning a sort of ripe gooseberry color. He said he
 would rather tell me frankly after what
 had been said about suits, than to have me find 1t out. l encouraged him by saying that a good many were pre- ferriDg gooseberry brown to blue that year. He said if that coat faded any more 1t would go mighty hard with the highway robber who sold it to him. We watched the relative merits of the suits for Q couple of weeks, when one morning he came in the office fairly livid with rage. His face was pale, except around the sides of the neck, where the skin was . beautiful indigo blue. I made some trifiinp re. mark about "Blue Monday, !" and asked him what he laid it to, when he asked me If l had ever been out in the rain with my blue suit on. told him I was out with the Light Horse Squad ron one night, in the rain, and there was not dry rag on me when got home. "Did the color come out of your blue suit?" he asked with blood in his eyes. l told him it did not, ip fact my suit was not built that way. Then he wanted me to go down with him to the ready made clothing store, and zee him kill the man that cold him that suit of clothes. I was si- ways opposed to witnessing the she'd l ding of human gore, and persuaded him not to kill the man, but tc sne him for damages. He was great on law suits, and decided to sue the man. | In the meantime he opened his shirt | bosom and showed me that his body | was as blue as indigo. He rolled up | his sleeves, and his arms were blue. l