hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address?
Why, I''ve seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren''t descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn''t written a novel, Mexicans who didn''t wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer''s clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don''t handicap him with the label of any section."
"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays ''Dixie'' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own--larger theory, I must confess."
And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.
"I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing tooralloo-ralloo."