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Even the best of us, though, get shy at least once in a life time, and have to call on some one for chips. I’ve done this a few times myself. I never refused one of the boys on the road a favor in all my life. Many a time I’ve dug up a bill and helped out some chap who was broke and I knew, at the time, that as far as getting back the money went, I might just as well chuck it in the sewer. Few of the boys will borrow, but all of them are ever ready to lend.

The one time I borrowed was in Spokane. When I went down to the depot I learned that I could buy a baggage prepaid permit and save about fifty dollars. I did not know until I reached the station that I could do this in Spokane. Down east they haven’t got on well to this system. You can prepay your excess baggage all the way from a coast point clear back to Chicago and have the right to drop your trunks off anywhere you will along the route. This makes a great saving. Well, when I went to check in I saw that I was short about four dollars. I did not have time to run back to my customer’s up town or to the hotel and cash a draft. I looked to see if there was somebody around that I knew. Not a familiar face. I had to do one of three things: Lose a day, give up by slow degrees over fifty dollars to the Railroad Company, or strike somebody for four.

Right here next to me at the baggage counter stood a tall, good natured fellow–I shall always remember his sandy whiskers and pair of generous blue eyes. He was checking his baggage to Walla Walla.

“Going right through to Walla Walla?” said I.

“Yes,” he said, “can I do anything for you?”

“Well, since you have mentioned it, you can,” I answered.

I introduced myself, told my new friend–Mason was his name, Billie Mason–how I was fixed and that I would give him a note to my customer, McPherson, at Walla Walla, requesting him to pay back the money.

I gave Mason the order, written with a lead pencil on the back of an envelope, and he gave me the four dollars.

I got down to Walla Walla in a few days. When I went in to see McPherson the first thing I said to him, handing him four dollars, was: “Mac, I want to pay you back that four.”

“What four?” said McPherson.

“What four?” said I. “Your memory must be short. Why, that four I gave a traveling man, named Mason, an order on you for!”

McPherson looked blank; but we happened to be standing near the cashier’s desk, and the matter was soon cleared up.

The cashier, who was a new man in the store, spoke up and said: “Yes, last week a fellow was in here with an order on you for four dollars, but it was written with a lead pencil on the back of an envelope. I thought it was no good. I didn’t want to be out the four, so I refused to pay it.”

“The deuce you did,” said my friend Mac, “Why, I’ve known this man (referring to me) and bought goods of him for ten years.”

The thing happened this way: On the very day that Mason presented my order both McPherson himself and the clerk in my department were out of town. When the new cashier told Mason that he did not know me, Mason simply thought he was “done” for four, and walked out thanking himself that the amount was not more.

But it so happened that Mason himself that night told this joke on himself to a friend of mine.

My friend laughed “fit to kill” and finally said to Mason: “Why that fellow’s good for four hundred;” and he gave Mason what I had failed to give him–my address.