" The remark seemed so out of place that
Frank went down there. The man was lying on the sidewalk, and telling the
barrel to roll over and not take up all the bed. Mr. Hatch accosted the
man gently, telling him he would catch cold there, and that he had better
go with him to the city hotel. The man said he would--be counted in if he
did, and Hatch bent over him to take him by the lily white hand, when a
drunken boot came down on the top of that hat, and drove it clean down to
Frank's nose. Of course it could go no further. Then the man pulled Frank
down, and the hat struck the end of a salt barrel, knocked it off, and the
man raised up and sat down on it, and kicked it into the street. Frank got
the man away, and a boy brought his hat to the police station, just as
Usher and Littlejohn and Knutson, and all the policeman entered. It is
said that all stood on the corner over by Kevin's watching the
arrest. The hat was a sight to behold, as it laid in state on the safe,
and all the boys making comments on it. It looked like a six-inch stove
pipe elbow that a profane man had been attempting to fit to a five-inch
stove pipe. It looked like some old dripping pan that had been thrown out
in the street, and had been run over by wagons. It looked like the very
dickens. And yet we have no doubt Hatch will say this is a lie, because he
now wears a good hat, but we know the hat he now wears he got by trading a
flannel shirt to a grasshopper sufferer, and it no more resembles the
beautiful new hat he won on election than nothing.
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