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SHOWMAN
every bored passenger instantly by spouting Shakespeare, as father had taught me to roll it out during cold evenings when we wanted to forget our empty stomachs: "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York" perhaps, or "Most potent grave and reverential signors / My very noble and approved good masters." Then I went into my spiel and passed down the aisle, tossing boxes of candy and such into the awed customers' laps.
That worked the finest kind on white people. I had another technique for Chinamen, of whom there were plenty farther west, always forced to ride in the smoker for one reason and another. When working a Chinaman, I'd drop a gold-piece on the seat beside him, call his attention to it and then palm it up my sleeve, making it appear and disappear before his mystified eyes. A little of that would mesmerize him into buying things he didn't even know the name of. I lost the San Francisco-Ogden run, one of the fattest in the country, because that failed to work on one disagreeable Chink. He didn't wait for my act— he grabbed the coin, a double-eagle, and swore it was his. When I saw he meant business, I swung on him. When I swung on him, he flashed a long, skinny knife from somewhere in the slack of his clothes and started for me. Other passengers held him back and kicked him off the train. I didn't need much holding back after a look at the high-lights on that knife-blade. But I wasn't supposed to be taking pokes at passengers, Chinamen or not, so
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