The Easiest Thing

That John Raudolph, late of Chicago, ihoulcl forsake that wicked city for the more effete environment of G-reater New York is not surprising when liis really pathetic story is known. I met Mr. Randolph recently, after a lapse of years, wearing au air of settled nielancholy, a wide briruined hat and hair that hung to the middle of his back. At first I hardly knew John, he had chauged so much. He is less than 2 feet high, broad of beam and is blessed with a pair of legs that resemble a horse collar. It was those legs that supplied the missing link in the chain of recognition. For years Mr. Randolph flourished in the gum drop industry in the Chicago Tenderloin. With a candy tray strapped to his stomach, John stood in front of thet aters and other places of anmseinenand infested saloons, doing a thriving gum drop trade at all hours until the footpads finally drove the little mau trom his native heath. "I couldn't standit any longer," said John, with a half sob. "Not only did the footpads break me up in business, but they hurt my feelings so that I had to leave town. How would yoi like lo be carried into an alley, held up by the heels and shaken like a meal sack until everything in your pockets feil out? Well, that's what those Chicago thieves did to me, a respectable business man. I was too little to sandbag. and the footpads used to jolly me and say I was the eaaiest thing in towu. Then the papers got to printing pieces aljout John Randolph being shaken down again, with pictnres supposed to be funny, but I couldn't. see the joke. "Thia winter ■vas the worst of all. 1 coukl stand being robbed two or thrce times a week, but when they got to shaking the coin out of my clothes every uight, and s-ometimes twice of an evening, I l(ft town. I intended to go into tesa here, but they won't let me wéair a tray, and if I cárried a basket the people would be stepping in it. But I've got a new schema See my hair and hat? Well, I've got some buckskin breeches with fringe on tliem aud a revolver, and I'm going to strike the dime museum circuit as the Lilliputian falo