"Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply
bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical
conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't
pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx
and Hyndman and Kautsky--what are they?--shines! Tolstoi?--his
garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the
idea of a cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive
systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia
of the roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!"
I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.
"Oh, come ahead," said Rivington, somewhat nervously; "you don't
want to listen to that."
"Why, man," I whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These
slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is
this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it."
"If I follow you," said the man who had spoken first, "you do not
believe it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common
interest?"
"Shinny on your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never
heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not
believe it practicable just now.
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