"'Blazes,' short and sweet and innercent like."
Landlord Ortigies was leaning with both elbows on the bar. The new name struck him favorably.
"I'm inclined to agree with Budge," he said, "cause there hain't any other place that's hit onto it. All of them names that you chaps have tried to spring onto us, have been used in other places, or at least some part of the names, but, as Budge has observed, no galoot has scooped 'Constantinople.'"
"'Cause no one ain't fool enough," observed Ike Hoe, who noted the drift of the sentiment.
"But they'll pounce onto it powerful quick if we don't grab it while it's passin'; it's a good long name, and what if it does make a chap sling the muscles of his jaw to warble it? All the better; it'll make him think well of his town, which I prophesy is going to be the emporium of the West."
"Let's see," growled Wade Ruggles, "Constantinople is in Ireland isn't it?"
"Where's your eddycation?" sneered Ike Vose; "it's the oldest town in Wales."
Landlord Ortigies raised his head and filled the room with his genial laughter.
"If there was anything I was strong on when I led my class at the Squankum High School it was astronermy; I was never catched in locating places."
"If you know so much," remarked Ruggles, "you'll let us know something 'bout that town which I scorn to name."
"I'm allers ready to enlighten ign'rance, though I've never visited Constantinople, which stands on the top of the Himalaya Mountains, in the southern part of Iceland."
"That's very good," said Budge Isham, who with his usual tact maneuvered to keep the ally he had gained, "but the Constantinople I have in mind is in Turkey, which is such a goodly sized country that it straddles from Europe to Asia."
"Which the same I suppose means to imply that this ere Constantinople will do likewise similar."
"No doubt that's what it'll do in time," assented the landlord.
"I beg to offer an amendment to my own motion," continued the oily Budge; "when the boom strikes this town, as it is bound soon to do, and it rivals in size the famous city on the other side of the Atlantic, there should be something to distinguish the two. We have no wish to rob any other place of the honors it has taken centuries to gain; so, while we reserve the principal name, I propose that we distinguish it from the old city by prefixing the word 'New.'"