Do you think it's
crazy? Well, you should see who I used to tattoo in the old days. Read the
article on the wall. As for being crazy, what do you say about the man who
spends his last 50 cents to get into a baseball game, and gets excited and
throws his only hat in the air and loses it, and the man who sits all day
and all night with a fishpole on the pier and don't catch any fish? Yes,
like I tell the judge who picked us up one day in Iowa, you know how they
do sometimes when you follow the carnival. And he asks me why I shouldn't
go to jail, and if tattooing ain't crazy, and I says give me three minutes
and I prove my case. And I begin with the Romans, and how they was the
brightest people we knew, and how they went in for tattooing, and how
Columbus was tattooed, and all the sailors that was bright enough to
discover America was tattooed, also. Then I say, what if Charlie Ross was
tattooed? Would he be lost to-day? And what if he had under his name the
word Philadelphia? And in addition to that the date where he was born and
his address and so on. Would he be lost then? 'You see,' I says, 'a man
can't be tattooed enough for his own good,' and the judge says I win my
case."
* * * * *
The automatic piano plays "Over There" and the shooting gallery rifles pop
too insistently for a moment.
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