Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 98: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_aaa——_-”™” -4 ‘era ———— 157, a yw} u bed x < Fe Dw amass “aS Aht/e MS a CLL wn LI? aa we Le Lan 7 ZZ ‘1A , FA Af he, a } eoase war if wdc MIOLOLTIA veg mote * LPL OD DIL, By WILLIAM SLAVENS McNUTT it? You meet a lot of people some place ‘that you never saw before, and right away maybe you get acquainted with one of them and make friends with them and all like that, and the rest of them you don’t pay no attention to. I don’t know why it is when you meet a lot of people like that you should pick out one of them, or some- times two or three, and get acquainted with [= funny how you meet people, ain’t them and maybe get to be friends and may-- be have a lot of influence in their lives and all like that. It’s funny, ain’t it? There ain’t any sense to it. You don’t pick them out because they got blue eyes, or for the way they talk, or because maybe they could do you some good if you got to know them well or some- thing like that. No! There ain’t any sense to it. You just kind of get to talking with them somehow, and then maybe you make a date to see them again some time, and then first thing you know vouw’re iriends. Why shouldn’t vou be friends with some of the other people you meet for the first time? You can’t tell. Maybe they’re better people than the ones you made friends with and maybe they got more money and could have done you more good if you’d made friends with them, and everything like that. But no! It just happens. It’s funny, ain’t it? I guess it’s Fate. Fate is funny that way, ain’t it? You can have all the sense you please, but you never know nothing about Fate. You can be a college professor, or God knows what, and you wouldn’t know any more about Fate than I do. { think Fate is like a fellow said to me once I was out on a party with in San Francisco, when we was there with the ** South Sea Maids,” and we’d had a couple of drinks, and he was a fellow with a lot of education. You wouldn’t believe what a lot of education that guy had. You’d think he was a preacher or maybe a Governor of a State or something like that, the way he sat up stiff and wouldn’t say much but just kept on looking like he was busy thinking, until we’d had a couple of drinks. 888 Ccopmicoooks (CO) in