Excerpt from Ring Rule and Ring Ruin: A Picture for the People<br><br>Scene I. - A room in the Grand American Depot. J. Coolie Planning, Vice-President of the Inter-Oceanic Railway, and Samuel Slykes, Esq., an Attorney, sitting together smoking.<br><br>Planning. - Well, Sam, how goes the chapel?<br><br>Slykes. - Goes, Coolie? A reg'lar run - no let up, I tell you. Shammius Chapel beats my old locomotive "Nancy," mended, packed, greased, and rubbed like a tea-pot - track straight, and pine knots under biler - whizzin' sixty mile an hour.<br><br>Planning. - Shammius Chapel then's a spec! hey! old fellow, pays? Your down-town building sold well, and your up-town edifice will rise in value every day. After paying expenses, forty per cent. over for parson, and charitable uses! Ecclesiastically, and commercially, Sam Slykes is a shrewd fox - sharp as that animal on his cane-head!<br><br>Slykes (flourishing his cane.) - Coolie, have a fellow-feelin' with the brute, that's a fact - sort of a brother of mine - same great-grand-papa in old times. Rather have a fox for my ancestor than a monkey!<br><br>Planning. - Sam, I am not anxious to pursue the line of your ancestors, nor of my own, fearing each might prove a hemp one - vegetable rather than animal. But I do want to know how you have filled Shammius Chapel with such crowds. You seem to run a church as well as you ran a locomotive.<br><br>Slykes. - Thing's plain as a steam-gauge. Parson got into trouble - family big - expensive wife - bills and vacations long, cash and visits short - scandal with the women. Pews wouldn't rent - income bad - congregations slim, and a general grumble. Then comes in Sam Slykes, my boy, to foreclose his mortgage, and drive the old failure off.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.