sole heir to a vast collection of echoes—­if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must look to my child’s interest; if you had but one echo which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a beggar.  Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever.”

My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the world.  But it could not be.  We were torn asunder, she to pine and die within the twelvemonth, I to toil life’s long journey sad and alone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.  Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money than any man in the trade.  Now this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let you have for—­

“Let me interrupt you,” I said.  “My friend, I have not had a moment’s respite from canvassers this day.  I have bought a sewing-machine which I did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness.  I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me.  I would not let it stay on the place.  I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes.  You see this gun?  Now take your collection and move on; let us not have bloodshed.”

But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.  You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got to suffer defeat.

I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour.  I bought two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, which he said was not salable because it only spoke German.  He said, “She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down.”

AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER

The nervous, dapper, “peart” young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added: