Kilo

k agents," said Pap Briggs spitefully

f hero of the book-agenting business. It makes me proud to call to remembrance that him an' me was kids together down at Franklin, years ago. Him an' me took to the book-agentin' biz the same day, we did. I needed cash, like I always do, and he had literatoor in the family. So we went an' did it. We did it to Gallops Junction first,

e wasn't Eliph' on that date, an' it wasn't Hewlitt, neither. It was plain Sammy; Sammy Mills. Eliph' Hewlitt was a sort of fancy name my pa had give to a horse he had that

I've heard tell of that grand

the porch of his pa's house-'Pa h

ked, supposin' it was us t

' sixty-four of them highly improvin' an' inte

'ry,' I says,

They all cling to the same subject too faithful. Eight hundred an' sixty-four volumes of the "Wage of Sin,"

mthin' like that, symp

er up the barn. They ought to be g

s all good sense. Horses don't take

onwealth of Iowa, U.S.A.? Here we've got a barnful of high-class, intellectooal poem, an' yon we have a State full of yearnin' minds, clamorous

head quite

remarked; 'no boo

'Do you calculate that the son of a high-class author o

hen?' I

ted ladies of Gallops Junction an' Tomville on the beauties of the "Wage of Sin." That ain't no book-agenting,' says he, 'that's

ratoor of the U.S.A. a boost in the right direction that it hasn't recovered from yet. It was the champion long distance poem of the nineteenth century. That book showed what a chunky an' nervous mind old W. P Mills had. There wa

it wasn't any of your little, sawed-off, one-year sprints. No siree! W. P. Mills started away b

o eternity, A hundred thousand years, and

ough the Bible like a cross-cut saw through a cottonwood log. He never missed a single event that was important, if true. He got all them old fellers

at was where she done dead wrong, and that was the 'Sin' as mentioned in the name of the book, an' old W. P. Mills he showed in that literary volume how everybody has had to pay t

d. Why, I never cared two cents for Shadrach, Meshach, an' Abednego before I read th

filled his soul with awe-Shadrach and Meshach

versation, which, when you come to think of it, was the most natural thing for them to be doin'. You wouldn't look to see them sit down on a hot log, or to stand still sayin' nothin'. Walk an' talk, that's w

y at an encyclopedia, or at a life of Stephen A. Douglas, but to handle a moral volume like the 'Wage of Sin' sort of ap

d about the time he got ready to issue it forth, an' he was necessitated to compensate the cost of printing it himself. And,' he says, 'the rush an' hurry of the public

, 'That's two hundred verses fo

your ear and whispers, even if he is only tellin' you that i

've a premonition,' he says, 'that 'twould be better so. If we was to start in here we would get discouraged, for the folks ain't used to buyin' "Wage of Sin." T

in that red head

thor. Filial relationship to genius,' he says, 'will make them overawed, an' grateful to be allowed to buy of me, but you will

me,' I says reminiscently. 'I'll make the

ote would be harrowing to the minds of literary inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce ab

a into my head, and I wanted to get it clear in and settled down to stay before I lost it. It got in, an' I

k at the depot platform the principal occupations of the grizzly inhabitants was pickin' sand burrs from the inside rim of their pants-leg. It was a dreary village, but Sammy restrained my unconscious impulse to get right aboard the trai

ts a while, an' get the gauge of 'em, an' learn their manners an' customs, before harshly thrustin' myself into their bosoms, so I went

r the to uplift the populace, so I went calmly an' respectfully to sleep, like eve

ssed, an' I was about to extend my ruminations to other thoughts, when I noticed a young female exit out of a grocery store across the road. She had a basket of et ceterys on her arm, an' a face that was as beautiful as a ham sandwich looks to

see what gentlemanly visitor was knockin' the paint off the screen door with his knuckles. The glad object that her eyes beheld was me, smilin' an' a

set, face to face with that beautiful specimen of female bric-a-brac, and about two inches from a ten-horse-power cook stove in full blossom. It was a warm day, and extry warm on the si

lady, I was baked but joyous, and I se

s when we buy any, but

t in a way to show that her eyes and hair

she says. 'Looks l

fting my most cooked side a littl

she says. 'Otherw

s seeming to imply her ma

ront room, talking. She has a very previous e

er. You have that intellectual look that I alwa

and talk book' she says, 'because when I whoop up that stove to git

ked the way she jumped right into the fact that I had a few things to say about books, too. She was an

says, 'this book is th

of Sin"? The celebrated volume by o

m of purest razorene. A rhymed compendium of wit, information, and highly moral so-forths. Ten thousand verses, printed on

eaven for relief As up the mountain-side sh

I wrote

me. 'What! Do I see before me a real, genooine author? Do I se

cherry tree. 'I wrote it. I am the author. Here, as you see me now, in trop

oximity and explore

real live author! My! But it is hard for me to g

says again.

ys. 'Genius is cert'nly

born in us. When we get warmed up to it it's no trick at all. An auth

rue what I've heard about autho

sks, being

wrote them. That is hard work. Now, I have to stay in this kitchen and perspire because I have to, bu

the satisfiedness of seeing a reely genooine author. So I travel around exhibiting myself for the good of the public. And as a special and extraordinary thing-a sort of guarantee to one and all that they have seen a genooine living author-I write my autograph in each

bargain,' she s

ntic,'

onderful phenomenus,' sh

o see if it was my pants that was s

to. Not yet. Not till I see how ma comes out. Mebby she

hotly warmed chair. 'Being ta

Your son, you know, Mister Samuel Mills;

thermometer in my spinal backbone

such a youngish father. He must have been two years old the

ted, but nervous. Then I g

ng his father in that way! All right for him! I disown him out of my

get so hot about it. He's a hard

hink that that boy which I hired to sell my book should pass himself off as my son, and then stay

seeing light, 'that young man in their ain

us, nor wasn't, nor will be,'

have his son out book-peddling, so we asservated back that he wasn't; and him and ma has been having a high-gr

t the son of the author thereof. She says that if she buys a book off of him when he's making false witness of having a talented dad she'll be encouraging lying, which she

I don't sell no "W

you want to tackle us as a common book ag

I can sell a copy of this volume I am willing to sell

ful, 'is spoke like a fi

just then the door swung open, and out came her

ughter, 'is the tie untied

'We talked seven miles and six furloughs, but I won. He has renou

y with a moist,

says, shaking my

t. I ain't no Sammy. I ain't n

'am I then deceived since

ing ready for another season of conversation. Sammy likewise

'I have deceived

ful and perplexed, and scrat

he turns to the elderly female, and asks desp

he says, 'Eli

ever. It's terrible. Why, when I come in here I knowed I had SOMETHING to say about this book, and I tried to remember, and I seemed to remember that I was the son of the author

n has got a bad scarlet fever memory, too. HE'S come near to lying, li

l I was thinking of writing out when I got my full growth, which I told you to

ook as if you had the sense to,

g into Sammy again. An' all of it was right near to that enthusiastical stove. So at last she laid a couple of extra hard words against us an' we keeled over, as you might say, an' toppled out of the kitchen. We was dazed with language that was all words, an' when we come to the gate we was so stupefied that we climbed right over it, an' so weak that we fell down off the other side of it, an' Sammy all the time repeatin' 'Eliph' Hewlitt,' like a man in a dream. By n

ll them 'Wage of Sin' books. I never sold but one, an' I

agent business, Jim," said Pap Briggs. "Th