ot some colored chalk round the corner at the
painters, and he showed me how to use 'em."

"Tode, you said you would remember not to use ''em' and 'leastways' any
more."

"So I will one of these days. I keep remembering all the time. Say,
won't that make a elegant sign? I never thought of a sign in my life
till Pliny Hastings he came along to-day. Did you ever see Pliny
Hastings?"

"No. Tode, I _do wish_ you would begin to study grammar this very
evening. You're enough to kill any body the way you talk."

"Oh bother the grammar, I'm telling you about Pliny Hastings. He came
along, and says he, 'Halloo, Tode, here you are as large as life in
business for yourself. You ought to have a sign,' says he. 'What's your
establishment called?' And you may think I felt cheap as long as I lived
at the Euclid house, to have no kind of a name for my place. I thought
then I'd have a name and a sign before this time to-morrow. So when I
went for my dinner I bought this pasteboard, and I been studying the
thing out all this afternoon between the spells of arithmetic, and I've
got it all fixed now, and I've got another idea come of that I never see
how one thing starts another. There's going to come a piece of
pasteboard off this end, 'cause you see it's too long, and I'm going to
have a circle out of that."

"A circle. What for?"

"Oh you'll see when we get to it. But now don't you want to know what my
sign is?"

"I suppose I'll have to know if I'm to help you, whether I want to or
not."

"Well, I had to study on that for quite a spell. You see I want a name
for my house, and then my own name right under it, 'cause I like to see
a man stand by his business, name and all; and then I want every body to
know I stand up for temperance. I thought of 'Cold Water House,' but
then you see it _ain't_ a cold water house, cause coffee is my principal
dish. Then I thought of 'Coffee House,' but there's a coffee house not
more than two blocks away from my place, and they keep plenty of whisky
there, and _that_ wouldn't do. And I thought and _thought_, and by and
by it came to me. I wouldn't have no 'House' at all about it, 'cause
after all is said and done it's just a _box_; and I concluded to have a
out-and-out temperance sign. I'll print a great big NO, so big you can
see it across the street, and then we'll make two great big black
bottles, like they keep rum in, standing by the 'No.' And then, says
_I_, everybody will know where to fi