ce, the two in one can be
united, and money and house-room alike can be saved? I trust, madam, I
believe, that I have said enough to convince you that my article is all
that fancy can paint or bright hope inspire; that in every household
made glad by its presence it will be regarded always and forever as a
heaven-given boon!" Suddenly dropping his rhetorical tone and coming
down to the tone of business, the man went on: "You'll buy one, won't
you? The price--"

The change of tone seemed to arouse Susan from the spellbound condition
in which she had remained during this extraordinary harangue.

"O-o-o-oh!" she said, shudderingly, "do take the horrid, horrid thing
right away!" Then she fled into the house.

I was very angry at the man for disturbing Susan in this way, and I told
him so pretty plainly; and I also told him to get out. At this juncture,
to my astonishment, Gregory Wilkinson interposed by asking what the
thing was worth; and when the man said five dollars, he said that he
would buy it. The man had manifested a disposition to be ugly while
I was giving him his talking to, but when he found that he had made a
sale, after all, he grew civil again. As he went off he expressed the
hope that the lady would be all right presently, and the conviction
that she would find the combination churn and wash-boiler a household
blessing that probably would add ten years to her life.

"What on earth did you buy that for?" I asked, when the man had gone.

"Oh, I don't know. It seems to be a pretty good wash-boiler, anyway.
I heard your wife say the other day that she wanted a wash-boiler. She
needn't use it as a churn if she don't want to, you know."

"But my wife never will tolerate that disgusting thing, with its horrid
suggestiveness of worse than Irish uncleanliness, about the house," I
went on, rather hotly. "I really must beg of you to send it away."

"All right," he answered. "I'll _take_ it away. I'm going to New York
to-morrow, and I'll take it along."

"And what ever will you do with it in New York?" I asked.

"Well, I can't say positively yet, but I guess I'll send it out to the
asylum. They'd be glad to get it there, I don't doubt--not as a churn,
you know, but for wash-boiling."

Then he went on to tell me that one of the things that he especially
wanted done at the asylum with his legacy was the construction of a
steam-laundry, with a thing in the middle that went round and round, and
dried the clothes