ear piecemeal
the Inexact,
Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt
him and me,
And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee!
--_The Rime of the Sheeted Spoorn_.

"Baggs," said Mr. Amidon, "take things entirely into your own hands.
I'm off."

"All right," said Baggs. "It's only a day's run to Canada; but in case
I should prove honest, and need to hear from you, you'll leave your
address?"

Mr. Amidon[1] frowned and made a gesture expressive of nervousness.

"No," said he, in a high-pitched and querulous tone. "No! I want to
see if this business owns me, or if I own it. Why should you need to
communicate with me? Whenever I'm off a day you always sign
everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time;
so it's only the usual thing, after all. I shall not leave any
address; and don't look for me until I step in at that door! Good-by."

And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for
the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia
of his fad.

"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his
sister, housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs--his
confidential clerk and silent partner--"gives me an uneasy feeling. If
you had only done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one----"

"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times,
and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep
your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that
Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and
as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely
speculative family of yours if we---- By the way, there's the whistle
at Anderson's crossing. Good-by, my dear!"

On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00,
Mr. Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of
Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an
important event. The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the
little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his
doings important, had nothing remarkable followed. But he had
exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these. His
father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a _grande dame_ as
to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories. The Daughters
of the American Revo