is worth but ten dollars over
and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or double-barreled
echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine hundred and
fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon-echo,
which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, and
cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the land in,
for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.

Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more
than a small way, for esthetic amusement.

Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain
of Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of
small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back
settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the
same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all
owned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis
owned the east hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso
owned the west hill; the swale between was the dividing-line. So while
my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and
eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill
for a shade over three million.

Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other.
There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward
a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!

You see, a