eir to a vast
collection of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is
scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American
continent; sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there
is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard
man, but I must look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo
which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which
was free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child,
and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus
wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry
my child to a beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your
mortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever."

My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together
again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these
maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for
less money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle
ten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in
Texas, I will let you have for--

"Let me interrupt you," I said. "My friend, I have not had a moment's
respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I
did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details;
I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison
which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of
useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I
would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I
would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to
sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on;
let us not have bloodshed."

But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.
You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have
once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have
got to suffer defeat.

I compromised with this man at the end of an i