e talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I
looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late
breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed
up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere
ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into
business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in
Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement
and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.

'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible
butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from
our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you
want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now--
what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's
oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't
tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house.
We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of
butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along
is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel
trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't
find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the
Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are
turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell
it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get
around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance
for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to
the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't
imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati
to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.'

And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid
strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said--

Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the
only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out
of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.'

'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business
for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and
Italy, with the United States custom-house mark