g the furniture in old families.
And that big bag there, with the puckerin'-string run around it, is
the bag to put china and valuables into and lug away."

"And your idee of an honor, is it," he sneered, "is that I'm goin'
to put that dingbusset with a leather back-fin onto my head and grab
up them two leather swill-pails and stick that iron thing there under
my arm and grab that puckering-string bag in my teeth and start
tophet-te-larrup over this town a-chasin' fires? Say--" but his
voice choked, and he began to read once more the pamphlet. The red
on the back of his neck grew deeper.

At last the explosion occurred.

"Louada Murilla Sproul, do you mean to say that you've had this thing
in your fam'ly once, and was knowin' what it meant, and then let them
three Shanghaiers come in here and shove this bloodsucker bus'ness
onto me, and git away all safe and sound? I had been thinkin' that
your Todds and Wards was spreadin' some sail for villuns, but they're
only moskeeters to Barb'ry pirates compared with this."

He cuffed his hand against the open pages of the pamphlet.

"It says here that the foreman has to set up a free dinner for 'em
four times a year and ev'ry holiday. It says that the foreman is fined
two dollars for ev'ry monthly meetin' that he misses, other members
ten cents. He's fined ten dollars for ev'ry fire that he isn't at,
other members a quarter of a dollar. He's fined one dollar for ev'ry
time he's ketched without his hat, buckets, bag, and bed-wrench hung
in his front hall where they belong, other members ten cents. And
he's taxed a quarter of the whole expenses of gittin' to firemen's
muster and back. Talk about lettin' blood with a gimlet! Why, they're
after me with a pod-auger!"

All the afternoon he read the little book, cuffed it, and cursed.
He snapped up Louada Murilla with scant courtesy when she tried to
give him the history of Smyrna's most famous organization, and
timorously represented to him the social eminence he had attained.

"It isn't as though you didn't have money, and plenty of it," she
pleaded. "You can't get any more good out of it than by spending it
that way. I tell you, Aaron, it isn't to be sneezed at, leading all
the grand marches at the Ancients' dances and being boss of 'em all
at the muster, with the band a-playin' and you leading 'em right up
the middle of the street. It's worth it, Aaron--and I shall be so
proud of you!"

He grumbled less angrily the next mo