pe with hers. The preliminary sparring was an exchange of compliments,
and deceived neither party. It seemed rather to heighten mutual respect.

"You be from Willesden, eh?" said Crane. "I calculate you know the
Salters."

If the truth were known, this evidence of an apparent omniscience rather
staggered Eliphalet. But training stood by him, and he showed no dismay.
Yes, he knew the Salters, and had drawed many a load out of Hiram
Salters' wood-lot to help pay for his schooling.

"Let me see," said Miss Crane, innocently; "who was it one of them
Salters girls married, and lived across the way from the meetin'-house?"

"Spauldin'," was the prompt reply.

"Wal, I want t' know!" cried the spinster: "not Ezra Spauldin'?"

Eliphalet nodded. That nod was one of infinite shrewdness which
commended itself to Miss Crane. These courtesies, far from making
awkward the material discussion which followed; did not affect it in the
least.

"So you want me to board you?" said she, as if in consternation.

Eliphalet calculated, if they could come to terms. And Mr. Barbo keyed
himself to enjoyment.

"Single gentlemen," said she, "pay as high as twelve dollars." And she
added that they had no cause to complain of her table.

Eliphalet said he guessed he'd have to go somewhere else. Upon this the
lady vouchsafed the explanation that those gentlemen had high positions
and rented her large rooms. Since Mr. Hopper was from Willesden and knew
the Salters, she would be willing to take him for less. Eliphalet said
bluntly he would give three and a half. Barbo gasped. This particular
kind of courage was wholly beyond him.

Half an hour later Eliphalet carried his carpet-bag up three flights and
put it down in a tiny bedroom under the eaves, still pulsing with
heat waves. Here he was to live, and eat at Miss Crane's table for the
consideration of four dollars a week.

Such is the story of the humble beginning of one substantial prop of the
American Nation. And what a hackneyed story it is! How many other young
men from the East have travelled across the mountains and floated down
the rivers to enter those strange cities of the West, the growth of
which was like Jonah's gourd.

Two centuries before, when Charles Stuart walked out of a window in
Whitehall Palace to die; when the great English race was in the throes
of a Civil War; when the Stern and the Gay slew each other at Naseby and
Marston Moor, two currents flowed across the Atl