t the farmers as they drove into town. Two or three or more of the
men would clamber upon the load, open the sacks, sample the grain and
bid for it. If one man wanted the load badly, or if he chanced to be in
a bad temper, the farmer was the gainer. Hence very few of them, even
the members of the Grange, were content to drive up to my father's
elevator and take the honest market price. They were all hoping to get a
little more than the market price.

This vexed and embittered my father who often spoke of it to me. "It
only shows," he said, "how hard it will be to work out any reform among
the farmers. They will never stand together. These other buyers will
force me off the market and then there will be no one here to represent
the farmers' interest."

These merchants interested me greatly. Humorous, self-contained,
remorseless in trade, they were most delightful companions when off
duty. They liked my father in his private capacity, but as a factor of
the Grange he was an enemy. Their kind was new to me and I loved to
linger about and listen to their banter when there was nothing else to
do.

One of them by reason of his tailor-made suit and a large ring on his
little finger, was especially attractive to me. He was a handsome man of
a sinister type, and I regarded his expressionless face as that of a
gambler. I didn't know that he was a poker player but it amused me to
think so. Another buyer was a choleric Cornishman whom the other men
sometimes goaded into paying five or six cents more than the market
admitted, by shrewdly playing on his hot temper. A third was a tall
gaunt old man of New England type, obstinate, honest, but of sanguine
temperament. He was always on the bull side of the market and a loud
debater.--The fourth, a quiet little man of smooth address, acted as
peacemaker.

Among these men my father moved as an equal, notwithstanding the fact of
his country training and prejudices, and it was through the man Morley
that we got our first outlook upon the bleak world of Agnosticism, for
during the summer a series of lectures by Robert Ingersoll was reported
in one of the Chicago papers and the West rang with the controversy.

On Monday as soon as the paper came to town it was the habit of the
grain-buyers to gather at their little central office, and while Morley,
the man with the seal ring, read the lecture aloud, the others listened
and commented on the heresies. Not all were sympathizers with the grea