and take a
fight for breakfast, and make three meals a day out of it: now, we in
the north have no stomach for such fare; so here, now, as far as I can
see, your climate takes pretty much after the people, and if so, it's no
wonder that solder can't stand it. Who knows, again, but you boil your
water quite too hot? Now, I guess, there's jest as much harm in boiling
water too hot, as in not boiling it hot enough. Who knows? All I can say
is, that the lot of wares I bring to this market next season shall be
calkilated on purpose to suit the climate."

The chairman seemed struck with this view of the case, and spoke with a
gravity corresponding with the deep sagacity he conceived himself to
have exhibited.

"There does seem to be something in this; and it stands to reason, what
will do for a nation of pedlers won't do for us. Why, when I recollect
that they are buried in snows half the year, and living on nothing else
the other half, I wonder how they get the water to boil at all. Answer
that, Bunce."

"Well, lawyer, I guess you must have travelled pretty considerable down
east in your time and among my people, for you do seem to know all about
the matter jest as well and something better than myself."

The lawyer, not a little flattered by the compliment so slyly and
evasively put in, responded to the remark with a due regard to his own
increase of importance.

"I am not ignorant of your country, pedler, and of the ways of its
people; but it is not me that you are to satisfy. Answer to the
gentlemen around, if it is not a difficult matter for you to get water
to boil at all during the winter months."

"Why, to say the truth, lawyer, when coal is scarce and high in the
market, heat is very hard to come. Now, I guess the ware I brought out
last season was made under those circumstances; but I have a lot on hand
now, which will be here in a day or two, which I should like to trade to
the colonel, and I guess I may venture to say, all the hot water in the
country won't melt the solder off."

"I tell you what, pedler, we are more likely to put you in hot water
than try any more of your ware in that way. But where's your
plunder?--let us see this fine lot of notions you speak of"--was the
speech of the colonel already so much referred to, and whose coffee-pot
bottom furnished so broad a foundation for the trial. He was a wild and
roving person, to whom the tavern, and the racecourse, and the cockpit,
from his very boyh