t of Poetry and Song."
What they want is all these in one.'--'Abridged?' said the
publishers. 'Enlarged!' said young Tarbox,--'enlarged and copiously
illustrated, complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars,
sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value to the
subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, "The Album of Universal
Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; editor, G. W. T.; agent for the
United States, the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox," that is to
say, myself.' That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand at the head of
my line; not merely because on every copy sold I make an author's as
well as a solicitor's margin; but because, being the author, I know
whereof I sell. A man that's got my book has got a college
education; and when a man taps me,--for, gentlemen, I never spout
until I'm tapped,--and information bursts from me like water from a
street hydrant, and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is
in that wonderful book, and that every thing that is in that
wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own a copy; and when I tell
him I can't spare my sample copy, but I'll take his subscription, he
smiles gratefully"--

A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the hall, betrayed the
opening of the front door. The door was shut again, and a well-formed,
muscular young man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway lifting
his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, and looking at it
with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox turned about once more with his
back to the fire, gave the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a
second and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. The
big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, and said:

"He smiles gratefully, you say?"

"Yes."

"And subscribes?"

"If he's got any sense," Mr. Tarbox replied in a pre-occupied tone.
His eyes were on the young man who still stood in the door. This
person must have reached the house in some covered conveyance. Even
his boot-tops were dry or nearly so. He was rather pleasing to see; of
good stature, his clothing cheap. A dark-blue flannel sack of the
ready-made sort hung on him not too well. Light as the garment was, he
showed no sign that he felt the penetrating cold out of which he had
just come. His throat and beardless face had the good brown of outdoor
life, his broad chest strained the two buttons of his sack, his head
was well-poised, his feet were shapely, and but for somewhat too much
r