ink they would," said the butcher heartily. "It makes me
sick to see them. But why did he do it if he didn't like it?"

"I was just going to tell you that," said Eliph', putting down his book
again. "You see, when he left here he went right to St. Louis,
that being where his home was, and that was how he happened to have
lung-testers with him when he was here. His father made them. That was
his father's business. He was in the lung-tester manufacturing business.
So when Bill Rossiter left here he went right home to his father, which
was the wise thing to do."

"Went home to sponge on the old man, I suppose," said Skinner.

"Just so," agreed Eliph', "and that was how I happened to meet him.
There was a man there in St. Louis by the name of Hopper-Darius
Hopper-and he owned the Imperial Theater and Museum. He was an old
friend of mine, and I had sold him a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of
Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art away back in
1874, and as soon as he heard I was stopping in St. Louis he sent
around to the hotel and begged me to come around to the museum and give
readings out of Jarby's to the people that come into the museum. He said
that it would draw bigger crowds in a cultured city like St. Louis
than would come to see a two-headed calf or a fat women's race, being
a course of readings that would instruct, entertain and please, and he
asked me to name my own price."

"I should call him a fool," said Skinner scornfully.

"He wasn't," said Eliph'. "It took splendid. But I wouldn't let him pay
me a cent. I said I considered it my sacred duty to make as many people
as I could love and know Jarby's, and that I was doing my best to better
the world that way, and was glad to do it free gratis, because in a
big place like St. Louis there were many that could not afford even the
small price of one dollar down and one dollar a month, which is all
that is asked for this splendid volume, containing all the wisdom of
the world, from the earliest days to the present time, neatly bound in
cloth, and I felt I was helping the cause of progress by reading them a
few chapters. I began at page one," continued Eliph', opening the book
in his hands, "skipping the allegorical frontispiece in three colors,
and the index in which ten thousand-----"

"I thought you was goin' to tell me about William Rossiter," said the
butcher suspiciously.

"So I am," said Eliph'. "William Rossiter was on the third floor of