r one
cent, an' the cover free.'

"Sammy was one of the confidential kind that gets close up to your ear
and whispers, even if he is only tellin' you that it looks like rain, so
he looks all around and whispers to me:

"'We'll make our initiative beginnin' first off at Gallops Junction,'
he says, 'where we ain't known, an' where pa ain't known, an' where the
book ain't known. I've a premonition,' he says, 'that 'twould be better
so. If we was to start in here we would get discouraged, for the folks
ain't used to buyin' "Wage of Sin." They've been given it so bountiful
an' free that pa can't give away another copy to the poorest man in
town. They've got so that they run when they see pa comin'.'

"'You've got sense in that red head of your'n,' I says.

"'For me,' he says, 'it will be merely a voluptuous excursion. It will
be pie to sell that book, because I am the son of its author. Filial
relationship to genius,' he says, 'will make them overawed, an' grateful
to be allowed to buy of me, but you will have it harder. You can't claim
nearer kin to genius than that you helped the son of it chop wood at
various and sundry times.'

"'And gave him a handsome black eye one time,' I says reminiscently.
'I'll make the most of that. The public likes anecdotes.'

"'No,' says Sammy, 'you can omit to mention that black-eye business.
That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literary
inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carry
wood while I recited passages of poem out of that book at you.'

"What I would have spoke next don't matter, because I omitted to speak
it. I was gettin' a glimmer of an idea into my head, and I wanted to get
it clear in and settled down to stay before I lost it. It got in, an'
I had a realization that it was an O.K. idea, an' that it beat Sammy's
son-of-his-father idea quite scandalous.

"When me an' Sammy got down to Gallops Junction we found that as
a municipality of art an' beauty it was a red-hot fizzle, but as a
red-hot, sizzling sandheap it was the leader of the world. As near as
we could judge from a premature look at the depot platform the principal
occupations of the grizzly inhabitants was pickin' sand burrs from
the inside rim of their pants-leg. It was a dreary village, but Sammy
restrained my unconscious impulse to get right aboard the train again.
He had that joyful light of combat in them blue eyes of his, an' he
looked at that bunch of paintl