yet they were to fill not only his best rooms but his whole
horizon.

"Nightingales and Prodigies," the handbills said, and after the concert
nobody questioned their claims. The "Musical Snows" liked the people,
the food, the scenery--and the climate which was doing Mr. Snow such a
lot of good--so well that they stayed on. There were so many of them and
they rested so long that their board-bill became too hopelessly large to
pay, so they did not dishearten themselves by trying.

Then while freight was seven cents a pound from the railroad terminus
and Old Man Hinds was staring at the ceiling in the tortured watches of
the night trying to figure out how he could make three hams last until
another wagon got in, a solution came to him which seemed the answer to
all his problems. He would turn the hotel over to the "Musical Snows"
and board with them! It was the only way he could ever hope to catch up.
To board them meant ruin.

So the Snow family abandoned their musical careers and consented to
assume the responsibility temporarily--at least while Pa was "poahly."
This was four years ago, and "Pa" was still poahly.

He spent most of his time in a rocking chair upstairs by the stove-pipe
hole where he could hear conveniently. When the stove-pipe parted at the
joint, as it sometimes did, those below knew that Mr. Snow had
inadvertently clasped the stove-pipe too tightly between his stockinged
feet, though there were those who held that it happened because he did
not like the turn the talk was taking. At any rate the Snow family
spread themselves around most advantageously. Mr. Will Snow, the tenor
of the "Plantation Quartette," appeared behind the office desk, while
Mr. Claude Snow, the baritone, turned hostler for the stage-line and
sold oats to the freighters. And "Ma" Snow developed such a taste for
discipline and executive ability that while she was only five feet four
and her outline had the gentle outward slope of a churn, Ore City spoke
of her fearfully as "SHE."

Her shoulders were narrow, her chest was flat, and the corrugated puffs
under her eyes with which she arose each morning looked like the
half-shell of an English walnut. By noon these puffs had sunk as far the
other way, so it was almost possible to tell the time of day by Ma
Snow's eyes; but she could beat the world on "The Last Rose of Summer,"
and she still took high C.

Regular food and four years in the mountain air had done wonders for
"The Infa