edge as
it could well hold. Such a budget of news as he always opened! Such
smart things as those which came from his mouth! Such wonderful good
nature as he showed towards the children. Why I don't remember that I
ever heard a peddler speak cross to a boy, though we used always to
tumble over the nameless "notions" in his trunks to our hearts'
content, all the time he stayed in the house. I hardly know which
interested me more, the driving up to our door of a peddler's wagon,
or the entrance into our kitchen of half a dozen Mohegan Indians, with
their squaws and pappooses.

The age of clock peddlers had not come then. Wooden clocks are plenty
as blackberries now; and you can buy one for a song, almost. But
Connecticut clocks were quite unknown in my childhood. Now, I suppose,
the peddlers sell more clocks than tin ovens and sauce pans. But the
peddler of clocks and the peddler of tin ware is, in all important
particulars, one and the same.

Did you ever hear of the peddler who sold a load of clocks that would
only keep in order twenty-four hours, and hardly that? It seems that
his clocks were, like Peter Pindar's razors, _made to sell_, and not
to run. Well, he went a good way off from home, before he offered any
of his wares for sale. He found no trouble in selling the clocks, for
they were wonderfully cheap; and besides, as he took good care to
inform all his customers, each clock was warranted, and on his way
homeward he would call at every house where he sold a clock, when he
should take pleasure in exchanging all the clocks that did not perform
well. Now it turned out that his clocks were not worth a farthing. He
sold out the whole load, though--every clock but one. Then he turned
about, and commenced his journey homeward, calling upon all his
customers, as he had agreed to do.

"Well, how did that _are_ clock run neighbor?"

"Run! it didn't run at all. It stopped as still as a gate post before
you had got up Pudding Hill!"

"Did it though, _raly_?"

"To be sure it did. What on earth did you sell me such a clock for?"

"Well, now, you needn't take on in that style. I'll give you another
clock. I told you I would, when I sold it to you."

So the cunning peddler gives his customer the only clock he has left,
and takes the one he sold him at first, in place of it. And that is
the way the fellow managed all the way home.

There are a great many stories told about peddlers, which, I presume,
are not true, a