and trying to give orders
to a young woman of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed
spectacles, I made inquiries concerning the pleasures of this
independence. They liked it--indeed they did. 'Twas the natural fate
of almost all girls--the recognized custom in America--and I was a
barbarian not to see it in that light.

"Well, and after?" said I. "What happens?"

"We work for our bread."

"And then what do you expect?"

"Then we shall work for our bread."

"Till you die?"

"Ye-es--unless--"

"Unless what? This is your business, you know. A man works until he
dies."

"So shall we"--this without enthusiasm--"I suppose."

Said the partner in the firm, audaciously:--"Sometimes we marry our
employees--at least, that's what the newspapers say."

The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. "Yet
I don't care. I hate it--I hate it--I hate it--and you needn't look so!"

The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach.

"I thought you did," said I. "I don't suppose American girls are much
different from English ones in instinct."

"Isn't it Theophile Gautier who says that the only difference between
country and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?"

Now, in the name of all the gods at once, what is one to say to a young
lady (who in England would be a person) who earns her own bread, and
very naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at
your head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying, but that
is not enough.

A mission should be established.

III. AMERICAN SALMON

The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but time
and chance cometh to all.

I HAVE lived!

The American Continent may now sink under the sea, for I have taken the
best that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor real
estate.

Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing Club, who whip the reaches
of the Tavi, and you who painfully import trout over to Octamund, and I
will tell you how old man California and I went fishing, and you shall
envy.

We returned from The Dalles to Portland by the way we had come, the
steamer stopping en route to pick up a night's catch of one of the
salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery downstream.

When the proprietor of the wheel announced that his take was two
thousand two hundred and thirty pounds weight of fish, "and not a heavy
catc