ld
man Ayers and young Simpson arrived at the post-office door at precisely
the same second and got their baskets and themselves in a hopeless jam.
Postmaster Flint had to appoint a peace conference to settle the
dispute.

Ayers is getting pretty old, and for several years we have been worrying
about his future. Since a cruel Government has decided that a newspaper
publisher must keep his subscription list paid up or go out of business,
times have been pretty hard for Ayers; formerly he could let a
subscription account run for ten years and then take a second-hand buggy
or a quarter of beef, or a few odd size grindstones on account; but of
late he has had to dun us every year, and of course that makes us mad,
and we quit his paper with great frequency and vim. I don't know what
would have happened to the old man if Wilson hadn't been elected. But
that, of course, has settled things for him. He will be our next
postmaster. Every one has conceded that except Pash Wade, Emery
Billings, Colonel Ackley, and Sim Askinson, who are also candidates.
However, old man Ayers's petition is as long as all the rest put
together, and when he is appointed and begins to draw down fifteen
hundred dollars a year for handing out his own paper to his
subscribers, we will sigh with relief, and Simpson's yells will be sweet
music in our ears.

If I had my way, I would put a clause in the Constitution giving all
third-class postmasterships to third-class editors, anyway. It's the
only chance they have of accumulating enough of a surplus to be able to
go into a store with their hats on one side and buy things like other
people.

VIII

THE HOMEBURG MARINE BAND

_Where Music is Cherished for its own Sweet Sake Regardless of
Dividends_

Where you New Yorkers get farthest ahead of us Homeburgers, Jim, is the
fact that you can go out and soak yourself in real, soul-hoisting music
whenever you feel like it--provided, of course, that you have the price
and that some speculator hasn't cornered the tickets, and that you can
get home at night in time to get dressed in time to go back to town, and
that you have sufficient nerve and endurance to go four rounds with your
celebrated subway in the same twenty-four hours.

You can't realize what having music constantly on tap means to a
pilgrim from a town where two concerts in a winter is a gorge, and where
about the only regular musical diversion is going to church on Sunday
morning and bet