fore Queen
Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not infrequently buy."

"Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible'," asked Washington, "wid de
Hypocrypha?"

"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Illustrated History of the
Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in costume.
Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf, five-seventy-five;
full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred and seven
illustrations on wood and steel. Three different engravings of Abraham
alone. Four of Noah,--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah Building the
Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat,' Steel engraving of
Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the gourd, Nineveh in
the distance."

Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of
harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and, with
a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed foreign
harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.

"Here is north," he said; "here is the coastline; here are the flats;
here are the sluicegates; they store the water here, in--"

Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about
the tin-pedler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his
journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.

In the corner farthest from Eli, a delicate-looking man began to tell
the butcher about Eli's wife.

"Twelve years ago this fall," he said, "I taught district-school in the
parish where she lived. She was about fourteen then. Her father was
a poor farmer, without any faculty. Her mother was dead, and she kept
house. I stayed there one week, boarding 'round."

"Prob'ly did n't git not much of any fresh meat that week," suggested
the butcher.

"She never said much, but it used to divert me to see her order around
her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be
great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school the girls in
her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third class
was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that
I called Lizzie--that's her name--right out, and had her stand up for
twenty minutes. She was a shy little thing, and set great store by
perfect marks. I saw that she was troubled a good deal, to have all of
them looking and laughing at her. But she stood there, with her hands
folded behind her, and not a smile or a word."

"Look out for a