and looked uneasy.

"Speak frankly. I want your candid opinion."

"Well, I must say, Mr. Scarborough, I think it's pretty bad."

"Thank you," said Scarborough; and he glanced round. "Does anybody
disagree with Mr. Drexel?"

There was not a murmur. Pierson covered his face to hide his smile at
this "jolt" for his friend. In the group round one of the windows a
laugh started and spread everywhere except to seven of the twelve young
women and to those near Scarborough--THEY looked frightened.

"I expected Mr. Drexel's answer," began Scarborough. "Before you can
sell Peaks of Progress each of you must be convinced that it's a book
he himself would buy. And I see you've not even read it. You've at
most glanced at it with unfriendly eyes. This book is not literature,
gentlemen. It is a storehouse of facts. It is an educational work so
simply written and so brilliantly illustrated that the very children
will hang over its pages with delight. If you attend to your training
in our coming three months of preliminary work you'll find during the
summer that the book's power to attract the children is its strongest
point. I made nearly half my sales last summer by turning from the
parents to the children and stirring their interest."

Pierson was now no more inclined to smile than were the pupils.

"When I started out," continued Scarborough, "I, too, had just glanced
at the book and had learned a few facts from the prospectus. And I
failed to sell, except to an occasional fool whom I was able to
overpower. Every one instinctively felt the estimate I myself placed
upon my goods. But as I went on the book gradually forced itself upon
me. And, long before the summer was over, I felt that I was an
ambassador of education to those eager people. And I'm proud that I
sold as many books as I did. Each book, I know, is a radiating center
of pleasure, of thought, of aspiration to higher things. No, ladies
and gentlemen, you must first learn that these eight hundred pages
crowded with facts of history, these six hundred illustrations taken
from the best sources and flooding the text with light, together
constitute a work that should be in all humble households."

Scarborough had his audience with him now.

"Never sneer," he said in conclusion. "Sneering will accomplish
nothing. Learn your business. Put yourself, your BEST self, into it.
And then you may hope to succeed at it."

He divided his pupils into six c