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uld think--that comb was five dollars; and now I comb it out with this one to remove the small stuff and the seeds." And releasing it from the clamp, he took down a fine comb from a nail, and repeated the process. "And now it is ready to be trimmed. I lay it on this hay-cutter, which some friends bought cheap for me at a fair, and answered my purpose after a few alterations, and I trim it off, nice and even at one end--and now it is done. You have seen a broom made." That was true. Our only regret was that we could not have that same broom to take away; but on our zig-zag journey, when we were likely enough to stop over or turn off anywhere, that was an absurdity not to be thought of. We did, however, "buy a broom" that we _could_ take--and an excellent one it proved--and we accepted a small package of broom-corn seed which the blind workman was anxious we should have, "to plant in some spare spot just to see how it looks when growing." When we went down-stairs, the woman was out on the platform, her yellow hair tossing about in the wind, and she seemed as happy with her meagre accommodations in the freight house as if she were owner of a mansion. She begged us to go in and get some of her apples, we were welcome, and "they did not cost me anything," she added. She told us more about her fellow-tenant, and said he paid half the rent, "and he used to board with us, but now he boards up in town, and he goes back and forth alone, his self." * * * * * This curious and pleasant little episode made us so ready to be interested in everything pertaining to brooms that it seemed a kind of sarcasm of circumstances when, at a junction not very far along our route, we saw, perched upon his cart, a pedler doing his best to sell his brooms to the crowd on their way home from one of the Cape camp-meetings. His words were just audible as the train went on: "Buy a broom! Buy a broom! Here's the place to buy a cheap broom, for _fourteen_ cents! _only_ fourteen cents! A broom for fourteen cents! So CHEAP!" And it happened not many days later that somebody read in our hearing that the broom-corn is a native of India, and that Dr. Franklin was the means of introducing it into this country; from seeing a whisk of it in the hands of a lady he began to examine it--being of an inquiring mind, as everybody knows--and found a seed, which he planted. The street-sweeper's broom is the genu
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