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