ot, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.

The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canvassers
brought under the "Noxious Animals Act", and demanded that a reward
should be offered for their scalps. Reports appeared in the country
press about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections
and frightened the inhabitants to death--these were Sloper and Dodge's
sober and reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits of tar and
feathers.

In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canvassers, and they came
in from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened, to tender
their resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had just
got out a large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn't sell it, ruin
stared them in the face; and how could they sell it without canvassers?

The members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long,
sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald. Dodge was a
little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard, and quick,
beady eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe, and puffing
the smoke through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive on a
steep grade. Anybody walking into one of those whiffs was liable to get
paralysis.

Just as things were at their very blackest, something had turned up that
promised to relieve all their difficulties. An inventor had offered to
supply them with a patent cast-iron canvasser--a figure which (he said)
when wound up would walk, talk, collect orders, and stand any amount
of ill-usage and wear and tear. If this could indeed be done, they
were saved. They had made an appointment with the genius; but he was
half-an-hour late, and the partners were steeped in gloom.

They had begun to despair of his appearing at all, when a cab rattled up
to the door. Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window. A
young man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab, holding over
his shoulder what looked like the upper half of a man's body. In his
disengaged hand he held a pair of human legs with boots and trousers on.
Thus burdened he turned to ask his fare, but the cabman gave a yell of
terror, whipped up his horse, and disappeared at a hand-gallop; and a
woman who happened to be going by, ran down the street, howling that
Jack the Ripper had come to town. The man bolted in at the door, and
toiled up the dark stairs tramping heavily, the legs and feet, which he
dragged after him