you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one
of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was
placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles."

"Lawsy!" says Mrs. Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you
was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of
information?"

"From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open
when I go about the world."

"Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There
are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that
it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be
gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined."

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow
house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell
her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and
compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of
the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.

I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with
old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way
over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming
down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her
hat made a dangerous dip over one eye.

"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I
believe."

"For nine years," says I.

"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"

"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with
asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I
never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was
a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance
and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him
impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years
of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to
impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed."

"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take
up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the
fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle
the ignominy of any lady."

"Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it
of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a
b