s father of being the
fossiliferous remnant of an ancient time.

"'The truth is, Harry hasn't enough competition in his line,' I
suggested, one evening. 'The other boys are doing well, but they don't
keep up with him.

"'You know after I left college, in my youth, I spent a couple of
years in Wyoming. Well, Mary Ann Crowder was the only single lady
within a hundred miles, and she was the most obstreperous damn critter
that I ever saw. She had a monopoly an' knew it, an' wasn't decently
polite. Put on more style than a nigger at a cakewalk. Though she had
red hair an' only one eye, some of the boys used to ride sixty miles
for a visit with her. Then they had to swim the Snake River and maybe
wrestle with a tame bear that was loose in the dooryard. By and by a
man with two unmarried daughters moved on to a ranch near us, and then
Mary Ann began to be polite. She suddenly became a human being, an'
killed the bear, an' moved across the river an' married the first man
that proposed, and lived happily ever after.

"'What we need here is another drag and tandem.'

"'Get what you need, and I'll pay the bills,' said Harry's father.

"So I went to a sale in New York, bought my drag and tandem-cart, and
had them shipped to Pointview. Our local sign-painter put a crest or,
rather, a kind of royal hatchment, on the panels of both. Then I sold
them for next to nothing to a local livery on conditions. Its new
owner agreed to use the drag for chowder-parties, and to break the
worst-looking nags in his stable to drive tandem on the cart.

"Tommy Ruggles, a smart-looking knight of the currycomb, whose first
name was a kitchen word in Pointview, sprang to my assistance. He had
curly hair, and a good deal of natural cuteness, and was, moreover, 'a
divvle with the girls.' He contracted with me to take a selected list
of female servants for an airing in the tandem-cart. He was to get a
royalty of five dollars a head on every servant that was properly
aired, with a small premium on red ones.

"He began with Big Bertha, our worthy German countess. Tommy had a
playful humor, and cracked his long whip over the rough-harnessed nags
and merrily tooted his horn as the rig lumbered along through the main
streets of our village. Many laughed and many wondered, while an army
of noisy kids followed and hung on behind.

"Tommy got his second girl, who was hit on the head with a ripe
tomato, and then it was all over. The girls wouldn't stand for