s? Up-and-down miles, tilted horribly or standing
on edge!

It didn't seem astute. And Herman achieved simply no persuasion whatever
with me by stocking in that "only." He could have put only all over the
rock and it would still have been thirty-two miles, wouldn't it? Only
indeed! You might think the man was saying "Only ten minutes' walk from
the post office"--or something with a real meaning like that. I claimed
then and I claim now that he should have omitted the only and come out
blunt with the truth. There are times in this world when the straight and
bitter truth is better without any word-lace. This Wagner person was a
sophist. So I said to him, now, as a man will at times:

"All right, Herman, old top! But you'll have to think up something better
than only to put before those thirty-two miles. If you had said 'Only two
miles' it might have had its message for me. But thirty more than that!
Be reasonable! Why not pick out a good glen that parties can slip off to
for a quiet evening without breaking up a whole week? Frankly, I don't
understand you and your glen. But you can bet I'll find out about it!"

So, right away, I said to Ma Pettengill, who by this time had a lot of
bills and papers and ledgers and stuff out on her desk, and was talking
hotly to all of them--I said to her that there was nearly half a bottle
of Uncle Henry's wine left, his rare old grape wine laid down well over a
month ago; so she had better toss off a foamy beaker of it--yes, it still
foamed--and answer me a few questions.

It was then she said the things about that there wine being able to
inflate the casualty lists, even of Polish weddings, which are already
the highest known to the society page of our police-court records. She
said, further, that she had took just enough of the stuff at dinner to
make her think she wasn't entirely bankrupt, and she wanted to give
these here accounts a thorough going-over while the sensation lasted.

Not wishing to hurt Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at
it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the
seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner. I found myself not a little moved
by the pathos of him. It was little enough I could get from Ma Pettengill
at first. She spoke almost shortly to me when I asked her things she had
to stop adding silly figures to answer.

What I found out was mostly my own work, putting two and two in their
fit relationship. Even the men