erked antelope and
canned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of all
Paisley shook me by the hand and told me I'd acted square and on the
level with him and he was proud to call me a friend.

"The preacher had a small house on the side of the street that he'd
fixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it till
the ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridal
tour to El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and
poison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery.

"About ten o'clock that night I sets down in the front door and pulls
off my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixing
around in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I sat
there a while reverberating over old times and scenes. And then I
heard Mrs. Hicks call out, 'Ain't you coming in soon, Lem?'

"'Well, well!' says I, kind of rousing up. 'Durn me if I wasn't
waiting for old Paisley to--'

"But when I got that far," concluded Telemachus Hicks, "I thought
somebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But it
turned out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs.
Hicks."

IV

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN

'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that
the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of
the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't
tell me why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the
meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they
could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the
main office what kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side
of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather
furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line
prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a
line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in
the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army
through a peace conference.

Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and
stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of
modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the
weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom
of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."