d of
poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes
they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent
through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they
don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says
I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to
the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like
this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell
accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the
equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen
thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine
degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."

"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you
say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a
Ruby's poetry!"

"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the
inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of
ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found.
In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics
more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old.
At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three
thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth,
near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet
eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut,
compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The
Tower of London was burned in 1841."

"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and
soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."

But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to
me out of Herkimer.

One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I
jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene.
When I see it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell,
and I was there in two minutes.

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every
masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and
barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to
get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him
the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and
come out alive.

"Where's Mrs. Sam