luggers and the heelers stood by him in this
campaign--so I ask your vote for Whitehead and the uplift, dearest
Jane."

"William Henry," said the housewife, "I am sorry to decline, but the
wife of Colonel Whitehead never was a friend of mine. Last July she
gave a party--you recall her Purple Tea?--and invited all the
neighbors, but she said no word to me. I don't care about your issues
or your uplift or your ring, but I won't support the husband of that
silly, stuck-up thing!"

Major Bounder was the victor on that day of stress and strife, for it
seemed that many women didn't like the Colonel's wife.

THE AGENT AT THE DOOR

"Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and
skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy and
breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've
bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything
from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg
beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire."

"You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I
know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but
be not uneasy--I've nothing to sell."

"I'm used to that story--it's whiskered and hoary," replied Mrs.
Granger, "you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a
Stentor you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're
dealing in unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the
corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for
the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd
better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you
look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd
spend it for drink."

"My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger--the woman had
reached for the broom by the wall--"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new
preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call."

GOOD AND BAD TIMES

"Times are so bad I have the blues," says Bilderbeck, who deals in
shoes. "All day I loaf around my store, and folks don't come here any
more; I reckon they have barely cash to buy cigars and corn beef hash,
and when they've bought the grub to eat, they can't afford to clothe
their feet.

"There's something wrong when trade's thus pinched," says he, "and
someone should be lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's
economy to die; and