my life it furnishes a solution. Corns? It tells how to
cure them. Food? It tells how to cook it. Love? It tells how to make it.
But," he said, laying his hand affectionately on the morocco cover, "to
be understood it must be read. To read it well is to admire and cherish
it, and yet, only this morning I was about to tear my copy of this
priceless volume to pieces and scatter it to the four winds of heaven."

He paused to let this awful fact sink into Miss Sally's mind.

"Yes," he continued, "I was about to turn away from the best friend I
have in the world and declare to one and all that Jarby's Encyclopedia
of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art was a fraud!
When I left your home yesterday, I was full of anger. I was mad at
Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science
and Art. I had trusted to its words and directions, as set forth in,
Courtship--How to Make Love--How to Win the Affections--How to Hold Them
When Won, and you sent me away. I went away a different man than I had
come, and resolved to go away from Kilo, and never to sell another
copy of this book. I resolved to take the sale of 'Hicks' Facts for the
Million,' a book, although greater in cost, containing by actual count
sixteen thousand less words than this.

"I went to my room at Doc Weaver's," he continued, "and seized my copy
of this work from where it lay on my bureau. I called it names. I told
it it was a cheat and a liar. Yes, Miss Sally, I let my angry passions
rise against this poor, innocent book. I believed it had advised me
falsely. I had trusted to its words and had done as it said to do, and
you had sent me away, not in anger, but in sorrow, but just as much
away. I picked up the book and opened it, grasping it in two hands to
tear it asunder."

He opened the book and showed her how he had grasped it.

"I pulled it to tear it in two," he said, raising the book and pulling
it in the direction of asunder, "but it would not rip. It was bound too
well, the copies bound in cloth at five dollars, one dollar down and one
dollar a month until paid, being bound as firmly as the more expensive
copies at seven fifty. I pulled harder and the book came level with my
nose. I saw it had opened at 'Courtship--How to Make Love,' and I said,
'While I am getting my breath to give this book another pull, why not
read the lie that is written here once more? It will give me strength to
rend it asunder.' So I read