n it. Mebby I DO get to talking about
that book when I don't mean to, for it is a book that a man that knows
it as well as I do just can't HELP talking about. It's a wonderful
book. It is a book that has all the wisdom and knowledge of the world
condensed into one volume, including five hundred ennobling thoughts
form the world's great authors, inclusive of the prose and poetical gems
of all ages, beginning on page 201, sixty-two solid pages of them,
with vingetty portraits of the authors, this being but one of the many
features that make the book helpful to all people of refinement and
mind. Now, when you take a book like that and bind it in a neat cloth
cover, making it an ornament to any center table in the country, and
sell it for the small price of five dollars, it is not selling it; it
is giving it away. Five dollars, neatly bound in cloth, one dollar down,
and one dollar a month until paid."

Miss Sally looked hopelessly toward the sample copy, which the minister
was still exhibiting to the picnickers with real pleasure. She was
enthralled, but she was puzzled. Never had she bought a book that
she had not first looked through. Invariably the agent had begun his
dissertation on the book's merits by an explanation of the illuminated
frontispiece--if it had one--and ended by turning the last page to show
the sheet where she must sign her name, underneath those of "the other
leading citizens of this town." There was something wrong, but she was
not quite sure what it was. She glanced back at the eager face of Eliph'
Hewlitt, and mistook the glow of "Affection, How to Hold it When Won,"
for the intense glance of the predatory book seller.

"I'll take a copy," she said recklessly.

Eliph' Hewlitt's face clouded, and he put out his hand as if to ward off
a blow.

"No, you won't!" he said, with distress. "You don't want one, and I
won't sell you one."

He cast his mind quickly over the chapter on "Courtship--How to Win the
Affections," and recalled its directions. He wished he had the book in
his hands, so that he could turn to the chapter and freshen his memory,
but the first direction was, certainly, to become well acquainted.

"I don't want to sell you one," he said more gently. "I want to sit down
on this nice grass and get acquainted. You and me are both strangers
here, and I guess we ought to talk to each other."

He seated himself as he said the word, and crossed his legs,
Turk-fashion, and looked up at Mi