started to put it down. I
thought we would finish it this evening. It won't be any work at all
for you, for I--I--bought you one of these to-day to put it down
with,"--pushing an illustrated circular across the table toward me.

ANY CHILD CAN USE IT

THE PERFECT AUTOMATIC CARPET-LAYER

No more carpet-laying bills. Do your own laying. No wrinkles. No
crowded corners. No sore knees. No pounded fingers. No broken backs.
Stand up and lay your carpet with the Perfect Automatic. Easy as
sweeping. Smooth as putting paper on the wall. You hold the handle,
and the Perfect Automatic does the rest. Patent Applied For. Price--

--but it was not the price! It was the tool--a weird hybrid tool, part
gun, part rake, part catapult, part curry-comb, fit apparently for
almost any purpose, from the business of blunderbuss to the office of
an apple-picker. Its handle, which any child could hold, was somewhat
shorter and thicker than a hoe-handle, and had a slotted tin barrel, a
sort of intestine, on its ventral side along its entire length. Down
this intestine, their points sticking through the slot, moved the tacks
in single file to a spring-hammer close to the floor. This hammer was
operated by a lever or tongue at the head of the handle, the connection
between the hammer at the distal end and the lever at the proximal end
being effected by means of a steel-wire spinal cord down the dorsal
side of the handle. Over the fist of a hammer spread a jaw of sharp
teeth to take hold of the carpet. The thing could not talk; but it
could do almost anything else, so fearfully and wonderfully was it made.

As for laying carpets with it, any child could do that. But we did n't
have any children then, and I had quite outgrown my childhood. I tried
to be a boy again just for that night. I grasped the handle of the
Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down
on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at
the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped
out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the
carpet, the crouching hammer sprang, and--

And then I lifted up the Perfect Automatic to see if the tack went
in,--a simple act that any child could do, but which took automatically
and perfectly all the stretch out of the carpet; for the hammer did not
hit the tack; the tack really did not get through the trap; the trap
did not open th