k. Come
again, say we."

And upon a paper whereon the clipping is pasted is this in Mary Adams's
hand:

"The famous Van Dorn baby! How the years have flown since the scandal of
his mother's elopement and his father's duel with Sir Charles shook two
continents. What an old rake the General was. And the boy's mother after
two other marriages and a sad period on the variety stage died alone in
penury! And Amos says that the General was so insolent to his men in the
war, that he dared not go into action with them for fear they would
shoot him in the back. Yet the boy is as lovely and gentle a creature as
one could ask to meet. This is as it should be."]

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH WE CONSIDER THE LADIES--GOD BLESS 'EM!

During those years in the late seventies and the early eighties, the
genii on the Harvey job grunted and grumbled as they worked, for the
hours were long and tedious and the material was difficult to handle.
Kyle Perry's wife died, and it was all the genii could do to find him a
cook who would stay with him and his lank, slab-sided son, and when the
genii did produce a cook--the famous Katrina, they wished her on Kyle
and the boy for life, and she ruled them with an iron rod. And to even
things up, they let Kyle stutter himself into a partnership with Ahab
Wright--though Kyle was trying to tell Ahab that they should have a
partition in their stable. But partition was too much of a mouthful and
poor Kyle fell to stuttering on it and found himself sold into bondage
for life by the genii, dispensing nails and cod-fish and calico as
Ahab's partner, before Kyle could get rid of the word partition.

The genii also had to break poor Casper Herdicker's heart--and he had
one, and a big one, despite his desire for blood and plunder; and they
broke it when his wife Brunhilde deserted the hearthstone back of the
shoe-shop, rented a vacant store room on Market Street and went into the
millinery way of life. And it wasn't enough that the tired genii had to
gouge out the streets of Harvey; to fill in the gulleys and ravines; to
dab in scores of new houses; to toil and moil over the new hotel,
witching up four bleak stories upon the prairie. It wasn't enough that
they had to cast a spell on people all over the earth, dragging
strangers to Harvey by trainloads; it wasn't enough that the overworked
genii should have to bring big George Brotherton to town with the
railroad--and he was load enough for any engine; his