Part 5 (1/2)

”Everybody says the same,” said Wilkins with a touch of pride. ”The Sir Walter Scott man said it, and I guess it's so. But there's other things besides books. Kilo may be strong and willin' on books, but she's strong other ways, too, and just now she is lookin' at another kind of horse, and that's why I say you've miscalculated your comin'. If I was you I'd go elsewhere and come back later. Kilo has got more books now than she can handle without straining something, and just now her mind's off on another tack. We struck a big missionary revival here last week, and you can bet a wager that every dollar that goes out of Kilo these days, except what goes for dues on Sir Walter, is goin' for the brethren. The women folks is havin' a sale this very evenin' to raise cash to help the heathen.”

Eliph' Hewlitt arose from his chair and tucked the oilcloth-covered parcel that had been lying on his knees under his left arm. He was a small man, and his movements were apt to be short and jerky.

”Missionary sale?” he said briskly. ”I guess I'll go around and look in on it. Strangers welcome, I suppose? I'm rather fond of missionary sales, and I think the world and all of the heathen. Think the ladies would like to see a stranger?”

Wilkins grinned.

”Pap,” he said, ”what you think? Think they'll fall on his neck if he has any money? From what I have experienced of them sales I figger to calculate that anybody that is anxious to buy gingham ap.r.o.ns an' sofa pillows is sure to be took by the hand and given a front seat. I'd go around with you, but I've got my taxes to pay, like Pap here, and I don't actually need any pink tidies. It ain't far; just up to Doc Weaver's; two blocks up, and you can't miss the house. It's the yeller mansion, this side the road, an' the gate's off the hinges and laid up alongside the fence. But I guess if them's your samples in that there package, you might as well leave them here.”

But Eliph' Hewlitt did not leave them there; he tucked them under his arm, and hurried away with brisk little steps.

CHAPTER V. Sammy Mills

”There ought to be a license agin book agents,” said Pap Briggs spitefully, when Eliph' Hewlitt had hurried away.

”It wouldn't harm that feller,” said Wilkins. ”He's a red hot one at book-agenting, he is, an' he'd find out some way to git round it. I hear lot of book agents that come round this way tell of him. He's got a record of sellin' more copies of that encyclopedia book of his than any one man ever sold of any one book, an' he's a sort of hero of the book-agenting business. It makes me proud to call to remembrance that him an' me was kids together down at Franklin, years ago. Him an' me took to the book-agentin' biz the same day, we did. I needed cash, like I always do, and he had literatoor in the family. So we went an' did it. We did it to Gallops Junction first, and after that Eliph' sowed literatoor pretty general all over Iowa, an' next I heard of him all over the United States. Iowa is now a grand State, an as full of culture as a Swiss cheese is full of holes, an' I don't take all the credit for it; I give Eliph' his share. Hotels help to scatter the seed, but literatoor scatters more.

”One day, down there at Franklin, Eliph' says to me, 'Jim, you know that book pa wrote?' That's what Eliph' remarked to me on the aforesaid day, but I wish to state his name wasn't Eliph' on that date, an' it wasn't Hewlitt, neither. It was plain Sammy; Sammy Mills. Eliph' Hewlitt was a sort of fancy name my pa had give to a horse he had that he thought was a racer, but wasn't. It was a good enough horse to enter in a race, but not good enough to win. It was the kind of race horse that kept pa poor, but hopeful.

”'Why, yes, Sammy,' I says, 'I've heard tell of that grand literary effort of your dad.'

”'Well,' he says--we was sittin' on the porch of his pa's house--'Pa he had a thousand of them printed.'

”'d.i.c.kens he did!' I remarked, supposin' it was us to me to do some remarkin'.

”'And,' says Sammy, 'he's got eight hundred an' sixty-four of them highly improvin' an' intellectooal volumes stored in the barn right now.'

”'Quite a lib'ry,' I says, off-hand like.

”'Numerous, but monotonous,' says Sam. 'As a lib'ry them books don't give the variety of topics they oughter. They all cling to the same subject too faithful. Eight hundred an' sixty-four volumes of the ”Wage of Sin,” all bound alike, don't make what I call a rightly differentiated lib'ry. When you've read one you've read all.'

”'Alas!' I says, or somthin' like that, sympathetic an' attentive.

”'Likewise,' says Sam, 'they clutter up the barn. They ought to be got out to make room for more hay.'

”'This was indeed true. I saw it was all good sense. Horses don't take to literatoor like they does to hay.

”'Well,' says Sammy, 'what's the matter with chuckin' them eight hundred an' sixty-four ”Wages of Sin” into the rustic communities of this commonwealth of Iowa, U.S.A.? Here we've got a barnful of high-cla.s.s, intellectooal poem, an' yon we have a State full of yearnin' minds, clamorous for mental improvement at one fifty per volume. It's our duty to chuck them poems into them minds, an' to intellectooally subside them clamors.'

”I shook my head quite strenuous.

”'Nix for me!' I remarked; 'no book-agenting for me.'

”'Who said book-agenting?” asked Sammy, deeply offended. 'Do you calculate that the son of a high-cla.s.s author of a famous an' helpful book would turn book agent? Never!'

”'What then?' I asks him.

”'Just a little salubrious an' entertainin' canva.s.sin' for a work of genius,' he says. 'A few heart-to-heart talks with the educated ladies of Gallops Junction an' Tomville on the beauties of the ”Wage of Sin.”

That ain't no book-agenting,' says he, 'that's pickin' money off the trees. It's pie ready cut an' handed to us on a plate with a gilt edge.

All we've got to do is to bite it.'

”No, let me tell you right here, Pap, that the 'Wage of Sin' was a thoroughbred treat to read. It was a moral book. Next to the Bible it was the morallest book I ever tackled, an' when W. P. Mills wrote that book he gave the literatoor of the U.S.A. a boost in the right direction that it hasn't recovered from yet. It was the champion long distance poem of the nineteenth century. That book showed what a chunky an'