When Eliph' Hewlitt, sad at heart, departed from his disastrous
interview with Miss Sally, he felt, for the first time in his life, a
doubt as to the infallibility of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge
and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art. Here was a book he had
praised, sold and believed, and it had failed him. Here was a book that
was proclaimed, in the “Advice to Agents,” to be so simply written and
so easy of understanding that a child could follow its directions
as well as a man, and it had only led him to defeat. He had courted
according to “Courtship”; he had tried to win the affections according
to “How to Win” them, and instead of the “Yes” that Jarby's book led him
to believe he would receive, he had been given a “No.” This, then, was
the book whose success he had made his life work! Caesar, when he
saw Brutus draw his dagger, was wounded no more in spirit than Eliph'
Hewlitt was now.
The world seemed to slip from beneath his feet; his firmest foundation
seemed to have crumbled away; his best friend seemed to have turned
false. As he walked toward Doc Weaver's house he decided what he
would do: he would go to his room and tear his sample copy of Jarby's
Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art
to scraps and throw them out upon the wind; he would write to Jarby &
Goss and resign his commission; he would have Irontail hitched to his
buggy and leave Kilo at once and forever, and from some other town he
would write to G. P. Hicks & Co., and solicit the agency for Hicks'
Facts for the Million, a book he had heretofore hated and despised. All
this he resolved to do, and yet here he was again at Miss Sally's door,
and the sample copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium
of Literature, Science and Art was under his arm!
Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, when she saw Eliph' Hewlitt at the door, uttered a
little cry of joy and darted toward him. She put her finger to her lips
and slipped out of the door and drew him to the seat that had once been
a church pew, but was now doing duty as a garden-seat under an apple
tree in the side yard. On Eliph's face was no longer the care-worn
expression of the rejected lover, but the full glow of confidence,
radiating from between his side-whiskers.
Mrs. Smith bent confidentially toward him, and laid one hand on the copy
of Jarby's, which he had placed across his knees. In quick, crowding
words she bade him hope--which wasn't necessary--and told him of the
coming of Guthrie and Skinner, and of their demands. She laid before him
all she knew of the affair of the fire-extinguishers, of the horror of
the threatened legal attack on Miss Sally, and the disgrace that would
overwhelm her should T. J. Jones publish an article mentioning her name.
Eliph' Hewlitt must prevent the publication of the article; he must save
Miss Sally.
The book agent was willing. As the appeal was spoken his eyes brightened
and the book agent instinct--the instinct that knows no defeat, but will
talk a book into any man's library, or die in the attempt--flowed
full and free through his soul. Mrs. Smith saw him take fire, and she
ventured the question she had been leading up to.
“Now, Mr. Hewlitt,” she said, “I have sent for Mr. Jones, and I will do
what I can to persuade him not to publish the article. I depend on you
to do what you can in that, too, but I am going to trespass on your good
nature in another thing also. It is something I know Miss Sally would
never allow me to ask, and I myself would not ask it but that I happen
to be waiting for a check from my publisher, and am quite out of funds
at the moment. I am going to ask you to lend me sixty dollars! Not for
myself, but to me. I believe Miss Sally would be willing to borrow it of
me, and I know, dear Mr. Hewlitt, you will be willing to lend it to me.”
Eliph' coughed softly behind his hand.
“Gladly!” he said. “Gladly any amount. I have quite a little money
laid away, quite a little; some thousands, in fact; I might be called
a wealthy man--in Kilo. And it would be a pleasure, a real pleasure,
to spend all for Miss Sally. She is a fine woman, Mrs. Smith. I admire
her.”
“I knew I could depend on YOU,” said Mrs. Smith, putting her white hand
on his scarcely less white one.
“But I can appreciate Miss Sally's-ah-maidenly dislike, in fact, her
quite proper dislike of a loan from-ah-one who aspires---- In fact,” he
said, boldly breaking away from all attempt to speak bookishly, “from
me. She don't want to borrow from me, and it would be the same thing if
you borrowed for her from me. The same thing. I am courting Miss Sally,
and such a loan would be irregular. There is nothing, Mrs. Smith, in
the chapter on 'Courtship--How to Win the Affections,' et cetery, about
loaning money to the lady. It would derange the directions given in this
book, which is----”
“I don't want to hear about the book,” said Mrs. Smith with annoyance.
“I know all about the book. So you refuse to lend me sixty dollars? You,
like these other men, are willing to desert Miss Sally at a time like
this?”
“No,” said the book agent. “Not desert. Rescue. Rescue her from the
hands of these--these men. Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and
Compendium of Literature, Science and Art should be in every home,
in every store, in every office. To be without it is to be like a
rudderless air ship tossed by the waves of the relentless ocean. It
contains a fact for every day in the year, for every moment of life, any
one of which is worth the price of the book many times over. This book,”
he said--and then his eyes, which had been gazing far into the sky over
Miss Sally's house, returned to the eyes of Mrs. Smith--“I am going to
sell Mr. Skinner a copy of this book.”
In spite of her disappointment in him, Mrs. Smith, the authoress, felt
a thrill of pleasure in the discovery of such an admirable type--a book
agent who could see in the midst of love, courtship, conspiracy and
trouble only his book and a chance to sell it. But she was deeply
disappointed.
“Then you desert Miss Sally,” she repeated sadly.
“Mrs. Smith.” Said Eliph', reaching into his pocket and laying a handful
of thick greasy manila envelopes in her lap, “these are my bank
books. Six, containing the sum of seventeen thousand four hundred and
eighty-two dollars and forty-six cents, and all this I lay at
Miss Sally's feet if I do not succeed in selling a copy of Jarby's
Encyclopedia this afternoon. If sold, the matter is settled.”
When Eliph' reached the business part of Main Street he turned into
Skinner's butcher shop and halted at the counter. The butcher was at
work in the back room, and he put his head out and, seeing who had
called, shook it.
“No books,” he said shortly. “I never buy books. I didn't buy them Sir
Walter Scotts even. No books.”
Eliph' coughed his deprecatory little cough and walked behind the
counter and to the door of the back room.
“So I understood,” he said. “I heard at Franklin that you didn't buy
books; it was mentioned to me that I would be wasting my time in calling
on you. They said you was known all over the State as not buying books,
and many admired your self-restraint in not buying. They said it was
wonderful. That's why I never called on you to buy. But I didn't come to
sell you a book. I wanted to ask if you knew William Rossiter?”
“William Rossiter?” asked Skinner, perplexed, coming out of the back
room. “Who's William Rossiter?”
Eliph' laid his book on the chopping block.
“William Rossiter, agent,” he said. “He was here once. He was the man
that stopped with Miss Sally Briggs a while. I thought maybe you knew
him. He's dead. I thought maybe you'd be interested to know it.”
A light dawned on the butcher. William Rossiter must have been the man
that left the lung-testers at Miss Sally's.
“I'm glad he's dead,” he said. “I don't know anybody I'd sooner have it
happen to.”
“Don't say that!” exclaimed Eliph'. “If you only knew how he died, poor
young man, you wouldn't say it. He burned to death.”
“Well,” said the butcher, “I don't know as I care how he died. I can't
say I'm sorry. I guess he cost me a hundred dollars. I've got to go to
law for it if I ever want to see it again. I guess he deserved to die,
for the trouble he has made in this town.”
Eliph' placed his hand on the sample copy of Jarby's.
“I will tell you how he died,” he said briskly.
“No, you won't,” said Skinner angrily, waving his hand toward the door;
“you won't tell me nothin'. I've heard of these stories of yours, I
have. You want to sell me one of them books, and you'll talk away at me
about this Rossiter feller, and the first thing I know you'll have me
down for a book. But you won't, for if you don't get right out of that
door I'm goin' to put you out.”
“All right,” said Eliph' cheerfully, picking up his book, “if that's the
way you feel about it I won't take up your time telling you about it I
won't take up your time telling you about Bill Rossiter. Only I thought
you'd like to know how it happened he was burned up in a theater when
there was two dozen as good fire-extinguishers, right at hand, as there
is in the world. But I won't intrude. I know myself too well, and I know
I might happen to get to talking books before I thought. You see,” he
said, as if apologizing for himself, “I can't forget how this book saved
my life, and might have saved the life of Bill Rossiter, too, if he
had had a copy, the price being only five dollars, bound in cloth, one
dollar down and one dollar a month until paid.”
“There,” said Skinner, as if Eliph' had offended him, “you are talkin'
books right now, like I said you would.”
“Was I?” asked Eliph'. “And all I started out to say was that I met Bill
Rossiter in St. Louis just after he had run away from here. He told me
all about it, and wept on my shoulder as he told me how it pained him to
have to skip that way. He said it wasn't as if he could have left Miss
Briggs anything that she could use, but-lung-testers! He asked me what
a town like Kilo could do with lung-testers, and he felt awful about it.
Said he couldn't bear to look at a lung-tester any more, they made him
feel so ashamed, and what made it all the worse was that he had to look
at them all day.”
“I should think they would,” said the butcher heartily. “It makes me
sick to see them. But why did he do it if he didn't like it?”
“I was just going to tell you that,” said Eliph', putting down his book
again. “You see, when he left here he went right to St. Louis,
that being where his home was, and that was how he happened to have
lung-testers with him when he was here. His father made them. That was
his father's business. He was in the lung-tester manufacturing business.
So when Bill Rossiter left here he went right home to his father, which
was the wise thing to do.”
“Went home to sponge on the old man, I suppose,” said Skinner.
“Just so,” agreed Eliph', “and that was how I happened to meet him.
There was a man there in St. Louis by the name of Hopper-Darius
Hopper-and he owned the Imperial Theater and Museum. He was an old
friend of mine, and I had sold him a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of
Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art away back in
1874, and as soon as he heard I was stopping in St. Louis he sent
around to the hotel and begged me to come around to the museum and give
readings out of Jarby's to the people that come into the museum. He said
that it would draw bigger crowds in a cultured city like St. Louis
than would come to see a two-headed calf or a fat women's race, being
a course of readings that would instruct, entertain and please, and he
asked me to name my own price.”
“I should call him a fool,” said Skinner scornfully.
“He wasn't,” said Eliph'. “It took splendid. But I wouldn't let him pay
me a cent. I said I considered it my sacred duty to make as many people
as I could love and know Jarby's, and that I was doing my best to better
the world that way, and was glad to do it free gratis, because in a
big place like St. Louis there were many that could not afford even the
small price of one dollar down and one dollar a month, which is all
that is asked for this splendid volume, containing all the wisdom of
the world, from the earliest days to the present time, neatly bound in
cloth, and I felt I was helping the cause of progress by reading them a
few chapters. I began at page one,” continued Eliph', opening the book
in his hands, “skipping the allegorical frontispiece in three colors,
and the index in which ten thousand-----”
“I thought you was goin' to tell me about William Rossiter,” said the
butcher suspiciously.
“So I am,” said Eliph'. “William Rossiter was on the third floor of the
Theater and Museum building, for that was the job his father hunted up
for him. William was in charge of the penny-in-the-slot machines of all
kinds, a full description of which will be found in this book under the
head of 'Machines, Automatic,' including a description of how made,
how to use and how to repair. In fact, there is nothing in the way of
information, from how to tell the weight of a baby by measuring its
waist, to the age, size and history of the immortal pyramids of Egypt,
one of the seven wonders of the world, that this book does not contain.
It interests alike the student and the business man. And,” he continued
quickly as Skinner was about to interrupt him, “among the slot machines
of which William Rossiter had charge were twenty-four lung-testers.”
“Twenty-four!” exclaimed Skinner. “Them St. Louis folks must like to
test their lungs!”
“No,” said Eliph', “they don't, and that is what makes me feel so bad
about William Rossiter. The St Louis people didn't care for lung-testers
at all. They crowded pennies into all the other machines, but they would
just go up to the lung-testers and sort of sniff at them, and walk away
without trying them. So there those twenty-four lung-testers stood,
useless to man and beast, all in a row, doing nobody any good, and there
I was on the floor below reading out of a book that would have told Bill
Rossiter how to make those lung-testers worth their weight in gold, and
would have saved his life. And to think he could have bought this book
for the small nominal sum of----”
“You said that once,” said Skinner. “Five dollars; one dollar down, and
one dollar a month until paid.”
“Bound in cloth,” said Eliph'. “Seven fifty if in morocco leather. So at
the very minute that the fire broke out----”
“Fire!” said Skinner; “what fire? You didn't say anything about a fire.”
“The fire in the theater and museum,” said Eliph'. “It started right
on the stairs between the second and third floors, and the old building
flared up like dry paper. Two or three men that was trying the slot
machines saw the smoke and run for the lung-testers, thinking by the
look they were fire-extinguishers, which was the most natural mistake
in the world. The looks of them would fool anybody, but they were
lung-testers, and there that old building was, with twenty-four
lung-testers in it, and not one fire-extinguisher. After that fire
they passed an ordinance compelling every theater to have four
fire-extinguishers.”
“And do they have them?” asked Skinner.
“Every first-class theater and opera house does, all over the United
States,” said Eliph'. “But the odd thing was that at the very moment
the fire broke out I had this book open at page 416, 'Fire--Its
Traditions--How to Make a Fire Without Matches--Fire Fighting--Fire
Extinguishers, How Made.' I was reading to those people how to make
fire-extinguishers at home out of common chemicals and any suitable
nickel-plated can, that would be as good as the best sold in any store,
and right as I read it I thought how easy it would be for any man or
child to turn those twenty-four useless lung-testers on the third floor
into first-class fire-extinguishers, by following the simple directions
set down on page 418, at a cost of only about twenty-six cents each----”
Skinner held out his hand for the book.
“Let me have a look at that book,” he said.
Eliph' picked up the book and tucked it under his arm.
“And at that minute came the cry of 'Fire!'” he said. “And I thought of
poor Bill Rossiter up there on the third floor, shut off from all hope
of rescue-----”
Skinner reached down to his cash drawer and pulled it open. He took out
a dollar bill and held it toward Eliph'. The book agent ignored it.
“Think of it,” he said. “Bill Rossiter on the third floor, burning up,
and me on the floor below with this book in my hand reading off of page
418 the names of the simple ingredients that would----”
“Mebby I might as well pay the whole five right now,” said Skinner,
taking four more dollars out of his drawer. “Could you leave that book
with me?”
“I will, as a special favor,” said Eliph'.
“Well, say,” said Skinner, “I'll be mortally obliged to you if you will.
It will take a mighty load off of my mind.”
And when Eliph' left the butcher shop he had, for the first time in his
life, sold his sample copy.