We're workin' the historical racket for all that it's worth,--ef we can't go back mor'n a hundred years or so, we kin rake in a Lord and a Lady when we do, and we're gettin' in some ole-fashioned spellin' and "methinkses" and "peradventures." We're doin' the religious bizness ez slick ez Robert Elsmere, and we find lots o' soul in folks--and heaps o quaint morril characters,' sez he." "Sakes alive, Dan'l!" broke in his sister; "what's all that got to do with your yarn 'bout the hoss trade ?" "Everythin'," returned Dan'l.

"'For,' sez he, 'Mr.Borem,' sez he, 'you're a quaint morril character.

You've got protracted humor,' sez he.

'You've bin an hour tellin' that yarn o' yours! Ef ye could spin it out to fill two chapters of a book--yer fortune's made! For you'll show that a successful hoss trade involves the highest nash'nul characteristics.

That what common folk calls "selfishness," "revenge," "mean lyin'," and "low-down money-grubbin' ambishun" is really "quaintness," and will go in double harness with the bizness of a Christian banker,' sez he." "Created goodness, Dan'l! You're designin' ter"-- Dan'l Borem rose, coughed, expectorated carefully at the usual spot in the fender, his general custom of indicating the conclusion of a subject or an interview, and said dryly: "I'm thar!" II To return to the writer of the letter, whose career was momentarily cut off by the episode of the horse trade (who, if he had previously received a letter written by somebody else would have been an entirely different person and not in this novel at all): John Lummox--known to his family as "the perfect Lummox"-- had been two years in college, but thought it rather fine of himself--a habit of thought in which he frequently indulged--to become a clerk, but finally got tired of it, and to his father's relief went to Europe for a couple of years, returning with some knowledge of French and German, and the cutting end of a German student's blunted dueling sword.