Eli | Page 9

he come to
me, and says he, 'Mr. Eldridge, I hope you 'll speak a good word for me;
if you do, I 'll get the ship, but if they refuse me this one, I 'm dished
everywhere.' Well, the owners put me the square question, and I had to
tell 'em. Well, I met him that afternoon on Sacramento Street, as white
as a sheet, and he would n't speak to me, but passed right by, and that
night he went and shipped before the mast. That's the last I ever heard
of him; but I had to do it. Now," he added, "this man 's been good to
you; but the case is proved, and you ought to vote with the rest of us."
"It ain't proved," said Eli. "The judge said that if any man had a

reasonable doubt, he ought to hold out. Now, I ain't convinced."
"Well, that 's easy said," replied Mr. Eldridge, a little hotly, and he
arose, and left him.
The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back, and
settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters allowed.
Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two whom he
honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled with a
dense cloud.
Eli sat alone by the window.
"Sometimes sell two at one house," said a lank book-agent, arousing
himself from a reverie; "once sold three."
"I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any," said a little farmer,
with a large circular beard. "I used to favor Jacobs's Seedling, but they
have n't done so well with me of late years."
"Sometimes," said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill, "you
'll go to a house, and they 'll say they can't be induced to buy a book of
any kind, historical, fictitious, or religious; but you just keep on talking,
and show the pictures--'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a Tanner,' Grant at
Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant before Queen
Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not infrequently buy."
"Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible'," asked Washington, "wid de
Hypocrypha?"
"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Illustrated History of the
Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in costume.
Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf, five-seventy-five; full
morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred and seven illustrations on
wood and steel. Three different engravings of Abraham alone. Four of
Noah,--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah Building the Ark,' 'Noah
Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat,' Steel engraving of Ezekiel's
Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the gourd, Nineveh in the

distance."
Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of
harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and, with a
cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed foreign
harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.
"Here is north," he said; "here is the coastline; here are the flats; here
are the sluicegates; they store the water here, in--"
Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about
the tin-pedler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his
journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.
In the corner farthest from Eli, a delicate-looking man began to tell the
butcher about Eli's wife.
"Twelve years ago this fall," he said, "I taught district-school in the
parish where she lived. She was about fourteen then. Her father was a
poor farmer, without any faculty. Her mother was dead, and she kept
house. I stayed there one week, boarding 'round."
"Prob'ly did n't git not much of any fresh meat that week," suggested
the butcher.
"She never said much, but it used to divert me to see her order around
her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be
great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school the girls in
her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third class
was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that I
called Lizzie--that's her name--right out, and had her stand up for
twenty minutes. She was a shy little thing, and set great store by perfect
marks. I saw that she was troubled a good deal, to have all of them
looking and laughing at her. But she stood there, with her hands folded
behind her, and not a smile or a word."
"Look out for a sullen cow," said the butcher.

"I felt afraid I had been too hasty with her, and I was rather sorry I had
been so decided--although, to be sure, she did n't pretend to deny that
she had been communicating."
"Of course,"