Kilo | Page 6

to live
and how to die. All the wisdom of the world in one volume, five dollars,
neatly bound in cloth, one dollar down and one dollar a month until
paid.' Mother looked up at me and says, 'Eliph', put me down for one
copy.' So I did. I hope I may do the same for you."
The lady was about to speak, but Eliph' Hewlitt held up his hand
warningly.
"No," he said. "I beg your pardon. I didn't MEAN to say that. I couldn't

think of taking your order. I didn't mean to ask it any more than I meant
to ask mother. It's habit, and that's what I'm afraid of. I'd better not
intrude."
The lady evidently did not agree with him. He amused her because he
was what she called a "type," and she was always on the lookout for
"types." She urged him to join the picnic, and said he could try not to
talk books, and reminded him that no one could do more than try. He
climbed the fence with a reluctance that was the more noticeable
because his climbing was retarded by the oilcloth-covered parcel he
held beneath his arm. The lady smiled as she noticed that he had not
feared his soliciting habits sufficiently to leave the book in the buggy,
and she made a mental note of this to be used in the story she meant to
write about this book-agent type.
"My name is Smith," she told him, as she tripped lightly toward the
group about the lunch baskets.
Eliph' Hewlitt was a small man and his movements were short and
jerky. He drew his hand over his red whiskers and coughed gently
when she mentioned her name, and as she hurried on before him he
looked at her tall, straight figure; noticed the stylish mode of her simple
summer gown, and caught a glimpse of low, white shoes and neat
ankles covered by delicately woven silk.
"Courtship--How to Make Love--How to Win the Affections--How to
Hold Them When Won," he meditated. "Lovely, but she will not suit.
She is an encyclopedia of knowledge and compendium of literature,
science and art, but she is not the edition I can afford. She is gilt-edged
and morocco bound, and an ornament to any parlor, but I can't afford
her. My style is cloth, good substantial cloth, one dollar down and one
dollar a month until paid. As I might say."
CHAPTER II
Susan
Mrs. Tarbro-Smith had arranged the picnic herself, hoping to bring a

little pleasure into the dullness of the summer, enliven the interest in
the little church, and make a pleasant day for the people of Clarence,
and she had succeeded in this as in everything she had undertaken
during her summer in Iowa. As the leader of her own little circle of
bright people in New York, she was accustomed to doing things
successfully, and perhaps she was too sure of always having things her
own way. As sister of the world-famous author, Marriott Nolan Tarbro,
she was always received with consideration in New York, even by
editors, but in seeking out a dead eddy in middle Iowa she had been in
search of the two things that the woman author most desires, and best
handles: local color and types. The editor of MURRAY'S MAGAZINE
had told her that his native ground-- middle Iowa--offered fresh
material for her pen, and, intent on opening this new mine of local
color, she had stolen away without letting even her most intimate
friends know where she was going. To have her coming heralded
would have put her "types" on their guard, and for that reason she had
assumed as an impenetrable incognito one-half her name. No rays of
reflected fame glittered on plain Mrs. Smith.
While her literary side had found some pleasure in studying the people
she had fallen among, she was not able to recognize the distinctness of
type in them that the editor of MURRAY'S had led her to believe she
should find. She had hoped to discover in Clarence a type as sharply
defined as the New England Yankee or the York County Dutch of
Pennsylvania, but she could not see that the middle Iowan was anything
but the average country person such as is found anywhere in Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio, a type that is hard to portray with fidelity, except
with rather more skill than she felt she had, since it is composed of
innumerable ingredients drawn not only from New England, but from
nearly every State, and from all the nations of Europe. However, her
kindness of heart had been able to exert itself bountifully, and she had
had enough experience in her sundry searches for local color to know
that a lapse of time and