"Hadn't you better keep quiet about it? Where's the use in killin' the goose that lays the golden egg? Pick up all the walnut clearin's that are for sale, an' make what you can out of 'em, before you go to talkin'; but if you feel that you must say somethin' on the subject to somebody, an' jubilate a little, go tell Doc Taggess, who owns the lot you thought you were buyin'. If anybody deserves to make money in the boom that's comin', Doc does, an' if he could clear his land, now that he can railroad the logs to market, an' then get out his stumps, he might get cash enough ahead to pick up a lot of real estate, or take stock in millin' enterprises, when the water-power ditch is made, an' so lay up somethin' to keep him out of the poor-house in old age; for as long as he can practise, he'll give to the poor all that he can collect from patients that are better off. The chap that handled the stumps for you asked me a lot of questions about the kind an' quantity of standin' timber out here, and said he didn't see why we didn't start mills to turn out furniture lumber an' dimension-stuff, like some that have made fortunes for men in the backwoods of Indiana and Michigan an' some other states." "Let's try it, if our cash and credit aren't already used as far as they should be. By the way, how is Claybanks corn-flour, Somerton's brand, going in England?" "Fairly. We've sent, in all, about four hundred barrels; that's an average of a hundred a month, with a net profit to us of about thirty per cent, which is better, I reckon, than any of the big flour shippers ever dreamed o' makin'. I've been hopin' that the good tidin's of good food-stuff at about half the price o' bad would work its way into other parts of London an' out into the country, too; but English people don't seem to move about an' swap stories an' prices, like us Americans. I reckon I came home too soon, for the good o' that deal, for I had a lot o' things in mind to do in London to make corn-meal popular. It seems to be the English way to let things alone until some of the upper classes take to 'em, so I was goin' to try the meal on some o' the swells; but the more I thought of it, the more it seemed that they too belonged to the follow-my-leader class. So I made up my mind to begin way up at the tip-top, an' so I wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, sayin' I'd come all the way from America to make the English people practically acquainted with the cheapest and most nutritious food known in the temperate zone, an' that I was catchin' on fairly, but the common people seemed to think it was common stuff, which it wasn't, as I would be glad to prove to her. Besides, I knew of Americans richer than any nobleman in England who had it on their tables every day. I said I could make six kinds o' bread an' three kinds o' puddin' out o' corn-meal, an' I'd like a chance to do it some day for her own table; if she'd let me do it in the palace kitchen, I'd bring my own pans an'