in putting the last touches to the pistols before being packed for delivery. I burnished the silver plates, set in the handles, cleaned and oiled the chambers, hammers and nipples, and polished the whole with fine chamois skin. Thus I had a hand in the beginning and completion of the construction of a pistol, and knew pretty well all the intermediate operations. I also obtained an inkling of the way the business was conducted by hearing the conversation and discussions of the proprietors. I heard many secrets. Some of them confused my small glimmerings of moral sense. It seemed to me that I had known the same sort of obliquities among boys in the swapping of jacknives. I heard the bookkeeper say one day, "business is business; this is no Sunday school." I had bewildering thoughts. Was it possible these pistols were not what they seemed and would not kill a man? For I knew they were sold mostly in the South for the fighting of duels. I longed to try one on a cat. The sun rose and set on my suspicions, with never a solution. To this day I cannot rid myself of an innate doubt when I make a purchase. I expect to be cheated. I seemed in a fair way at last of acquiring a trade, and it might have been, except for the accident of my boarding place. For there I first came in contact with books and students. It was not a regular boarding house, save for three months in the winter. I was taken into the family on account of its association with mine long before in Bellingham. The master of the house had formerly been the clergyman of that town, but was now a botanic-eclectic physician and general medical professor of a school, which held one winter session in his house. It was attended by only a dozen students. Lobelia was Prof. ----'s strong point. Everybody in the house was put through a course of lobelia with a heavy sweat, sometimes to cure a slight indisposition, but more often as an experiment. My only escape from the drudgery of the workshop was in feigning sickness and undergoing the Professor's panacea. This confined me to the bed for a day and gave me another day for recovery, when I could be about and enjoy myself. These sweatings and retchings took the color out of my cheeks so that when I returned to the shop it was easily believed that I had been ill, and, with considerable sympathy, my master also warned me of the brevity and uncertainty of life and the necessity of preparing for the day of wrath. Little did he know how all this could be escaped by a good dose of lobelia.