“The more I set under the board awning of that hotel the less I felt like goin' for the to uplift the populace, so I went calmly an' respectfully to sleep, like everybody else in sight, an' the gentle hours sizzled past like rows of hot griddles. “It was contiguous to five o'clock when I woke up, an' I had put three hours of blissful ignorance into the past, an' I seen it was too late to begin my labors of helpfulness that day. I crossed my legs the other way from what they had been crossed, an' I was about to extend my ruminations to other thoughts, when I noticed a young female exit out of a grocery store across the road. She had a basket of et ceterys on her arm, an' a face that was as beautiful as a ham sandwich looks to a man after a forty days' fast. I recognized her right away as the prettiest girl of my life's experience, an' as she stepped out I slid out of my chair an' made up my mind to make a disposal of one copy of that book as soon as she struck home. “She went into her house at the back door, as most folks do, an' before she slid the basket off her plump but modest arm, she looked up in surprise to see what gentlemanly visitor was knockin' the paint off the screen door with his knuckles. The glad object that her eyes beheld was me, smilin' an' amiable, with one hand shyly feeling if my necktie was loose, while the other concealed behind my back the interesting volume entitled the 'Wage of Sin.' “I won't circumlocute about how I got in and got set down on a chair alongside of the kitchen stove. Approaching the female species promptly and slick was my hard card always. So there I set, face to face with that beautiful specimen of female bric-a-brac, and about two inches from a ten-horse-power cook stove in full blossom. It was a warm day, and extry warm on the side of me next that stove. The night side of me felt like sudden fever aggravated by applications of breaths from the orthodox bit of brimstone, and even my off side was perspirating some. “Thus situated before that young female lady, I was baked but joyous, and I set right in to sell her a 'Wage of Sin.' “'Ma genully buys books when we buy any, but we never do,' she says. “'Your ma in now?' I asks, respectful, but in a way to show that her eyes and hair wasn't being wasted on no desert hermit. “'Yes, she's in,' she says. 'Looks like it's guna rain.' “'Its some few warm,' I says, shifting my most cooked side a little. 'Can I converse with your ma?' “'Only in spirit,' she says. 'Otherwise she's engaged.' “'Dead?' I asks, her words seeming to imply her ma's having departed hence. “'Oh, no,' she says, smiling. 'She's in the front room, talking. She has a very previous engagement with a gent, and can't break away.' “'You'll do just as well,' I says, 'if not better. You have that intellectual look that I always spot on the genooine lover of reading matter.'