The Belt Line car, returning stationward, bore him with small loss of time straightway to the very centre of excitement; to where bunting waved on store fronts and flag standards swayed from trolley poles, converting the County Square into a Court of Honour, and a myriad lights glowed golden russet through the haze of dust kicked up by the hurrying feet of merrymaking thousands. Barkers barked and brass bands brayed; strange cries of man and beast arose, and crowds eddied to and fro like windblown leaves in a gusty November. And all was gaiety and abandon. From the confusion certain sounds detached themselves, becoming intelligible to the human understanding. As for example: "Remembah, good people, the cool of the evenin' is the time to view the edgycated ostritch and mark his many peculiarities!" And this: "The big red hots! The g-e-r-reat big, juicy, sizzlin' red hots! The eriginal hot-dog sand-wige--fi' cents, halluf a dime, the twentieth part of a dollah! Here y'are! Here y'are! The genuwine Mexican hairless Frankfurter fer fi' cents!" And this: "Cornfetti! Cornfetti! All the colours of the rainbow! All the pleasures of the Maudie Graw! A large full sack for a nickel! Buy cornfetti and enjoy yourselves." And so on and so forth. The forlorn youth, a half-fledged school-teacher from a back district, who had purchased the county rights of a patent razor sharpener from a polished gentleman who had had to look at the map before he even knew the name of the county, stood on a dry-goods box at the corner of Jefferson and Yazoo, dimly regretful of the good money paid out for license and unsalable stock, striving desperately to remember and enunciate the patter taught him by the gifted promoter. For the twentieth time he lifted his voice, essaying his word-formula in husky and stuttering accents for the benefit of swirling multitudes, who never stopped to listen: "Friends, I have here the Infallible Patent Razor Sharpener. 'Twill sharpen razors, knives, scissors, scythe blades or any edged tool. If you don't believe it will----" He paused, forgetting the tag line; then cleared his throat and improvised a finish: "If you don't believe it will--why, it will!" It was a lame conclusion and fruitful of no sales. How different the case with a talented professional stationed half a block down the street, who nonchalantly coiled and whirled and threw a lasso at nothing; then gathered in the rope and coiled and threw it again, always at nothing at all, until an audience collected, being drawn by a desire to know the meaning of a performance seemingly so purposeless. Then, dropping the rope, he burst into a stirring panegyric touching on the miraculous qualifications of the Ajax Matchless Cleaning and Washing Powder, which made bathing a sheer pleasure and household drudgery a joy.