Kilo : being the love story of Eliph' Hewlitt, book agent

by Ellis Parker Butler

  CHAPTER V. Sammy Mills

  "There ought to be a license agin book agents," said Pap Briggs spitefully, when Eliph' Hewlitt had hurried away.

  "It wouldn't harm that feller," said Wilkins. "He's a red hot one atbook-agenting, he is, an' he'd find out some way to git round it. Ihear lot of book agents that come round this way tell of him. He's got arecord of sellin' more copies of that encyclopedia book of his thanany one man ever sold of any one book, an' he's a sort of hero of thebook-agenting business. It makes me proud to call to remembrance thathim an' me was kids together down at Franklin, years ago. Him an' metook to the book-agentin' biz the same day, we did. I needed cash, likeI always do, and he had literatoor in the family. So we went an' didit. We did it to Gallops Junction first, and after that Eliph' sowedliteratoor pretty general all over Iowa, an' next I heard of him allover the United States. Iowa is now a grand State, an as full of cultureas a Swiss cheese is full of holes, an' I don't take all the creditfor it; I give Eliph' his share. Hotels help to scatter the seed, butliteratoor scatters more.

  "One day, down there at Franklin, Eliph' says to me, 'Jim, you know thatbook pa wrote?' That's what Eliph' remarked to me on the aforesaid day,but I wish to state his name wasn't Eliph' on that date, an' it wasn'tHewlitt, neither. It was plain Sammy; Sammy Mills. Eliph' Hewlitt was asort of fancy name my pa had give to a horse he had that he thought wasa racer, but wasn't. It was a good enough horse to enter in a race, butnot good enough to win. It was the kind of race horse that kept pa poor,but hopeful.

  "'Why, yes, Sammy,' I says, 'I've heard tell of that grand literaryeffort of your dad.'

  "'Well,' he says--we was sittin' on the porch of his pa's house--'Pa hehad a thousand of them printed.'

  "'Dickens he did!' I remarked, supposin' it was us to me to do someremarkin'.

  "'And,' says Sammy, 'he's got eight hundred an' sixty-four of themhighly improvin' an' intellectooal volumes stored in the barn rightnow.'

  "'Quite a lib'ry,' I says, off-hand like.

  "'Numerous, but monotonous,' says Sam. 'As a lib'ry them books don'tgive the variety of topics they oughter. They all cling to the samesubject too faithful. Eight hundred an' sixty-four volumes of the"Wage of Sin," all bound alike, don't make what I call a rightlydifferentiated lib'ry. When you've read one you've read all.'

  "'Alas!' I says, or somthin' like that, sympathetic an' attentive.

  "'Likewise,' says Sam, 'they clutter up the barn. They ought to be gotout to make room for more hay.'

  "'This was indeed true. I saw it was all good sense. Horses don't taketo literatoor like they does to hay.

  "'Well,' says Sammy, 'what's the matter with chuckin' them eight hundredan' sixty-four "Wages of Sin" into the rustic communities of thiscommonwealth of Iowa, U.S.A.? Here we've got a barnful of high-class,intellectooal poem, an' yon we have a State full of yearnin' minds,clamorous for mental improvement at one fifty per volume. It's our dutyto chuck them poems into them minds, an' to intellectooally subside themclamors.'

  "I shook my head quite strenuous.

  "'Nix for me!' I remarked; 'no book-agenting for me.'

  "'Who said book-agenting?" asked Sammy, deeply offended. 'Do youcalculate that the son of a high-class author of a famous an' helpfulbook would turn book agent? Never!'

  "'What then?' I asks him.

  "'Just a little salubrious an' entertainin' canvassin' for a work ofgenius,' he says. 'A few heart-to-heart talks with the educated ladiesof Gallops Junction an' Tomville on the beauties of the "Wage of Sin."That ain't no book-agenting,' says he, 'that's pickin' money off thetrees. It's pie ready cut an' handed to us on a plate with a gilt edge.All we've got to do is to bite it.'

  "No, let me tell you right here, Pap, that the 'Wage of Sin' was athoroughbred treat to read. It was a moral book. Next to the Bible itwas the morallest book I ever tackled, an' when W. P. Mills wrote thatbook he gave the literatoor of the U.S.A. a boost in the right directionthat it hasn't recovered from yet. It was the champion long distancepoem of the nineteenth century. That book showed what a chunky an'nervous mind old W. P Mills had. There was ten thousand verses to thatbook of poem, partitioned off into various an' sundry parts so the readthereof could sit up an' draw breath about every thousand verses, an'get his full wind ready for the run through the next slice.

  "That 'Wage of Sin' book was surely for to admire, any way you looked atit. Take the subject; it wasn't any of your little, sawed-off, one-yearsprints. No siree! W. P. Mills started away back in the front vestibuleof time. He said, right in the preface--an' that was all poetry, too--

  Now, reader, go along with me Away back to eternity, A hundred thousandyears, and still Keep backing backwards if you will.

  "An' when he got away back there he sort of expectorated on his handsan' started in at Genesis, Chapter One, Verse One, an' went right alongdown through the Bible like a cross-cut saw through a cottonwood log. Henever missed a single event that was important, if true. He got all themold fellers rhymed right into that book--Jereboam, Rehoboam, Meschach,Schadrach, an' Abednego, an' all the whole caboodle, from Adam with an Ato Zaccheus with a Z.

  "That certain was a moral tome, an' no prevarication. It was plumbdrippin' with moral from start to finish. You see Eve she set the balla-rollin' when she swiped them apples. That was where she done deadwrong, and that was the 'Sin' as mentioned in the name of the book, an'old W. P. Mills he showed in that literary volume how everybody has hadto pay the 'Wages' ever since. It was great. I never read anything elsemoral that I could say I really hankered for, but I sure did enjoy thatbook. Old W. P. Mills was a wonder at poetry.

  "It beat all how vivid he made all them Old Testament people, an' thethings they did. Why, I never cared two cents for Shadrach, Meshach, an'Abednego before I read that book, but after I read it I never could gitthem lines of W. P.'s out of my head--

  'The King perhaps that moment saw A thing that filled his soul withawe-Shadrach and Meshach, to and fro, Walked and talked with Abednego.'

  "I tell you, you can't obliterate them three men out of your mind whenyou read that verse once. You see them walkin' in that fiery furnace,even when you're in your little bed; walkin' an' carryin' on aconversation, which, when you come to think of it, was the most naturalthing for them to be doin'. You wouldn't look to see them sit down ona hot log, or to stand still sayin' nothin'. Walk an' talk, that's whatthey did, an' it's what anybody would do in similar circumstances. Iguess fiery furnaces has that effect all the world over, but it took W.P. Mills to see it with his mind's eye, an' put it into verses.

  "So, when Sammy gently intimated to me that it was his pa's book we wasto canvass, the job looked different. I might shy at an encyclopedia, orat a life of Stephen A. Douglas, but to handle a moral volume likethe 'Wage of Sin' sort of appealed to the financial morality of myconscience. So I asked Sammy what the gentlemanly canvassers would getout of it.

  "'Pa had a lot of faith in that lyric poem,' says Sammy to me, 'an' noone had a better right to, for he wrote it himself, but the publishinggame was dull an' depressed about the time he got ready to issue itforth, an' he was necessitated to compensate the cost of printing ithimself. And,' he says, 'the rush an' hurry of the public to buy thatbook is such it reminds me of the eagerness of a kid to get spanked. SoI figger we can get several wagon-loads of "Wage of Sin" at fifty centsper volume.'

  "'That's a cheap price,' I says, 'That's two hundred verses for onecent, an' the cover free.'

  "Sammy was one of the confidential kind that gets close up to your earand whispers, even if he is only tellin' you that it looks like rain, sohe looks all around and whispers to me:

  "'We'll make our initiative beginnin' first off at Gallops Junction,'he says, 'where we ain't known, an' where pa ain't known, an' where thebook ain't known. I've a premonition,' he says, 'that 'twould be betterso. If we was to start in here we would get discouraged, for the folksain't used to buyin' "Wage of Sin." They've been given it so bountifulan' free that pa can't give away another copy to t
he poorest man intown. They've got so that they run when they see pa comin'.'

  "'You've got sense in that red head of your'n,' I says.

  "'For me,' he says, 'it will be merely a voluptuous excursion. It willbe pie to sell that book, because I am the son of its author. Filialrelationship to genius,' he says, 'will make them overawed, an' gratefulto be allowed to buy of me, but you will have it harder. You can't claimnearer kin to genius than that you helped the son of it chop wood atvarious and sundry times.'

  "'And gave him a handsome black eye one time,' I says reminiscently.'I'll make the most of that. The public likes anecdotes.'

  "'No,' says Sammy, 'you can omit to mention that black-eye business.That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literaryinclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carrywood while I recited passages of poem out of that book at you.'

  "What I would have spoke next don't matter, because I omitted to speakit. I was gettin' a glimmer of an idea into my head, and I wanted to getit clear in and settled down to stay before I lost it. It got in, an'I had a realization that it was an O.K. idea, an' that it beat Sammy'sson-of-his-father idea quite scandalous.

  "When me an' Sammy got down to Gallops Junction we found that asa municipality of art an' beauty it was a red-hot fizzle, but as ared-hot, sizzling sandheap it was the leader of the world. As near aswe could judge from a premature look at the depot platform the principaloccupations of the grizzly inhabitants was pickin' sand burrs fromthe inside rim of their pants-leg. It was a dreary village, but Sammyrestrained my unconscious impulse to get right aboard the train again.He had that joyful light of combat in them blue eyes of his, an' helooked at that bunch of paintless houses that was dumped around theGallops Junction Hotel like Columbus must have looked at Plymouth Rockwhen he landed there.

  "I had an immediate notion that the thing for me to do was to go overto the hotel, an' sit in the shade there, an' study the inhabitants awhile, an' get the gauge of 'em, an' learn their manners an' customs,before harshly thrustin' myself into their bosoms, so I went an' didit; but Sammy proceeded immediate to visit their homes with the 'Wage ofSin' in one hand an' the torch of culture in the other.

  "The more I set under the board awning of that hotel the less Ifelt like goin' for the to uplift the populace, so I went calmly an'respectfully to sleep, like everybody else in sight, an' the gentlehours sizzled past like rows of hot griddles.

  "It was contiguous to five o'clock when I woke up, an' I had put threehours of blissful ignorance into the past, an' I seen it was too late tobegin my labors of helpfulness that day. I crossed my legs the otherway from what they had been crossed, an' I was about to extend myruminations to other thoughts, when I noticed a young female exit out ofa grocery store across the road. She had a basket of et ceterys on herarm, an' a face that was as beautiful as a ham sandwich looks to a manafter a forty days' fast. I recognized her right away as the prettiestgirl of my life's experience, an' as she stepped out I slid out of mychair an' made up my mind to make a disposal of one copy of that book assoon as she struck home.

  "She went into her house at the back door, as most folks do, an' beforeshe slid the basket off her plump but modest arm, she looked up insurprise to see what gentlemanly visitor was knockin' the paint off thescreen door with his knuckles. The glad object that her eyes beheld wasme, smilin' an' amiable, with one hand shyly feeling if my necktie wasloose, while the other concealed behind my back the interesting volumeentitled the 'Wage of Sin.'

  "I won't circumlocute about how I got in and got set down on a chairalongside of the kitchen stove. Approaching the female species promptlyand slick was my hard card always. So there I set, face to face withthat beautiful specimen of female bric-a-brac, and about two inches froma ten-horse-power cook stove in full blossom. It was a warm day, andextry warm on the side of me next that stove. The night side of mefelt like sudden fever aggravated by applications of breaths from theorthodox 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 hereyes 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 departedhence.

  "'Oh, no,' she says, smiling. 'She's in the front room, talking. She hasa very previous engagement with a gent, and can't break away.'

  "'You'll do just as well,' I says, 'if not better. You have thatintellectual look that I always spot on the genooine lover of readingmatter.'

  "'If you are gun to talk book, you better git right down to business andtalk book' she says, 'because when I whoop up that stove to git supper,as I'm gun to soon, it's liable to git warm in this kitchen.'

  "I took a look at the cooking apparatus, and decided that she knew whatshe was conversing about. I liked the way she jumped right into thefact that I had a few things to say about books, too. She was anup-and-coming sort, and that's my sort. It's up-and-comingness that hasmade the Kilo Hotel what it is.

  "'All right, sister,' I says, 'this book is the famous "Wage of Sin."'

  "'No?" she exlamates. 'Not the "Wage of Sin"? The celebrated volume byour fellow Iowan, Mr. What's-his-name?'

  "'The same book!' I says, glad to know its knowledge had passed far downthe State. 'Price one-dollar-fifty per each. A gem of purest razorene.A rhymed compendium of wit, information, and highly moral so-forths. Tenthousand verses, printed on a new style rotating duplex press, and boundup in pale-gray calico. Let me quote you that sweet couplet about theflood:

  "I hear the mother in her grief Imploring heaven for relief As up themountain-side she drags Herself by mountain peaks and crags."

  "'When I wrote that--'

  "'When you wrote that!' she cries joyous, stopping to gaze at me. 'What!Do I see before me a real, genooine author? Do I see in our humble butnot chilly kitchen a reely trooly author?'

  "'Yes'm,' I says, modest, like G. W. when is papa caught him executingthe cherry tree. 'I wrote it. I am the author. Here, as you see me now,in tropical but dripping diffidence, I am the author of that tome. It'sa warm day.'

  "She stood in my proximity and explored me with her eyes.

  "'An author!' she says, stunned but pleased. 'A real live author! My!But it is hard for me to grasp a realization of that fact. So you wroteit?'

  "'Yes'm,' I says again. 'I done it.'

  "'So young, too,' she says. 'Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus.'

  "'It's easy when you know how,' I says off-hand like. 'Book-writing isborn in us. When we get warmed up to it it's no trick at all. An authorcan't no more help authorizing than a stray pup can help scratching.'

  "'But,' she says, 'it must be true what I've heard about authorizingbeing a poor paying job.'

  "'Why?' I asks, being suspicious.

  "'Because,' she says, 'if it wasn't you wouldn't be touring around tosell your own books after you've wrote them. That is hard work. Now, Ihave to stay in this kitchen and perspire because I have to, but ifyou was rich off your books you wouldn't sit on that chair and get allstewed up. I can see that.'

  "'What you can't see,' I says, 'is that I came here just because I wasthe writer of this here composition. Money I don't desire to wish for.Being a rich man and a philanthropist, I give all I make off ofthis book to the poor. But it ain't everybody can experience thesatisfiedness of seeing a reely genooine author. So I travel aroundexhibiting myself for the good of the public. And as a special andextraordinary thing--a sort of guarantee to one and all that they haveseen a genooine living author--I write my autograph in each an
d everyvolume of this book that I sell at the small sum of one-fifty per.Think of it! Ten thousand verses; moral, intellectooal, and witty;cloth cover, and the author's own autograph written by himself, all forone-fifty. The autograph of the famous boy author.'

  "'That's a big bargain,' she says, thoughtful.

  "'Jigantic,' I says

  "'Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus,' she repeats again, dreamy.

  "'Ain't it!' I responds, sniffing to see if it was my pants that wasscorching. 'Will you have one volume?'

  "She hesitated, and then she says, 'No. No, I don't dast to. Not yet.Not till I see how ma comes out. Mebby she'll purchase one before shegits through being talked to.'

  "I set straight upward on my hotly warmed chair. 'Being talked to!' Isays, astonished.

  "'Yes,' says the sweet sample of girl. 'Your son, you know, MisterSamuel Mills; he's in the front room interviewing ma.'

  "'My son!' I ejaculates weakly, the thermometer in my spinal backbonegoing up ten thousand degrees hotter.

  "'Such an oldish son, too,' she says, sinfully joyous, 'for such ayoungish father. He must have been two years old the day you were born.Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus!'

  "I set there a minute, wilted, but nervous. Then I got hot, and arose inanger.

  "'My son!' I says, scornful. 'So that's what he says, it is? Disgracinghis father in that way! All right for him! I disown him out of myfamily. And I furthermore remark that he ain't my son, nor never was.'

  "'Well,' she says, 'you needn't get so hot about it. He's a hard worker.He's been here all day.'

  "'I ain't hot,' I says, forgetting that my temperature was torrid plusglowing, 'but I'm mad to think that that boy which I hired to sell mybook should pass himself off as my son, and then stay talking all dayin one place, instead of selling books throughout the promiscuousneighborhood.'

  "'Then,' she says, as if for the first time seeing light, 'that youngman in their ain't no son of the author of this "Sin" book?'

  "'Never; subsequent nor previous, nor wasn't, nor will be,' I solemnlymade prevarication.

  "'Well,' she says, 'he said he was when he come in; and me and ma didn'tthink it likely an author person would have his son out book-peddling,so we asservated back that he wasn't; and him and ma has been having ahigh-grade talking match all day in the front parlor to convince eachother otherwise than what they are convinced of.'

  "'Him,' continued the lovely girl, 'says he'll sell ma a book BECAUSEhe's the son of the author thereof, and ma says she'll buy a book if heowns up truthful that he ain't the son of the author thereof. She saysthat if she buys a book off of him when he's making false witness ofhaving a talented dad she'll be encouraging lying, which she can't do,being a full-blood Baptist. So they've got a deadlock, and the jury ishung, and the plurality is equal and unbiased on both sides, and up todate nobody wins.'

  "'Then,' I says, 'I don't sell no "Wage of Sin" do I?'

  "'Not as no author if it,' she says. 'If you want to tackle us as acommon book agent, you'll find us right in the market.'

  "'Katie,' I says, 'call your ma out here a minute. If I can sell a copyof this volume I am willing to sell my birthmark for a mess of potashany day of the week.'

  "'That,' she says, cheerful, 'is spoke like a financier and agentleman.'

  "With that she started for the front room, but just then the door swungopen, and out came her ma and Sammy, tired with fatigue, but satisfied.

  "'What!' says the young daughter, 'is the tie untied? Is the jawfestconcluded?'

  "'It is,' says the maternal ancestor of that girl, weak but happy. 'Wetalked seven miles and six furloughs, but I won. He has renounced hissin. He ain't no son of no author. I've boughten his book.'

  "I gazed at Sammy with a moist, reproachful eye.

  "'Sammy! Sammy!' I says, shaking my head, 'to think----'

  "'Hush!' he says, 'don't say it. I ain't no Sammy. I ain't no Mills.Them is not my name.'

  "'Alas!' I says, mournful, 'am I then deceived since childhood's happyhours?'

  "I see the respectable old lady pricking up her ears and gettingready for another season of conversation. Sammy likewise made the sameobservation, and he fended off the deadly blow.

  "'Yes,' he says, 'I have deceived you. My name is----'

  "He stopped and looked doubtful and perplexed, and scratched his earwith his forepaw.

  "'My name is----' he says, and stops, and then he turns to the elderlyfemale, and asks desperate: 'What in tunket did I say my name was?'

  "'Hewlitt,' she says, 'Eliph' Hewlitt.'

  "'Oh, yes!' says Sammy, 'that's it. I guess I'll just write that down,so as to have it handy. You know,' he says, looking at me, 'my memory'sawful bad since I had the scarlet fever. It's terrible. Why, when I comein here I knowed I had SOMETHING to say about this book, and I tried toremember, and I seemed to remember that I was the son of the author whoauthored it. I never come so near lying in my life. I'm all in a trembleover it to think how near to lying I was! An' I got the notion Eliph'Hewlitt was the name of a horse.'

  "'Ma,' says Katie, giving me a wicked smile, 'this here other youngman has got a bad scarlet fever memory, too. HE'S come near to lying,likewise. You'd ought to speak a few words of helpfulness with him,too!'

  "'Now, here,' I says, 'you pass that by, Katie. All that that I said wasa novel I was thinking of writing out when I got my full growth, whichI told you to pass the time away whiles this What's-his-name was busy. Inever wrote nothing!'

  "'Well,' she says, 'you don't look as if you had the sense to, so Iguess you ain't lying now.'

  "But ma lit into me, and spent two hours, steady talk, convincing meI wasn't W. P. Mills, although every time she said I wasn't I said so,too. The more I agreed that I wasn't the more she would fire up and takea fresh hold, and try to bear it home to me that I wasn't. There wasnever in the world such a long fight, with both sides saying the samething. Ordinary persons couldn't have done it, but hat lady mothercould, an' did, an' every now an' then she would dig into Sammy again.An' all of it was right near to that enthusiastical stove. So at lastshe laid a couple of extra hard words against us an' we keeled over,as you might say, an' toppled out of the kitchen. We was dazed withlanguage that was all words, an' when we come to the gate we was sostupefied that we climbed right over it, an' so weak that we fell downoff the other side of it, an' Sammy all the time repeatin' 'Eliph'Hewlitt,' like a man in a dream. By next day he was able to leave thehotel, an' he took the train, an' I ain't seen him until this day, soI guess he stuck right to that name, for fear he might meet the talkin'lady again. I don't see how he could get the name out of his system whenonce Katie's ma had talked it in, anyway, for she was a great talker. Iought to know, for I went back an' chinned with Katie as soon as Igot the daze out of my head, an' the long-come short-come of it was Imarried Katie.

  "When Sammy comes back I want to ask him if he sold out all them 'Wageof Sin' books. I never sold but one, an' I didn't sell that--I gave itto Katie for a wedding present."

  "You done right when you gave up the book agent business, Jim," said PapBriggs. "There ought to be a license agin all of 'em."