proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable.

"Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are
swell. You are not familiar with this part of the country, are
you?"

"Oh, yes, I am," answered Carrie. "That is, I live at Columbia
City. I have never been through here, though."

"And so this is your first visit to Chicago," he observed.

All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the
side of her eye. Flush, colourful cheeks, a light moustache, a
grey fedora hat. She now turned and looked upon him in full, the
instincts of self-protection and coquetry mingling confusedly in
her brain.

"I didn't say that," she said.

"Oh," he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air
of mistake, "I thought you did."

Here was a type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing
house--a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the
slang of the day "drummers." He came within the meaning of a
still newer term, which had sprung into general use among
Americans in 1880, and which concisely expressed the thought of
one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the
admiration of susceptible young women--a "masher." His suit was
of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time,