not want to know anything about them."

So I contented myself with the tickets for my own use, and as the man
slowly selected them from his little package, I asked him if he had sold
many of them.

"These you now buy are the first of which I have made disposal," he
answered. "For two days I have endeavored to sell them, but to no
purpose. There are many people to whom I cannot bring myself to speak
upon the matter, and those I have asked care not for these things. I
would not have come to you, but having twice passed your open window, I
liked your face and took courage."

I smiled. So this man had been studying me before I began to study him;
and this discovery revived in me the desire that he had come on some
more interesting business than that of selling tickets; a thing he did
so badly as to make me wonder why he had undertaken it.

"I imagine," said I, "that this sort of business is out of your line."

He looked at me a moment, and then with earnestness exclaimed:
"Entirely! utterly! absolutely! I am altogether unfitted for this
calling, and it is an injustice to those who send me out for me to
longer continue in it. Some other person might sell their tickets; I
cannot. And yet," he said, with a sigh, "what is there that I may do?"

The idea that that strong, well-grown man should have any difficulty in
finding something to do surprised me. If he chose to go out and labor
with his hands--and surely no man who was willing to wander about
selling tickets should object to that--there would be no difficulty in