chance to read your story."

The expression on the Youngish Girl's face was a curious mixture of
humor and seriousness. "There's no special object in reading," she
said, "when you can hear a bright man talk!"

As unappreciatingly as a duck might shake champagne from its back, the
Traveling Salesman shrugged the compliment from his shoulders.

"Oh, I'm bright enough," he grumbled, "but I ain't refined." Slowly
to the tips of his ears mounted a dark red flush of real
mortification.

"Now, there's some traveling men," he mourned, "who are as slick and
fine as any college president you ever saw. But me? I'd look coarse
sipping warm milk out of a gold-lined spoon. I haven't had any
education. And I'm fat, besides!" Almost plaintively he turned and
stared for a second from the Young Electrician's embarrassed grin to
the Youngish Girl's more subtle smile. "Why, I'm nearly fifty years
old," he said, "and since I was fifteen the only learning I've ever
got was what I picked up in trains talking to whoever sits nearest to
me. Sometimes it's hens I learn about. Sometimes it's national
politics. Once a young Canuck farmer sitting up all night with me
coming down from St. John learned me all about the French Revolution.
And now and then high school kids will give me a point or two on
astronomy. And in this very seat I'm sitting in now, I guess, a
red-kerchiefed Dago woman, who worked on a pansy farm just outside of
Boston, used to ride in town with me every night for a month, and she
coached me quite a bit on Dago talk, and I paid her five dollars for
that."