and we were obliged to wait three weeks till he had had his
birthday, and then to have a special election and choose him
again. Everybody was young except Grandpa Oldberry and Squire
Poinsett.

But I was trying to account for our being in the port of
Prairie Flower. Jack had a cheese-factory there, and made small
round cheeses. I had a printing-office, and printed a small
square newspaper. In my paper I used to praise Jack's cheeses,
and keep repeating how good they were, so people bought then; and
Jack used, once in a while, to give me a cheese. So we both
managed to live, though I think we sometimes got a little tired
of being men, and wished we were back home, far from thick round
cheeses and thin square newspapers.

One evening in the first week in September, when it was
raining as hard as it could rain, and when the wind was blowing
as hard as it could blow, and was driving empty boxes and
barrels, and old tin pails, and wash-boilers, and castaway hats
and runaway hats and lost hats, and other things across the
prairie before it, Jack came into my office, where I was setting
type (my printer having been blown away, along with the boxes and
the hats), and after he had allowed the rain to run off his
clothes and make little puddles like thin mud pies on the dusty
floor, he said:

[Illustration: The Voyage First Suggested]

"I'm tired of making poor cheeses."