of being shown a gold-mine, and his guide galloped away
and left him to freeze all night in the bush. In mining localities
the inhabitants were called together by beating a camp-oven lid
with a pick, and the canvasser was given ten minutes in which
to get out of the town alive. If he disregarded the hint he would,
as likely as not, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.

The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canvassers
brought under the "Noxious Animals Act", and demanded that a reward
should be offered for their scalps. Reports appeared in the country press
about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections
and frightened the inhabitants to death -- these were Sloper and Dodge's
sober and reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits
of tar and feathers.

In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canvassers,
and they came in from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened,
to tender their resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had
just got out a large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn't sell it,
ruin stared them in the face; and how could they sell it
without canvassers?

The members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long,
sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald.
Dodge was a little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard,
and quick, beady eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe,
and puffing the smoke through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive
on a steep grade. Anybody walking into one of those whiffs
was liable to get paralysis.