because I'm a traveling man it doesn't follow that I've forgotten the
Bess feeling. As far as that goes, I don't mind telling you that I've
got neuralgia from sitting in that park with my feet in the damp
grass. I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will
be camping over my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war
dance up the side of my face. And, boy, I'd give last week's
commissions if there was some one to whom I had the right to say:
'Henry, will you get up and get me a hot-water bag for my neuralgia?
It's something awful. And just open the left-hand lower drawer of the
chiffonier and get out one of those gauze vests and then get me a
safety pin from the tray on my dresser. I'm going to pin it around my
head.'"

[Illustration: "'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'"]




II

REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK


Emma McChesney, Mrs. (I place it in the background because she
generally did) swung off the 2:15, crossed the depot platform, and
dived into the hotel 'bus. She had to climb over the feet of a fat man
in brown and a lean man in black, to do it. Long practise had made her
perfect in the art. She knew that the fat man and the thin man were
hogging the end seats so that they could be the first to register and
get a choice of rooms when the 'bus reached the hotel. The vehicle