"'After all, a "touch of pity makes the whole world akin",' the
merchant said to me:

"'Just tell your friend, when he is in shape again to talk business,
that he may send me the line he picked out and that I really like it
first rate."

Sometimes the tragedies of the road show a brighter side. Once, an old
time Knight of the Grip, said to me, as we rode together:

"Do you know, a touching, yet a happy thing, happened this morning
down in Missoula?

"I was standing in my customer's store taking sizes on his stock. I
heard the notes of a concertina and soon, going to the front door, I
saw a young girl singing in the street. In the street a good looking
woman was pulling the bellows of the instrument. Beside her stood two
girls--one of ten, another of about fourteen. They took turns at
singing--sometimes in the same song.

"All three wore neat black clothes--not a spark of color about them
except the sparkling keys of the concertina. They were not common
looking, poorly clad, dirty street musicians. They were refined, even
beautiful. The little group looked strangely out of place. I said to
myself: 'How have these people come to this?'

"How those two girls could sing! Their voices were sweet and full. I
quit my business, and a little bunch of us--two more of the boys on
the road having joined me--stood on the sidewalk.