The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back, and settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters allowed. Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two whom he honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled with a dense cloud.
Eli sat alone by the window.
“Sometimes sell two at one house,” said a lank book-agent, arousing himself from a reverie; “once sold three.”
“I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any,” said a little farmer, with a large circular beard. “I used to favor Jacobs's Seedling, but they have n't done so well with me of late years.”
“Sometimes,” said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill, “you 'll go to a house, and they 'll say they can't be induced to buy a book of any kind, historical, fictitious, or religious; but you just keep on talking, and show the pictures—'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a Tanner,' Grant at Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant before Queen Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not infrequently buy.”
“Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible',” asked Washington, “wid de Hypocrypha?”
“No; I have a more popular treatise—the 'Illustrated History of the Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in costume. Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf, five-seventy-five; full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred and seven illustrations on wood and steel. Three different engravings of Abraham alone. Four of Noah,—'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah Building the Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat,' Steel engraving of Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the gourd, Nineveh in the distance.”
Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and, with a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed foreign harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.
“Here is north,” he said; “here is the coastline; here are the flats; here are the sluicegates; they store the water here, in—”
Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about the tin-pedler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.