"Indeed, Brother Johnston, I can never sell it all. Will you please trade back? This is my first experience in the patent-right business, and pray to the Lord it shall be the last."
I asked what had become of his customer, and inquired his name.
Brother Long went on then to explain how an Irishman, living neighbor to him, had called at his house and, after seeing the model, went half crazy over it, and wanted to buy ten counties. He agreed to pay in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars, and in his enthusiasm made a deposit of "tin dollars, as ividence of me good faith." On the strength of that sale he had made the trade.
"Well, Great Heavens!" said I, "aren't you satisfied with five or six hundred dollars profit, on a little deal like that?"
"Yes," he answered; "had I sold the counties the profits would have suited all right."
"But you just told me you had sold them, and the Irishman had deposited ten dollars to bind the bargain."
"True, he did," said Brother Long, "but he came back the next day after I had traded, and said: 'A divil a bit of a county can I take at all, at all. Me old wife threatens to scald me, if I bring even one county into the house!'"
"Well, but you kept his ten dollars, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," he yelled out.
"Well, then, you ought to be satisfied," I ventured to remark.