"No, I have stopped to stay over night, and to chop wood for breakfast."
"A judicious answer, sir; a shrewd statement. They told me that you were strangely guarded in speech, that you suffered yourself to seem dull rather than to trip off a waste of words. That is true wisdom, not, indeed, to have nothing to say, but keeping the something that fain would fly forth. I take it that you came from the city to these parts."
"Yes, directly. But I was there only a short time."
"A stranger, indeed. Have you ever chanced to live in Kansas?"
"I've broken out there in spots."
"Ha! an idiomatic answer. I see that you belong to the new school. Perhaps it is better, but I am too old to learn. Did you ever happen to break out in a spot called Grayson?"
"I passed through there on my way to break out somewhere else."
"You did? That was my town, sir—a seat of learning made famous by a bank robbery. When our city was ten years old, I read a paper at the celebration. Were you ever engaged in any educational work?"
"Yes, one of the greatest. I sold a cook-book."
"Shrewd; yes, sharp. From what I heard, I thought that you would be worth knowing. I have met your landlady, a most impressive woman, but with a vulgar contempt for my profession. She said that it was a good thing that I had left off fooling and at last got down to work. And I think that this has precluded any relationship between her and my wife. She can't stand a reference, not that kind of a reference, to my decline. In this regard, women haven't so much virtue as a man possesses. They can not piece a torn quilt with an aphorism. In what part of the country have your labors been mostly confined?"