"Did you say you were working for a magazine? So are we—The Homestead. I was about to ask you to become a subscriber."

"And the benevolent?" I asked.

"Oh, these are given away to subscribers."

I explained that I wasn't a commercial traveller, but one of those who wrote sometimes in magazines.

"You'd be a sort of reporter?"

"Well, not quite."

"A poet?"

"No. I earn my living by writing."

"Better than a poet, I suppose. Well, good-day, wish you luck!"

So I won free of my last big town in mighty Pennsylvania, and set out for the State of Ohio.