"And now, gentlemen, every morning between ten and eleven o'clock, I propose to be here with the papers; price one dollar per copy, cash on delivery."
The bundle, containing one hundred papers, was immediately disposed of; some gentlemen taking two or three, and others half a dozen.
The tongues of my patrons were now unloosed, and they all acceded unhesitatingly to the terms which I had proposed. An elderly Englishman, with a very white waistcoat, and a very large watch-chain, came up to me, and, patting my shoulder, said, "Why, my son, you have done better than you promised; you have given us the newspapers in much less than thirty-six hours after their issue at home."
"Yes, sir," I replied; "I intended to get them here in about sixteen hours; but I thought it more prudent to say thirty-six, because—because"—I hardly knew what reason to give, without betraying myself—"because, sir, I wasn't certain how the magnetic currents might operate."
"Ah-hah-ah, I begin to see. Magnetic currents in the heavens, in the atmosphere."
"Yes, sir," I answered promptly, "in the atmosphere."
This was true enough; but I could not say in the heavens, without telling an untruth; and this I always regarded as a great sin.
"Don't you think," continued my English friend, "that, when you bring the American papers over, you could just stop on the way, and get a copy or two of 'The London Times'?"
"I do not go for the papers myself."
"You don't mean to say that they come entirely by themselves?" he replied, looking more perplexed and astounded than I can describe.