After Cummings had dropped from the express car, he had walked some
fifteen miles to the Missouri River, near St. Charles, and had then
gone north on a train through Pike County. I had more than once made
the same trip on freight trains; and I had a liking for the county
as the home district of Champ Clark, a politico-newspaper comrade of
several legislative sessions and conventions. Newspaper experience
in those days, before the "flimsy" and the "rewrite," emphasized the
value of going to the place in order to report the occurrence; and I
knew that, aside from these three characters and their official and
sentimental relationships, the rest of my people and my play were
waiting for me in Bowling Green.

In those days, Mrs. Thomas and I used to hold hands on our evening
promenades; but I think it was really our foolish New York clothes
that made the blacksmith smile. At any rate, we stopped at his door
and talked with him. He knew Champ Clark and Dave Ball--another
Missouri statesman--and had the keenest interest in the coming
convention for the legislative nomination. It was fine to hear him
pronounce the state name, _Mizzoura_, as it was originally spelt on
many territorial charts, and as we were permitted to call it in the
public schools until we reached the grades where imported culture
ruled. The blacksmith's helper, who was finishing a wagon shaft with a
draw knife, was younger and less intelligent, and preferred to talk
to Mrs. Thomas. It is distracting to listen at the same time to three
persons; but I learned that "You kin make anything that's made out
o' wood with a draw knife;" and over the bench was the frame for an
upholstered chair. A driver brought in a two-horse, side seated,
depot wagon on three wheels and a fence rail. The fourth wheel and its
broken tire were in the wagon; and the blacksmith said he'd weld the