of authors, and I noticed a faded newspaper cutting pinned up. The
headlines ran: "Literary Pedlar Lectures on Poetry." I read it
through. Apparently the Professor (so I had begun to call him, as
the aptness of the nickname stuck in my mind) had given a lecture
in Camden, N.J., where he had asserted that Tennyson was a greater
poet than Walt Whitman; and the boosters of the Camden poet had
enlivened the evening with missiles. It seems that the chief Whitman
disciple in Camden is Mr. Traubel; and Mr. Mifflin had started the
rumpus by asserting that Tennyson, too, had "Traubels of his own."
What an absurd creature the Professor was, I thought, as I lay
comfortably lulled by the rolling wheels.

Greenbriar is a straggling little town, built around a large common
meadow. Mifflin's general plan in towns, he had told me, was to
halt Parnassus in front of the principal store or hotel, and when
a little throng had gathered he would put up the flaps of the van,
distribute his cards, and deliver a harangue on the value of good
books. I lay concealed inside, but I gathered from the sounds that
this was what was happening. We came to a stop; I heard a growing
murmur of voices and laughter outside, and then the click of the
raised sides of the wagon. I heard Mifflin's shrill, slightly nasal
voice making facetious remarks as he passed out the cards. Evidently
Bock was quite accustomed to the routine, for though his tail wagged
gently when the Professor began to talk, he lay quite peaceably
dozing at my feet.

"My friends," said Mr. Mifflin. "You remember Abe Lincoln's joke
about the dog? If you call a tail a leg, said Abe, how many legs
has a dog? Five, you answer. No, says Abe; because calling a tail a
leg doesn't make it a leg. Well, there are lots of us in the same