“‘So far, so pernicious,’ says I, when we had finished the literary concoction.  ‘And now,’ says I, ‘where is the lady.’

“Andy gives me one of his looks of calm irritation.

“‘Jeff,’ says he, ’I thought you had lost them ideas of realism in your art.  Why should there be a lady?  When they sell a lot of watered stock on Wall Street would you expect to find a mermaid in it?  What has a matrimonial ad got to do with a lady?’

“‘Now listen,’ says I.  ’You know my rule, Andy, that in all my illegitimate inroads against the legal letter of the law the article sold must be existent, visible, producible.  In that way and by a careful study of city ordinances and train schedules I have kept out of all trouble with the police that a five dollar bill and a cigar could not square.  Now, to work this scheme we’ve got to be able to produce bodily a charming widow or its equivalent with or without the beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances set forth in the catalogue and writ of errors, or hereafter be held by a justice of the peace.’

“‘Well,’ says Andy, reconstructing his mind, ’maybe it would be safer in case the post office or the peace commission should try to investigate our agency.  But where,’ he says, ’could you hope to find a widow who would waste time on a matrimonial scheme that had no matrimony in it?’

“I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party.  An old friend of mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw soda water and teeth in a tent show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some dyspepsia cure of the old doctor’s instead of the liniment that he always got boozed up on.  I used to stop at their house often, and I thought we could get her to work with us.

“’Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped out on the I. C. and finds her in the same cottage with the same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub.  Mrs. Trotter fitted our ad first rate except, maybe for beauty and age and property valuation.  But she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the eye, and it was a kindness to Zeke’s memory to give her the job.

“‘Is this an honest deal you are putting on, Mr. Peters,’ she asks me when I tell her what we want.

“‘Mrs. Trotter,’ says I, ’Andy Tucker and me have computed the calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair country will endeavor to secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property through our advertisement.  Out of that number something like thirty hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you, the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and contemptible fortune seeker.

“‘Me and Andy,’ says I, ’propose to teach these preyers upon society a lesson.  It was with difficulty,’ says I, ’that me and Andy could refrain from forming a corporation under the title of the Great Moral and Millennial Malevolent Matrimonial Agency.  Does that satisfy you?’