Hawkins responded with enthusiasm: 

“O, it works admirably!  I know there’s a hundred fortunes in it.”

“And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington.”

“O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever.  Ah, it’s the grandest invention of the age!”

“Ah, well; we live in wonderful times.  The elements are crowded full of beneficent forces—­always have been—­and ours is the first generation to turn them to account and make them work for us.  Why Hawkins, everything is useful—­nothing ought ever to be wasted.  Now look at sewer gas, for instance.  Sewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to save up sewer-gas—­you can’t name me a man.  Ain’t that so? you know perfectly well it’s so.”

“Yes it is so—­but I never—­er—­I don’t quite see why a body—­”

“Should want to save it up?  Well, I’ll tell you.  Do you see this little invention here?—­it’s a decomposer—­I call it a decomposer.  I give you my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I’ll engage to set up my decomposer there and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in less than half an hour.”

“Dear me, but why should you want to?”

“Want to?  Listen, and you’ll see.  My boy, for illuminating purposes and economy combined, there’s nothing in the world that begins with sewer-gas.  And really, it don’t cost a cent.  You put in a good inferior article of plumbing,—­such as you find everywhere—­and add my decomposer, and there you are.  Just use the ordinary gas pipes—­and there your expense ends.  Think of it.  Why, Major, in five years from now you won’t see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas.  Every physician I talk to, recommends it; and every plumber.”

“But isn’t it dangerous?”

“O, yes, more or less, but everything is—­coal gas, candles, electricity —­there isn’t anything that ain’t.”

“It lights up well, does it?”

“O, magnificently.”

“Have you given it a good trial?”

“Well, no, not a first rate one.  Polly’s prejudiced, and she won’t let me put it in here; but I’m playing my cards to get it adopted in the President’s house, and then it’ll go—­don’t you doubt it.  I shall not need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some boarding-house and give it a trial if you like.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought.  After a little, Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill.

“Well, this.  Have you got some secret project in your head which requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?”

The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said: 

“Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?”