“Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last spring?”

“No—­don’t believe I could, to save me.  Let me see—­let me see.  About two thousand dollars, maybe?  But no; no, sir, I know you couldn’t have made that much.  Say seventeen hundred, maybe?”

“Ha! ha!  I knew you couldn’t.  My lecturing receipts for last spring and this winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.  What do you think of that?”

“Why, it is amazing-perfectly amazing.  I will make a note of it.  And you say even this wasn’t all?”

“All!  Why bless you, there was my income from the Daily Warwhoop for four months—­about—­about—­well, what should you say to about eight thousand dollars, for instance?”

“Say!  Why, I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such another ocean of affluence.  Eight thousand!  I’ll make a note of it.  Why man!—­and on top of all this am I to understand that you had still more income?”

“Ha! ha! ha!  Why, you’re only in the suburbs of it, so to speak.  There’s my book, The Innocents Abroad price $3.50 to $5, according to the binding.  Listen to me.  Look me in the eye.  During the last four months and a half, saying nothing of sales before that, but just simply during the four months and a half, we’ve sold ninety-five thousand copies of that book.  Ninety-five thousand!  Think of it.  Average four dollars a copy, say.  It’s nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son.  I get half.”

“The suffering Moses!  I’ll set that down.  Fourteen-seven-fifty —­eight—­two hundred.  Total, say—­well, upon my word, the grand total is about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars!  Is that possible?”

“Possible!  If there’s any mistake it’s the other way.  Two hundred and fourteen thousand, cash, is my income for this year if I know how to cipher.”

Then the gentleman got up to go.  It came over me most uncomfortably that maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into stretching them considerably by the stranger’s astonished exclamations.  But no; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope, and said it contained his advertisement; and that I would find out all about his business in it; and that he would be happy to have my custom-would, in fact, be proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income; and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had enough to live on; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing me—­in fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me.

This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this simple-hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few tranquilizing tears down the back of my neck.  Then he went his way.