The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-06

c''ining respected in the village would be to
n the Methodist Church, and get the better
- the old man "on trade" He has there
fore already become q ''class leader" and in
consequence of certain secret information re-
gardiDg her father, conveyed to us by Dollie,
we see way by which we shall be enabled
to obtain possession of a good deal of the
old mans property without rendering our
selves liable to imprisonment. We are
indebted for the idea to Swomp, the pettifog-
giDg lawyer, who is the old mans rival in
politics and in piety, and who is to obtain a
percentage on the whole amount resulting
from the transaction. After we had obtained
possession of the farm and of Dollie, we
found that it would be necessary to improve
our living accommodations; and instead of
building we determined to buy ready-made
house which was for sale half mile distant,
and move it to our own land-a proceeding
which involved great deal of the process
known as ''dickering" 70 dicker success
fully, one must have great aptitude for
chewing straws and whiting. The
great art is to force your opponent
to be the first to put value on the article to
be bought or sold. You choose morning
when you are not busy, for it is ruinous to let
any indication of anxiety or haste appear
You walk slowly with your opponent to a
fence-rail, and both sit leisurely across it.
and chew straws thoughtfully. say oppo-
nent, because, in one sense, every man is
your natural enemy-all the 0embers of the
community, whether they are engaged in
agriculture, commerce, or politics, being
trained from their earliest infancy to prey
upon each others pockets. You find your
self engaged in gigantic game of grab
(Which means getting all you can, and CIV
ing as little as possible in return), AMI the
weakest goes to the wall. Some win the game
as bullies, others AZ sneaks; but you have
very little chance unless you are either the
one or the other. Moreover, it is important
to remember that if you do not treat every
man with whom you have any dealings upon
the assumption that be is both liar and
rogue, he considers you fool; nor is there
the least danger of his feelings being
wounded by your openly doubling aud re-
quiriDg proof of his most sole nn assevera-
tions. This entire absence on your part
of any gentlemanlike feeling excites
his respect for your ''smartness," and leads
him to doubt equally every statement made
by you in return as the highest compliment
he can pay you. l remember my first attempt
at trade was made in Dollies presence, and
what l imagined were feelings of delicacy she
called weakness, and my sense of honor she
said was nonsense-a fossil sentiment which
had its origin in ages ftly called clark, 1"
when idiots in armor devoted themselves to
the protection of weak-minded women when
they might have been making money,
and sacrificed their material progress
to an abstraction called chivalry. explained
to Dollie that among the Anglo-Saxons on the
other side Of the Atlantic it was only consi-
dered honorable to tell lies when they were
necessary to screen the woman you had be-
trayed and that, according to modern ideas
of chivalry, it was not considered important
that you should respect the virtue of your
friends wife, if you religiously paid him your
gambling debts. Nor could get this obtuse
Dollie to admit that the unscrupulous pursuit
of dollars by men of business in the New
World was a more degrading occupation than
the unlicensed pursuit of women by men of
pleasure I'D the Old.
Orange Zee, who has an immense physique
trusts a good deal to his overbearing voice
and manner in trade, and it was amusing to
hear him endeavor, by sheer force of will, to
extort from little Deacon Brown a price for
his house, and to see the little Deacon wrig-
gle, and writhe, aud protest that he had not
the faintest idea of how much it might be
worth, that he had never sold house in his
life before, and that unless Orange Zee would
make him an offer, he felt quite powerless aud
paralyzed. At least two hours elapsed before
either of them would name a figure. think it
was Orange Zee who, in spite of his brow
beating, was forced to name a sum, which
SO wounded the Deacon's feelings, that he
quietly rose and walked off without vouch-
sa6ng a word in reply, leaving our big
Orange Zee ignominiously chewing his straw
In this game the little Deacon made the first
score. 1t was protraoted over many days with
varying fortunes, and might finally be eons-
dered drawn, as l do not think we paid
either too much or too little for the house.
The next thing was to dicker with the
''house-mover" to transfer our new residence
bodily on to our farm, which he did for a
hundred dollars, with the assistance of
an old broken winded horse, d man, and a
boy. The mOduS Operandi is simple enough.
You go into the woods and cut down two
trees long enough to pass under the whole
length of the building, which is of course of
wood. BY means of screws the house is
raised from its er-pinning and placed
upon these timbers, which are in their turn
placed upon wheels; the old horse walks
round and works a sort of capstan fixed in
the middle of the road, and attached by a
rope to the house, which moves upon the
wheels along planks placed under them as it
slowly progresses. Most farmers in
America are carpenters as well, and
build their own houses without
any assistance; but we were in hurry, and
Orange Zee had too great contempt for my
powers as an assistant for us to under
take it.
The most expensive operation was the pur-
chase of stock. Twenty-Five COWS at from
sixty to eighty dollars apiece made con-
siderable inroad into what the old man had
left of our capital.
Orange Zee and work our whole farm of
100 acres without any help. We have team
for which We paid three hundred dollars and
lumber wagon and mowing-machine, with
ploughs, harrows, and other farmimplements.
NJ l. ~ n