Eliph' Hewlitt is a traveling salesman for "Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, Comprising Useful Information on One Thousand and One Subjects, Including A History of the World, the Lives of all Famous Men, Quotations From the World's Great Authors, One Thousand and One Recipes, Et Cetera in One Volume, published by Jarby & Goss, New York; price five dollars, neatly bound in cloth; seven fifty, morocco; one dollar down, and one dollar a month until paid." While working in central Iowa, he decides it's time to take a wife.

Naturally, he consults Jarby's section on "Courtship-How to Make Love -- How to Win the Affections -- How to Hold Them When Won." Unfortunately, due to his inability to keep the wonders of Jarby's Encyclopedia out of his conversation, the object of his affection believes he's bent on trying to sell her a book -- which she's determined not to buy, since she's still paying on another agent's persuasive sale of Sir Walter Scott's Complete Works, "two dollars down, and one dollar a month" -- and so she does everything possible to escape his attentions.

Butler's prose is wonderful. Consider this evocative sentence: "The Colonel raised his fist and brought it down on the butcher's counter so hard that the meat scales danced, and the indicator jerked nervously across the face of the dial, weighing a half pound of anger."

The story also touches humorously on such subjects as small-town life, country politics, religion, fire extinguishers and eggs.

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