Michael Malone - Weebly

those awful migraines, doesn't she, and can't join us
again. So awful for her, isn't it?"
"Yes, apparently they're very painful. Here, let me
get you a chair."
"No, no, I'm already behind this morning. Alvis, I
want to buy a signature for a friend, and I know you
have so many yourself, famous signatures, so I thought
you could advise me where I could get a Bach, or if
not, perhaps a Mozart or a Beethoven, or even a
Brahms would do. I did try Altman's, but they had
mostly those presidents nobody ever heard of. Oh, and
Napoleon's mother! They wanted two thousand dollars
for her. He was only fifteen hundred, and his mother
was two thousand, isn't that cunning?"
Hayes explained to Mrs. Troyes that even Brahms
would not be cheap, but he wrote down for her some
agents in Manhattan who handled names. She fluttered
away.
It was true that the editor had in his den a collection
of famous names, framed with engraved faces on velvet
cloth. They were mostly signatures of Union generals—
Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Polk—handwriting of the