most men narrow.

I simply mention these things in a general way. You know blame well
that I don't understand any French, and so when you spring it on me
you are simply showing a customer the wrong line of goods. It's like
trying to sell our Pickled Luncheon Tidbits to a fellow in the black
belt who doesn't buy anything but plain dry-salt hog in hunks and
slabs. It makes me a little nervous for fear you'll be sending out a
lot of letters to the trade some day, asking them if their stock of
Porkuss Americanuss isn't running low.

The world is full of bright men who know all the right things to say
and who say them in the wrong place. A young fellow always thinks that
if he doesn't talk he seems stupid, but it's better to shut up and
seem dull than to open up and prove yourself a fool. It's a pretty
good rule to show your best goods last.

Whenever I meet one of those fellows who tells you all he knows, and a
good deal that he doesn't know, as soon as he's introduced to you, I
always think of Bill Harkness, who kept a temporary home for
broken-down horses--though he didn't call it that--back in Missouri.
Bill would pick up an old critter whose par value was the price of one
horse-hide, and after it had been pulled and shoved into his stable,
the boys would stand around waiting for crape to be hung on the door.
But inside a week Bill would be driving down Main Street behind that
horse, yelling Whoa! at the top of his voice while it tried to kick
holes in the dashboard.

Bill had a theory that the Ten Commandments were suspended while a
horse-trade was going on, so he did most of his business with
strangers. Caught a Northerner nosing round his barn one day, and
inside of ten minutes the fellow was driving off behind what Bill
described as "the peartest piece of ginger and cayenne in Pike
County." Bill just made a free gift of it to the Yankee, he said, but
to keep the transaction from being a piece of pure charity he accepted
fifty dollars from him.

The stranger drove all over town bragging of his bargain, until some
one casually called his attention to the fact that the mare was
stone-blind. Then he hiked back to Bill's and went for him in broken
Bostonese, winding up with:

"What the skip-two-and-carry-one do you mean, you old
hold-your-breath-and-take-ten-swallows, by stealing my good money.
Didn't you know the horse was blind? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Yep," Bill bit off from his piece of store plug; "I reck