her to write and send us lots of love.

The average buyer is a good deal like the heiress to a million dollars
who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's
no demand for her, but because there's too much. Most girls whose
capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young,
because they're like a fellow on 'Change who's scalping the
market--not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick
turn. Old maids are usually the girls who were so homely that they
never had an offer, or so good-looking that they carried their
matrimonial corner from one option to another till the new crop came
along and bust them. But a girl with a million dollars isn't a
speculative venture. She can advertise for sealed proposals on her
fiftieth birthday and be oversubscribed like an issue of 10 per cent.
Government bonds. There's no closed season on heiresses, and,
naturally, a bird that can't stick its head up without getting shot at
becomes a pretty wary old fowl.

A buyer is like your heiress--he always has a lot of nice young
drummers flirting and fooling around him, but mighty few of them are
so much in earnest that they can convince him that their only chance
for happiness lies in securing his particular order. But you let one
of these dead-in-earnest boys happen along, and the first thing you
know he's persuaded the heiress that he loves her for herself alone or
has eloped from town with an order for a car-load of lard.

A lot of young men start off in business with an idea that they must
arm themselves with the same sort of weapons that their competitors
carry. There's nothing in it. Fighting the devil with fire is all
foolishness, because that's the one weapon with which he's more expert
than any one else. I usually find that it's pretty good policy to
oppose suspicion with candor, foxiness with openness, indifference
with earnestness. When you deal squarely with a crooked man you scare
him to death, because he thinks you're springing some new and
extra-deep game on him.

A fellow who's subject to cramps and chills has no business in the
water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be
one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and
showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf,
pour a little sand in their hair, and think they've had a bath.

You mustn't forget, though, that it's just as important to know when
to come out as