use inch space and sell single cases; Foreman kicked because
full pages weren't bigger and wanted to sell in car-lots, leaving the
case trade to the jobbers. Sowers only half-believed in himself, and
only a quarter in the food, and only an eighth in advertising. So he
used to go home nights and lie awake with a living-picture exhibit of
himself being kicked out of his store by the sheriff; and out of his
house by the landlord; and, finally, off the corner where he was
standing with his hat out for pennies, by the policeman. He hadn't a
big enough imagination even to introduce into this last picture a
sport dropping a dollar bill into his hat. But Foreman had a pretty
good opinion of himself, and a mighty big opinion of the food, and he
believed that a clever, well-knit ad. was strong enough to draw teeth.
So he would go home and build steam-yachts and country places in his
sleep.

Naturally, the next morning, Sowers would come down haggard and
gloomy, and grow gloomier as he went deeper into the mail and saw how
small the orders were. But Foreman would start out as brisk and busy
as a humming-bird, tap the advertising agent for a new line of credit
on his way down to the office, and extract honey and hope from every
letter.

Sowers begged him, day by day, to stop the useless fight and save the
remains of their business. But Foreman simply laughed. Said there
wouldn't be any remains when he was ready to quit. Allowed that he
believed in cremation, anyway, and that the only way to fix a brand on
the mind of the people was to burn it in with money.

Sowers worried along a few days more, and then one night, after he had
been buried in the potter's field, he planned a final stroke to stop
Foreman, who, he believed, didn't know just how deep in they really
were. Foreman was in a particular jolly mood the next morning, for he
had spent the night bidding against Pierrepont Morgan at an auction
sale of old masters; but he listened patiently while Sowers called off
the figures in a sort of dirge-like singsong, and until he had wailed
out his final note of despair, a bass-drum crash, which he thought
would bring Foreman to a realizing sense of their loss, so to speak.

"That," Sowers wound up, "makes a grand total of $800,000 that we have
already lost."

Foreman's head drooped, and for a moment he was deep in thought, while
Sowers stood over him, sad, but triumphant, in the feeling that he had
at last brought this madman to