to Make the World Better," and
have turned out something as correct as a spike-tail coat--and every
one would have wanted to die to get out of it.

Then, too, I never saw such a cuss for system. Other men would forget
costs and prices, but Sol never did. Seemed he ran his memory by
system. Had a way when there was a change in the price-list of taking
it home and setting it to poetry. Used "Ring Out, Wild Bells," by A.
Tennyson, for a bull market--remember he began it "Ring Off, Wild
Bulls"--and "Break, Break, Break," for a bear one.

It used to annoy me considerable when I asked him the price of pork
tenderloins to have him mumble through two or three verses till he
fetched it up, but I didn't have any real kick coming till he got
ambitious and I had to wait till he'd hummed half through a grand
opera to get a quotation on pickled pigs' feet in kits. I felt that we
had reached the parting of the ways then, but I didn't like to point
out his way too abruptly, because the friend who had unloaded him on
us was pretty important to me in my business just then, and he seemed
to be all wrapped up in Sol's making a hit with us.

It's been my experience, though, that sometimes when you can't kick a
man out of the back door without a row, you can get him to walk out
the front way voluntarily. So when I get stuck with a fellow that, for
some reason, it isn't desirable to fire, I generally promote him and
raise his pay. Some of these weak sisters I make the assistant boss of
the machine-shop and some of the bone-meal mill. I didn't dare send
Sol to the machine-shop, because I knew he wouldn't have been there a
week before he'd have had the shop running on Goetterdaemmerung or one
of those other cuss-word operas of Wagner's. But the strong point of a
bone-meal mill is bone-dust, and the strong point of bone-dust is
smell, and the strong point of its smell is its staying qualities.
Naturally it's the sort of job for which you want a bald-headed man,
because a fellow who's got nice thick curls will cheat the house by
taking a good deal of the product home with him. To tell the truth,
Sol's hair had been worrying me almost as much as his system. When I
hired him I'd supposed he'd finally molt it along with his musical
tail-feathers. I had a little talk with him then, in which I hinted at
the value of looking clear-cut and trim and of giving sixteen ounces
to the pound, but the only result of it was that he went off and
bought a pot