r too blamed refined to suit me in their ideas of
what's a fair day's work, so I'm staying over a little longer than I
had intended, in order to ring the rising bell for them and to get
them back into good Chicago habits. The manager started in to tell me
that you couldn't do any business here before nine or ten in the
morning--and I raised that boy myself!

We had a short season of something that wasn't exactly prayer, but was
just as earnest, and I think he sees the error of his ways. He seemed
to feel that just because he was getting a fair share of the business
I ought to be satisfied, but I don't want any half-sports out gunning
with me. It's the fellow that settles himself in his blind before the
ducks begin to fly who gets everything that's coming to his decoys. I
reckon we'll have to bring this man back to Chicago and give him a
beef house where he has to report at five before he can appreciate
what a soft thing it is to get down to work at eight.

I'm mighty glad to hear you're getting so many wedding presents that
you think you'll have enough to furnish your house, only you don't
want to fingermark them looking to see it a hundred-thousand-dollar
check from me ain't slipped in among them, because it ain't.

I intend to give you a present, all right, but there's a pretty wide
margin for guessing between a hundred thousand dollars and the real
figures. And you don't want to feel too glad about what you've got,
either, because you're going to find out that furnishing a house with
wedding presents is equivalent to furnishing it on the installment
plan. Along about the time you want to buy a go-cart for the twins,
you'll discover that you'll have to make Tommy's busted old
baby-carriage do, because you've got to use the money to buy a
tutti-frutti ice-cream spoon for the young widow who sent you a
doormat with "Welcome" on it. And when she gets it, the young widow
will call you that idiotic Mr. Graham, because she's going to have
sixteen other tutti-frutti ice-cream spoons, and her doctor's told her
that if she eats sweet things she'll have to go in the front door like
a piano--sideways.

Then when you get the junk sorted over and your house furnished with
it, you're going to sit down to dinner on some empty soap-boxes, with
the soup in cut-glass finger-bowls, and the fish on a hand-painted
smoking-set, and the meat on dinky, little egg-shell salad plates, with
ice-cream forks and fruit knives to eat with. You'