le to jobbers, and a set price at
retail, with best legal talent to avoid the Sherman Act.

This man has lived--my spleen rises at the thought--in many of the
capitals of Europe. For six months at a time he has walked around one
end of the Louvre on his way home at night without once putting his
head inside. Indeed, it is probable he hasn't noticed the building,
or if he has, thinks it is an arsenal. Now in all humility, and
unbuttoned, as it were, for a spanking by whomsoever shall wish to give
it, I must confess that I myself have no great love for the Louvre,
regarding it somewhat as an endurance test for tired tourists, a kind
of blow-in-the-nozzle-and-watch-the-dial-mount-up contrivance, as at a
country fair. And so I am not sure but that the band playing in the
gardens is a better amusement for a bright afternoon, and that a
nursemaid in uniform with her children--bare-legged tots with fingers
in the sand--that such sight is more worthy of respect than a dead
Duchess painted on the wall. It is but a ritualistic obeisance I have paid
the gods inside. My finer reverence has been for benches in the sun and
the vagabondage of a bus-top.

If ever my friend gets to heaven it will be but another point for
exportation. How closely he will listen for any squeaking of the Pearly
Gates, with a nostrum ready for their dry complaint! When he is once
through and safe (the other pilgrims still coming up the hill--for heaven,
I'm sure, will be set on some wind-swept ridge, with purple distance in
the valleys--) how he will put his ear against the hinge for nice
diagnosis as to the weight of oil that will give best result! How he will
wink upon the gateman that he write his order large!

Reader, I have sent you off upon a wrong direction. I have twisted the
wooden finger at the crossroads. The man of oil does not exist. He is a
piece of fiction with which to point a moral. Pig-iron or cotton-cloth
would have served as well; anything, in fact, whereon, by too close
squinting, one may blunt his sight.

We have all observed a growing tendency in many persons to put, as it
were, electric lights in all the corners and attics of their brains, until
it is too much a rarity to find any one who will admit a twilight in his
whole establishment. This is carrying mental housekeeping too far. I will
confess that I prefer a light at the foot of the back stairs, where the
steps are narrow at the turn, for Annie is precious to us. I will confe