k buyer who'll show
you a sample of lard which he'll say was made by a competitor, and ask
what you think the grand jury ought to do to a house which had the nerve
to label it "leaf." Of course, you will nose around it and look wise and
say that, while you hesitate to criticize, you are afraid it would smell
like a hot-box on a freight if any one tried to fry doughnuts in it.
That is the place where the buyer will call for Jack and Charlie to get
in on the laugh, and when he has wiped away the tears he will tell you
that it is your own lard, and prove it to you. Of course, there won't be
anything really the matter with it, and if you had been properly posted
you would have looked surprised when he showed it to you and have said:

"I don't quite diagnose the case your way, Mr. Smith; that's a blamed
sight better lard than I thought Muggins & Co. were making." And you'd
have driven a spike right through that fellow's little joke and have
nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow.

What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don't know is a
meat-ax for the other fellow. That is why you want to be on the lookout
all the time for information about the business, and to nail a fact just
as a sensible man nails a mosquito--the first time it settles near him.
Of course, a fellow may get another chance, but the odds are that if he
misses the first opening he will lose a good deal of blood before he
gets the second.

[Illustration: "_Josh Jenkinson would eat a little food now and then
just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco._"]

Speaking of finishing up a subject as you go along naturally calls to
mind the case of Josh Jenkinson, back in my home town. As I first
remember Josh, he was just bone and by-products. Wasn't an ounce of real
meat on him. In fact, he was so blamed thin that when he bought an
outfit of clothes his wife used to make them over into two suits for
him. Josh would eat a little food now and then, just to be sociable, but
what he really lived on was tobacco. Usually kept a chew in one cheek
and a cob pipe in the other. He was a powerful hand for a joke and had
one of those porous heads and movable scalps which go with a sense of
humor in a small village. Used to scare us boys by drawing in on his
pipe and letting the smoke sort of leak out through his eyes and ears
and nose. Pretended that he was the devil and that he was on fire
inside. Old Doc Hoover caught him at it