the lost balls in the middle,
and the highballs at the end of the game. But a young fellow who wants
to be a boss butcher hasn't much daylight to waste on any kind of links
except sausage links.

Of course, a man should have a certain amount of play, just as a boy is
entitled to a piece of pie at the end of his dinner, but he don't want
to make a meal of it. Any one who lets sinkers take the place of bread
and meat gets bilious pretty young; and these fellows who haven't any
job, except to blow the old man's dollars, are a good deal like the
little niggers in the pie-eating contest at the County Fair--they've
a-plenty of pastry and they're attracting a heap of attention, but
they've got a stomach-ache coming to them by and by.

I want to caution you right here against getting the society bug in your
head. I'd sooner you'd smoke these Turkish cigarettes which smell like a
fire in the fertilizer factory. You're going to meet a good many stray
fools in the course of business every day without going out to hunt up
the main herd after dark.

Everybody over here in Europe thinks that we haven't any society in
America, and a power of people in New York think that we haven't any
society in Chicago. But so far as I can see there are just as many
ninety-nine-cent men spending million-dollar incomes in one place as
another; and the rules that govern the game seem to be the same in all
three places--you've got to be a descendant to belong, and the farther
you descend the harder you belong. The only difference is that, in
Europe, the ancestor who made money enough so that his family could
descend, has been dead so long that they have forgotten his shop; in
New York he's so recent that they can only pretend to have forgotten it;
but in Chicago they can't lose it because the ancestor is hustling on
the Board of Trade or out at the Stock Yards. I want to say right here
that I don't propose to be an ancestor until after I'm dead. Then, if
you want to have some fellow whose grandfather sold bad whiskey to the
Indians sniff and smell pork when you come into the room, you can suit
yourself.

Of course, I may be off in sizing this thing up, because it's a little
out of my line. But it's been my experience that these people who think
that they are all the choice cuts off the critter, and that the rest of
us are only fit for sausage, are usually chuck steak when you get them
under the knife. I've tried two or three of them, who had gone