bly been the triflingest and
orneriest man alive before he was converted. Then, along toward
hog-killing time, he'd backslide, and go around bragging that he was
standing so close to the mouth of the pit that his whiskers smelt of
brimstone.

He kept this up for about ten years, getting vainer and vainer of his
staying qualities, until one summer, when the Elder had rounded up all
the likeliest sinners in the bunch, he announced that the meetings were
over for that year.

You never saw a sicker-looking man than Bill when he heard that there
wasn't going to be any extra session for him. He got up and said he
reckoned another meeting would fetch him; that he sort of felt the
clutch of old Satan loosening; but Doc Hoover was firm. Then Bill begged
to have a special deacon told off to wrastle with him, but Doc wouldn't
listen to that. Said he'd been wasting time enough on him for ten years
to save a county, and he had just about made up his mind to let him try
his luck by himself; that what he really needed more than religion was
common-sense and a conviction that time in this world was too valuable
to be frittered away. If he'd get that in his head he didn't think he'd
be so apt to trifle with eternity; and if he didn't get it, religion
wouldn't be of any special use to him.

A big merchant finds himself in Doc Hoover's fix pretty often. There are
too many likely young sinners in his office to make it worth while to
bother long with the Bills. Very few men are worth wasting time on
beyond a certain point, and that point is soon reached with a fellow who
doesn't show any signs of wanting to help. Naturally, a green man always
comes to a house in a pretty subordinate position, and it isn't possible
to make so much noise with a firecracker as with a cannon. But you can
tell a good deal by what there is left of the boy, when you come to
inventory him on the fifth of July, whether he'll be safe to trust with
a cannon next year.

It isn't the little extra money that you may make for the house by
learning the fundamental business virtues which counts so much as it is
the effect that it has on your character and that of those about you,
and especially on the judgment of the old man when he's casting around
for the fellow to fill the vacancy just ahead of you. He's pretty apt to
pick some one who keeps separate ledger accounts for work and for fun,
who gives the house sixteen ounces to the pound, and, on general
principles, to