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Title: A Man of Means

Author: P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8713]
Posting Date: July 27, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MAN OF MEANS ***

Produced by The United States Members of the Blandings E-Group

A MAN OF MEANS

A SERIES OF SIX STORIES

By Pelham Grenville Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

From the _Pictorial Review_, May-October 1916

CONTENTS

THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER

THE EPISODE OF THE FINANCIAL NAPOLEON

THE EPISODE OF THE THEATRICAL VENTURE

THE EPISODE OF THE LIVE WEEKLY

THE DIVERTING EPISODE OF THE EXILED MONARCH

THE EPISODE OF THE HIRED PAST

THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER

First of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
May 1916]

When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main
chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely
large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to
predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these people,
he asks himself, proposing to set up as farmers of a large scale, or do
they merely want the seed to give verisimilitude to their otherwise bald
and unconvincing raspberry jam? On the solution of this problem
depends the important matter of price, for, obviously, you can charge
a fraudulent jam disseminator in a manner which an honest farmer would
resent.

This was the problem which was furrowing the brow of Mr. Julian
Fineberg, of Bury St. Edwards, one sunny morning when Roland Bleke
knocked at his door; and such was its difficulty that only at the
nineteenth knock did Mr. Fineberg raise his head.

"Come in--that dashed woodpecker out there!" he shouted, for it was his
habit to express himself with a generous strength towards the junior
members of his staff.

The young man who entered looked exactly like a second clerk in a
provincial seed-merchant's office--which, strangely enough, he chanced
to be. His chief characteristic was an intense ordinariness. He was a