it
more when I am eatin' than I miss the victuals. I carry one with me
all the time. Awful handy little thing. Now--"

"But--" I put in.

"Certainly," he continued, with the smoothest-running motor I ever
heard, "but here's the point of the whole matter, as you might say.
_This_ thing is up to date, Professor. Now, the old-fashioned way of
tying a knot in the corner of your napkin and anchoring it under your
Adam's apple--_that's_ gone by. Also the stringed bib and safety-pin.
Both those devices were crude--but necessary, of course, Professor--and
inconvenient, and that old-fashioned knot really dangerous; for the
knot, pressing against the Adam's apple, or the apple, as you might
say, trying to swallow the knot--well, if there isn't less apoplexy and
strangulation when this little Friend finds universal application, then
I 'm no Prophet, as the Good Book says."

"But you see--" I broke in.

"I do, Professor. It's right here. I understand your objection. But
it is purely verbal and academic, Professor. You are troubled
concerning the name of this indispensable article. But you know, as
well as I--even better with your education, Professor--that there 's
nothing, absolutely nothing in a name. 'What's in a name?' the poet
says. And I 'll agree with you--though, of course, it's
confidential--that 'The Fat Man's Friend' is, as you literary folks
would say, more or less of a _nom de plume_. Isn't it? Besides,--if
you 'll allow me the language, Professor,--it's too delimiting,
restricting, prejudicing. Sets a lean man against it. But between us,
Professor, they 're going to change the name of the next batch.
They're--"

"Indeed!" I exclaimed; "what's the next batch going to be?"

"Oh, just the same--fifteen cents each--two for a quarter. You could
n't tell them apart. You might just as well have one of these, and run
no chances getting one of the next lot. They'll be precisely the same;
only, you see, they're going to name the next ones 'Every Bosom's
Friend,' to fit lean and fat, and without distinction of sex. Ideal
thing now, is n't it? Yes, that's right--fifteen cents--two for
twenty-five, Professor?--don't you want another for your wife?"

No, I did not want another for her. But if _she_ had been at home, and
I had been away, who knows but that all six of us had come off with a
"Friend" apiece? They were a bargain by the half-dozen.

A bargain? Did anybody ever get a bargain--something