ote spot and sometimes in another--never where it should have been.
I have a theory that for reasons best known to themselves plumbers make
a practice of mislaying and losing their tools.

I supposed that having once begun their work these plumbers would push
it to completion. I never undertake anything that I do not keep at it
until it is done and finished, and I think that this rule obtains among
most of the professions and trades. Plumbers seem, however, to be a
privileged class. They come to your premises and spend an hour or two
examining what is to be done; then they go away. When they get ready
to come back they return--this time with a miniature furnace and
whatever tools they do not require. Then they go away to bring the
tools they need, leaving the tools they do not require for a pretext
for another trip. Then they take turns at suggesting how the proposed
work should be done, and one after another they get down upon their
knees and peer into closets and holes and under floors and into dark
places, after which some of them go back to the "shop," for more
things, while the others either sit around doing nothing or busy
themselves at losing and mislaying the tools they have already at hand.

Uncle Si, who is an authority on the subject, says that there never was
a plumber who died of overwork or in the poorhouse. He tells me that
he once knew of a plumber named Bilkins who fell dead of heart disease
one day when he discovered that he had worked four minutes overtime.

The boss painter was another individual who excited my astonishment. I
never knew another man so fertile in the art of prevarication. Mr.
Krome would rather lie than eat--at any rate, he would rather lie than
paint. He never neglected to come over twice a day and take a long and
careful survey of the house.

"I reckon you 're about ready for us, eh?" he 'd ask.

"We 're waiting on you," Uncle Si would say.

"Then I 'll have to put my gang at work in the mornin'," he would
answer. This performance was repeated again and again, but the "gang"
we looked for did not come. I remonstrated against this seeming
neglect, but Mr. Krome blandly assured me that when his men did once
get to work they would push the job with incredible speed. I knew he
was a liar, yet I always believed the fellow.

We gave him the glazing to do. We even accommodated him to the extent
of sending the window frames to his shop instead of making him haul
them h