s me. It's a pity if a man can't
be independent of females.'

"I knew consider'ble many men that was subjects for pity, 'cordin' to
that rule. But I wa'n't in for no week's cruise, and I told him so. He
said of course not; we'd be home that evenin'.

"The Shootin' Star kept slippin' along. 'Twas a beautiful mornin' and,
after a spell, it had its effect, even on a crippled disposition like
that banker man's. He lit up a cigar and begun to get more sociable, in
his way. Commenced to ask me questions about myself.

"By and by he says: 'Berry, I suppose you figger that it's a smart thing
to get ten dollars out of me for a trip like this, hey?'

"'Not if it's to last a week, I don't,' says I.

"'It's your lookout if it does,' he says prompt. 'You get ten for takin'
me out and back. If you ain't back on time 'tain't my fault.'

"'Unless this craft breaks down,' I says.

"''Twon't break down. I looked after that. My motto is to look out for
number one every time, and it's a mighty good motto. At any rate, it's
made my money for me.'

"He went on, preachin' about business shrewdness and how it paid, and
how mean and tricky in little deals we Rubes was, and yet we didn't
appreciate how to manage big things, till I got kind of sick of it.

"'Look here, Mr. Williams,' says I, 'you know how I make my money--what
little I do make--or you say you do. Now, if it ain't a sassy question,
how did you make yours?'

"Well, he made his by bein' shrewd and careful and always lookin' out
for number one. 'Number one' was his hobby. I gathered that the heft of
his spare change had come from dickers in stocks and bonds.

"'Humph!' says I. 'Well, speakin' of tricks and meanness, I've allers
heard tell that there was some of them things hitched to the tail of
the stock market. What makes the stock market price of--well, of wheat,
we'll say?'

"That was regulated, so he said, by the law of supply and demand. If a
feller had all the wheat there was and another chap had to have some or
starve, why, the first one had a right to gouge t'other chap's last cent
away from him afore he let it go.

"'That's legitimate,' he says. 'That's cornerin' the market. Law of
supply and demand exemplified.'

"''Cordin' to that law,' says I, 'when you was so set on fishin' to-day
and hunted me up to run your boat here--'cause I was about the only chap
who could run it and wa'n't otherwise busy--I'd ought to have charged
you twenty dollars instead of te