don't pretend to know about such things, Dad. But morphine
seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately."

"Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certina to-day."

"I'm glad of it."

"Oh, I don't know. It's useful in its place. For instance, you can't run
a soothing-syrup without it. But when the Pure Food Law compelled us to
print the amount of morphine on the label, I just made up my mind that
I'd have no government interference in the Certina business, so I
dropped the drug."

"Did the law hurt our trade much?"

"Not so far as Certina goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see,
now we can print 'Guaranteed under the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on every
bottle. In fact we're required to."

"What does the guaranty mean?"

"That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. That's all.
But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially
guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled Dr.
Surtaine. "It's a great card. We've done more business under the new
formula than we ever did under the old."

"What is the formula now?"

"Prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man.

"But if I'm coming into the shop, to learn--"

"Right you are, Boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "There's the
formula for making profits." He swept his hand about in a spacious
circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "There's
where the brains count. Come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a
turn around the joint."

Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to
go through the entire plant.

"It's the only way to keep a business up to mark. Besides, I like to
know my people."

Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked
him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly
greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and
such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their
wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company
doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called "the
literary bureau."

"Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained
in an aside. "One of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have
to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do
it myself, I'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. I'd have to,
to keep him.