d to, said: "Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave," at the same time
loosening his neck-cloth. "Are you competent to a good shave, barber?"

"No broker more so, sir," answered the barber, whom the business-like
proposition instinctively made confine to business-ends his views of the
visitor.

"Broker? What has a broker to do with lather? A broker I have always
understood to be a worthy dealer in certain papers and metals."

"He, he!" taking him now for some dry sort of joker, whose jokes, he
being a customer, it might be as well to appreciate, "he, he! You
understand well enough, sir. Take this seat, sir," laying his hand on a
great stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered, and
raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed but to lack a canopy and
quarterings, to make it in aspect quite a throne, "take this seat, sir."

"Thank you," sitting down; "and now, pray, explain that about the
broker. But look, look--what's this?" suddenly rising, and pointing,
with his long pipe, towards a gilt notification swinging among colored
fly-papers from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, "_No Trust?_" "No trust
means distrust; distrust means no confidence. Barber," turning upon him
excitedly, "what fell suspiciousness prompts this scandalous confession?
My life!" stamping his foot, "if but to tell a dog that you have no
confidence in him be matter for affront to the dog, what an insult to
take that way the whole haughty race of man by the beard! By my heart,
sir! but at least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites with
the pluck of Agamemnon."

"Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line," said the barber,
rather ruefully, being now again hopeless of his customer, and not
without return of uneasiness; "not in my line, sir," he emphatically
repeated.

"But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit, barber, which I
sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a disrespect for man. For how,
indeed, may respectful conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual
habit of taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too, clearly
see the import of your notification, I do not, as yet, perceive the
object. What is it?"

"Now you speak a little in my line, sir," said the barber, not
unrelieved at this return to plain talk; "that notification I find very
useful, sparing me much work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good
deal, off and on, before putting