r opening, set his
sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the
alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the
advertising man to his window.

"'To decide a bet,' says I, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in
last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?'

"'He was not,' says the man. 'He would measure about six feet by four
and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies
of the conservatory.'

"At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy's.

"'Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?' she
asks.

"'If you do, ma'am,' says I, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood
all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the
outside of it.'

"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how hard
it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."

"But," I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule
should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you
would not have lost--"

Jeff's look of dignified reproach stopped me.

"That don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "Mine was a
legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high--
don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***

******* This file should be named 1805.txt or 1805.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBoo