I
deny it every time I hear it, though every man in town
knows it. How that man ever got the position he has is
more than I can tell. And, as for holding it, he couldn't
hold it half a day if it weren't that the rest of us in
the office do practically everything for him.

Why, I've seen him send out letters (I wouldn't say this
to anyone outside, of course, and I wouldn't like to have
it repeated)--letters with, actually, mistakes in English.
Think of it, in English! Ask his stenographer.

I often wonder why I go on working for him. There are
dozens of other companies that would give anything to
get me. Only the other day--it's not ten years ago--I
had an offer, or practically an offer, to go to Japan
selling Bibles. I often wish now I had taken it. I believe
I'd like the Japanese. They're gentlemen, the Japanese.
They wouldn't turn a man down after slaving away for
fifteen years.

I often think I'll quit him. I say to my wife that that
man had better not provoke me too far; or some day I'll
just step into his office and tell him exactly what I
think of him. I'd like to. I often say it over to myself
in the street car coming home.

He'd better be careful, that's all.

(II) THE MINISTER WHOSE CHURCH HE ATTENDS

A dull man. Dull is the only word I can think of that
exactly describes him--dull and prosy. I don't say that
he is not a good man. He may be. I don't say that he is
not. I have never seen any sign of it, if he is. But I
make it a rule never to say anything to take away a man's
character.

And his sermons! Really that sermon he gave last Sunday
on Esau seemed to me the absolute limit. I wish you could
have heard it. I mean to say--drivel. I said to my wife
and some friends, as we walked away from the church, that
a sermon like that seemed to me to come from the dregs
of the human intellect. Mind you, I don't believe in
criticising a sermon. I always feel it a sacred obligation
never to offer a word of criticism. When I say that the
sermon was _punk_, I don't say it as criticism. I merely
state it as a fact. And to think that we pay that man
eighteen hundred dollars a year! And he's in debt all
the time at that. What does he do with it? He can't spend
it. It's not as if he had a large family (they've only
four children). It's just a case of sheer extravagance.
He runs about all the time. Last year it was a trip to
a Synod Meeting at New York--away four whole days; and
two years before that,