verages and have more than an average business. Once an old fellow
who's just missed everything he's sprung at gets his hooks in, he's a
tiger to stay by the meat course. And I've picked up two or three of
these old man-eaters in my time who are drawing pretty large salaries
with the house right now.

Whenever I hear any of this talk about carting off old fellows to the
glue factory, I always think of Doc Hoover and the time they tried the
"dead-line-at-fifty" racket on him, though he was something over
eighty when it happened.

After I left Missouri, Doc stayed right along, year after year, in the
old town, handing out hell to the sinners in public, on Sundays, and
distributing corn-meal and side-meat to them on the quiet, week-days.
He was a boss shepherd, you bet, and he didn't stand for any church rows
or such like nonsense among his sheep. When one of them got into trouble
the Doc was always on hand with his crook to pull him out, but let an old
ram try to start any stampede-and-follow-the-leader-over-the-precipice
foolishness, and he got the sharp end of the stick.

There was one old billy-goat in the church, a grocer named Deacon
Wiggleford, who didn't really like the Elder's way of preaching.
Wanted him to soak the Amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the
grocery business alone. Would holler Amen! when the parson got after
the money-changers in the Temple, but would shut up and look sour when
he took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of the nineteenth
century. Said he "went to church to hear the simple Gospel preached,"
and that may have been one of the reasons, but he didn't want it
applied, because there wasn't any place where the Doc could lay it on
without cutting him on the raw. The real trouble with the Deacon was
that he'd never really got grace, but only a pretty fair imitation.

Well, one time after the Deacon got back from his fall trip North to
buy goods, he tried to worry the Doc by telling him that all the
ministers in Chicago were preaching that there wasn't any super-heated
hereafter, but that each man lived through his share of hell right
here on earth. Doc's face fell at first, but he cheered up mightily
after nosing it over for a moment, and allowed it might be so; in
fact, that he was sure it was so, as far as those fellows were
concerned--they lived in Chicago. And next Sunday he preached hell so
hot that the audience fairly sweat.

He wound up his sermon by deploring the tend