the next year, putting up a house on
Michigan Avenue, buying hand-painted pictures by the square foot and
paying for them by the square inch--for his wife had decided that they
must occupy their proper station in society--and generally building up
a mighty high rating as a good thing.

As you know, I keep a pretty close eye on the packing house, but on
account of my rheumatism I don't often go through the cellars. But
along about this time we began to get so many complaints about our dry
salt meats that I decided to have a little peek at our stock for
myself, and check up the new cellar boss. I made for him and his gang
first, and I was mightily pleased, as I came upon him without his
seeing me, to notice how he was handling his men. No hollering, or
yelling, or cussing, but every word counting and making somebody hop.
I was right upon him before I discovered that it wasn't the new
foreman, but Mike, who was bossing the gang. He half ducked behind a
pile of Extra Short Clears when he saw me, but turned, when he found
that it was too late, and faced me bold as brass.

"A nice state you've let things get in while I was away, sorr," he
began.

It was Mike, the cellar boss, who knew his job, and no longer Mr.
Shaughnessy, the millionaire, who didn't know his, that was talking,
so I wasn't too inquisitive, and only nodded.

"Small wonder," he went on, "that crime's incr'asing an' th' cotton
crop's decreasing in the black belt, when you're sendin' such mate to
the poor naygurs. Why don't you git a cellar man that's been raised
with the hogs, an' 'll treat 'em right when they're dead?"

"I'm looking for one," says I.

"I know a likely lad for you," says he.

"Report to the superintendent," says I; and Mike's been with me ever
since. I found out when I looked into it that for a week back he'd
been paying the new cellar boss ten dollars a day to lay around
outside while he bossed his job.

Mike sold his old masters to a saloon-keeper and moved back to
Packingtown, where he invested all his money in houses, from which he
got a heap of satisfaction, because, as his tenants were compatriots,
he had plenty of excitement collecting his rents. Like most people who
fall into fortunes suddenly, he had bought a lot of things, not
because he needed them or really wanted them, but because poorer
people couldn't have them. Yet in the end he had sense enough to see
that happiness can't be inherited, but that it must be earned.