of scented vaseline and grew another inch of hair for
good measure. It seemed a pity now, so long as I was after his scalp,
not to get it with the hair on.

Sol had never seen a bone-meal mill, but it flattered him mightily to
be promoted into the manufacturing end, "where a fellow could get
ahead faster," and he said good-by to the boys in the office with his
nose in the air, where he kept it, I reckon, during the rest of his
connection with the house.

If Sol had stuck it out for a month at the mill I'd have known that he
had the right stuff in him somewhere and have taken him back into the
office after a good rub-down with pumice-stone. But he turned up the
second day, smelling of violet soap and bone-meal, and he didn't sing
his list of grievances, either. Started right in by telling me how,
when he got into a street-car, all the other passengers sort of faded
out; and how his landlady insisted on serving his meals in his room.
Almost foamed at the mouth when I said the office seemed a little
close and opened the window, and he quoted some poetry about that
being "the most unkindest cut of all." Wound up by wanting to know how
he was going to get it out of his hair.

I broke it to him as gently as I could that it would have to wear out
or be cut out, and tried to make him see that it was better to be a
bald-headed boss on a large salary than a curly-headed clerk on a
small one; but, in the end, he resigned, taking along a letter from me
to the friend who had recommended him and some of my good bone-meal.

I didn't grudge him the fertilizer, but I did feel sore that he hadn't
left me a lock of his hair, till some one saw him a few days later,
dodging along with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down,
looking like a new-clipped lamb. I heard, too, that the fellow who had
given him the wise-men-muses letter to me was so impressed with the
almost exact duplicate of it which I gave Sol, and with the fact that
I had promoted him so soon, that he concluded he must have let a good
man get by him, and hired him himself.

Sol was a failure as a musician because, while he knew all the notes,
he had nothing in himself to add to them when he played them. It's
easy to learn all the notes that make good music and all the rules
that make good business, but a fellow's got to add the fine curves to
them himself if he wants to do anything more than beat the bass-drum
all his life. Some men think that rules should be made of