al country sausage" at twice as much
a pound.

He laughs best who doesn't laugh at all when he's dealing with the
public. It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of
humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a
laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There's nothing in the world
sicker-looking than the grin of the man who's trying to join in heartily
when the laugh's on him, and to pretend that he likes it.

Speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little
experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with
a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows
that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow's mustache
tickles. Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn't really disposed to add a dog
to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him what he wanted for
the little cuss.

[Illustration: "_You looked so blamed important and chesty when you
started off._"]

The fellow hawed and choked and wiped away a tear. Finally, he fetched
out that he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke his heart to
think of parting with him; that he wouldn't dare look Dandy in the face
after he had named the price he was asking for him, and that it was the
record-breaking, marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on dogs; that it
wasn't really money he was after, but a good home for the little chap.
Said that I had a rather pleasant face and he knew that he could trust
me to treat Dandy kindly; so--as a gift--he would let me have him for
five hundred.

"Cents?" says I.

"Dollars," says he, without blinking.

"It ought to be a mastiff at that price," says I.

"If you thought more of quality," says he, in a tone of sort of
dignified reproof, "and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a
better reputation."

I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open, so I just
said: "The sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such
price for light-weights. Bring around a bigger dog and then we'll talk;"
but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked
off.

I simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that
when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he's apt to affect the
sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest
butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There's such a
thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fe