ginning "Dearest," and containing an invitation to the
theatre to-morrow night, it didn't seem to have any real bearing on his
claim for shortage on the last carload of sweet pickled hams he had
bought from us.

Of course, I sent for Milligan and went for him pretty rough for having
a mailing clerk so no-account as to be writing personal letters in
office hours, and such a blunderer as to mix them up with the firm's
correspondence. Milligan just stood there like a dumb Irishman and let
me get through and go back and cuss him out all over again, with some
trimmings that I had forgotten the first time, before he told me that
you were the fellow who had made the bull. Naturally, I felt pretty
foolish, and, while I tried to pass it off with something about your
still being green and raw, the ice was mighty thin, and you had the
old man running tiddledies.

It didn't make me feel any sweeter about the matter to hear that when
Milligan went for you, and asked what you supposed Donnelly would think
of that sort of business, you told him to "consider the feelings of the
girl who got our brutal refusal to allow a claim for a few hundredweight
of hams."

I haven't any special objection to your writing to girls and telling
them that they are the real sugar-cured article, for, after all, if you
overdo it, it's your breach-of-promise suit, but you must write before
eight or after six. I have bought the stretch between those hours. Your
time is money--my money--and when you take half an hour of it for your
own purposes, that is just a petty form of petty larceny.

Milligan tells me that you are quick to learn, and that you can do a
powerful lot of work when you've a mind to; but he adds that it's mighty
seldom your mind takes that particular turn. Your attention may be on
the letters you are addressing, or you may be in a comatose condition
mentally; he never quite knows until the returns come from the
dead-letter office.

A man can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full
of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right. It
doesn't make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he's doing
may seem, that's the big thing and the only thing for him just then.
Business is like oil--it won't mix with anything but business.

You can resolve everything in the world, even a great fortune, into
atoms. And the fundamental principles which govern the handling of
postage stamps and of millions are