guess you can expect me home in about a fortnight. For
he's the breed of doctor that is always two weeks ahead of his patients'
condition when they're poor, and two weeks behind it when they're rich.
He calls himself a specialist, which means that it costs me ten dollars
every time he has a look in at my tongue, against two that I would pay
the family doctor for gratifying his curiosity. But I guess this
specialist business is about the only outlet for marketing the surplus
of young doctors.

Reminds me of the time when we were piling up canned corned beef in
stock faster than people would eat it, and a big drought happened along
in Texas and began driving the canners in to the packing-house quicker
than we could tuck them away in tin. Jim Durham tried to "stimulate the
consumption," as he put it, by getting out a nice little booklet called,
"A Hundred Dainty Dishes from a Can," and telling how to work off corned
beef on the family in various disguises; but, after he had schemed out
ten different combinations, the other ninety turned out to be corned-beef
hash. So that was no use.

But one day we got together and had a nice, fancy, appetizing label
printed, and we didn't economize on the gilt--a picture of a steer so
fat that he looked as if he'd break his legs if they weren't shored up
pretty quick with props, and with blue ribbons tied to his horns. We
labeled it "Blue Ribbon Beef--For Fancy Family Trade," and charged an
extra ten cents a dozen for the cans on which that special label was
pasted. Of course, people just naturally wanted it.

There's nothing helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a
little gold on the label. And it's pretty safe to bet that if a fellow
needs a six or seven-syllabled word to describe his profession, he's a
corn doctor when you come to look him up in the dictionary. And then
you'll generally find him in the back part of the book where they tuck
away the doubtful words.

But that isn't what I started out to say. I want to tell you that I was
very, very glad to learn from your letter that you had been promoted to
the billing desk. I have felt all along that when you got a little of
the nonsense tried out of you there would be a residue of common-sense,
and I am glad to have your boss back up my judgment. There's two things
you just naturally don't expect from human nature--that the widow's
tombstone estimate of the departed, on which she is trying to convince
the neighbors a