the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as
convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of
my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at
my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him
shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of
circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in
the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an
indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.

About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be
most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on
the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately
sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close
shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get
him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my
chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice
without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one
little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the
forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up
smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,
and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human
being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping
with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face
in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next
he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the
wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would
have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not
rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me
up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he
suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.
I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath
yesterday. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair
Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the
new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me
some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of
his own invention, and when I declined offe