l
service jobs. His was only a small city job, that of Sealer of Weights
and Measures, while I was connected with the Department of Health as an
Inspector of Offensive Trades, with more pay to offset the larger
responsibilities.

Jim once asked me what I did and I explained it this way:

"An Inspector of Offensive Trades must have a nose as delicately trained
as a Sousa's ear, so that when a blast from the full olfactory orchestra
rolls up from Newtown Creek and its stupefying vibrations are wafted on
the fog billows driven by a gusty east wind toward the Department of
Health, he can detect strains of the glue hoofs quite independently of
the abattoir's offal bass, and tell at a sniff if discord breathes from
the settling tanks of the fish factory or if the aroma of the
fertilizer grinder is two notes below standard pitch as established by
the officials to meet the approval of the sensitive ladies of the civic
smelling committees."

You can see that my work called for a peculiar kind of brains.

Jim, in those days, went around to the grocery stores and made sure that
the scales were in working order and that the weights balanced with the
official weights he carried in a small bag. If he found a groceryman
using weights that had been bored out to make them lighter he made an
arrest and usually laid off for two days because he had to be a witness
against the prisoner at court. He took these vacations at regular
intervals, about twice a month, so I figured he did not pounce down on a
man as soon as he found him giving short weight, but saved those
desirable cases for use at regular periods when he required rest with a
day or two at home.

Jim was not lazy, but he was not so spry as he was ten years ago when he
was fresh from playing full-back on our scrub team. For a number of
years he had been tramping around outdoors all day and had been inclined
to play full front on the gastronomic flying wedge at the restaurants,
where we commuted for our meals as long as we could stand it before
taking up the primitive notions of the culinary art practiced in our own
kitchen. Our cooking became very simple. After we tackled making fried
cakes and both went to bed with headaches from the cottonseed oil, I
asked Jim to take what we had turned out to a neighboring machine shop
and see if they didn't want some three-inch washers for locomotive work.

The farmer and the manicure artist have discovered the same law of
compensation.