If a man has a big ear he may have only a little corn.
With Jim it was about the same. He chased short-weight fellows all day
and when it came night he piled on all the weight he could just to lift
himself out of the under-weight rut of the day's work. Fat kept Jim
sociable--I don't mean that he was portly, but he was filled out well
over the angles of youth. This was desirable, because a lean bachelor
can't live with another lean one. I don't know why, except it's Nature's
law. He hyenas in the same cage act the same way.

Before Jim started in to take on weight he had been passing through
quite a long correspondence with a young woman, and it was so long that
I began to give out on poetry and was thinking of laying in more stock
in that line to drive the arrow home to a finish. Jim had never done
any courting without consulting me. I attended to the correspondence and
rather liked my job, because it gave me experience that might be useful.
Now that it is all over, of course, I know better--I look the other way.

At the time we were very busy in one of these affairs, I remember, Jim
was blue-eared, ragged-nerved and petulant to such a degree that I began
to think of shipping him back to the old farm, where pork gravy and
fried cakes would certainly restore his nervous system; otherwise I felt
he would land in a padded cell. Nothing he ate agreed with him and I
felt sure it must be a bad case of unrequited love. He looked sour upon
all the world, mistaking me most of the time for the man who ran it. We
were both on the point of getting a divorce when he began to take a
bottle of ale regularly at dinner. The first week Jim mounted a pound a
day and we were both overjoyed to note the improvement in our relations
which the ugly co-respondent (did you ever see a co-respondent that
wasn't ugly?) had threatened to disturb with the Dakota chills.

The remedy proved it was not a girl who bothered him. For a long time
after when Jim felt nervous I would recommend ale. I did not believe it
was possible for a woman to disturb him, but I was wrong again.

When Jim had returned two cases of empties we were on thoroughly good
terms again. Of course we are glad he tried the ale, but if we had
parted then and there we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
The small amount the junk man would have paid for our outfit might have
been better than what we netted.

CHAPTER II

Any man who knows the first thing about house