tleman Pettit now to myself. It’s a miserable name to give a man, but it sounds better than it looks in print.
“I see,” said old Pettit, as he took up his story and began tearing it into small strips. “I see the game now. You can’t write with ink, and you can’t write with your own heart’s blood, but you can write with the heart’s blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist. Well, I am for old Alabam and the Major’s store. Have you got a light, Old Hoss?”
I went with Pettit to the dépôt and died hard.
“Shakespeare’s sonnets?” I blurted, making a last stand. “How about him?”
“A cad,” said Pettit. “They give it to you, and you sell it—love, you know. I’d rather sell ploughs for father.”
“But,” I protested, “you are reversing the decision of the world’s greatest———”
“Good-by, Old Hoss,” said Petit.
“Critics,” I continued. “But—say—if the Major can use a fairly good salesman and bookkeeper down there in the store, let me know, will you?”
[114]
