Fields's cause looked blue. One director after another groped to the door, saying, as he went, "I can't encourage it, Mr. President—tell him 'No,' Mr. President—it would only make the rest uneasy if we allowed it—plenty more to fill his place."
The hatter's voice stopped further mention of the subject. He stood at one end of the apartment in a paroxysm of laughter. Tears filled his eyes. He pointed to another director, who, at the other extremity of the room, was also puzzling over a coat. "There's Stuart with my mackintosh! He's trying to put it on—and here am I with his coat trying to put that on. I—I said to myself, 'This is pretty large for a slim man like you.'—Great God, Stuart, if I hadn't been quick-sighted we might have stayed here all night!" He immediately fell into another fit of laughter, and so did his friend. They exchanged coats with great hilarity, and those who had gone out of the door lumbered back to learn the cause of it. The story went round from one to the other, "Why, Stuart had Jacobs's coat, and Jacobs had Stuart's coat!" Everybody went into convulsions, and the president drew out his pocket-handkerchief and shrieked into it.
The board broke up with great good feeling, and Jacobs went away very weak, saying that he was going to tell the joke against Stuart on the street—if he lived to get there.
Three gentlemen remained, professedly to hear Fields's letter read. Two staid because the room was comfortable, and the other because he wanted to have a little private conversation with the president afterward.
Therefore the president wiped away the tears that Stuart's humor had forced from his eyes, and opened the crumpled letter, and, turning his back to the light, read it aloud, while the rest listened with looks of great amusement in their wrinkled faces.
"To the President and Directors of the---- National Bank.
"GENTLEMEN: I most respectfully renew my application for an increase
of my salary to five thousand dollars per annum, it now being four
thousand. I am impelled to do this because I am convinced that I am
not sufficiently recompensed for the labor I perform; and because