"Your order for the four now reposes in the inside pocket of my vest amongst my firm's cash and will stand as an I. O. U. against me until I hear from you. Even as I write, my friend Dickey, who sits at my left, keeps singing into my ear:
"'If I should die tonight and you should come to my cold corpse and say:
"'"Here, Bill, I've brought you back that four,"
"'"I'd rise up in my white cravat and say: "What's that?" And then fall dead once more.'
"Beseechingly yours,
"W. L. Mason, "Denver, Box —."
Although I sent Mason a check, it seemed that I was ever doomed to be in error with him. I wrote him insisting that he wear a new hat on me and asked him to send me his size.
He wrote back that he was satisfied to get the four dollars; but, since I pressed the matter, his size was seven and one-fourth.
I wrote my hatter to express a clear beaver to Mason. But somehow he got the size wrong, for Mason wrote back:
"Dear Brother: Everything that I have to do with you seems at first all wrong, but finally wiggles out all right. For example, while I stated that my size was seven and one-fourth your hatter sent a seven and one-half—two sizes too big under ordinary circumstances. But I was so tickled to get the unexpected four and a new lid besides that my head swelled and my bonnet fit me to a T."