If you studied sufficiently over the hieroglyphics appended by Clothespin Jimmy at the end of a check you discovered them to indicate the signature “James Ashe.” But it required more than a passing glance. Nobody ever quarreled with the signature, because it suited the old man and was honored by the bank.
The owner of the illegible signature was sixty-five years old, was hale, hearty, and ripe for adventure. Also he figured that fifty years of hard labor about completed his sentence and that he was entitled to play about.
Therefore he called home his son James, who had shown an early and marked distaste for the clothespin business, and took him into the library, where there lived in ease and idleness some ninety feet of assorted red, blue and black books. He opened the conversation:
“Son, what name do folks call you by when they speak to you?”
“Why—Jim, I guess.”
“Just Jim? Nothing describin’ it?”
“That’s all.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t the least notion, father. Why should they call me anything else?”
“No reason in the world. That’s what I’m gettin’ at in my feeble way. What do folks call me?”