162—of my letters.
18—of Jim's hairs.
——
180—total hairs and letters.
You then divide $1,000 by 180 to ascertain the average price of $5.55.
Or, if you want to get at the price of each hair, counting the letters as dead stock, you grasp at a glance that the hairs are just 10 per cent, of the outfit, so you divide 180 by 10, and that gives you 18; take this amount and you run it into $1,000, and you get the price per hair as $55.55. When you arrive at this answer you may note that you might have obtained it by multiplying the average price by ten. In other words, the hair, if entirely loose from the poetry, costs ten times as much. To get at the price of the poetry loose from the hair, you simply divide $1,000 by 162, the number of letters, and that gives you $6.17 as the price of each letter, wholly disregarding the hair. It will be seen, therefore, that the commodity of highest value in an ordinary love correspondence, such as this was, is the hair, so that it is important for purchasers to consider if it is worth the price should the poetry go out of style.
I have often thought I might have bought four or five Persian lamb coats for—well, never mind. There is no cold-storage expense keeping this fur of Jim's. Every deal shows its profit one way or the other, and sooner or later you'll find it. There is a heavy expense attached to making over Persian lamb coats, besides. What I have of Jim's coat I wouldn't alter for the world, because whenever I have a craving for poetry with hair, I turn to that and get all I want for some time to come, just at a glance.
CHAPTER VIII
Now that I know Gabrielle Tescheron, I am for giving woman the largest liberty in all matters; let her have suffrage if she will take it. I am for giving woman everything—just let her run loose, here, there and everywhere, and then you'll see the world tidy up. It's time the worldliness of the world was viewed with fresh eyes. Woman, so long held in restraint, in many ways is a better observer than conventional man. She is like a countryman newly arrived in the city. It takes a countryman to see the real sights of New York; of course, he won't let on or be surprised at anything, for he wants you to feel that the only metropolis worth while is the place he calls "down street," up home; he is taking it all in, however, like an old-fashioned sap-kettle, and if you have dumped maple juice fresh from the trees into one all day, you'd think it held the five oceans and the Great Lakes. For years afterward his views on New York illuminate locally every city scandal reported in the New York papers; he probably saw it coming when he was down, and can tell a lot of incidents there was no space for in the crowded papers.
At one of the Oswegatchie County dinners held in a swell New York hotel I once saw one of these confident, you-can't-surprise-me countrymen take a drink of water from a goblet with a scalloped edge; it stood fourteen inches high and six across. The waiter had placed it on the table near him full of celery, but when the last piece had been taken and only a few green leaves floated like lily pads on its calm surface, he knew the proper thing to do. He just blew off the stray leaves, stretched his mouth around the prongs on the edge, got his paw under it, turned it up and enjoyed his simple highball. All our strong men come from the country. They drink and see things straight. They are more particular as to contents than containers, for they are nearly all prohibitionists or very high license advocates. When they are "dry," they drink equally well from a spring-hole, a spigot, a dipper or a pail.
"Rather generous with the water at these dinners, Reuben," I said, addressing him across the table, as he covered his mouth with his napkin preparatory to resuming his composure.