“Well—”
“What, Graves?” said I sternly. “You make me a positive statement, you tell me it benefits people to be discharged by you, and you have not one fact by which to substantiate your statement. I demand to be shown one of these alleged persons!”
“Well—” he said again.
He was so much perturbed that I hadn’t the heart to perturb him further. He was such an honest, artless, enthusiastic fellow, and altogether so likable, that I can’t for the life of me explain why it was so natural to worry and badger him; but everybody did. When some especially woeful-looking derelict passed by, some one was sure to call Graves to the window and say something like—
“See here, Graves! Isn’t that the shipping clerk you discharged for not keeping his nails manicured?”
Rather gruesomely, we used to read aloud from the newspapers various reports of suicides.
Unknown man found in the river—nothing to identify him but a scrap of paper in his pocket, on which was written “Graves drove me to this.”
These fictitious papers varied. Sometimes they said:
And after Graves had turned me down,
What could I do but go and drown?
Graves told me all I didn’t oughter,
Despair then drove me to the water.