Mr. Wright sat down heavily and sighed.
"Sam been giving you something to think about?" Dr. Lavendar asked cheerfully.
"He always gives me something to think about. He is beyond my comprehension! I may say candidly, that I cannot understand him. What do you think he has done now?"
"Nothing wicked."
"I don't know how you look at it," Samuel said, "but from my point of view, buying prints with other people's money is dangerously near wickedness. This present matter, however, is just imbecility. I told him one day last week to write to a man in Troy, New York, about a bill of exchange. Well, he wrote. Oh, yes—he wrote. Back comes a letter from the man, enclosing my young gentleman's epistle, with a line added"—Mr. Wright fumbled in his breast pocket to find the document—"here it is: 'Above remarks about ships not understood by our House.' Will you look at that, sir, for the 'remarks about ships'?"
Dr. Lavendar took the sheet stamped "Bank of Pennsylvania," and hunted for his spectacles. When he settled them on his nose he turned the letter over and read in young Sam's sprawling hand:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
"What's this? I don't understand."
"Certainly you do not; no sensible person would. I showed it to my young gentleman, and requested an explanation. 'Oh,' he said, 'when you told me to write to Troy, it made me think of those lines.' He added that not wishing to forget them, he wrote them down on a sheet of paper, and that probably he used the other side of the sheet for the Troy letter—'by mistake.' 'Mistake, sir!' I said, 'a sufficient number of mistakes will send me out of business.'"
"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar thoughtfully, "do you recall whose face it was that 'launched the thousand ships' on Troy?"