"It isn't standing up now, hey?—well, did it stand up before?—does it stand up most of the time, hey?"
Usually the answer is favorable. Naturally a man with a dog he doesn't want speaks as well of its tail as he can. Thereupon our friend seizes his hat, rushes out of the building for the nearest car line, and comes back two hours later to expatiate on the crass stupidity of people who find dogs.
The tail, it seems, is never the perfect tail he is looking for—thick, shaggy and perpendicular, with a slight bend. Half the time the dogs are not even Airedales. The last one he went to look at—seven miles away in the suburban slums—proved to be a Scotch terrier, a bandy-legged, little black chap.
We told him he ought to have taken it anyway. But he is a persistent beggar, and he is still answering "ads." He is weakening, however, and we are laying bets that he will take whatever the next person who 'phones in has to offer—A Persian cat, perhaps, or a Belgian hare.
ON BEING HANDY WITH TOOLS
On Being Handy With Tools
We are not handy with tools. We state this with all solemnity and knowing full well the nature of an oath. But even if we were handy with tools we would perjure ourself rather than admit it—we know what that admission leads to.
We have a brother, dear reader—a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, as you might guess, with a very open face. That is the chief cause of his troubles, his face is so very open. And in his tender youth he used to open it regularly and widely about the things he could do with tools.
There was nothing that boy couldn't make or mend. There was no domestic emergency which he couldn't meet with the appropriate tools—either the family tools or the neighbors'. Did a tap need a washer? Frank was right there with a rubber disk in one hand and a monkey-wrench in the other. Were the electric lights on the blink, or was the gas-stove doing its best to suffocate the cook? Did the family dog, a descendant of several shaggy breeds, require a hair-cut or a shampoo? Had the horse kicked the side out of his stall?—we are not bragging, friend reader, as you would realize if you had ever seen that ancient charger. Or was the barn itself in need of a coat of paint? In any and all of these cases Frank was electrician, gas-fitter, barber, carpenter, painter, or whatever the circumstances called for.