Stomach Cake.
Line a small boy with green apples and cucumbers. This can be prepared on short notice.
Lemon Pie.
Line a pie tin with puff paste, put in your lemons, build a lattice over the top and bake three weeks.
Calves’ Foot Jelly.
Get trusted for a Chicago calf—they have the largest feet. Cut off the calf, which can be used for making hash or chicken salad, add a few molasses, strain through a cane-bottom chair, pour in a blue bowl with pictures on it, set it in the shade to get tough, and then send to a friend contemplating suicide.
I have heard that the female sex are deficient in the sense of humor, but the milliner laughed heartily at these jokes, which happened to be new to her, and signed the contract for a set without a struggle.
Virtually I was in the book business for over nine years, in which time I handled scarcely anything else.
You may be sure I was acquainted with every wile and artifice of the trade. I had traveled all over the United States and Canada, visiting all the principal cities and interviewing the governor and other officers in each state and territory. I had crossed the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, thirty-two times. For years I seemed to have success without a break, and I dreaded no more of being “busted.” All the time my bank account was growing, and in one year of prosperity I banked twelve thousand dollars in clear cash while selling encyclopedias.
How was that for a fakir? I will not say that I was tired of the life; but it began to look as though, like Alexander, I had no more worlds to conquer. Was it a wonder or was it not that I found I could go a step farther?