Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/170

Rh he, in a tone of sort of dignified reproof, "and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a better reputation."

I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I had laid myself open, so I just said: "The sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such price for light-weights. Bring around a bigger dog and then we'll talk;" but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked off.

I simply mention this l'ttle incident as an example of the fact that when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he's apt to affect the sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There's such a thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending to believe that he's paying for pork and getting dog is pretty apt to get dog in the end.

But all that aside, I want you to get it firmly fixed in your mind right at the start