Page:The Family Album.pdf/55

Rh Once Bill made a mistake and shaved a guy with the back of the razor instead of the edge. Do you know that this man was the only customer who ever came back the second time?

Business got so prosperous that Bill’s creditors invented the safety razor to drive him into some other business where tools weren’t weapons.

So Bill got married and furnished his house with the insides of a barber shop.

They had a palatial bungalow in the suburbs and it was beautiful in the Spring when the caterpillars were crawling among the buds on the red and white revolving barber pole in the front yard.

Bill had his shiniest nickel-plated and enamel chair in the parlor. They looked fine. There was eight of ’em in the parlor and fourteen polished brass cuspidors. Besides some of the handsomest tonic and dandruff signs you ever saw. Of course, the signs had strangers’ faces on ’em. But Bill didn’t like us relatives, anyway.

The parlor, corridor and other rooms were all papered with Bill’s mirrors and there were six more barber’s chairs in the dining room.