However, the consequence of this folly was,
      that in two or three days, I had to be sent home to my
      button-headed family in a high state of fever, and with a most
      violent and dangerous pain in the sinciput, all around about my
      organ of order. It was nearly a gone case with me then—just
      touch-and-go for six weeks—the physicians giving me up and all
      that sort of thing. But, although I suffered much, I was a
      thankful boy in the main. I was saved from being a “respectable
      hardware and commission merchant, doing a capital bit of
      business,” and I felt grateful to the protuberance which had been
      the means of my salvation, as well as to the kindhearted female
      who had originally put these means within my reach. The most of boys run away from home at ten or twelve years of
      age, but I waited till I was sixteen. I don’t know that I should
      have gone even then, if I had not happened to hear my old mother
      talk about setting me up on my own hook in the grocery way. The
      grocery way!—only think of that! I resolved to be off forthwith,
      and try and establish myself in some decent occupation, without
      dancing attendance any longer upon the caprices of these
      eccentric old people, and running the risk of being made a genius
      of in the end. In this project I succeeded perfectly well at the
      first effort, and by the time I was fairly eighteen, found myself
      doing an extensive and profitable business in the Tailor’s
      Walking-Advertisement line. I was enabled to discharge the onerous duties of this profession,
      only by that rigid adherence to system which formed the leading
      feature of my mind. A scrupulous method characterized my actions
      as well as my accounts. In my case it was method—not money—which
      made the man: at least all of him that was not made by the tailor
      whom I served. At nine, every morning, I called upon that
      individual for the clothes of the day. Ten o’clock found me in
      some fashionable promenade or other place of public amusement. The precise regularity with which I turned my handsome person
      about, so as to bring successively into view every portion of the
      suit upon my back, was the admiration of all the knowing men in
      the trade. Noon never passed without my bringing home a customer
      to the house of my employers, Messrs. Cut & Comeagain. I say this
      proudly, but with tears in my eyes—for the firm proved themselves
      the basest of ingrates. The little account, about which we
      quarreled and finally parted, cannot, in any item, be thought
      overcharged, by gentlemen really conversant with the nature of
      the business. Upon this point, however, I feel a degree of proud
      satisfaction in permitting the reader to judge for himself. My
      bill ran thus:

_Messrs. Cut & Comeagain, Merchant Tailors. To Peter Proffit, Walking Advertiser,_ Drs. July 10.   to promenade, as usual and customer brought home   $00 25
July 11. To do do do                                            25
July 12. To one lie, second class; damaged black cloth sold
           for invisible green                                    25
July 13. To one lie, first class, extra quality and size;
           recommended milled satinet as broadcloth,              75
July 20. To purchasing bran new paper shirt collar or dickey,
           to set off gray Petersham                              02
Aug. 15. To wearing double-padded bobtail frock, (thermometer
           106 in the shade)                                      25
Aug. 16. Standing on one leg three hours, to show off
           new-style strapped pants at 12 1/2 cents per leg per
           hour                                                   37½
Aug. 17. To promenade, as usual, and large customer brought
           (fat man)                                              50
Aug. 18. To do do (medium size)                                 25
Aug. 19. To do do (small man and bad pay)                        6
           TOTAL                                               $2 95½


      The item chiefly disputed in this bill was the very moderate
      charge of two pennies for the dickey. Upon my word of honor, this
      was not an unreasonable price for that dickey. It was one of the
      cleanest and prettiest little dickeys I ever saw; and I have good
      reason to believe that it effected the sale of three Petershams. The elder partner of the firm, however, would allow me only one
      penny of the charge, and took it upon himself to show in what
      manner four of the same sized conveniences could be got out of a
      sheet of foolscap. But it is needless to say that I stood upon
      the principle of the thing. Business is business, and should be
      done in a business way. There was no system whatever in swindling
      me out of a penny—a clear fraud of fifty per cent—no method in
      any respect. I left at once the employment of Messrs. Cut &
      Comeagain, and set up in the Eye-Sore line by myself—one of the
      most lucrative, respectable, and independent of the ordinary
      occupations. My strict integrity, economy, and rigorous business habits, here
      again came into play. I found myself driving a flourishing trade,
      and soon became a marked man upon “Change.” The truth is, I never
      dabbled in flashy matters, but jogged on in the good old sober
      routine of the calling—a calling in which I should, no doubt,
      have remained to the present hour, but for a little accident
      which happened to me in the prosecution of one of the usual
      business operations of the profession. Whenever a rich old hunks
      or prodigal heir or bankrupt corporation gets into the notion of
      putting up a palace, there is no such thing in the world as
      stopping either of them, and this every intelligent person knows. The fact in question is indeed the basis of the Eye-Sore trade. As soon, therefore, as a building-project is fairly afoot by one
      of these parties, we merchants secure a nice corner of the lot in
      contemplation, or a prime little situation just adjoining, or
      tight in front. This done, we wait until the palace is half-way
      up, and then we pay some tasty architect to run us up an
      ornamental mud hovel, right against it; or a Down-East or Dutch
      Pagoda, or a pig-sty, or an ingenious little bit of fancy work,
      either Esquimau, Kickapoo, or Hottentot. Of course we can’t
      afford to take these structures down under a bonus of five
      hundred per cent upon the prime cost of our lot and plaster. Can
      we? I ask the question. I ask it of business men. It would be
      irrational to suppose that we can. And yet there was a rascally
      corporation which asked me to do this very thing—this very thing!