and selfishness. I can hope that you are a young man who, in going on a
fishing excursion with some reputable person of your age, will not cast
a cloud on the mind of that person's employer, and cause him to fear
that his clerk is falling instead of rising in self-esteem. Let my hope
be taken as an enduring fact. Now I feel I am on safe ground. You are
building a structure. On your west party-wall your neighbor is also
erecting one. He is building it so that it will fall down--that is
plain. When it falls it will involve you in its ruins because the middle
wall supports both edifices. What do you do? You go to the authorities,
and they make him take down his house brick by brick. In this way the
law surrounds you with its beneficent protection, and you need not
suffer from the faults of others. But alas!
[Illustration: "Adieu, valor! rust, rapier! be still, drum: For your
manager is in love; yea, he loveth."]