There were a good many holes in Bill’s methods, but he never leaked information through them; and when I come across a fellow who doesn’t mention it when he’s asked not to, I come pretty near letting him fix his own salary.  It’s only a mighty big man that doesn’t care whether the people whom he meets believe that he’s big; but the smaller a fellow is, the bigger he wants to appear.  He hasn’t anything of his own in his head that’s of any special importance, so just to prove that he’s a trusted employee, and in the confidence of the boss, he gives away everything he knows about the business, and, as that isn’t much, he lies a little to swell it up.  It’s a mighty curious thing how some men will lie a little to impress people who are laughing at them; will drink a little in order to sit around with people who want to get away from them; and will even steal a little to “go into society” with people who sneer at them.

The most important animal in the world is a turkey-cock.  You let him get among the chickens on the manure pile behind the barn, with his wings held down stiff, his tail feathers stuck up starchy, his wish-bone poked out perky, and gobbling for room to show his fancy steps, and he’s a mighty impressive fowl.  But a small boy with a rock and a good aim can make him run a mile.  When you see a fellow swelling up and telling his firm’s secrets, holler Cash! and you’ll stampede him back to his hall bedroom.

I dwell a little on this matter of loose talking, because it breaks up more firms and more homes than any other one thing I know.  The father of lies lives in Hell, but he spends a good deal of his time in Chicago.  You’ll find him on the Board of Trade when the market’s wobbling, saying that the Russians are just about to eat up Turkey, and that it’ll take twenty million bushels of our wheat to make the bread for the sandwich; and down in the street, asking if you knew that the cashier of the Teenth National was leading a double life as a single man in the suburbs and a singular life for a married man in the city; and out on Prairie Avenue, whispering that it’s too bad Mabel smokes Turkish cigarettes, for she’s got such pretty curly hair; and how sad it is that Daisy and Dan are going to separate, “but they do say that he—­sh! sh! hush; here she comes.”  Yet, when you come to wash your pan of dirt, and the lies have all been carried off down the flume, and you’ve got the color of the few particles of solid, eighteen-carat truth left, you’ll find it’s the Sultan who’s smoking Turkish cigarettes; and that Mabel is trying cubebs for her catarrh; and that the cashier of the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in the suburbs and is the superintendent of a Sunday-school in the city; and that Dan has put Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the Czar hasn’t done a blame thing except to become the father of another girl baby.