“I love them all,” he said, “but I haven’t money enough to entertain a quarter of them.  The last time Billie Hicks was up here he smoked sixteen Invincible cigars.  Now, I am very fond of Billie Hicks, but with cigars at twenty cents apiece I can’t afford him more than one Sunday in a year.  He’s getting a little cold because I haven’t asked him up since.”

“Why don’t you buy cheaper cigars?  At our grocery store they have some very nice looking ones at two for five cents,” suggested Mrs. Jarley.

“I don’t wish to have to move out of the house,” said Jarley.

Mrs. Jarley failed to see the connection.

“Very likely you don’t,” said Jarley; “but if I smoked one of your two-and-a-half-cent grocery cigars in this house, you’d see the point in a minute.  If you will get me a yard of cotton cloth, and let me put it in the furnace fire, you’ll get a fair idea of the kind of atmosphere we’d be breathing if I allowed a cigar like that to be lit within fifty feet of the front door.”

“But you can get a good cigar for ten cents, can’t you?” Mrs. Jarley asked.

“Yes—­very good,” assented Jarley; “but Billie would probably smoke thirty-two of those, and carry three or four away with him in his pockets.  I’d lose even more that way.  It’s a singular thing about friends.  They have some conscience about Invincible cigars, but they’ll take others by the handful.”

Jarley was also somewhat blue upon this occasion because none of his inventions—­the little things he thought out in his leisure moments, and out of some of which he had hoped to gain a deal of profit—­had been successful.  The public had refused to place any confidence whatsoever in his patent reversible spats, which, when turned inside out, could be made useful as galoches; and the beaux of New York actually rejected with scorn the celluloid chrysanthemum, which he had hoped would become a popular boutonniere because of its durability and cheapness.  An impecunious young man with care could make one fifteen-cent chrysanthemum of the Jarley order last through a whole season, and it could be colored to suit the wearer’s taste with the ordinary paint-boxes that children so delight in; but in spite of this the celluloid chrysanthemum was a distinct failure, and Jarley had had his trouble for his pains, to say nothing of the cost of the model.  But worst of all the failures, because of the prospective losses its failure entailed, was the Jarley safety lightning razor.  Its failure was not due to any lack of merit, for it certainly possessed much that was ingenious and commendable.  The affair was not different in principle from a lawn-mower.  Six little sharp blades set on a cylinder would revolve rapidly as the pretty machine was pushed up and down the cheek of the person shaving, and leave the face of that person as smooth as a piece of velvet; but in announcing it to the world its inventor had made the unfortunate statement that a child could use it with impunity, and some would-be smart person on a comic paper took it up and wrote an undeniably clever article on the futility of inventing a razor for children.  The consequence was that the safety razor was laughed out of existence, and the additions to his residence which Jarley was going to pay for out of the proceeds had to be abandoned.