Got them squeezed out?  Oh, yes, easy.  There wasn’t any trouble about that.  You see the old man worked up a sort of jolt in wholesale leather on one side, and I fixed up a strike of the hands on the other.  We passed the dividend two quarters running, and within a year we had them all scared out and the bulk of the little shareholders, of course, trooped out after them.  They always do.  The old man picked up the stock when they dropped it, and one-half of it he handed over to me.

That’s what put me where I am now, do you see, with the whole control of the industry in two states and more than that now, because we have the Amalgamated Tanneries in with us, so it’s practically all one concern.

Guggenbaum?  Did I squeeze him out?  No, I didn’t because, you see, I didn’t have to.  The way it was—­well, I tell you—­I used to go up to the house, see, to arrange things with him—­and the way it was—­why, you see, I married his daughter, see, so I didn’t exactly need to squeeze him out.  He lives up with us now, but he’s pretty old and past business.  In fact, I do it all for him now, and pretty well everything he has is signed over to my wife.  She has no head for it, and she’s sort of timid anyway —­always was—­so I manage it all.  Of course, if anything happens to the old man, then we get it all.  I don’t think he’ll last long.  I notice him each day, how weak he’s getting.

My son in the business?  Well, I’d like him to be.  But he don’t seem to take to it somehow—­I’m afraid he takes more after his mother; or else it’s the college that’s doing it.  Somehow, I don’t think the colleges bring out business character, do you?

X. A Study in Still Life—­My Tailor

He always stands there—­and has stood these thirty years—­in the back part of his shop, his tape woven about his neck, a smile of welcome on his face, waiting to greet me.

“Something in a serge,” he says, “or perhaps in a tweed?”

There are only these two choices open to us.  We have had no others for thirty years.  It is too late to alter now.

“A serge, yes,” continues my tailor, “something in a dark blue, perhaps.”  He says it with all the gusto of a new idea, as if the thought of dark blue had sprung up as an inspiration.  “Mr. Jennings” (this is his assistant), “kindly take down some of those dark blues.

“Ah,” he exclaims, “now here is an excellent thing.”  His manner as he says this is such as to suggest that by sheer good fortune and blind chance he has stumbled upon a thing among a million.

He lifts one knee and drapes the cloth over it, standing upon one leg.  He knows that in this attitude it is hard to resist him.  Cloth to be appreciated as cloth must be viewed over the bended knee of a tailor with one leg in the air.

My tailor can stand in this way indefinitely, on one leg in a sort of ecstasy, a kind of local paralysis.