would be truly beneficial.  So, at noon you go.  There never was a game of billiards that would end precisely at the moment you should leave for duty.  There never were two employes who played billiards who did not cheat their employers out of considerable time.  There never was an employer who would not resent this injustice.  The comrade who does not play billiards will, sooner or later, get an absolute advantage over you.  You will come in, complaining of your luck only to find that your slow-going comrade has “got something” which you have missed.  Employers do not want head-clerks or partners who hang around billiard saloons or livery stables.  “He who comes from the kitchen smells of its smoke.”  What can you get at a billiard saloon?  You can get the good opinion of some person who is never civil to anybody.  His incivility has a charm for your young mind.  You naturally imitate him.

YOU TRY IT ON A CUSTOMER.

He says:  “Have you any buttons like this?” showing one about fourteen years old.  You look at him insolently and say “Nah!” (meaning “No, sir").  This makes the other clerk (who plays billiards with you) laugh very heartily, but it makes your employer laugh out of the other corner of his mouth, for he has no business to keep such a clerk, and the customer knows it.  The customer may avenge himself by refusing an extension on a note which he holds, and that note, possibly, may have your employer’s name on it!  The mistake you make in this particular case is in applying the manners of a billiard-saloon to the uses of a place of business.  A very ordinary-looking old man was one day standing in a great bank in New York City.  He was talking with a friend, and the friend spoke of desiring to have a draft cashed which had been drawn in his favor.  Knowing that the old man banked at that place, he asked him to step up to the paying teller and identify the drawer of the money.  This the old man, naturally, attempted to do.  He said:  “I know this gentleman to be Alvin H. Hamilton.”  The paying teller looked at the old man and judged him by his clothes.  He said:  “I don’t know you at all, sir!  Pass along.”  This did not please the old man.  He expostulated.  “Pass along!” yelled the teller, looking ominously toward the policeman, who edged toward the group.

“I’LL PASS ALONG!”

said the old man, hotly.  And he drew a blank check, engraved in a costly manner, from his pocket, and wrote on the “please-pay” line “Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”  Then he signed his name to it, turned it over, put his name on the back of it, and got in line again.  By the time he was at the window the word had gone along the line.  The receiving teller, the collecting clerk, the certifying clerk and the examiners, had passed the news to

THE CASHIER AND THE PRESIDENT