What was the use? It almost cleaned me out, but I never hankered after money if it meant publicity. You may say it was only a fad or fancy of mine. I drew my check for $1,000 of hard-earned cash, slowly gathered by years of saving out of a small salary, and gave it to him, making sure I had the goods and extra fittings. Mr. Obreeon started for home with warm feet and a remarkably steady gait. Well, I never thought any letters of mine would bring that sum in the open market, and as for Jim's hair, I had known him to pay a quarter to have a lot of it cut off and thrown away. I did a little figuring with my pen after Obreeon left. Taking the hairs and letters combined, they cost me an average price of $5.55. I worked it out this way: 162--of my letters. 18--of Jim's hairs. ---- 180--total hairs and letters. You then divide $1,000 by 180 to ascertain the average price of $5.55. Or, if you want to get at the price of each hair, counting the letters as dead stock, you grasp at a glance that the hairs are just 10 per cent, of the outfit, so you divide 180 by 10, and that gives you 18; take this amount and you run it into $1,000, and you get the price per hair as $55.55. When you arrive at this answer you may note that you might have obtained it by multiplying the average price by ten. In other words, the hair, if entirely loose from the poetry, costs ten times as much. To get at the price of the poetry loose from the hair, you simply divide $1,000 by 162, the number of letters, and that gives you $6.17 as the price of each letter, wholly disregarding the hair. It will be seen, therefore, that the commodity of highest value in an ordinary love correspondence, such as this was, is the hair, so that it is important for purchasers to consider if it is worth the price should the poetry go out of style. I have often thought I might have bought four or five Persian lamb coats for--well, never mind. There is no cold-storage expense keeping this fur of Jim's. Every deal shows its profit one way or the other, and sooner or later you'll find it. There is a heavy expense attached to making over Persian lamb coats, besides. What I have of Jim's coat I wouldn't alter for the world, because whenever I have a craving for poetry with hair, I turn to that and get all I want for some time to come, just at a glance. CHAPTER VIII