He was shrewd enough before leaving home to re-inforce his proposition with several strong To-Whom-It-May-Concerns from men of high standing in the community. One was from the Mayor of Squirrel Cove and another was executed by the Proprietor of the Crescent Hand Laundry who up and spoke in no uncertain tone respecting the high esteem in which our fellow townsman, Ezekiel Whiffle, was held by one and all. * * * * * Here let it be set down truthfully, with malice toward none, that Ezekiel Whiffle was no speckled yobbish when it came to doing the thing he packed off to do. He had a life-long record of accomplishment as clean as a willow whistle from the day he set out as a youth to shingle the silo, down to the last leg of the last stove he set up at the Hardware Store before his departure. Thus it did not take Ezekiel one thousand years to land a job in Chicago, although the parking facilities for men less energetic were very tempting in the City of Basement Restaurants. Within one week of his first lap round the Loop, Ezekiel had secured a comfortable berth as County Hurdler for a large Manufacturing Concern that was struggling to make both ends meet on 142 percent net profit after paying State and Federal squeeze. Ezekiel’s very earnestness impressed the Boss, even if his Letters of Recommendation did not cause any wild demonstration around the Works. His lack of experience gave him a fresh point of view. He was quite free from the customary we-never-did-it-that-way advice to men who had been running their own business successfully for twenty years. When the matter of salary was mentioned, Ezekiel had to remove his ear-muffs to be sure he heard the figure correctly. But he decided to go to it anyway and prove that he was worth more than the sixty dollars a month. During the following fortnight Ezekiel overalled it in the various departments of the big Works getting grease on his face and gathering a rustic headful of practical information which resolved itself finally into a beautifully webbed mass that made the last estate of the poor goop worse than the first. Zeekie was assigned by the Sales Manager to Luke’s Rock, Iowa, for the initial sales bombardment. The Sales Manager, with his well-set little New England head, had of course never been there himself, just as he had never been any place else, but he talked as though he had been making the dorp for years, and assured Ezekiel that there were wonderful possibilities at Luke’s Rock and said he would be greviously disappointed if Zeke did not pull out of there with fourteen carloads scored up in his Order Book. “We are expecting big things of you,” he said. “That’s more than I am expecting of you,” replied Zeke. But he replied it strictly to himself. Then the S. M. gave Zeke one of those Boston handshakes and a modest bunch of Expense Money and told him to track. * * * * *