All these things Burra Boss quietly eyed-in from time to time, as Bosses have the lowdown habit of doing. And so one bright Spring Morning about eleven minutes past ten he called Bud into the Throne Room. “Young man,” quoth he, “you have been for several years sitting in with a bunch of office beadles without becoming one of them. “It is no simple cinch for a young man to hold himself aloof from the piffle and puff of Office Politics and to evolve ideas in an intellectual graveyard. I take this occasion to congratulate you, my boy.” “Thank you sir,” quoth Bud, wondering if he was in for something more negotiable than a congratulation. “And furthermore,” quoth on the Boss, “I have decided to promote you to the sales-managership of this hustling hive at twice the salary we have been smothering you with heretofore.” Bud attempted to quoth back, but there wasn’t a quoth left in his quothary. Too full for coherent utterance, he merely made various motions indicating large appreciation, such as bowing, tapping his shirt bosom, winding his watch, and so on. And then he backed modestly out of the room. Into the Salesmanager’s sanctum Bud carried the same dashing disregard for precedent and prehistoric policies that had landed him the hundred-and-fifty dollar job. Inside two more years he had established such a ripping record that the Boss made him General Manager of the Works and raised him to Two Hundred. The Boss also let Bud in on a percentage of the profits equaling one-sixteenth of one percent beginning with the tenth year after it went into effect. As for Clarence, he is still sitting neat and erect somewhere in one of the outer offices checking things at a small desk. In between glances at comrade clock, he wonders how the Boss could have possibly made such a busy blunder as to pop Bud to the top and overlook real genius. “Mercy!” he ejaculates, and turns once more to his checking. _Lesson for Today:_ A stiff neck never supported a thinking head. HOT SKETCH NO. 16 THE BENEDICT WHO WISDOMED-UP MARK McMARK was one of those good-lord-look-at-this-desk Business Bees that fish their noonday grub out of a Pie Incubator and rush up and pay what they think is approximately correct, and then snap back to their offices like a rubber band. When it came to Fortune Farming, Mark McMark was cutting a good clean furrow and he was as happy as the day is wide. In spite of this, he decided to get married. He did not first make up his mind to rivet-up, and then roll up his sleeves and go out on a hunt for the girl. On the contrary Mark had a keen contempt of large circumference for that type of male kanoop that sits around his bachelor dugout until the microbe of Melancholy begins to take up its winter quarters in his corrugated heart, and then decides he wants a Home and goes out and sizes up every girl he meets like a bumpkin in to buy a bullock.