“The third day of my apprenticeship, my master having just given me a note to receive money, there came into the shop a ruffian with a pair of whiskers, and told my master he would have them turned up. The journeyman not being at hand, my master began to turn them up himself and desired me to heat the irons. I complied, and just as he had turned up one whisker, there happened a quarrel in the street, and my master ran out to learn the cause. The scuffle lasting long, and my master desirous to see the end as well as the beginning of the bustle, the spark was all the time detained in the shop, with the one whisker ornamented, and the other hanging down like an aspen leaf. In a harsh tone he asked me, if I understood my trade; and I, thinking it derogatory to my understanding to be ignorant, boldly replied that I did; ‘Why, then,’ said he, ‘turn up this whisker for me, or I shall go into the street as I am, and kick your master.’ I was unwilling to be detected in a lie, and deeming it no difficult matter to turn up a whisker, never showed the least concern, but took up one of the irons, that had been in the fire ever since the commencement of the street bustle, and having nothing to try it on, and willing to appear expeditious, I took a comb, stuck it into his bristly bush, and clapped the iron to it: no sooner did they meet, than there arose a smoke, as if it had been out of a chimney, with a whizzing noise, and in a moment all the hair vanished. He exclaimed furiously, ‘Thou son of a thousand dogs! dost thou take me for St. Lawrence, that thou burnest me alive!’ With that he let fly such a bang at me, that the comb dropped out of my hand, and I could not avoid, in the fright, laying the hot iron close along his cheek: this made him give such a shriek as shook the whole house, and he, at the same time, drew his sword to send me to the other world. I, however, recollecting the proverb, that ‘One pair of heels is worth two pair of hands,’ ran so nimbly into the street, and fled so quickly from that part of the town, that though I was a good runner, I was amazed when I found myself about a mile from home, with the iron in my hand, and the remainder of the whisker sticking to it. As fortune would have it, I was near the dwelling of the person who was to pay the note my master gave me: I went and received the money, but deemed it proper to detain it in lieu of my three days’ wages.