“As you are well aware, my dear Fido, I was a decent enough fellow in my youth, save for my somewhat foppish tendencies. Being--ahem!--a rather handsome chap, you will recollect that I was quite popular with the ladies. As is usually the case with such young fellows, I was at first pampered and then--spoiled. I remember with keen remorse that practically all my friends eventually became estranged from me through my self-conceit. You alone were loyal, and always ready to defend and advise me. As for my own family--they had long since ceased to recognize me when I left the old place. “It was the old story--I became very unhappy, and felt that no one understood or appreciated me. I did not have sense enough to understand that it was my own failings that had caused me to lose my former popularity. I believed that the coldness of my friends was due to their jealousy and malicious envy. “It was not long before I determined, with an ‘I’ll show ’em’ desire for revenge, that I would leave the old farm at the first opportunity, and seek a field where my talents would be appreciated at their true value. And then came the tempter. “One day while you were away with little Tod Baker on a fishing excursion, I received a call from Pete Tucker of Posyville--I don’t think you ever met him. Pete had seen a good deal of the world, and his stories of adventure were perfectly fascinating to me. He had been to sea several times, had spent a couple of seasons doing the happy family act with a circus and, at the time of his visit to me, was living in Chicago--having come home for a few days’ vacation. He said a great deal about the pleasures of city life, and informed me that he had a most delightful situation where he mingled with the best society and had very little to do to earn what he described as an enormous salary. “‘Tommy, my boy,’ he said, slapping me familiarly on the shoulder, ‘you are a blamed fool to bury yourself out here in the country! Come back to the city with me, and I’ll get you a nice soft berth where you can make something of yourself.’ I yielded only too readily to the tempter and long before you returned home, my dear Fido, I was on my way to Chicago. “I had never before been in a large city, hence Chicago unfolded a new world to me--a world that seemed as fair as I have since found it to be corrupt. “Pete had told me the truth, in some respects, regarding his situation. He was employed as chief mouser in the bar-room of a fashionable hotel, and living on the fat of the land. I was soon installed as assistant mouser, the rat department being under the management of a terrier gentleman named Foxy. And now came my initiation into the mysteries of office-holding.