"That's it--simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, That's All.' But, I don't know--for so big a space that seemed to me kind of--well--kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to 'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough--but after studying it, I says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with--so off comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and dignified--'Higbee's Hams.'" "By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again, later in the day, "where is Henry, now?" Higbee chuckled. "That's the other thing took me back this time--the new sign and getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like sinful idleness to Henry by that time." Percival whistled in amazement. "I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one else. "You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New York--being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and 'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera company that was one of the worst I ever _did_ see. Henry had no judgment. He was _too_ easy. Well, along this summer he was on the point of making a break that would--well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there won't be any more stretch left in them.' "The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of wolves--that's the gist of it--fortune-hunters--with tushes like the ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain--the father and the mother and the girl, too.