While apparently doing a business that should have yielded a large surplus, my expenses were already so great that I was actually making less money than when traveling alone, while a few weeks of poor business, such as were liable at any moment to occur, would put me decidedly in the hole. I paid off all salaries to the end of the month, closed up my affairs, disbanded my company, and once more hit the road, solitary and alone. After all the noise and rush of the past months, the first few weeks which followed were solemn, if not awful; but I stuck it out, found that the portrait line was as good as ever, and what I made was my own. I could visit towns which had been too small to stand the expense of the troupe, but were full to the brim of untouched business, which I worked after the same old style. When a great battle is won by shrewd maneuvering they call it a splendid display of strategy; when a fakir carries his point in the same way it is branded as infernal trickery. Early in the battle of life I discovered that I would have to do a great deal of strategical maneuvering or starve; and I seldom failed, however well defended his front might be, to turn the flank of the enemy if it was at all unprotected, often snatching victory out of the very jaws of defeat. Once, under peculiar provocation, I obtained an order from a saloon keeper for a nice crayon portrait of his wife. I had great hopes of getting an order for his own portrait also, and with that end in view, and being naturally of a generous disposition when I circulated among the boys, I spent about five dollars at the bar. When he turned me down in what I thought rather a bare-faced style, I set about getting even. His wife was a pronounced brunette, with black, curly hair, bright eyes and clear-cut features, being an excellent subject for a portrait. When the picture was finished it was really a very fine one, and taking it around to the saloon a day or two before I had promised delivery I asked his honor what he thought of it. He admired it immensely and was more than pleased. “Well,” said I, “it may be a surprise, but this picture is not for you. The one you ordered is not finished yet, and this is done by a new process and for a particular purpose.” “If that is not for me I’d like to know who it is for?” he asked, about as angry as he was surprised. “For me,” I told him. “It is such a perfect picture, and such a splendid example of what the new art will do, and what a magnificent picture can be obtained for only ten dollars more, that the house has sent it to me to canvass with.” You can believe that he got dead stuck on the picture and wanted it instead of the other. I asked him an increase of ten dollars for it, but compromised by accepting from him five dollars more than the original contract price. He never knew the difference, and I got back the money I had spent at his saloon.