And King Edward needing the money so badly, with all the expense he is under. The United States is just as up and coming, though, as Canada. Every bit. We don’t propose that our fair land shall be devastated by a flood of cheap Canadian mutton (it is most mighty good mutton; I’ll say that for it), so there is a fine on anybody that brings it over. The Beef Trust has expensive families to send to college too. In response to popular demand, the baker consented to run the butcher-shop. If you found the place locked up, you stamped on the stoop and yelled awhile. He would come out, rolling the dough off his fingers and cut you off some meat. Sometimes, though you’d have to wait until he got those pies out. He was as good-hearted a man as ever lived, but he caused me many a sleepless night. I’ll tell you how it was. One day I didn’t go for the meat. The Honest Man’s Wife went. She got a roast, five pounds and a quarter it was, at 18 cents a pound. The man figured on the cost. He put it down 70 cents, but that didn’t look quite right to him, so he set down a figure 1. “Dollar seventy,” he said. Now the Honest Man’s Wife had taught school, and was right good at ciphering. “Would you mind,” she asked as innocent as a cat lapping milk, “would you mind figuring that out for me?” “Sure thing, lady,” said the baker-butcher. “Five pounds and a quarter. There’s your 5¼, at 18 cents. There’s your 18. Five tums 8 is 40. Put down the aught and carry 4. Five tums one is 5, and 4 is—is—er—er—Five times 8 is 40. Put down the aught and carry—Hold on. I guess I made a mistake. Call it 97 cents.” He smiled pleasingly. “Seven cents,” mused she. “M—, won’t you please figure out for me how one-fourth of 18 is 7?” Well now. I had been paying for meat without ever figuring it out. Considering that with his limited arithmetical powers he was certain to make mistakes, and considering that those mistakes were equally certain to be all in his favor, can you wonder that I have tossed and tossed for hours upon a sleepless couch trying to recall the times I bought meat of him, how much it weighed and what I paid him? I promised to speak of “Joe’s.” Behold I show you a mystery. I saw a billhead of his. His initial was M. Try my best I couldn’t make out to spell Joe with an M. Yet everybody called him Joe. I asked the Signora, his mother-in-law. She pressed her lips strongly together and wildly shook her head. “Eena Cannodda dey gotta no sensea,” she exclaimed. “Eesa nemma notta Joe. No. Eesa nemma Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga. Cannodda mans ee say: ‘Eh Joe? Youra nemma Joe? Eh?’ Ee know dey gotta nuss sense a eena Cannodda. Ee say: ‘Sure a-tinga.’ Eesa neema notta Joe. No. Eesa nemma Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga.”