What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will give you.'

"He was overcome with gratitude. 'I knew it, sir,' he said. 'I knew you
would not refuse me. I said so to Hannah. I said, "I will go to that
gentleman and ask him. I will go to him and ask him for his advice."'

"I said, 'His what?'

"'His advice,' repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, 'on a
little matter as I can't quite make up my mind about.'

"I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn't. That
man sat there, and wrestled with me for my advice as to whether he should
invest a thousand dollars which Julia's father had offered to lend him,
in the purchase of a laundry business or a bar. He hadn't had enough of
it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it again, and he spun me reasons why I
should give it him. The choice of a wife was a different thing
altogether, he argued. Perhaps he ought _not_ to have asked me for my
opinion as to that. But advice as to which of two trades a man would do
best to select, surely any business man could give. He said he had just
been reading again my little book, _How to be Happy_, etc., and if the
gentleman who wrote that could not decide between the respective merits
of one particular laundry and one particular bar, both situate in the
same city, well, then, all he had got to say was that knowledge and
wisdom were clearly of no practical use in this world whatever.

"Well, it did seem a simple thing to advise a man about. Surely as to a
matter of this kind, I, a professed business man, must be able to form a
sounder judgment than this poor pumpkin-headed lamb. It would be
heartless to refuse to help him. I promised to look into the matter, and