shop. He may have, and it may have been that that turned his mind to
investment. But it's hard to see how he could. A shave cost five
cents, and a hair-cut fifteen (or the two, if you liked, for a
quarter), and at that it is hard to see how he could make money, even
when he had both chairs going and shaved first in one and then in the
other.

You see, in Mariposa, shaving isn't the hurried, perfunctory thing
that it is in the city. A shave is looked upon as a form of physical
pleasure and lasts anywhere from twenty-five minutes to three-quarters
of an hour.

In the morning hours, perhaps, there was a semblance of haste about
it, but in the long quiet of the afternoon, as Jeff leaned forward
towards the customerand talked to him in a soft confidential
monotone, like a portrait painter, the razor would go slower and
slower, and pause and stop, move and pause again, till the shave died
away into the mere drowse of conversation.

At such hours, the Mariposa barber shop would become a very Palace of
Slumber, and as you waited your turn in one of the wooden arm-chairs
beside the wall, what with the quiet of the hour, and the low drone
of Jeff's conversation, the buzzing of the flies against the window
pane and the measured tick of the clock above the mirror, your head
sank dreaming on your breast, and the Mariposa Newspacket rustled
unheeded on the floor. It makes one drowsy just to think of it!

The conversation, of course, was the real charm of the place. You
see, Jefferson's forte, or specialty, was information. He could tell
you more things within the compass of a half-hour's shave than you