2S8 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I 

 sat down, hoping that I might fall hei;' to the chair belonging to the better of the 

 remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair, while His 

 comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his customer's locks. I 

 watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining 

 on No. I my interest grew to solicitude. When No. i stopped a moment to make 

 change on a bath ticket for a new comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude 

 rose to anxiety. When No. i caught up again, and both he and his comrade were 

 pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customer's cheeks, 

 and it was .ibout an even thing which one would say " Next!" first, my very breath 

 stood still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. i stopped 

 to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he 

 had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to 

 keep from falling into the hands of No. 2 ; for I have none of that enviable firmness 

 that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he 

 will wait for his fellow-barber's chair. 



I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. Of 

 course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsocia- 

 ble, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who are awaiting their turn 

 in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old 

 sofa, and put in the time for a while reading the framed advertisements of all sorts 

 of quack nostrums for dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names 

 on the private bay rum bottles ; read the names and noted the numbers on the 

 private shaving cups in the pigeon-holes ; studied the stained and damaged cheap 

 prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas^ 

 and the tiresome and everlastiTig young girl putting her grandfather's spectacles 

 on ; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting parrot that few 

 barbers' shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last 

 year's illustrated papers that littered the foul centre-table, and conned their 

 unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events. 



At last my turn came. A voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to — No. 2, of 

 course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected 



