CHAPTER I.
HOW A RETIRED PROVISION MERCHANT FELT THE IMPULSE OF SPRING Mr.Dickson McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with the towel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the looking-glass, and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window.
In the little garden lilacs were budding, and there was a gold line of daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse.

Beyond the sooty wall a birch flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk.

A blackbird whistled from a thorn-bush, and Mr.McCunn was inspired to follow its example.

He began a tolerable version of "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch." He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safety razor.

A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.
Calculation revealed to him the fact that in his fifty-five years, having begun to shave at eighteen, he had wasted three thousand three hundred and seventy hours--or one hundred and forty days--or between four and five months--by his neglect of this admirable invention.