Six Pieces of Pie.
A man has just died in Boston who is said to have made a fortune by adopting in his restaurant a new fashion of cutting pies. Whereas before his day pie had always been cut into five pieces, he learned to cut it into six pieces. This at least is the tradition.
Whether the fortune of this particular restaurant keeper was made by this innovation or not, it is certain that many a great fortune has been based upon that extra piece of pie.
To be sure, the six-piece pies are no larger than the five-piece pies. The public stomach is not so well filled as it was before the extra piece was cut out of the pie. But the manipulator's pocket is far better filled, and that, as the pie man looks at the matter, is the main result to be sought.
Of course, if there were a law on the size of pie pieces, he could not do it; but there isn't.
Sometimes it is an ounce less in the loaf of bread. Sometimes it is a few threads of wool fewer in the yard of cloth. Sometimes it is twenty-five pounds of sugar got out of twenty-four pounds of saccharine matter. Whatever it is, the principle is the same—it is the sixth piece of pie; and it is the comparatively empty stomach.
And it is somebody's fuller purse.