<br />MARK TWAIN - SELECTED STORIES<br />The Story Of The Bad Little Boy<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />Table of contents<br />About Barbers<br />A Ghost Story<br />The Story Of The Bad Little Boy<br />The Story Of The Good Little Boy<br />Punch, Brothers, Punch!<br />How I Edited an Agricultural Paper<br />A Dog&#39;s Tale<br />A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It<br />Cannibalism In The Cars<br />The Great Revolution In Pitcairn<br />About Barbers<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber&#39;s shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers&#39; shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main -- a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man&#39;s hair, while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his customer&#39;s locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to solicitude. When No. 1 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. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers&#39; cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say &quot;Next!&quot; first, my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer&#39;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&#39;s chair.