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“You don’t understand me,” explained the Devil. “What I mean by a good time is that which makes the heart merry and keeps the soul youthful and buoyant,–wine, Daniel! Wine and the theatre and pretty girls and fast horses and all that sort of happy, joyful life!”

“Tut, tut, tut!” cried Daniel; “no more of that, sir! I sowed my wild oats in college. What right have I to think of such silly follies,–I, at forty years of age, and a business man too?”

So not even the Devil himself could persuade Daniel into a life of dissipation. All you who have made a study of the business man will agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to swerve from conservative methods. The Devil groaned and began to wonder why he had ever tied up to a man like Daniel,–a business man.

Pretty soon Daniel developed an ambition. He wanted reputation, and he told the Devil so. The Devil’s eyes sparkled. “At last,” murmured the Devil, with a sigh of relief,–“at last.”

“Yes,” said Daniel, “I want to be known far and wide. You must build a church for me.”

“What!” shrieked the Devil. And the Devil’s tail stiffened up like a sore thumb.

“Yes,” said Daniel, calmly; “you must build a church for me, and it must be the largest and the handsomest church in the city. The sittings shall be free, and you shall provide the funds for its support forever.”

The Devil frothed at his mouth, and blue fire issued from his ears and nostrils. He was the maddest devil ever seen on earth.

“I won’t do it!” roared the Devil. “Do you suppose I’m going to spend my time building churches and stultifying myself just for the sake of gratifying your idle whims? I won’t do it,–never!”

“Then the bond I gave is null and void,” said Daniel.

“Take your old bond,” said the Devil, petulantly.

“But the bond you gave is operative,” continued Daniel. “So release the thousand and one souls you owe me when you refuse to obey me.”

“Oh, Daniel!” whimpered the Devil, “how can you treat me so? Have n’t I always been good to you? Have n’t I given you riches and prosperity? Does no sentiment of friendship–“

“Hush,” said Daniel, interrupting him. “I have already told you a thousand times that our relations were simply those of one business man with another. It now behooves you to fulfil your part of our compact; eventually I shall fulfil mine. Come, now, to business! Will you or will you not keep your word and save your bond?”

The Devil was sorely put to his trumps. But when it came to releasing a thousand and one souls from hell,–ah, that staggered him! He had to build the church, and a noble one it was too. Then he endowed the church, and finally he built a parsonage; altogether it was a stupendous work, and Daniel got all the credit for it. The preacher whom Daniel installed in this magnificent temple was severely orthodox, and one of the first things he did was to preach a series of sermons upon the personality of the Devil, wherein he inveighed most bitterly against that person and his work.

By and by Daniel made the Devil endow and build a number of hospitals, charity schools, free baths, libraries, and other institutions of similar character. Then he made him secure the election of honest men to office and of upright judges to the bench. It almost broke the Devil’s heart to do it, but the Devil was prepared to do almost anything else than forfeit his bond and give up those one thousand and one souls. By this time Daniel came to be known far and wide for his philanthropy and his piety. This gratified him of course; but most of all he gloried in the circumstance that he was a business man.