“DOLLARS TO DOUGHNUTS”

They say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is this: The optimist looks on the doughnut, the pessimist looks on the hole. Well, there once was a man up in a certain town in Eastern Pennsylvania who did a very good business at the baker-trade. Everybody knew and patronized the good German baker, Hans Kitzeldorfer. Hans was industrious, frugal and thrifty, and was making money, until one unfortunate day he turned pessimist and began to look on the hole in the doughnut. The longer he looked at that hole the more he became persuaded that he could make money much more rapidly by making the holes in his celebrated brand of doughnuts larger than they had been. This happy suggestion he at once proceeded to act on, and for two years he was immensely tickled over his discovery. But by and by it seemed to him that his receipts were not as large as formerly, especially in the Doughnut Department, and he ordered an investigation, the result of which Was that he discovered that by making the holes larger he had unwittingly used more dough to go around the holes than when the holes were less in diameter, whereupon he at once restored his earlier and more profitable system—and Prosperity returned.