ess
& Co. were simultaneously cultivating two industries: those who didn't
care for snuff or tobacco could get something to read, and vice versa.

Over the shelves, on the tobacco side, were posted signs bearing the
assurance that something was "manufactured" here. Differing entirely
from the Pieterses, these gentlemen seemed to think that to make
a thing meant more than merely to sell it. We leave the question
undecided.

Was it true that this business firm manufactured anything? The only
thing they manufactured was the paper bags that were to be pasted
together by the moral, well-behaved, diligent and reliable young man
who was a member of the Dutch Reform Church.

The amount of business done was small, the profits barely paying the
rent. The wicked world on the Zeedyk even said that the two blue
porcelain vases bearing in old-fashioned letters the inscriptions
"Rappee" and "Zinking," had been borrowed from a second-hand dealer
in the neighborhood, and that the good man came by every day to look
after his property.

The shop was small, and was closed off in the rear by a green curtain,
which was calculated to make customers think there was something more
beyond. To be exact, there was something beyond that curtain. There
hung a dilapidated mirror, consoling with a lonely chair, which was
now ornamented by the coat of the worthy senior partner; and leaning
against the wall was a half-round table, on which a pomatum-pot
was making fun of a comb because for years it had been expecting
to grow new teeth. Business was not so exacting but that Mr. Motto
could devote a little spare time to the improvement of his personal
beauty. He had succeeded in developing two beautiful bunches of hair
on the sides of his face. They cost him much pains and grease; but
they were the delight of all the ladies who entered the shop.

"And so you want to go into business, do you?" asked Mr. Motto,
after he had given the old woman a "pinch" from the jar. "What all
have you studied? Reading, writing, arithmetic, French? Eh? And what
are your parents."

"They dealt in shoes--from Paris, M'neer. But I don't know
French. Arithmetic--yes. Went through Strabbe."

"And you know arithmetic, do you? How much then is a Pietje and
a half?"

Walter stammered that he didn't know. Does the reader know?

"But you must know that if you expect to calculate. And you don't know
what a Pietje is? Do you know the difference between a sesthalf and
a shi