overcoat, you was lucky if you could
get fifty cents out of old man Baum. Nowadays is different already.
Instead of young fellers learning business by business men like old man
Baum, they go to business colleges yet, and certainly I don't say it
ain't just as good."

Sam Zaretsky exchanged significant glances with his partner, Max
Fatkin, and they both puffed hard on their cigars.

"You take my nephew, Fillup, for instance," Aaron went on. "There's a
boy of sixteen which just graduated from business college, and the boy
writes such a hand which you wouldn't believe at all. He gets a silver
medal from the college for making a bird with a pen--something
remarkable. The eyes is all little dollar marks. I took it down to
Shenkman's picture store, and seventy-five cents that sucker charges me
for framing it."

"That's nothing, Aaron," Sam Zaretsky broke in, with a diplomatic
attempt at a conversational diversion. "That's nothing at all. I could
tell you myself an experience which I got with Shenkman. My wife's
mother sends her a picture from the old country yet----"

"Not that I am kicking at all," Aaron interrupted, "because it was
worth it. I assure you, Sam, I don't begrudge seventy-five cents for
that boy, because the boy is a good boy, y'understand. The boy is a
natural-born bookkeeper. Single entry and double entry, he could do it
like nothing, and neat--that boy is neat like a pin."

"Huh, huh!" Max grunted.

"Yes," Aaron added, "you didn't make no mistake when you got me to
bring you Fillup for a bookkeeper."

It was at this point that Max threw diplomacy to the winds.

"Got you to bring us a bookkeeper!" he exclaimed. "Why, Aaron, I ain't
said a word about getting us this here--now--Fillup for a bookkeeper.
We already hired it a bookkeeper."

"What?" Aaron cried. "Do you mean to say you got the nerve to sit there
and tell me you ain't asked me I should bring you a bookkeeper?"

"Why, Aaron," Sam interrupted with a withering glance at his partner.
"I ain't saying nothing one way or the other, y'understand, but I don't
think Max could of asked you because, only this morning, Aaron, Max and
me was talking about this here, now--what's-his-name--and we was saying
that nowadays what future was there for a young feller as a bookkeeper?
Ain't it? I says to Max distinctively: 'If Aaron would bring us his
nephew we would give him a job on stock. Then the first thing you know
the boy gets to be a salesman and could