Max Kirschner had reached the age of sixty without making a single enemy save his stomach, which at length ungratefully rejected all the rich favours that Max had bestowed on it so long and so generously. Indeed, he was reduced to a diet of crackers and milk when Abe encountered him in Hammersmith's restaurant that September morning. "Hello, Max!" Abe cried. "When did you get back? I thought you was in one of them--now--sanatoriums." "A sanatorium is no place for a drummer to find a job, Abe," Max replied. "A good salesman like you could find a job anywhere without much trouble, Max," Abe said cheerfully. "That's what everybody says, Abe; meantime I'm loafing." "It wouldn't be for long, Max," Abe rejoined as he cast a hungry eye over Hammersmith's bill of fare. "How's that fillet de who's this, with asparagrass tips and mushrooms?" For a brief moment Max's eye gleamed and then grew dull again. "It's fine to put the stomach out of business, Abe," Max said. "Take the tip from one who has lost sixty pounds, ten customers, and a good job all in six weeks--and order poached eggs on toast." Abe compromised on boiled beef with horseradish sauce; and when he was well into the noisy consumption of that simple dish he broached the subject of Max's future plans. "When d'ye think you'll go to work again, Max?" he asked. Max shrugged expressively. "I'm not a prophet, Abe; I'm a salesman," he said. "Well, there ain't no particular hurry, Max. It ain't the same like you would got a family to look out for." "I've been a drummer all my life, Abe," Max declared, "and a drummer has no right to be married. When I was a kid I had a chance to go into the store of a couple of yokels upstate in the town where I was born and raised; and I guess if I'd done so I'd been married and had a whole family of children by now." "Maybe you're just as well off, Max," Abe said consolingly. "Children is a gamble anyhow, Max. The boys is assets and the girls is liabilities; and if you got a large family of girls you're practically bankrupt, no matter how good business would be." "Don't you believe it, Abe," Max said. "Those two yokels both had big families and they didn't do such a big business either. But they managed to make a good living, and last week I hear they sold out to some city dry goods man for forty thousand dollars." Abe paused with a loaded knife in midair. "Forty thousand dollars between two ain't much, Max," he said. "It's more than I've got, anyhow," Max rejoined as he rose to his feet. "You got lots of time to make money, Max," Abe concluded. "Come round and see us when you get time, won't you?" Max nodded; and as he walked down the street to make a further canvass of the garment trade he passed the broad windows of the dairy lunchroom, where Morris was regaling Sam Green with a popular-price meal.