"If you would only forget you ain't got a pair of shears in your right hand, Aaron," the professor said, "and listen to what I am telling you, in two years' time you are making more money than all the garment cutters together. All you got to do is to play just halfway good." "I suppose you're a millionaire, ain't it?" Aaron rejoined. "And you can play fiddle like a streak." The professor heaved a great sigh as he passed his hand over his bald head. "With your hair, Aaron," he said, "I could make fifty thousand a year on concert towers alone, to say nothing of two recitals up on Fifty-seventh Street. But if a feller only got one arm, Aaron, he would better got a show to be a fiddle virtuoso as if he would be bald.". Thus encouraged Aaron persevered with his practice for some months; but, despite the patient instruction of his brother Louis the garment cutter's wrist still handicapped him. "That's a legato phrase," Louis Shellak cried impatiently, one night in mid-February. "With one bow you got to play it." "Which phrase are you talking about," Aaron asked--"the one that goes 'Ta-ra-reera, ta-ra-reera'?" He sang the two measures in a clear tenor voice, whereat Louis snatched the violin from his brother's grasp and, seating himself at the piano, he struck the major triad of C natural with force sufficient to wreck the instrument. "Sing 'Ah'!" he commanded. Aaron attacked the high C like a veteran and Professor Ladislaw Wcelak leaped from the piano stool with an inarticulate cry. Immediately thereafter he secured a strangle-hold on his brother and kissed him Budapest fashion on both cheeks. "To-morrow night already you will commence lessons with the best teacher money could buy," he declared. "Whose money?" Aaron Shellak inquired, as he wiped away the marks of his brother's affection--"yours or mine?" "Me--I ain't got no money," Louis admitted. "Me neither," Aaron said. He was the sole support of his mother and sisters, for Louis, as _chef d'orchestre_ in a Second Avenue restaurant, constantly anticipated his salary over _stuss_ or _tarrok_ in the rear of his employer's cafe. "How much would it take?" he asked Louis after a silence of several minutes. Louis shrugged. "Who knows?" he replied. "Fifty dollars _oder_ a hundred, perhaps." Aaron nodded; and the next day, when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's place of business, he carried with him his violin and bow in a black leather case. Thus it happened that the strains of Godard's _Berceuse_ saluted Abe as he stepped from the elevator that morning; and without removing his coat he made straight for the cutting room. "_Koosh!_" he bellowed. "What are we running here, anyhow, Shellak--a cloak-and-suit house _oder_ a theayter?" Aaron hastily replaced the instrument in its case. "I am only showing it to Nathan," he mumbled by way of explanation. "Might he would like to buy it maybe."