Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and AdventuresGlass, Montague
General
Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures
Glass, Montague
Clothing trade -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; Jewish fiction; Jews -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction
Small turned and fixed Walsh with a glare. "I am going to do what I
please, Mr. Walsh," he said coldly. "If I want to go to lunch I go to
lunch; if I don't that's something else again."
"Oh, I've got lots of time," Walsh explained. "I was just reminding
you, that's all. Wasserbauer's got a few good specialties on his
bill-of-fare that don't improve with waiting."
"All right," Mr. Small said. "If that's the case go ahead and have your
lunch. I won't detain you none."
He put his hand on Abe's shoulder, and the little procession passed into
the store with Abe and Mr. Small in the van, while Frank Walsh
constituted a solitary rear-guard. He sat disconsolately on a pile of
piece goods as the four others went into the show-room.
"Sit down, Mr. Small," Abe said genially. "Mr. Berkowitz, take that easy
chair."
Then Morris produced the "gilt-edged" cigars from the safe, and they all
lit up.
"First thing, Mr. Small," Abe went on, "I should like to know where I
seen you before. Of course, I know you're running a big business in
Walla Walla, Washington, and certainly, too, I know your _face_."
"Sure you know my face, Abe," Mr. Small replied. "But my _name_ ain't
familiar. The last time you seen my face, Abe, was some twenty years
since."
"Twenty years is a long time," Abe commented. "I seen lots of trade in
twenty years."
"Trade you seen it, yes," Mr. Small said, "but I wasn't trade."
He paused and looked straight at Abe. "Think, Abe," he said. "When did
you seen me last?"
Abe gazed at him earnestly and then shook his head. "I give it up," he
said.
"Well, Abe," Mr. Small murmured, "the last time you seen me I went out
to buy ten dollars' worth of schnapps."
"What!" Abe cried.
"But that afternoon there was a sure-thing mare going to start over to
Guttenberg just as I happened to be passing Butch Thompson's old place,
and I no more than got the ten dollars down than she blew up in the
stretch. So I boarded a freight over to West Thirtieth Street and
fetched up in Walla Walla, Washington."
"Look a-here!" Abe gasped. "You ain't Scheuer Smolinski, are you?"
Mr. Small nodded.
"That's me," he said. "I'm Scheuer Smolinski or Sidney Small, whichever
you like. When me and Jake Berkowitz started this here Small Drygoods
Company we decided that Smolinski and Berkowitz was too big a mouthful
for the Pacific Slope, so we slipped the 'inski' and the 'owitz.'
Scheuer Small and Jacob Burke didn't sound so well, neither. Ain't it?
So, since there ain't no harm in it, we just changed our front names,
too, and me and him is Sidney Small and James Burke."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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