The Entire March Family TrilogyHowells, William Dean
General
The Entire March Family Trilogy
Howells, William Dean
Fiction; Literature -- Collections
Not far from this group sat two Hebrews, one young and the other old,
talking of some business out of which the latter had retired. The
younger had been asked his opinion upon some point, and he was expanding
with a flattered consciousness of the elder's perception of his
importance, and toadying to him with the pleasure which all young men
feel in winning the favor of seniors in their vocation. “Well, as I was
a-say'n', Isaac don't seem to haf no natcheral pent for the glothing
business. Man gomes in and wands a goat,”--he seemed to be speaking of a
garment and not a domestic animal,--“Isaac'll zell him the goat he wands
him to puy, and he'll make him believe it 'a the goat he was a lookin'
for. Well, now, that's well enough as far as it goes; but you know and
I know, Mr. Rosenthal, that that 's no way to do business. A man gan't
zugzeed that goes upon that brincible. Id's wrong. Id's easy enough to
make a man puy the goat you want him to, if he wands a goat, but the
thing is to make him puy the goat that you wand to zell when he don't
wand no goat at all. You've asked me what I thought and I've dold you.
Isaac'll never zugzeed in the redail glothing-business in the world!”
“Well,” sighed the elder, who filled his armchair quite full, and
quivered with a comfortable jelly-like tremor in it, at every pulsation
of the engine, “I was afraid of something of the kind. As you say,
Benjamin, he don't seem to have no pent for it. And yet I proughd him up
to the business; I drained him to it, myself.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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