Bildungsromans; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
The commission firm for which Sam worked was a partnership, not a
corporation, and was owned by two brothers. Of the two Sam thought that
the elder, a tall, bald, narrow-shouldered man, with a long narrow face
and a suave manner, was the real master, and represented most of the
ability in the partnership. He was oily, silent, tireless. All day he
went in and out of the office and warehouses and up and down the crowded
street, sucking nervously at an unlighted cigar. He was a great worker
in a suburban church, but a shrewd and, Sam suspected, an unscrupulous
business man. Occasionally the minister or some of the women of the
suburban church came into the office to talk with him, and Sam was
amused at the thought that Narrow Face, when he talked of the affairs of
the church, bore a striking resemblance to the brown-bearded minister of
the church in Caxton.
The other brother was a far different sort, and, in business, Sam
thought, a much inferior man. He was a heavy, broad-shouldered,
square-faced man of about thirty, who sat in the office dictating
letters and who stayed out two or three hours to lunch. He sent out
letters signed by him on the firm’s stationery with the title of
General Manager, and Narrow Face let him do it. Broad Shoulders had
been educated in New England and even after several years away from
his college seemed more interested in it than in the welfare of the
business. For a month or more in the spring he took most of the time
of one of the two stenographers employed by the firm writing letters to
graduates of Chicago high schools to induce them to go East to finish
their education; and when a graduate of the college came to Chicago
seeking employment, he closed his desk and spent entire days going from
place to place, introducing, urging, recommending. Sam noticed, however,
that when the firm employed a new man in their own office or on the road
it was Narrow-Face who chose the man.
Broad-shoulders had been a famous football player in his day and wore
an iron brace on his leg. The offices, like most of the offices on the
street, were dark and narrow, and smelled of decaying vegetables
and rancid butter. Noisy Greek and Italian hucksters wrangled on the
sidewalk in front, and among these went Narrow-Face hurrying about
making deals.
In South Water Street Sam did well, multiplying his thirty-six hundred
dollars by ten during the three years that he stayed there, or went out
from there to towns and cities directing a part of the great flowing
river of foodstuff through his firm’s front door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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