Abe and Mawruss | Page 2

would be willing to give the young feller a show too, Abe, if I would only got plain bone and metal buttons in stock. But when you carry a couple hundred pieces silk goods, Abe, like we do, then that's something else again."
"Well, Mawruss, Gott sei dank we don't got to get a new shipping clerk. Jake has been with us five years now, Mawruss, and so far what I could see he ain't got ambition enough to ask for a raise even, let alone look for a better job."
"You shouldn't congradulate yourself too quick, Abe," Morris replied. "Ambition he's got it plenty, but he ain't got the nerve. We really ought to give the feller a raise, Abe. I mean it. Every time I go near him at all he gives me a look, and the first thing you know, Abe, he would be leaving us."
"Looks we could stand it, Mawruss; but if we would start in giving him a raise there would be no end to it at all. Lass's bleiben. If the feller wants a raise, Mawruss, he should ask for it."
Barely two weeks after the conversation above set forth, however, Jake entered the firm's private office and tendered his resignation.
"Mr. Perlmutter," he said, "I'm going to leave."
"Going to leave?" Morris cried. "What d'ye mean--going to leave?"
"Going to leave?" Abe repeated crescendo. "An idea! You should positively do nothing of the kind."
"It wouldn't be no more than you deserve, Jake, if we would fire you right out of the store," Morris added. "You work for us here five years and then you come to us and say you are going to leave. Did you ever hear of such a thing? If you want it a couple dollars more a week, we would give it to you and fartig. But if you get fresh and come to us and tell us you are going to leave, y'understand, then that's something else again."
"Moost I work for you if I don't want to?" Jake asked.
"'S enough, Jake," Abe said. "We heard enough from you already."
"All right, Mr. Potash," he replied. "But just the same I am telling you, Mr. Potash, you should look for a new shipping clerk, as I bought it a candy, cigar and stationery store on Lenox Avenue, and I am going to quit Saturday sure."
"Well, Abe, what did I told you?" Morris said bitterly, after Jake had left the office. "For the sake of a couple of dollars a week, Abe, we are losing a good shipping clerk."
Abe covered his embarrassment with a mirthless laugh.
"Good shipping clerks you could get any day in the week, Mawruss," he said. "We ain't going to go out of business exactly, y'understand, just because Jake is leaving us. I bet yer if we would advertise in to-morrow morning's paper we would get a dozen good shipping clerks."
"Go ahead, advertise," Morris grunted. "This is your idee Jake leaves us, Abe, and now you should find somebody to take his place. I'm sick and tired making changes in the store."
"Always kicking, Mawruss, always kicking!" Abe retorted. "By Saturday I bet yer we would get a hundred good shipping clerks already."
But Saturday came and went, and although in the meantime old and young shipping clerks of every degree of uncleanliness passed in review before Abe and Morris, none of them proved acceptable.
"All right, Abe," Morris said on the Monday morning after Jake had gone, "you done enough about this here shipping clerk business. Give me a show. I ain't got such liberal idees about shipping clerks as you got, Abe, but all the same, Abe, I think I could go at this business with a little system, y'understand."
"You shouldn't trouble yourself, Mawruss," Abe replied, with an airy wave of his hand. "I hired one already."
"You hired one already, Abe!" Morris repeated. "Well, ain't I got something to say about it too?"
"Again kicking, Mawruss?" Abe exclaimed. "You yourself told me I should find a shipping clerk, and so I done so."
"Well," Morris cried, "ain't I even entitled to know the feller's name at all?"
"Sure you are entitled to know his name," Abe answered. "He's a young feller by the name of Schenkmann."
"Schenkmann," Morris said slowly. "Schenkmann? Where did I--you mean that feller by the name Schenkmann which he works by Max Linkheimer?"
Abe nodded.
"What's the matter with you, Abe?" Morris cried. "Are you crazy or what?"
"What do you mean am I crazy?" Abe said. "We carry burglary insurance, ain't it? And besides he ain't, Mawruss, Max Linkheimer says, missed so much as a button since the feller worked for him."
"A button," Morris shouted; "let me tell you something, Abe. Max Linkheimer could miss a thousand buttons, and what is it? But with us, Abe, one piece of silk goods is more as a hundred dollars."
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