ke you
would got a family to look out for."

"I've been a drummer all my life, Abe," Max declared, "and a drummer has
no right to be married. When I was a kid I had a chance to go into the
store of a couple of yokels upstate in the town where I was born and
raised; and I guess if I'd done so I'd been married and had a whole
family of children by now."

"Maybe you're just as well off, Max," Abe said consolingly. "Children is
a gamble anyhow, Max. The boys is assets and the girls is liabilities;
and if you got a large family of girls you're practically bankrupt, no
matter how good business would be."

"Don't you believe it, Abe," Max said. "Those two yokels both had big
families and they didn't do such a big business either. But they managed
to make a good living, and last week I hear they sold out to some city
dry goods man for forty thousand dollars."

Abe paused with a loaded knife in midair.

"Forty thousand dollars between two ain't much, Max," he said.

"It's more than I've got, anyhow," Max rejoined as he rose to his feet.

"You got lots of time to make money, Max," Abe concluded. "Come round
and see us when you get time, won't you?"

Max nodded; and as he walked down the street to make a further canvass
of the garment trade he passed the broad windows of the dairy lunchroom,
where Morris was regaling Sam Green with a popular-price meal.

"Yes, Sam," Morris said as he caught sight of Max Kirschner's dejected
figure, "you're lucky when you consider some people. You are still a
young man and it ain't too late for you to start in as a new beginner
somewhere. A young man could always make a living anyhow."

"Sure," Sam agreed, "but why should I start in as a new beginner,
Mawruss? I already got an established business, y'understand; and if I
could get a feller with a headpiece, Mawruss--never mind he ain't got
so much money--with a couple thousand dollars, we could run that feller
from Sarahcuse out of town."

"What feller from Sarahcuse?" Morris asked.

"Ain't I told you?" Sam continued. "I thought I says that the reason the
bank shuts down on me is a feller from Sarahcuse buys out them two
suckers, Van Buskirk and Patterson, and he's going to operate the store
as a branch house."

Morris nodded his head slowly.

"So, Sam," he said, "you are up against one of them sharks from
Sarahcuse? I'm afraid you got a dead proposition in that store of
yours."

Two cups of coffee had revived Sam Green's ambitio