is to play just halfway good."

"I suppose you're a millionaire, ain't it?" Aaron rejoined. "And you can
play fiddle like a streak." The professor heaved a great sigh as he
passed his hand over his bald head.

"With your hair, Aaron," he said, "I could make fifty thousand a year on
concert towers alone, to say nothing of two recitals up on Fifty-seventh
Street. But if a feller only got one arm, Aaron, he would better got a
show to be a fiddle virtuoso as if he would be bald.".

Thus encouraged Aaron persevered with his practice for some months; but,
despite the patient instruction of his brother Louis the garment
cutter's wrist still handicapped him.

"That's a legato phrase," Louis Shellak cried impatiently, one night in
mid-February. "With one bow you got to play it."

"Which phrase are you talking about," Aaron asked--"the one that goes
'Ta-ra-reera, ta-ra-reera'?"

He sang the two measures in a clear tenor voice, whereat Louis snatched
the violin from his brother's grasp and, seating himself at the piano,
he struck the major triad of C natural with force sufficient to wreck
the instrument.

"Sing 'Ah'!" he commanded.

Aaron attacked the high C like a veteran and Professor Ladislaw Wcelak
leaped from the piano stool with an inarticulate cry. Immediately
thereafter he secured a strangle-hold on his brother and kissed him
Budapest fashion on both cheeks.

"To-morrow night already you will commence lessons with the best teacher
money could buy," he declared.

"Whose money?" Aaron Shellak inquired, as he wiped away the marks of his
brother's affection--"yours or mine?"

"Me--I ain't got no money," Louis admitted.

"Me neither," Aaron said. He was the sole support of his mother and
sisters, for Louis, as _chef d'orchestre_ in a Second Avenue restaurant,
constantly anticipated his salary over _stuss_ or _tarrok_ in the rear
of his employer's cafe.

"How much would it take?" he asked Louis after a silence of several
minutes.

Louis shrugged.

"Who knows?" he replied. "Fifty dollars _oder_ a hundred, perhaps."

Aaron nodded; and the next day, when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's
place of business, he carried with him his violin and bow in a black
leather case. Thus it happened that the strains of Godard's _Berceuse_
saluted Abe as he stepped from the elevator that morning; and without
removing his coat he made straight for the cutting room.

"_Koosh!_" he bellowed. "What are we running here, anyhow, S