firm's trade, Abe," Louis commenced, "why----"

"I'm only saying for the sake of argument," Abe hastened to explain.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Louis: I'll make it two years, and at the
end of that time if you want to quit you can do it; only, you should
agree not to work as salesman for no other house for the space of one
year afterward or you can go on working for us for one year afterward.
How's that?"

"I think that's eminently fair," Mr. Feldman broke in hurriedly. "You
can't refuse those terms, Mr. Mintz. Mr. Potash will sign for his
partner, I apprehend, and then Mr. Perlmutter will be bound under the
principle of _qui fecit per alium fecit per se_."

No one could stand up against such a flood of Latin, and Louis nodded.

"All right," he said. "Let her go that way."

Mr. Feldman immediately rang for a stenographer.

"Come back to-morrow at four o'clock," he said. "I shall send a clerk
with the deed to be signed by Mrs. Potash and Mrs. Perlmutter to-night."

The next afternoon, at half an hour after the appointed time, the
contract was executed and the deed delivered to Louis Mintz, and on the
first of the following month Louis entered upon his new employment.

Louis' first season with his new employers was fraught with good results
for Potash & Perlmutter, who reaped large profits from Louis'
salesmanship; but for Louis it had been somewhat disappointing.

"I never see nothing like it," he complained to Abe. "That tenement
house is like a summer hotel--people coming and going all the time; and
every time a tenant moves yet I got to pay for painting and repapering
the rooms. You certainly stuck me good on that house."

"Stuck you!" Abe cried. "We didn't stuck you, Louis. We just give you
the house as a bonus. If it don't rent well, Louis, you ought to sell
it."

"Don't I know I ought to sell it?" Louis cried; "but who's going to buy
it? Real-estater after real-estater comes to look at it, and it all
amounts to nix. They wouldn't take the house for the mortgages."

For nearly a year and a half Louis and Abe repeated this conversation
every time Louis came back from the road, and on the days when Louis
paid interest on mortgages and premiums on fire insurance he grew
positively tearful.

"Why don't you pay me what I am short from paying carrying charges on
that property?" Louis asked one day. "And I'll give you the house back."

Abe laughed.

"You should make that proposition to the feller what so