EMBARRASSMENTS
Among our numerous embarrassments we don’t know any more painful than being compelled, the other day, to expose our theory of rolltop housekeeping to an insurance man. Old Henry Sonneborn, Jr., of Philadelphia (who is, let us explain, the only insurance man with whom we ever do business) came over to arrange some alterations in our complicated scheme of “protection.” But he caught us unawares, and when he wanted to see some of our receipts we had to go hunting through our desk while he was sitting right there watching us.
We explained our theory. Now, Henry, we said, there are only three places where that missing receipt can possibly be. It may be in one of the pigeonholes that run due east of the foc’s’le of the desk. If it isn’t there, it will be in the right-hand front corner of the principal drawer, where we put things while waiting for a chance to file them. If it isn’t there, it will be in the tin tobacco box that we keep hidden under the unanswered letters. We feared that Henry would think us very unbusinesslike, but he was polite and kind, as always.
We went through the drawer first. Henry was a bit disconcerted to find it so dusty; and so were we. We found a clay pipe that we hadn’t seen for a long time; we found some foreign stamps that we have been saving to send to a small boy in Philadelphia. We tried with these to distract Henry’s attention from the object of search. We asked him if his little boy was a stamp collector. But Henry kept bringing us back to the receipt, which was necessary for some reason. He said he needed that receipt to complete some scheme he had for reducing our overhead; the best authorities on finance, he said, are agreed that no man has any right to attempt to save money before he is 40; no, he should put it into insurance. We tried to keep Henry talking while we were scuffling about through the back of the desk. We thought that perhaps the receipt would turn up unexpectedly; we didn’t want him to notice that we were looking in parts of the desk where we had explained it could not possibly be.
Damnation, Henry, we said; it isn’t our fault that this desk is in such a mess; we have the most orderly instincts, but our clients keep dumping stuff on us so fast that we can’t ever catch up with it.
It was a queer coincidence, we thought, that when we went out to lunch that day we noticed at 56 Wall Street a tablet in honour of Morris Robinson, who “established on this spot the business of modern life insurance.” He was a Canadian, the tablet says. We’re glad he wasn’t an American.
In the meantime we are going to have another look through those pigeonholes.
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