The wise bartender does not dispute with his patrons as long as they have the means of paying for what they order. Without a word he filled a small goblet with the thick cordial, and Rosenstein, without a word, gulped it down. The bartender watched him in open-mouthed amazement, charged him for four drinks, and then, as Rosenstein walked haughtily out of the place, murmured to himself: “Well, I’ll be hanged!”
Rosenstein walked aimlessly but joyfully down the street, bowing to right and to left at the many people who smiled upon him in so friendly a fashion. When he came to the corner he was surprised to see that the whole character of the street had changed over night. Then it seemed to him that a regiment of soldiers came marching up, each man holding out a flowing bowl to him, that he fell into line and joined the march, and that they all found themselves in a brilliant, dazzling glare of several hundred suns. Then they shot him from the mouth of a cannon, and when he regained consciousness he recognised the features of Mrs. Rosenstein and felt the grateful coolness of the wet towels she was tenderly laying upon his fevered head. It was nearly midnight.
Rosenstein groaned in anguish.
“What has happened?” he asked.
“You have been a drinker,” his wife replied, “but it is all over now. Take a nice long sleep and we will never speak of it again. And the yellow paper will do for another year.”
Rosenstein watched the flaming pinwheels and skyrockets that were shooting before his vision for a while; then a horrible idea came to him.
“See how much money I have in my pockets,” he said. His wife counted it.
“One dollar and forty cents,” she said. A sigh of relief rose from Rosenstein’s lips.
“It’s all right, then. I only had two dollars when I went out.” Then he fell peacefully asleep. The next morning he faced his wife and pointed out to her the awful lesson he had taught her.
“You now see what your stubbornness can drive me to,” he said. “I have squandered sixty cents and lost a whole day’s work in the store merely to convince you that it is all nonsense to put red paper on the walls.” But his wife was clinging to him and crying and vowing that she would never again insist upon anything that would add to their expenses. And then they kissed and made up, and Rosenstein went to his store, somewhat weak in the legs and somewhat dizzy, and with a queer feeling in his head, but elated that he had won a complete mastery over his stubborn spouse so cheaply.