Wesblock, the autobiography of an automaton

by Harry McDonald Walters

Now comes one of the most unsavoury of all my experiences during the days that kept me struggling in the bog of poverty. I was informed one day by letter that the London Fur Dressing Company of Prince Street required the services of an accountant to prepare a statement of their affairs. I rejoiced exceedingly until I visited its place of business. The name of the company looked like big things, when printed as the heading of a good letter-sheet. “Prince Street” sounded like important business, but when I visited it I found it dirty and disreputable-looking, although business was done therein. The number given on the letter paper of the London Fur Dressing Company led me to the most ancient, dilapidated and frowsy-looking building in the street. Its side walls protruded into a dirty lane and were shored up with beams black with age and grime. No sign decorated the front of the building, and the windows were so small and dirty that one could not see within. Weird, rumbling noises showed that men were working in this place. I opened a small greasy door, which evidently rang a bell, and my nostrils were at once assailed by a most peculiar and horrible stench. A wide and filthy staircase was before me, and a gentle voice from above invited me to “come right up.”

Mounting the stairs, which were slimy with ancient accumulations of dirt, I found a strange scene. A tremendous room, with a very low wooden ceiling supported by huge rafters, was before me. The floor was littered with fur skins piled up in great heaps and lying about in apparent disorder. Some were soaking wet, others dry, hard and stiff, and each individual skin evidently gave off its own particular odour, with a result that cannot be described in words, except as an orchestra of bad smells. Some twenty men, dirty and ragged, worked at this mess in a steamy atmosphere. Some stood in large barrels and appeared to be kneading something with their feet, stamping noiselessly and perspiring very freely; others sat at low work benches, and scraped fat and meat from the inner sides of fur skins with a large instrument that looked like a kind of plane or spokeshave. Final detail of the picture: some rough, dirty boards formed a little cupboard in a corner of the large room.

In this retreat, which was near the top of the stairs, sat a rather pleasant-looking bearded man, with large bright blue eyes. The cupboard was, in fact, the office of the London Fur Dressing Company, which required the services of an accountant. The outlook was not very promising for the accountant; but beggars cannot be choosers, and the enormous quantity of fur skins in sight, worth thousands of dollars, showed clearly that notwithstanding the vile appearance of the place, business was being done.

Having a stomach not easily turned by trifles, I stayed and entered the cupboard, and explained the reason of my presence to the blue-eyed man. He proved to be the proprietor of the concern. The books of the London Fur Dressing Company were the only clean things about the place. They had been well kept as far as writing things down was concerned, and were quite understandable, although a little involved and irregular. A bargain was soon struck between Mr. Cramer, the blue-eyed man, and myself. That I could be bought for small money was a recommendation in the first place.

I worked for the London Fur Dressing Company for many weeks, and got so accustomed to the filth and the stench that I hardly noticed them. A statement of the affairs of the company showed a curious record of events, typical of the small businesses which are continually making vain attempts to live in the days of big things. Some poor devil is always losing his all, in some little one-horse effort to do business. The greater number of such venturers, conceived in ignorance, born in wooden stupidity, and badly nourished with money, are of few days and full of sorrow. They are not, therefore, guileless, but just as greedy, voracious and inclined to dishonesty as Big Businesses. They only lack strength and brains.

Cramer, a German, had come to Montreal, where he boarded with an Irish woman whose hardy son had accumulated a few dollars, after years of toil, by selling coal oil from door to door. He cried his wares in a fine voice, singing, “Cool ile! Cool ile!” all day long. Michael by name he was, and under the influence of the smooth tongue and the blue eyes of his mother’s German boarder, he had invested one thousand dollars in starting the London Fur Dressing Company. These things had happened nearly two years before I was called in, and my services were now required by Michael, to show him how his money was doing, and why he had never drawn any profits from his investment. He still cried “Cool ile!” He was one of the “be jasus” Irish, of a locality called “The Pint,” but he was a fine fellow in spite of his toughness.

The statement of affairs when complete showed small progress, not enough to tempt Michael to further investment of his hard-earned dollars. Michael did not know that he only stood towards Cramer as an ordinary creditor, and was not in law a part-owner of the London Fur Dressing Company. His indignation, when he learned this was such that if Mr. Cramer had not been more of a diplomat than he was a fist-fighter, he would have received serious injuries. The whole incident seems amusing enough now, but at the time it was stern business, and as earnest and important as if it had been carried on around the mahogany table in the carpeted and curtained board-room of a gigantic company.

The outcome was that I became a partner in the London Fur Dressing Company. I secured this valuable partnership because both Michael and Cramer wished to retain my services, and as a reward for my aiding to secure a temporary loan of three hundred dollars. On this sum it was proposed that Cramer should return to Germany and obtain from his father the necessary addition to the capital of the company. Let me close this painful experience. Cramer, no doubt, went to Germany, for I bought his passage myself, but “alas and alack, he never came back.” Weeks ran into months, and when Michael and I could no longer hope for his return, we decided to wind up the Fur Dressing business. “Cool ile” Michael could depend on, and of the dressing of furs I was entirely ignorant and desired to remain so.

While in the process of getting out of the Fur Dressing business, as well as I could, my last financial adventure fell upon me. I had one more dream of wealth. It was such a vivid and beautiful dream too; it fairly equalled some of those that had visited me in my gambling days. One day while at work in my little office, the bell over the street door rang announcing the arrival of some one. Two men soon appeared at the top of the stairway, one tall and dark, the other short and fair. I could see by the tilt of their noses that they were experiencing a new sensation in the way of odours, so concluded that they were not in the fur business. The tall one addressed me, inquiring if I were Mr. Cramer. I explained that I represented Mr. Cramer, without going into the details of his being in parts unknown, with no very certain prospect of returning.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, before inviting them to be seated on the two boxes reserved for visitors.