The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

"But what," I demanded in a sort of despairing indignation, "can I do at that business?"

"You can learn," said Fred. "And you'll be making something before you know it. And as we grow you'll make more."

And then I made the startling discovery that there are no parallels in life. Writers may babble of types and statisticians of means and averages and populations of facts, but I realized with pain that with all my books I knew of no guide or inspiration. The case of every blessed one of us is unique. I could think of no one in precisely my own circumstances. A pathetic, dejected melancholy overcame me at my fatal tardiness in learning that the world, like a hungry beast, was clamoring for decisions. "Decide! Decide! Decide!" it seems to roar with slavering jaws, "or I devour you! And if you don't decide I shall still devour you." The drifters perish without a struggle. I had drifted heretofore but now I must flagellate the will for a choice.

And so I yielded.

The half of my capital has already gone into our offices, and if chairs, desks and tables will make for success we shall both be millionaires. There are magnificent leather sofas such as I never dreamed of lolling on, but discussions and transactions of money, it seems, must be done within walls padded with luxury. Money breeds money, Fred is ever telling me, and even as bees are attracted by honey, so the opulent investors will flock to our richly fitted hive. The droning of the ticker and the sound of a typewriter are the only noises permissible, and the smoke of cigars must be the most fragrant.

I hardly know why I should be ironic. Never before have I derived so much amusement in a short space of time. There was the entrance of our first customer, Signor Visconti. He came, this enterprising Milanese, in response to one of the hundreds of individual circular letters we sent out to small banks and investors, on magnificent stationery, announcing our rare bargains in securities so safe that the rock of Gibraltar was pasteboard by comparison, so gilt-edged that only the best of government paper could dare to crackle in their presence; so remunerative that—anyway, Mr. Visconti, admirably dressed, came in.

The young woman who brought in his name had been drilled not to seem flustered. Fred flushed purple with pleasure and executed a brief but exquisite war dance on the rug.

"Tell him I shall see him directly," he murmured to the young woman and sprawled on the leather chair beside me in his triumph.

"Why don't you see him then?" I could not help asking.

"Wouldn't do," Fred wagged his head mysteriously. "Must keep him waiting at least a minute or two—though I'm burning up to get my talons into him."