The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

"Because that's business," he tried to shout me down. "That devil will have more confidence in us if we let him go back on his bargain than if he made a lot of money on it. Don't you know human nature?"

"Not human nature like that," I retorted bitterly. "Tell me what you are going to do about it."

"Let's get on the telephone, both of us," he spoke cheerfully, "and each call up as many people as we can and offer them those bonds before that weak sister gets here."

"A desperate remedy," I growled irritably. "Let me see you do it."

Fred lighted a cigar and gazed out of the window. When he turned his face was suave and benignant. He looked like nothing so much as a man about to fill a row of Christmas stockings. Then he betook himself to the telephone. In a cheerful, friendly, lingering voice he began to offer his gift to one after another of his list as though an inward and spiritual grace were moving him irresistibly to benefaction. His face was on a broad grin even under a series of repeated refusals, and I confess to experiencing a sort of truculent joy at what I believed to be his discomfiture. His accents, however, never lost their velvety quality nor did he betray by a single note any trace of disappointment. On the contrary he was warming to his work with a keen gusto. On a sudden the young woman at the telephone outside informed him that he was being called. He listened.

"Mr. Smith?" he answered mildly. "Hello! Bringing us those bonds? What? Decided to keep them, after all? Well, well," with a laugh, "the Lord be with you then, Mr. Smith. We could have sold them ten times over since you first called me. No, no. It doesn't matter. I'll find something else for the others. You're mighty wise, Mr. Smith—I'll hand that to you. No, it's all right. Come and see us. Good-by—good-by, sir!"

When he turned away from the telephone the perspiration beaded his forehead and puffy cheeks and he grinned genially.

"Whew," he whistled, passing a handkerchief over his face. "That was great fun. But why do they want to break in on the innocent morning with things like that! Well, that's how it is, Randolph, my boy," he added lightly and turned away to other things. In his way Fred compels my admiration. For this is only one instance of many, one thread in the texture of our daily life. How I long to read a few pages of "Urn Burial" in order to forget it all!

It is too soon to know whether or not we are a success. But we are each of us drawing a small salary and to me that is an immediate help.

What a curious jumble is our life! Forces strange and awe-inspiring, the very stars in their courses seem to be defending Laura's children, lest I should do them an injury. But in order to keep them and rear them I must resort to a kind of olla-podrida of backstairs shifts and devices, such as I have described, that make my cheek burn. But I suppose it is as Dibdin says: We are all the ministers and retinue, be it in court dress or in tinsel and livery, of that exalted prince of the world, the child. For me, however, it is still a struggle to grasp that ineluctable truth. Perhaps as a reward for this, as a sort of pourboire of Fate, I shall become gruesomely rich, a kind of Mæcenas, an orgulous figure among scholars, and finance some new Tudor or early English texts or latter-day collections of the classics?