“Jim, I’m certainly sorry to see you in this place.”
“Kernel,” stated the captive, “I’m sorry ’bout it myself. And I’m hopin’ you kin use your influence to git me out pronto. They really ain’t got no right to keep me locked up. My bein’ here is all due to a mistake anyway.”
“A mistake?” echoed the Colonel. “Why, I understood you were charged with some serious offence—shooting somebody, wasn’t it?”
“Well,” said the prisoner, “it’s true I did shoot a lady in the eye. But it was an accident, Colonel.”
“An accident?”
“Yes suh, a pure accident. I wasn’t shootin’ at that lady at all. I was shootin’ at my wife.”
§ 52 There Spake True Friendship
To a prosperous cloak and suit merchant on the lower East Side came an acquaintance of many years’ standing. The newcomer had made a failure of it as a pushcart huckster, and then as a dealer in castoff garments. But he was undismayed; his ambition still soared. It seemed that now he aspired to open a regular store—on borrowed capital.
“But I don’t want I should ask my friends for the money,” he explained. “So this morning I go by that bank over yonder on the other side of the street and I talk with the bank president, a feller named Howard, about it. But what should I know about banks? Nothing, that’s what. He says to me I should make him a note with indorsements. I asks him what is a note, and what is this here indorsement? So he asks me who do I know in this neighborhood what has plenty money, and I says to him that I know you—that we came over together, greeners, on the same ship from Poland eighteen years ago. And then he fixes up this here piece of paper, and he says to me I should bring it over here and get you to sign your name on the back of it, and then I should bring it back to him and he would right away give me the two thousand dollars I need. So, here I am, Goldberg.”
Mr. Goldberg’s voice was husky with emotion as he answered: