"But how can you know anything, father?"
"Not being a bookkeeper, I know my business. The best proof that bookkeepers are not business men is that they are working for somebody else."
The next day, and the next, and the next, Sofia's eyes were red from crying.
"What should be the matter with her?" Mrs. Goldberg asked her husband.
"The Talmud says, that a young couple are like a new wagon and a new horse. They must adjust themselves," was his answer.
But the mother was not satisfied with the answer, and she got her daughter's confidence.
"Ephraim wants to look for a position. He says he can't understand a business which has no bookkeeping. No modern business is carried on that way."
The long and short of the story was that Moishe Goldberg was browbeaten by the two women. He gave his little notebook to his son-in-law who undertook to make an inventory of all the assets of Goldberg & Waldman.
The old merchant had the fun of his life to watch the young man enter everything in his books. But the laughter died on his lips when this same young man told him that the assets were some sixty thousand dollars less than the liabilities.
"It's a stupid lie! Only a silly fellow with a bookkeeping mania could say such a foolish thing."