Was it true that this business firm manufactured anything? The only thing they manufactured was the paper bags that were to be pasted together by the moral, well-behaved, diligent and reliable young man who was a member of the Dutch Reform Church.
The amount of business done was small, the profits barely paying the rent. The wicked world on the Zeedyk even said that the two blue porcelain vases bearing in old-fashioned letters the inscriptions “Rappee” and “Zinking,” had been borrowed from a second-hand dealer in the neighborhood, and that the good man came by every day to look after his property.
The shop was small, and was closed off in the rear by a green curtain, which was calculated to make customers think there was something more beyond. To be exact, there was something beyond that curtain. There hung a dilapidated mirror, consoling with a lonely chair, which was now ornamented by the coat of the worthy senior partner; and leaning against the wall was a half-round table, on which a pomatum-pot was making fun of a comb because for years it had been expecting to grow new teeth. Business was not so exacting but that Mr. Motto could devote a little spare time to the improvement of his personal beauty. He had succeeded in developing two beautiful bunches of hair on the sides of his face. They cost him much pains and grease; but they were the delight of all the ladies who entered the shop.
“And so you want to go into business, do you?” asked Mr. Motto, after he had given the old woman a “pinch” from the jar. “What all have you studied? Reading, writing, arithmetic, French? Eh? And what are your parents.”
“They dealt in shoes—from Paris, M’neer. But I don’t know French. Arithmetic—yes. Went through Strabbe.”
“And you know arithmetic, do you? How much then is a Pietje and a half?”
Walter stammered that he didn’t know. Does the reader know?
“But you must know that if you expect to calculate. And you don’t know what a Pietje is? Do you know the difference between a sesthalf and a shilling? And between a dollar and a twenty-eight piece? Look——”
Mr. Motto pulled out the cash-drawer and seemed to be hunting for a dollar; but for some reason or other he decided to make out with a sesthalf. This he laid on the counter and asked Walter to imagine a shilling lying beside it. He then proceeded to test Walter’s knowledge of business by asking him to point out the differences between the two coins. Mr. Motto claimed that in business one must know these details thoroughly.
And Mr. Motto was right about it. At that time there were more different kinds of money in the Netherlands than there are in Germany now. To be able to distinguish the various coins readily and make change accurately a regular course of study was necessary. Just as a law was about to be passed to confer the title, “Doctor of Numismatics,” on examination, the secretary of the treasury discovered that all this trouble could be spared by simplifying the money. He became very unpopular after this.