"'We will make it complete,' said Bingenburg and Rheinfels. 'There shall be no living soul in Schnitzelhammerstein on the Zugvitz whose name and occupation and domicile shall not be down in full.'
"'Then,' said the Board of Trade, 'you may make the Directory, but if we find one name left out, or without an occupation and an address, then will we not only not endorse your Directory, but we will say it is bad, and advise the citizens of this town not to go to those addresses which you print.'
"'We will do our best,' said Bingenburg and Rheinfels.
"'That's good,' replied the Board of Trade. 'Go ahead. What we have feared from experience is that you would do your worst.'
"And so," continued Hans Pumpernickel to me, "these persons were commissioned to prepare a Directory for Schnitzelhammerstein on the Zugvitz. They went ahead and got most everybody. In their original manuscript, submitted to the Board of Trade, they had entries like this: 'Hans Blumenthal, baby, Altgeldstrasse, 19 bis.' They had 'Gretchen Frorumelstine, doll-fancier, 4612 Funf Avenue'—in fact, they had every single human being in town, by name and by occupation, however trivial, mentioned.
"Now, of course, to do this they had to see everybody, and among others they saw poor old Gorgonzola, and he willingly gave them his address and his name.
"'But your occupation?' said the agent, instructed beforehand already.
"'I have none,' said he.
"'Then we put you down as "Wilhelm Gorgonzola, nothing,"' said the agent.
"'But I am not nothing,' cried Gorgonzola.