The Competitive Nephew

"That ain't here nor there, Mrs. Saphir," Seiden declared. "Why should I got to give your Bessie a job, when already I got so many people hanging around my shop, half the time they are spending treading on their toes?"

"Ai, tzuris!" Mrs. Saphir wailed. "My own husband's Uncle Pesach is from his wife a cousin and he asks me why! Who should people look to for help if it wouldn't be their family, Mr. Seiden? Should I go and beg from strangers?"

Here Mrs. Saphir succumbed to a wave of self-pity, and she wept aloud.

"Koosh!" Mr. Seiden bellowed. "What do you think I am running here – a cemetery? If you want to cry you should go out on the sidewalk."

"Such hearts people got it," Mrs. Seiden sobbed, "like a piece from ice."

"'S enough!" said Mr. Seiden. "I wasted enough time already. You took up pretty near my whole morning, Mrs. Saphir; so once and for all I am telling you you should send your Bessie to work as a learner Monday morning, and if she gets worth it I would pay her just the same wages like anybody else."

Mrs. Saphir dried her eyes with the back of her hand, while Mr. Seiden walked into his workroom and slammed the door behind him as evidence that the interview was at an end. When he returned a few minutes later Mrs. Saphir was still there waiting for him.

"Well," he demanded, "what d'ye want of me now?"

For answer Mrs. Saphir beat her forehead and commenced to rock anew. "My last ten cents I am spending it for carfare," she cried.

"What is that got to do with me?" Seiden asked. "People comes into my office and takes up my whole morning disturbing my business, and I should pay 'em carfare yet? An idee!"

"Only one way I am asking," Mrs. Saphir said.

"I wouldn't even give you a transfer ticket," Mr. Seiden declared, and once more he banged the door behind him with force sufficient to shiver its ground-glass panel.

Mrs. Saphir waited for an interval of ten minutes and then she gathered her shawl about her; and with a final adjustment of her crape bonnet she shuffled out of the office.

Miss Bessie Saphir was a chronic "learner" – that is to say, she had never survived the period of instruction in any of the numerous shirt, cloak, dress, and clothing factories in which she had sought employment; and at the end of her second month in the workshop of the Sanspareil Waist Company she appeared to know even less about the manufacture of waists than she did at the beginning of her first week.

"How could any one be so dumm!" Philip Sternsilver cried as he held up a damaged garment for his employer's inspection, "I couldn't understand at all. That's the tenth waist Bessie Saphir ruins on us."

"Dumm!" Mr. Seiden exclaimed. "What d'ye mean, dumb? You are getting altogether too independent around here, Sternsilver."

"Me – independent!" Philip rejoined. "For what reason I am independent, Mr. Seiden? I don't understand what you are talking about at all."

"No?" Seiden said. "Might you don't know you are calling my wife's relation dumb, Sternsilver? From a big mouth a feller like you could get himself into a whole lot of trouble."

"Me calling your wife's relation dumb, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver cried in horrified accents. "I ain't never said nothing of the sort. What I am saying is that that dummer cow over there – that Bessie Saphir – is dumm. I ain't said a word about your wife's relations."

"Loafer!" Seiden shouted in a frenzy. "What d'ye mean?"

Sternsilver commenced to perspire.

"What do I mean?" he murmured. "Why, I am just telling you what I mean."

"If it wouldn't be our busy season," Seiden continued, "I would fire you right out of here und fertig. Did you ever hear the like? Calls my wife's cousin, Miss Bessie Saphir, a dummer Ochs!"

"How should I know she's your wife's cousin, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver protested. "Did she got a label on her?"

"Gets fresh yet!" Seiden exclaimed. "Never mind, Sternsilver. If the learners is dumm it's the foreman's fault; and if you couldn't learn the learners properly I would got to get another foreman which he could learn, and that's all there is to it."

He stalked majestically away while Sternsilver turned and gazed at the unconscious subject of their conversation. As he watched her bending over her sewing-machine a sense of injustice rankled in his breast, for there could be no doubt the epithet dummer Ochs, as applied to Miss Saphir, was not only justified but eminently appropriate.

Her wide cheekbones, flat nose, and expressionless eyes suggested at once the calm, ruminating cow; and there was not even lacking a piece of chewing-gum between her slowly moving jaws to complete the portrait.

"A girl like her should got rich relations yet," he murmured to himself. "A Schnorrer wouldn't marry her, not if her uncles was Rothschilds oder Carnegies. You wouldn't find the mate to her outside a dairy farm."

As he turned away, however, the sight of Hillel Fatkin wielding a pair of shears gave him the lie; for, if Miss Bessie Saphir's cheekbones were broad, Hillel's were broader. In short, Hillel's features compared to Bessie's as the head of a Texas steer to that of a Jersey heifer.

Sternsilver noticed the resemblance with a smile just as Mr. Seiden returned to the workroom.

"Sternsilver," he said, "ain't you got nothing better to do that you should be standing around grinning like a fool? Seemingly you think a foreman don't got to work at all."

"I was laying out some work for the operators over there, Mr. Seiden," Philip replied. "Oncet in a while a feller must got to think, Mr. Seiden."

"What d'ye mean, think?" Seiden exclaimed. "Who asks you you should think, Sternsilver? You get all of a sudden such grossartig notions. 'Must got to think,' sagt er! I am the only one which does the thinking here, Sternsilver. Now you go right ahead and tend to them basters."

Sternsilver retired at once to the far end of the workroom, where he proceeded to relieve his outraged feeling by criticising Hillel Fatkin's work in excellent imitation of his employer's bullying manner.

"What is the matter, Mr. Sternsilver, you are all the time picking on me so?" Hillel demanded. "I am doing my best here and certainly if you don't like my work I could quick go somewheres else. I ain't a Schnorrer exactly, Mr. Sternsilver. I got in savings bank already a couple hundred dollars which I could easy start a shop of my own; so I ain't asking no favours from nobody."

"You shouldn't worry yourself, Fatkin," Sternsilver said. "Nobody is going to do you no favours around here. On the contrary, Fatkin, the way you are ruining garments around here, sooner as do you favours we would sue you in the courts yet, and you could kiss yourself good-bye with your two hundred dollars in savings bank. Furthermore, for an operator you are altogether too independent, Fatkin."

"Maybe I am and maybe I ain't," Fatkin retorted with simple dignity. "My father was anyhow from decent, respectable people in Grodno, Sternsilver; and even if I wouldn't got a sister which she is married to Sam Kupferberg's cousin, y'understand, Sam would quick fix me up by the Madison Street court. You shouldn't throw me no bluffs, Sternsilver. Go ahead and sue."

He waited for his foreman to utter a suitable rejoinder, but none came, for in Fatkin's disclosure of a two-hundred dollar deposit in the savings bank and his sister's relationship to Sam Kupferberg, the well-known legal practitioner of Madison Street, Philip Sternsilver conceived a brilliant idea.

"I ain't saying we would sue you exactly, understand me," he replied. "All I am saying, Hillel, is you should try and be a little more careful with your work, y'understand."

Here Sternsilver looked over from Hillel's bovine features to the dull countenance of Miss Bessie Saphir.

"A feller which he has got money in the bank and comes from decent, respectable people like you, Hillel," he concluded, "if they work hard there is nothing which they couldn't do, y'understand. All they got to look out for is they shouldn't Jonah themselves with their bosses, y'understand."

"Bosses!" Hillel repeated. "What d'ye mean, bosses? Might you got an idee you are my boss maybe, Sternsilver?"

"Me, I ain't saying nothing about it at all," Sternsilver declared. "I am only saying something which it is for your own good; and if you don't believe me, Hillel, come out with me lunch time and have a cup coffee. I got a few words, something important, to tell you."

For the remainder of the forenoon Sternsilver busied himself about the instruction of Miss Bessie Saphir. Indeed, so assiduously did he apply himself to his task that at half-past eleven Mr. Seiden was moved to indignant comment. He beckoned Sternsilver to accompany him to the office and when he reached the door he broke into an angry tirade:

"Nu, Sternsilver," he began, "ain't you got to do nothing else but learn that girl the whole morning? What do I pay a foreman wages he should fool away his time like that?"

"What d'ye mean, fool away my time, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver protested. "Ain't you told me I should learn her something, on account she is a relation from your wife already?"

"Sure, I told you you should learn her something," Seiden admitted; "but I ain't told you you should learn her everything in one morning already. She ain't such a close relation as all that, y'understand. The trouble with you is, Sternsilver, you don't use your head at all. A foreman must got to think oncet in a while, Sternsilver. Don't leave all the thinking to the boss, Sternsilver. I got other things to bother my head over, Sternsilver, without I should go crazy laying out the work in the shop for the foreman."

Thus admonished, Sternsilver returned to the workroom more strongly convinced than ever that, unless he could carry out the idea suggested by his conversation with Fatkin, there would be a summary ending to his job as foreman. As soon, therefore, as the lunch-hour arrived he hustled Fatkin to a Bath-brick dairy restaurant and then and there unfolded his scheme.

"Say, listen here, Fatkin," he commenced. "Why don't a young feller like you get married?"

Fatkin remained silent. He was soaking zwieback in coffee and applying it to his face in such a manner that the greater part of it filled his mouth and rendered conversation impossible.

"There's many a nice girl, which she could cook herself and wash herself A Number One, y'understand, would be only too glad to get a decent, respectable feller like you," Sternsilver went on.

Hillel Fatkin acknowledged the compliment by a tremendous fit of coughing, for in his embarrassment he had managed to inhale a crum of the zwieback. His effort to remove it nearly strangled him, but at length the dislodged particle found a target in the right eye of an errand boy sitting opposite. For some moments Sternsilver was unable to proceed, by reason of the errand boy's tribute to Hillel's table manners. Indeed, so masterly was this example of profane invective that the manager of the lunchroom, without inquiring into the merits of the controversy, personally led Hillel's victim to the door and kicked him firmly into the gutter. After this, Philip Sternsilver proceeded with the unfolding of his plan.

"Yes, Hillel," he said, "I mean it. For a young feller like you even a girl which she got rich relations like Seiden ain't too good."

"Seiden?" Hillel interrupted, with a supercilious shrug. "What is Seiden? I know his people from old times in Grodno yet. So poor they were, y'understand, his Grossmutter would be glad supposing my Grossmutter, olav hasholam, would send her round a couple pieces clothing to wash. The whole family was beggars – one worser as the other."

"Sure, I know," Philip said; "but look where he is to-day, Hillel. You got to give him credit, Hillel. He certainly worked himself up wonderful, and why? Because the feller saves his money, understand me, and then he turns around and goes to work to pick out a wife, and married right."

"What are you talking nonsense – got married right?" Hillel said. "Do you mean to told me that Seiden is getting married right? An idee! What for a family was all them Gubins, Sternsilver? The one Uncle Pesach was a low-life bum – a Shikerrer which he wouldn't stop at nothing, from Schnapps to varnish. Furthermore, his father, y'understand, got into trouble once on account he ganvers a couple chickens; and if it wouldn't be for my Grossvater, which he was for years a Rav in Telshi – a very learned man, Sternsilver – no one knows what would have become of them people at all."

For the remainder of the lunch-hour Hillel so volubly demonstrated himself to be the Debrett, Burke, and Almanach de Gotha of Grodno, Telshi, and vicinity that Sternsilver was obliged to return to the factory with his scheme barely outlined.

Nevertheless, on his journey back to Greene Street he managed to interrupt Hillel long enough to ask him if he was willing to get married.

"I don't say I wouldn't," Hillel replied, "supposing I would get a nice girl. Aber one thing I wouldn't do, Sternsilver. I wouldn't take no one which she ain't coming from decent, respectable people, y'understand; and certainly, if a feller got a couple hundred dollars in savings bank, Sternsilver, he's got a right to expect a little consideration. Ain't it?"

This ultimatum brought them to the door of the factory, and when they entered further conversation was summarily prevented by Mr. Seiden himself.

"Sternsilver," Mr. Seiden bellowed at him, "where was you?"

"Couldn't I get oncet in a while a few minutes I should eat my lunch, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver replied. "I am entitled to eat, ain't I, Mr. Seiden?"

"'Entitled to eat,' sagt er, when the operators is carrying on so they pretty near tear the place to pieces already!" Seiden exclaimed. "A foreman must got to be in the workroom, lunch-hour oder no lunch-hour, Sternsilver. Me, I do everything here. I get no assistance at all."

He walked off toward the office; and after Sternsilver had started up the motor, which supplied power for the sewing-machines, he followed his employer.

"Mr. Seiden," he began, "I don't know what comes over you lately. Seemingly nothing suits you at all – and me I am all the time doing my very best to help you out."

"Is that so?" Seiden replied ironically. "Since when is the foreman helping out the boss if he would go and spend a couple hours for his lunch, making a hog out of himself, Sternsilver?"

"I ain't making a hog out of myself, Mr. Seiden," Philip continued. "If I am going out of the factory for my lunch, Mr. Seiden, I got my reasons for it."

Seiden glared at his foreman for some minutes; ordinarily Sternsilver's manner was diffident to the point of timidity, and this newborn courage temporarily silenced Mr. Seiden.

"The way you are talking, Sternsilver," he said at last, "to hear you go on any one would think you are the boss and I am the foreman."

"In business, yes," Philip rejoined, "you are the boss, Mr. Seiden; but outside of business a man could be a Mensch as well as a foreman. Ain't it?"

Seiden stared at the unruffled Sternsilver, who allowed no opportunity for a retort by immediately going on with his dissertation.

"Even operators also," he said. "Hillel Fatkin is an operator, y'understand, but he has got anyhow a couple hundred dollars in the savings bank; and when it comes to family, Mr. Seiden, he's from decent, respectable people in the old country. His own grandfather was a rabbi, y'understand."

"What the devil's that got to do with me, Sternsilver?" Seiden asked. "I don't know what you are talking about at all."

Sternsilver disregarded the interruption.

"Operator oder foreman, Mr. Seiden, what is the difference when it comes to a poor girl like Miss Bessie Saphir, which, even supposing she is a relation from your wife, she ain't so young no longer? Furthermore, with some faces which a girl got it she could have a heart from gold, y'understand, and what is it? Am I right or wrong, Mr. Seiden?"

Mr. Seiden made no reply. He was blinking at vacancy while his mind reverted to an afternoon call paid uptown by Mrs. Miriam Saphir. As a corollary, Mrs. Seiden had kept him awake half the night, and the burden of her jeremiad was: "What did you ever done for my relations? Tell me that."

"Say, lookyhere, Sternsilver," he said at length, "what are you trying to drive into?"

"I am driving into this, Mr. Seiden," Philip replied: "Miss Bessie Saphir must got to get married some time. Ain't it?"

Seiden nodded.

"Schon gut!" Sternsilver continued. "There's no time like the present."

A forced smile started to appear on Seiden's face, when the door leading to the public hall opened and a bonneted and shawled figure appeared. It was none other than Mrs. Miriam Saphir.

"Ai, tzuris!" she cried; and sinking into the nearest chair she began forthwith to rock to and fro and to beat her forehead with her clenched fist.

"Nu!" Seiden exploded. "What's the trouble now?"

Mrs. Saphir ceased rocking. On leaving home she had provided herself with a pathetic story which would not only excuse her presence in Seiden's factory but was also calculated to wring at least seventy-five cents from Seiden himself. Unfortunately she had forgotten to go over the minor details of the narrative on her way downtown, and now even the main points escaped her by reason of a heated altercation with the conductor of a Third Avenue car. The matter in dispute was her tender, in lieu of fare, of a Brooklyn transfer ticket which she had found between the pages of a week-old newspaper. For the first ten blocks of her ride she had feigned ignorance of the English language, and five blocks more were consumed in the interpretation, by a well-meaning passenger, of the conductor's urgent demands. Another five blocks passed in Mrs. Saphir's protestations that she had received the transfer in question from the conductor of a Twenty-third Street car; failing the accuracy of which statement, she expressed the hope that her children should all drop dead and that she herself might never stir from her seat. This brought the car to Bleecker Street, where the conductor rang the bell and invited Mrs. Saphir to alight. Her first impulse was to defy him to the point of a constructive assault, with its attendant lawsuit against the railroad company; but she discovered that, in carrying out her project to its successful issue, she had already gone one block past her destination. Hence she walked leisurely down the aisle; and after pausing on the platform to adjust her shawl and bonnet she descended to the street with a parting scowl at the conductor, who immediately broke the bell-rope in starting the car.

"Nu!" Seiden repeated. "Couldn't you open your mouth at all? What's the matter?"

Mrs. Saphir commenced to rock tentatively, but Seiden stopped her with a loud "Koosh!"

"What do you want from me?" he demanded.

"Meine Tochter Bessie," she replied, "she don't get on at all."

"What d'ye mean, she don't get on at all?" Seiden interrupted. "Ain't I doing all I could for her? I am learning her the business; and what is more, Mrs. Saphir, I got a feller which he wants to marry her, too. Ain't that right, Sternsilver?"

Philip nodded vigorously and Mrs. Saphir sat up in her chair.

"Him?" she asked.

"Sure; why not?" Seiden answered.

"But, Mr. Seiden – " Sternsilver cried.

"Koosh, Sternsilver," Seiden said. "Don't you mind that woman at all. If Bessie was my own daughter even, I would give my consent."

"Aber, Mr. Seiden – " Sternsilver cried again in anguished tones, but further protest was choked off by Mrs. Saphir, who rose from her seat with surprising alacrity and seized Philip around the neck. For several minutes she kissed him with loud smacking noises, and by the time he had disengaged himself Seiden had brought in Miss Bessie Saphir. As she blushingly laid her hand in Sternsilver's unresisting clasp Seiden patted them both on the shoulder.

"For a business man, Sternsilver," he said, "long engagements is nix; and to show you that I got a heart, Sternsilver, I myself would pay for the wedding, which would be in two weeks at the latest."

He turned to Mrs. Miriam Saphir.

"I congradulate you," he said. "And now get out of here!"

For the next ten days Mr. and Mrs. Seiden and Miss Saphir were so busy with preparations for the wedding that they had no leisure to observe Sternsilver's behaviour. He proved to be no ardent swain; and, although Bessie was withdrawn from the factory on the day following her betrothal, Sternsilver called at her residence only twice during the first week of their engagement.

"I didn't think the feller got so much sense," Seiden commented when Bessie Saphir complained of Philip's coldness.

"He sees you got your hands full getting ready, so he don't bother you at all."

As for Seiden, he determined to spare no expense, up to two hundred and fifty dollars, in making the wedding festivites greatly redound to his credit both socially and in a business way.

To that end he had dispatched over a hundred invitations to the wholesale houses from which he purchased goods.

"You see what I am doing for you," he said to Sternsilver one morning, a week before the wedding day. "Not only in postage stamps I am spending my money but the printing also costs me a whole lot, too, I bet yer."

"What is the use spending money for printing when you got a typewriter which she is setting half the time doing nothing, Mr. Seiden?" Philip protested.

"That's what I told Mrs. Seiden," his employer replied, "and she goes pretty near crazy. She even wanted me I should got 'em engraved, so grossartig she becomes all of a sudden. Printing is good enough, Sternsilver. Just lookyhere at this now, how elegant it is."

He handed Philip an invitation which read as follows:

MR. AND MRS. I. SEIDEN AND MRS. MIRIAM SAPHIRREQUEST THE HONOUR OFTHE INTERCOLONIAL TEXTILE COMPANY'SPRESENCE AT THE MARRIAGE OF HER DAUGHTERBESSIETOMr. PHILIP STERNSILVERON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1909, AT SIX O'CLOCKNEW RIGA HALL, 522 ALLEN STREET, NEW YORKBride's Address:c/o SANSPAREIL WAIST COMPANYIsaac Seiden, ProprietorWaists in Marquisette, Voile, Lingerie, Crepe and Novelty Silks also a Full Line of Lace and Hand-embroidered Waists800 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK CITY

"What's the use you are inviting a corporation to a wedding, Mr. Seiden?" Philip said as he returned the invitation with a heavy sigh. "A corporation couldn't eat nothing, Mr. Seiden."

"Sure, I know," Seiden replied. "I ain't asking 'em they should eat anything, Sternsilver. All I am wanting of 'em is this: Here it is in black and white. Me and Beckie and that old Schnorrer, Mrs. Saphir, requests the honour of the Intercolonial Company's presents at the marriage of their daughter. You should know a corporation's presents is just as good as anybody else's presents, Sternsilver. Ain't it?"

Sternsilver nodded gloomily.

"Also I am sending invitations to a dozen of my best customers and to a couple of high-price sales-men. Them fellers should loosen up also oncet in a while. Ain't I right?"

Again Sternsilver nodded and returned to the factory where, at hourly intervals during the following week, Seiden accosted him and issued bulletins of the arrival of wedding presents and the acceptance of invitations to the ceremony.

"What do you think for a couple of small potatoes like Kugel & Mishkin?" he said. "If I bought a cent from them people during the last five years I must of bought three hundred dollars' worth of buttons; and they got the nerve to send a half a dozen coffee spoons, which they are so light, y'understand, you could pretty near see through 'em."

Sternsilver received this news with a manner suggesting a cramped swimmer coming up for the second time.

"Never mind, Sternsilver," Seiden continued reassuringly, "we got a whole lot of people to hear from yet. I bet yer the Binder & Baum Manufacturing Company, the least you get from 'em is a piece of cut glass which it costs, at wholesale yet, ten dollars."

Sternsilver's distress proceeded from another cause, however; for that very morning he had made a desperate resolve, which was no less than to leave the Borough of Manhattan and to begin life anew in Philadelphia. From the immediate execution of the plan he was deterred only by one circumstance – lack of funds; and this he proposed to overcome by borrowing from Fatkin. Indeed, when he pondered the situation, he became convinced that Fatkin, as the cause of his dilemma, ought to be the means of his extrication. He therefore broached the matter of a loan more in the manner of a lender than a borrower.