Among our numerous embarrassments we don’t know any more painful
than being compelled, the other day, to expose our theory of rolltop
housekeeping to an insurance man. Old Henry Sonneborn, Jr., of
Philadelphia (who is, let us explain, the only insurance man with whom
we ever do business) came over to arrange some alterations in our
complicated scheme of “protection.” But he caught us unawares, and when
he wanted to see some of our receipts we had to go hunting through our
desk while he was sitting right there watching us.
We explained our theory. Now, Henry, we said, there are only three
places where that missing receipt can possibly be. It may be in one of
the pigeonholes that run due east of the foc’s’le of the desk. If it
isn’t there, it will be in the right-hand front corner of the principal
drawer, where we put things while waiting for a chance to file them. If
it isn’t there, it will be in the tin tobacco box that we keep hidden
under the unanswered letters. We feared that Henry would think us very
unbusinesslike, but he was polite and kind, as always.
We went through the drawer first. Henry was a bit disconcerted to find
it so dusty; and so were we. We found a clay pipe that we hadn’t seen
for a long time; we found some foreign stamps that we have been saving
to send to a small boy in Philadelphia. We tried with these to distract
Henry’s attention from the object of search. We asked him if his little
boy was a stamp collector. But Henry kept bringing us back to the
receipt, which was necessary for some reason. He said he needed that
receipt to complete some scheme he had for reducing our overhead; the
best authorities on finance, he said, are agreed that no man has any
_right_ to attempt to save money before he is 40; no, he should put it
into insurance. We tried to keep Henry talking while we were scuffling
about through the back of the desk. We thought that perhaps the receipt
would turn up unexpectedly; we didn’t want him to notice that we were
looking in parts of the desk where we had explained it could not
possibly be.
Damnation, Henry, we said; it isn’t our fault that this desk is in
such a mess; we have the most orderly instincts, but our clients keep
dumping stuff on us so fast that we can’t ever catch up with it.
It was a queer coincidence, we thought, that when we went out to lunch
that day we noticed at 56 Wall Street a tablet in honour of Morris
Robinson, who “established on this spot the business of modern life
insurance.” He was a Canadian, the tablet says. We’re glad he wasn’t an
American.
In the meantime we are going to have another look through those
pigeonholes.
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