Chapter III
Reading edition
Wyman engaged Dixon, and Phogie procured the services of an ill-looking fellow for three hundred dollars. The next time he saw Wyman, he indulged in a little innocent raillery over the fact that he paid his new clerk but just half the salary Dixon received; and Phogie thought he was even a better bookkeeper than Dixon, wrote a plainer hand, and could run up a column of figures rather quicker. As to the new clerk’s honesty, he had a bundle of testimonials as big as the invoice book; and his maternal uncle was president of the Soap and Candle Makers’ Bank. Of course he was honest!
Things went on swimmingly for six months. The new assistant was a jewel; and when Mr. Quilldriver, the head bookkeeper, was taken down with rheumatism, which proved to be chronic, Mr. Phogie had so much confidence in this notable nephew of a notable uncle, that he gave him the entire charge of the books, and, in the liberality of his big heart, advanced his salary voluntarily to four hundred dollars a year.
On the first of January, however, when Mr. Phogie called for the balance sheet, it was not ready. The trial balance didn’t come out right, and the profit and loss account looked “thundering strange,” as Mr. Phogie classically expressed it. Three days were hopelessly used up in “taking stock;” but the thing couldn’t be figured out.
Mr. Phogie began to be alarmed. The general—a noted expert in unsnarling complicated and difficult accounts—was called in to examine into affairs; but no sooner did the smart nephew of the president of the Soap and Candle Makers’ Bank, see the well-known gray locks of the expert bent over the obstinate folios, than he stepped out to lunch, and, by some singular oversight, forgot to return.
The upshot of the whole matter was, that the general discovered an “absquatulation” of some fifteen hundred dollars—just enough to keep the dapper little bookkeeper in opera tickets and 2:40’s during the past season.
Of course the thing went up and down the street; and the little ragged news boys in State Street bellowed it at the top of their lungs into the ears of the passer by.
“Why, Phogie, how’s this?” said Mr. Wyman, meeting the supporter of the cheap clerk system.
Mr. Phogie used a very hard word, which only the ministers are permitted to use in stirring sermons.
“Pay ’em well, Phogie, and they won’t steal; and when you get a faithful servant, don’t part with him.”
Phogie scowled and edged off.
“By the way, Dixon has brought every thing out as square as a brick. Trial balance, balance sheet, every thing foots up without the variation of a penny,” continued Wyman, maliciously, as Phogie increased his speed.
Poor penny-wise, pound-foolish merchant! He learned better after that.
For the satisfaction of the reader, I may as well add, that Dixon got a thousand for his next year’s service, and that he is now engaged to his employer’s pretty daughter, with the prospect of immediately becoming a partner in the concern.