. . . that this increase necessitated an addition to our staff.
Absolutely true! Only last night the Accountant was at his desk after eleven, to look for his spectacles.
That a special need was felt of respectable, well-brought-up young men, for the German correspondence. That certainly many German youths, already in Amsterdam, possessed the necessary qualifications, but that a self-respecting firm . . .
Absolute truth!
. . . in view of the growing frivolity and immorality among the young, of the daily increase of the number of fortune-hunters, and bearing in mind the necessity of combining reliability in conduct with reliability in the carrying out of orders . . .
I swear it is all absolute truth!
that such a firm—I mean Last & Co., coffee-brokers, Laurier Canal, No. 37—could not be too cautious in the matter of engaging employés.
All this is the unadulterated truth, reader! You probably don’t know that the young German who stood on the Exchange near pillar No. 17 has run away with the daughter of Busselinck & Waterman! And our own Mary will be thirteen next September!
. . . that I had had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler—Saffeler travels for Stern—that the esteemed head of the firm, Mr. Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr. Ernest Stern, who, to perfect his commercial knowledge, was desirous of being employed for some time in a Dutch firm. That I, with a view to . . .
Here I repeated all that immorality business, and told the story of the daughter of Busselinck & Waterman. Not in order to blacken anyone . . . no, throwing dirt is entirely foreign to my habits! But . . . it can do no harm that they should know it, I should think.
