Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/65

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Cucus and Courtesy

HIS real name is Sam, but we named him "Cucus" because when he first arrived from his birthplace in southern Italy and began his daily round with his push cart delivering fruit and vegetables at our back door, he had his own difficulties with our unmusical language and cut short the unmanageable cucumbers to "cucus".

His honesty, his soft, pleasant voice, and his ingratiating manners won trade for him, and it was not long until he was driving a wagon of his own with his name painted in gold along the side. He learned to speak a little better, and at night school he learned to write a very round and a very readable hand.

He had his own troubles, too, as other business men have had, and sometimes he