him "Cucus" because when he first arrived from his birthplace in southern Italy and began his daily round with his pushcart delivering fruit and vegetables at our back door, he had his own difficulties with our unmusical language and announced the early green cucumbers as "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 gradually to speak a little better, and at night school he learned to write a very round and very readable hand, though his orthography, his diction, and his punctuation retained some original touches, a condition not in any sense unique.
He had his own troubles, too, as other business men have had, and sometimes he told them confidentially to me. His consignments of fruit were not always good, he could not always dispose of his stock before it became stale, and sometimes landladies did not pay him or unregenerate students imposed upon him and gave him bad checks. It was about such a check that he spoke to me. Cucus was out
