The Spring Auction will
make it right again. Don't suppose, however, that we have nothing
to do. At Busselinck and Waterman's trade is slacker still. It is
a strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting
the Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried--I
mean Busselinck and Waterman--to do me out of the custom of Ludwig
Stern. As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange,
I will tell you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg,
who always employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that
out--I mean that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They
had offered to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They
are low fellows--nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop
them. Any one in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern,
"that we too would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for
consideration on account of the long services of Last and Co."
I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years,
has gained four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion
dates from the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled
Colonial produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won't
reduce the brokerage.
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