Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1911-02-22
CONTINUED from last week.

CONTINUED from last week.
| was now to embark for the
first time in business enterprise on
my own account. All my life, l
had been quite we'll satisfied to work
for others, receiving such wages as
| might be able TO earn, but seeing
as l thought, good opening for
business on an unpretentious scale
with fair prospect of future
growth, | prevailed on one of my
friends to join me in the ice cream
and lemonade business So we pool
ed our ready money, which was very
little all told, and with what credit
we could get, bought what fixtures
we could neither rent nor borrow,
and securing small room opened
our ice cream saloon. After long
consultation with each other, dur
ing which we thoroughly discussed
the matter, we concluded to have
big send-off, a sort of grand open
ing, at which our friends were to
be invited to drink lemonade and
cat ice cream at our expense. 1t
was a brilliant idea, there could be
no doubt about that, because all
the young people about town said
so. 1t was a master stroke and
would have been the making of us
lad it not been for just one thing,
we had too many friends-that
night-more than we had ever
dreamed of; more than we ever had
before by all odds and far more than
we ever had afterward. They came
singly, they came by twos, by threes,
by fours, they came in groups; they
came early, they stayed late; they
were hungry, they were thirsty.
Heavens! how they did eat that ice
cream and drink that lemonade;
Why, they simply ate and drank
everything there was in the shop
and rested not till the last saucer
had been emptied and the last glass
had been drained to the dregs. And
there we were, as helpless victims
as were ever attacked by a mob.
Poor Jim, / will never forget his
woe-be-gone looks, the utter misery
upon his face when the last guest
had taken his departure and not a
cent in the drawer. What was to
be done? Nothing. We had ex-
hausted our resources the first night,
everything was cleaned out, we had
no future. Nothing to go on with,
no money, no credit, even our fix
lures had been pledged for what we
had had to borrow TO start with.
1t was bad, no mistake about that.
We were in much the same situation
as that of the base ball player who
declared that he had only one in
nings to five outs-he was out at
the elbows, out at the toes, out of
money and out of clothes, out of
credit and in debt. Now what was
to be done, we were unable to bor-
row any more money Somehow,
those who had any. to loan, which
were not many, did not appear to
have unbounded confidence in our
business ability, while "our friends"
who had so promptly availed them
selves of our hospitality kindly vol
unteered the opinion that we were
1.-TWO fools who ought TO have known
better than to give away everything
we had, we deserved to fail" It
may have been very ungrateful Of
us, but candor compels me to say
that these tenderly expressed senti-
ments did not tend to soothe our
lacerated feelings; they were not
like balmy days in June to us, and
in all tne years that have followed
the remembrance of them has not
made for the development of gener-
Gus impulses IN the breasts of two
deluded mortals. So we went into
bankruptcy, closed up our shop, and
each went his way to earn by hard
knocks his share of what we were