The Sunday Eight O'Clock/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 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 gave him bad checks.
It was about such a check that he spoke to me a week or two ago. There had been some error, or misunderstanding on some one's part, but whatever it was Cucus was out eight dollars which he could ill afford to lose. He had somehow developed a feeling that I need but say the word and any recreant undergraduate would immediately come to time. When he had told me his story, I found that his was not a difficult matter of adjustment. I agreed to manage it for him, received his gracious thanks and a handful of fresh carrots, attended to the little business the next day, and forgot about it.
Yesterday I found a note from him in my morning mail. The spelling is his own; the "Urbanana" probably an echo of his favorite morning announcement at our back door.
Champaign, Illinois.
Oct. 18 - 1916
Mr. Thomas Arkle Clark
- University of Illinois
- Urbanana, Illinois
My dear Mr. Clarke
I droped you this few lines to let you know that Mr. Devine paid me today so I have get my money from him. I am thank you very much, and I remain your very sincery freind
Sam
I held the letter in my hand a long time, thinking. I do business mostly with cultivated, educated people; I wish they were all as thoughtful and courteous as this Italian fruit vender.
October