Harpo Speaks! Read Online Free PDF

share of the inventory.
    I didn’t do so well. Turned out that every hockshop I went to Chico had just been to. We looked so much alike that the pawnbrokers thought I was the same kid trying to unload more hot goods, and they wouldn’t deal with me.
    Chico then said he’d take care of the hockshops, and I should work on people up in the neighborhood. Early the next morning, I took a clock and gathered up my courage and went to the office of the ice works on Third Avenue. The manager there was a friendly guy, who winked whenever the loader chipped off wedges of ice for us kids. He seemed like an ideal customer.
    “Cuckoo clock for sale,” I said to the manager, trying to sound self-assured, like Chico. “Good bargain. Guaranteed.” I don’t know why the word “guaranteed” popped out. I must have been carried away by what was, for me, a rare burst of eloquence. So the ice works manager wanted to know how long the clock was guaranteed to run on a winding. Whereupon I heard myself saying, as I began to sweat, “Eight hours.”
    “All right,” he said. “Wind ‘er up. If she’s still running eight hours from now I’ll buy her.”
    I pulled the chain that wound the clock. I stood in a corner of the office, out of the way, holding the clock, waiting and praying. It was a torturous battle of nerves. Every time the manager turned his back, I gave the chain a little pull to keep the clock wound tight. Along about lunchtime, he suspected what I was doing, and caught me with my hand on the chain with a swift, unexpected look. He took the clock and hung it on the wall, without a word.
    At two-thirty, the clock ran down and died. The manager took it off the wall and handed it to me, still without a word. When I ran out of the office, I could hear him behind me, slapping his leg and laughing his head off.
    Those were the most grueling six hours I had ever spent and my net profit was, in round figures, zero. I got home to find that Chico’s net profit on the clock deal was $11.10. I was ashamed to ask for any more than my original dime back. But Chico insisted I take half the loot-on one condition. He would borrow it and double it for me in a crap game.
    And damned if he didn’t that same night. By bedtime the total capital of the Marx Cuckoo Clock Corporation was $29.90. Chico counted out my share and gave it to me. I had never touched such a fabulous pile of raw cash before in my life. But I still felt lousy about the ice works fiasco, and I pushed the money back to Chico. “You keep it,” I said. “Double it again.”
    The next day he dropped the whole wad in a pinochle game. Chico said this should be a lesson to me. Trying to redouble my money was going against the odds. Too bad I had to learn the hard way. Next time I would know better.
    I never did get my dime back.
    There was no hope of having spending-type money in my pocket until Uncle Al’s next visit, which would be a long time off, not until after the High Holidays were over and Grandpa lifted the shade and came out of the front room.
    Such was my basic education in the Economics of Free Enterprise.
    “Today I am a man!” At thirteen I am bar mitzvah-graduating not only to manhood but to derbyhood. Not long afterwards I had my first taste of life in the raw, when I went to work for a certain Mrs. Schang (see below).
    Minnie and Frenchie, my mother and father, looking as I remember them best. This was taken outside of Chicago, around the time of World War I. Below: Chico and I were often mistaken for twins when we were young, which led to no end of collusion and confusion.
    HARPO
    CHICO
    Culver Service
    The Four Nightingales, shortly after I was shanghaied into show business and made my calamitous debut at Coney Island. Top to bottom: Groucho, me, Gummo, Lou Levy.
    Groucho leads the Six Mascots in “Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank?” I’m at the keyboard. The “girls” are Aunt Hannah (left) and Minnie. Below: the School Days troupe hits Waukegan.