No Excuse by Henry P. Kramer

        The other day, I had an annoying and embarrassing experience. Nancy was here with George and some other people. I asked whether anyone would like a bit to drink: "I have some nice sherry, how about it?" They were agreeable, so I went to the cabinet and started pouring. It looked too pale. On tasting it, I found out it wasn't sherry at all. It was water. Someone had drunk the entire bottle of sherry and replaced it with water thus hoping to delay discovery. Well, I had to apologize. I was embarrassed for myself, and for the person who I knew had done this. To cover up the ensuing silence, I told my guests about a somewhat similar occurrence in my childhood in Germany.
        "There is a person here to see you" announced the maid. It was after Sunday dinner and we were all in the salon dressed in our very best. Everything was clean and orderly and suffused with Sunday serenity. We children were sitting obediently and quietly. We said nothing and only observed. Mother sat silently, hands folded in her lap. "Shall I show him in?" asked the maid. Father gravely nodded his head.
        The person came into the salon crushing his cap in his hands. He was dressed in his only black suit, a kind of white shirt and some sort of a dark tie. When he came to a stop in the room he only looked down at his worn black shoes and then carefully studied the pattern of the Persian rug..
        "Yes?" said Father addressing the him. The person said nothing. Father repeated "Yes?". The person cleared his throat, picked at his cap, scuffed his shoes and said nothing. Father, more firmly than before said "Yes?" to the person.
        He answered "Yes, dear sir, I am here." "So I see", said Father, "I understand that you are the coal man." "Yes, that is to say, I mean, I only work for the coal dealer. I just shovel the coal. I do whatever he says." "Hum" , said Father, "and did the coal dealer tell you to do what you did here in my basement the other day?". "Oh no, sir, oh no, that is what I came about. Oh sir, I never, it was, I don't know, no excuse. Please forgive, sir, forgive me. No excuse. And here, sir, I want to give this", and he pulled out a much creased bill of folding money, "for, you know, I mean, I don't know if, that is, well..." Father, waved away the money. "No need, we just want to know that you are sorry for the terrible deed you did." The person looked deeper into the pattern on the Persian rug and whispered "Sorry, I am sorry, forgive me, dear sir." Father hadn't heard clearly and demanded "Speak up. What did you say?" The person rasped out "Forgiveness, mercy, kind sir." Father said magnanimously, "All right, all right, terrible thing but it's behind us now, isn't it, my good man. All right, you may leave and I'll have a word with your employer." The person mumbled thanks and was shown out.
        I had seen and heard but I didn't understand what horrible thing this person had done in the basement. But a child learns a great deal by looking and listening.
        Next day, after school, I was in the kitchen trying to snitch a cookie. I sat down in a comer to eat it and heard the cook and the maid talk in the pantry. "What an awful little man that was yesterday. He really tied one on, didn't he?" "Yes", answered the maid, "four bottles of Mister's best Rhine wine". "But the worst" recalled the cook, "is what he put back in the bottles". "Sure was" responded the maid, "but, after all, think about it, what was the poor thing to do? In his state, drunk, filthy with black coal dust, with his bladder full of the Mister's fine wine, he could hardly come upstairs and use the Mistress' clean toilet, could he?"