The boy reluctantly went away again, and in a moment later came back
and told the F. S. to take a seat. Whereupon the F. S. took it,
and then for one long, lonely newspaper-reading, thumb-twirling,
watch-glancing hour he held it down without a whimper.
Finally he called the boy again and told him that he’d like to see the
Boss during the present era if possible. The boy waddled off once more
to the secret chamber of the Great and Grouchy One. When he returned he
brought back this cheery message:
“Tell the gentleman I don’t believe I care to go into the matter. I am
Very Busy today, and besides, I am not in favor of these Associations
that cost a lot of money and produce no results.”
“Very well,” replied the Field Secretary sweetly, “I’ll consider myself
null and void.”
“But just kindly inform your intelligent Boss for me,” he continued,
“that the reason these Associations cost a lot of money is because of
the time they lose in hanging around waiting to get possum heads like
himself to see their own Game. And the reason they ‘produce no results’
is because stupid men can’t see that they’ve got to get together to
produce results.”
“And tell him further,” went on Field Sec., edging toward the door and
raising his voice just high enough so that it could be heard about
seven miles, “that while I shall expect to lose my good hundred-dollar
job for it, I can not restrain myself the pleasure of telling him
and his visionless ilk that they deserve just exactly the kind of
legislation they are getting, and that as far as I myself am concerned,
they can all go and take a great big jump into the seventeenth
sub-basement of hell. Good-NIGHT!”
And with this impressive Valedictory the Field Secretary departed,
slamming the door so hard that it jarred the ledger out of balance and
woke up every clerk in the place.
_Lesson for Today:_ There are none so blind as the trusting
husband and the bright-eyed business man.
HOT SKETCH NO. 5
THE ADVERTISING GENIUS OF SQUIRRELVILLE
THERE was a Hotel Clerk in a one-ply town who yearned to become an Ad
Man.
He could have yearned to become President of the United States if he
had wanted to, but there wasn’t so much money in the president business.
His name was Fred, but they called him Chesterton for short.
During his incarceration as Glad Hander at the McGlook House,
Chesterton had lived to see one of the Town Terriers go down to New
York and hoof up great clods of turf in the arena of Successful
Advertising.
This fired his Ambition, and when later he learned that the reporter
on the Squirrelville Banner had just landed a good job as Advertising
Manager for a nearby manufactory which had begun to stretch, he just up
and heard the voice of Destiny calling him through a railway megaphone.
Thus it was, one Gladsome spring morning, that Chesterton backed away
from the little pine hotel-desk for good, and plunged eye-deep into the
intricacies of the Advertising Art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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