Well, Cynthia, when your inquiry reached me I propped my feet on the desk, got out the corncob pipe and thought things over. How to simplify life? How, indeed! It is a subject that interests me strangely. Of course, the easiest method is to let one's ancestors do it for one. If you have been lucky enough to choose a simple-minded, quiet-natured quartet of grandparents, frugal, thrifty and foresighted, who had the good sense to buy property in an improving neighborhood and keep their money compounding at a fair rate of interest, the problem is greatly clarified. If they have hung on to the old farmstead, with its huckleberry pasture and cowbells tankling homeward at sunset and a bright brown brook cascading down over ledges of rock into a swimming hole, then again your problem has possible solutions. Just go out to the farm, with a copy of Matthew Arnold's "Scholar Gipsy" (you remember the poem, in which he praises the guy who had sense enough to leave town and live in the suburbs where the Bolsheviki wouldn't bother him), and don't leave any forwarding address with the postoffice. But if, as I fear from an examination of your pink-scalloped notepaper with its exhalation of lilac essence, the vortex of modern jazz life has swept you in, the crisis is far more intricate. TAKE THE MATTER IN YOUR OWN HANDS Of course, my dear Cynthia, it is better to simplify your own life than to have some one else do it for you. The Kaiser, for instance, has had his career greatly simplified, but hardly in a way he himself would have chosen. The first thing to do is to come to a clear understanding of (and to let your employer know you understand) the two principles that underlie modern business. There are only two kinds of affairs that are attended to in an office. First, things that absolutely must be done. These are often numerous; but remember, that since they _have_ to be done, if you don't do them some one else will. Second, things that don't have to be done. And since they don't have to be done, why do them? This will simplify matters a great deal. FURTHER SUGGESTIONS The next thing to do is to stop answering letters. Even the firm's most persistent customers will cease troubling you by and bye if you persist. Then, stop answering the telephone. A pair of office shears can sever a telephone wire much faster than any mechanician can keep it repaired. If the matter is really urgent, let the other people telegraph. While you are perfecting this scheme look about, in a dignified way, for another job. Don't take the first thing that offers itself, but wait until something really congenial appears. It is a good thing to choose some occupation that will keep you a great deal in the open air, preferably something that involves looking at shop windows and frequent visits to the receiving teller at the bank. It is nice to have a job in a tall building overlooking the sea, with office hours from 3 to 5 p.m. HOW EASY, AFTER ALL!