"Tomato sauce!" butts in James sneeringly. "I don't wish no part of
_you_, the baby _I_ want to hire is the bozo which wrote this
recommendation of you. He's good, what I mean, a letter-writin' idiot!"
"A bit odd that we should both be thinking the same thing," says Mr.
Press Agent coolly. "As a matter of fact, I wrote that recommendation
myself. So now that I'm engaged as your publicity expert, let me have a
few of your photos and----"
The following morning nearly every front page in town displayed a
picture of James Burns and this glaring headline:
BELL BOY LEFT MILLION BY GUEST
HE ONCE LOANED DIME!
That was the press agent's first effort and, as far as I was ever able
to see, his last. But it got ample results, as with your permission I'll
be glad to show you.
Within a week, Jimmy Burns had discovered what millions have discovered
before _his_ little day--that the mere possession of lucre does not mean
happiness, and for some it means positive misery! Not only did James
become the prey of the charity solicitors, confidence workers, stock
swindlers, "yes men," phony promoters and other parasites that infest
the hotel, but he was constantly in boiling water through his cuckoo
escapades growing out of sudden wealth that sent his brains on location.
After purchasing a diamond as big as Boston, only brighter, he bought
the highest priced horseless carriage he could find in the market and
the same identical day it slipped out of his hands and tried to climb
the steps of the Fifth Avenue library. The gendarmes pinched him for
reckless driving, though Jimmy protested that it wasn't really
"wreckless" as he had plenty wreck, and his worship tossed the trembling
James into the hoosegow for three days, remarking, "I'll teach you rich
men a lesson!" Then the income-tax beagles read that newspaper headline
and came down on Burns like a cracked ceiling. So all in all, Jimmy was
finding few chuckles connected with his pieces of eight.
When the rich but unhappy James got out of the Bastille, he decided to
throw a party in his costly suite at the St. Moe for his former
associates of the bellhops' bench. As Jimmy confided to me, apparently
his only friend, he felt the immediate need of mixing with people who
spoke his language. He wanted to forget his troubles and get back on a
friendly footing with the boys, who had severed diplomatic relations
with him on account of his acting like he was Sultan of Goitre or
something when he became a thousandaire overnight. Jimmy felt that a
first-class soiree would do the trick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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