Mr. Equity (a most unusual thing in any circumstances) shakes my hand with great cordiality. He smiles, not benignantly but rather deferentially. Says that he has recognized for some little time that I have not had a salary commensurate with my services. Times, however, are not of the best. Would I be willing to continue with the firm at--a pause--well, double my present salary? Everything, he adds, would be made as pleasant for me as possible. His secretary whispers to me in an outer office: "He has been so flustered. He was scared you weren't ever coming back." I discussed this matter of the strange workings of the human system with a friend of mine outside the office. "Ah!" he said, "you didn't persevere long enough in looking after yourself. If you had kept it up for a year instead of only a month, you'd be a well man today. And," he added seriously, "a successful man, too." CHAPTER XIII SEEING THE "SITUATIONS WANTED" SCENE "What a lot of things they put in the papers!" Hilaire Belloc observes somewhere in one of his essays. Indeed, it is so! I fear, however, that one of the features "they" put in the papers does not have anything like as popular a reading as it deserves to have. Those of the governing class, personages who employ people, probably consult fragments of this department of the newspaper now and then. But, it may fairly be claimed, nobody reads, with the delicious pleasure and the abundant profit he might read, that part of the paper fullest of all of, so to say, meat and gravy. The story it tells is probably the deepest grounding in life to be found in print. There as it stands in today's paper Shakespeare (I fancy) could not have written it, nor Balzac, nor Dickens, nor Arnold Bennett, nor O. Henry, nor Sinclair Lewis. This newspaper feature is called "Situations Wanted." It might just as accurately be called "The Human Scene," or "The Heart of the World," or "The Cry of the Soul." Its tale is of what all men are seeking (and have ever sought), each in his own degree, and after his fashion--bread, a place in the sun, a level higher than that of today. Let us, briefly, survey this Page of Life. The most conspicuous figure in the vast and motley throng is the Bold and Confident Man. He that knows his superior worth and does not propose to hide his light, he that has the spirit to attack the conqueror. His method is to fling a large and arresting headline across his "ad." "I AM THE MAN YOU WANT!" he begins. Or, "PAR-EXCELLENCE," he announces in big type. Or, "Mr. Busy Manufacturer," he says in good sized "caps"; in smaller letters asks: "Are you in need of _a competent manager_?" If Mr. B. M. is in such need, it is squarely put up to him: he "will do well to address X." To the employer who hesitates this vital opportunity is lost. The ad says: "Write now--_Right Now!_" Undoubtedly this is the horse to put your money on; the hero to marry your daughter to. He will not want.