Besides, I have for a good many years had a pet theory—why Colonel Roosevelt did not cultivate the game of golf. May he not have felt sure that he could learn nothing from persons met on the links—rich idlers, men who have “made their pile,” always hidebound conservatives and their hangers-on? We all know that the most popular of our Presidents was interested in workers in every field—eager to learn their opinion, to get their point of view. Was he ever known to show interest in the mind processes of an idler?
Yet, in spite of the so recent example of this most typical American, mothers and fathers, American men and women, persist in bringing their children up with the Old World prejudice against useful work. They may spend any amount of time and energy on any work provided it is silly and useless, but let it only become useful and at once it becomes a stigma, a disgrace.
And so it was with this family. The three girls could all play a little on the piano and sing a little with their kitten voices. Each was ardently certain that she could drive an automobile if only her father could be induced to buy one—poor silent, care-worn, overworked father! He loved his wife and was very fond of his children, yet I think he used to dread to come home and at the same time be afraid not to come.
When I told the cook of my intention to leave at the end of my first week she called me a fool. She urged me to follow her example and stick it out long enough to have something worth going to court about.
The mother and three daughters felt ill used when I announced my departure. The eldest daughter remarked that she really didn’t see what more a second girl would want—nobody ever interfered with me, they let me have my own way. Her mother told me that I really must wait until Saturday. Her husband never gave her money for the servants except on Saturdays—it was then Tuesday. She gave me the use of the family commutation ticket with the understanding that I was to deliver little Mistake to her maiden aunt.
That enabled me to truthfully assure Alice and the hat-trimmer that the experience had not cost me anything even though I had received no wages. This time Alice said that instead of my looking like I had been buried and dug up I looked as if I had been buried and had to scratch my way out. Mrs. Wilkins agreed with her.
The next day was the end of our partnership. Alice, obeying her mother, returned to her home. I accompanied her to the train, and received as much advice as could be packed into fifteen minutes by a fast talker. Though candor forces me to admit that most of it flowed out of one ear as fast as it was driven into the other, a few pieces did reach my brain and so lodged in the meshes of my memory. One of these lodgments was an earnest request that I forsake the help-wanted column and confine myself to reputable employment agencies. And Alice emphasized reputable.
Earlier in the winter, following Alice’s advice, I had tried an agency which made a specialty of placing college graduates. I had registered, paid my dollar, and been told they would communicate with me as soon as anything along my line turned up. Now, on my way back to the rooming-house, after watching Alice get aboard the train for Washington City, I called again at this agency and reminded them of my application.
Much to my surprise, I learned that I was an unskilled worker in my own line. Because I had never been a proofreader, sat in an editorial chair, nor taught a class in story-writing I was unskilled. Neither my college degree nor the fact that I had published several novels amounted to a row of pins. H’m, I thought, why did you go to the trouble of changing your name and otherwise sailing under false colors? As an unskilled worker you are really in the class to which you belong.
From this agency I went to a “placement bureau,” the annex of a semiphilanthropic organization whose specialty is “reduced gentlewomen.” Here the charge was fifty cents for registration. When it came my turn to be interviewed by the overdressed woman in charge, she earnestly advised me to take a secretarial course at a particular school. She gave me her personal card to the head of this school and assured me that she had more demands for graduates from this school than she could possibly fill that season. As I had overheard her give the same advice to three other women I was not very much impressed. However, as I had come there for advice I decided to see how far hers would take me.