for the next thing, whatever that may be, and you feel pretty sure that it will be interesting. It's a kind of perpetual "night before Christmas" feeling. Some time ago when I picked up my evening paper my eye fell on this advertisement:
"Wanted: A third partner in a well-established trading business in the South Seas. Schooner now fitting out in San Francisco to visit the Islands for cargo of copra, pearls, sandalwood, spices, etc. Woman of forty or over would be considered for clerical side of enterprise, with headquarters on one of the islands. This is a strictly business proposition—no one with sentiment need apply."
When I read it first I couldn't believe it. I rubbed my eyes and read it again. There it was next to the Belgian hares, the bargains in orange groves and the rebuilt
automobiles. It was fairly reeking with romance. I felt like finding an understudy for my job at home, boarding the schooner and sailing blithely out of the Golden Gate. The South Seas is the next stop beyond Southern California. I think I could keep their old books, though I never took any prizes in arithmetic at school. How amusing it would be to enter in my ledger instead of "two dozen eggs" and "three pounds of butter," "two dozen pearls at so much a dozen" (or would they be entered by ounces?) and "fifty pounds of sandalwood," or should I reckon that by cords? I could find out later. I would wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles (possibly blinders in addition), and I should attend strictly to business for a while, but when a full moon rose over a South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees
rustled and the phosphorescence broke in silver on the bow of the pearl schooner, where she rode at anchor in our little bay, could I keep my contract and avoid sentiment? How ridiculous to suppose that stipulating that the lady should be forty or over would make any difference! What is forty? If they had said that she must be a cross-eyed spinster with a hare-lip, it would have been more to the point. I'm not a spinster or cross-eyed, but why go on? I don't intend to commit myself about the age limit. I don't have to, because I am not going to apply for the position, after all. I have a South Sea temperament but as it is securely yoked to a New England upbringing, the trade wind will only blow the sails of my imagination to that sandalwood port.
We saw a most amusing farce some time ago which contained much interesting information concerning the worth of advertising. I forget the fabulous figure at which "The Gold Dust Twins" trade-mark is valued, but I know that it easily puts them into Charley Chaplin's class. I am sure that "Sunkist" cannot be far