Walking-Stick Papers

by Robert Cortes Holliday

Uplifters and governments do not deal a more telling blow at the demon rum than do want "ads." There is no longer any job for the drinker. "Bartender wanted. In a very low place. Must be strict teetotaler!" The student of the help-wanted columns will come to regard it as a very great mystery who floats all our "public-houses."

Persons whose outlook on life is restricted to the dull round of one occupation and to one class of society will find a decidedly broadening influence in the perusal of help-wanted "ads," a liberal and a humane education in the subject of the variety and picaresque quality of humanity's manifold activities. And such persons will be made aware of their dark ignorance of many matters. What, for instance (they will say) is a "bushelman"? A great many bushelmen are continually "wanted." It might be well to be one so much in constant demand as a bushelman. Has this welcome character something to do with the delectable grocery trade? No, my dears (for though I never saw a bushelman, I'd rather see than be one), he engages in the tailoring business, in the sweatshop way (as well as I can make out).

There are people wanted in help-wanted "ads" (but not in real life) to do nothing but travel in pleasant and historic places as companions to wealthy, "refined" persons in delicate health. There are people wanted (in want "ads") to share attractive homes in fashionable country places whose duties will be to smoke excellent cigars and take naps in the afternoon.

And there are as romantic things to be found among help-wanted "ads" as there are in the most romantic romances. Now, lest it may be thought that some of the help-wanted "ads" which I have written right out of my head to illustrate the type of each are somewhat fanciful, I will copy out of yesterday's paper an advertisement which "Robinson Crusoe" hasn't anything on, to put it thusly. Here you are.

"WANTED—A man (or woman) to live alone on an island, eight miles from shore; food, shelter, clothing furnished; no work, no compensation. Summer time, Box G, 532 Times, Downtown."

I knew a man once who got several replies to advertisements for help wanted. He bought ten New York papers one Sunday and a dollar's worth of two cent stamps. At ten o'clock in the evening he went out and stuffed the ballot-box, I mean the letter box. He said in his own handwriting that he was an excellent man to be manager of "the upper floors of an apartment house"; that he was uncommonly experienced in the moving-picture business and knew "the screen" from A to izzard; that he had edited trade journals from the time he could talk; that he had an admirable figure for a clothing model; that he was very successful in interviewing bankers and brokers; that he was fond of children; that he would like to add a side line of metal polisher to his list; and that he certainly knew more about Bolivera than anybody else in the world, and would be prepared to head an expedition there by half-past two the following day.

That man already had a job that he had got from a want "ad." He had been "copying letters" at home, "light, genteel work for one of artistic tastes." But he found that one could not make any money out of it. Because, after one had bought the "outfit" necessary one discovered that it was humanly impossible to copy the bloomin' letters in the somewhat eccentric fashion required.

He got several replies, as I said, to his replies to want "ads," this man. One was a postcard which read: "Call to-morrow morning about work, Room 954, Horseshoe Building, X. Y. Z. Co." Considering himself a gentleman, and being touchy about such things, he was annoyed at this manner of addressing him on a postcard. However he went to the Horseshoe Building. Room 954 had a great many names on the door, names there stated to be those of "attorneys," "syndicates," and "corporations, limited." Among these names was that of the X. Y. Z. Co. Within, one side of Room 954 was partitioned off into many little alcoves. An antique, though youthfully dressed, typist, by the railing near the door, showed our friend to the X. Y. Z. Co., who was seated at a bleak-looking desk in one of the little alcoves. The alcove contained, besides the "Co." (a little whiskered man, wearing his hat and overcoat) and the desk, an empty waste basket, and one unoccupied chair.

It was a "demonstrator" that was wanted, on a commission basis, for a fluid to cleanse silver. This alcove, it developed, was merely one of many thousand branch offices of the "Co." scattered across the country. The "Co's." "factory," he said, was over in New Jersey, a very large affair.

Mr. Bivens, that is the name of the gentleman of whom I have just been speaking, was invited, too, this time in a letter politely beginning "My Dear Sir," to call at the offices of a moving-picture "corporation." Asking to see "M. T. Cummings," who had signed the letter, he was presented to an efficient-looking person, evidently an elderly, retired show-girl, who directly proved him wofully deficient in knowledge of "the screen."