“And what is that?” she says.
“Well it is this business that you can never economize in nothing without turning somebody out of work. But it is a terrible thing for working people to be out of jobs,” I says, “right now my Pop is scared that he may lose his job at the gas-works and him with a half a dozen kids growing up and why should them kids have to starve just because some people is took it into their heads to economize on gas-bills?”
“Perhaps we had better go in to the table,” says Mrs. Edgerton and so there is the dining room and gee Mom if you could see how them people live they are surely making jobs for the poor. The table is all got a solid piece of glass over the whole top and there is a centre-piece that is hand-embroidered lace and you have got a hand-embroidered doily in front of your place and there is real silver and what I guess is cut-glass and there is little electric candles at each place and there is two sorts of wine glasses well Mom all I can say is that I am glad I have took your advice and studied the etiquette books and practiced them so that now I do not have to be rattled but can give my thoughts to being intellectual.
Well we have got started on some oyster cocktails and I says, “Have you thought up any way to undo them blunders of ours and get the people to liking the Spokesman again?” And he says, “No I have not.”
And so I says, “I have been thinking hard about it and I have been looking at the pictures of the Spokesman that I see in the papers and it seems to me they are wrong. Have you ever thought about them?” “No,” he says, “I can’t say that I have what is it?”
And so I tell him, “They are all pictures that is took in regular clothes like a business Man with a white collar and one of them hundred and twenty-five dollars suits on. But the most of the people in this country don’t look like a fashion model,” I says, “and they don’t wear white collars except on Sunday and the Fourth of July. It seems to me they would be a lot more interested in listening to the Spokesman’s advice about how to live their lives if they thought He lived the same kind of lives that they do.”
So he sits very thoughtful and he says, “That might be a worthwhile idea,” he says. “What would you suggest Miss Riggs?”
“Well,” I says, “what was it that the Spokesman done when He was young back there in the State of North Carolina?”
“North Carolina?” says he. “You mean Vermont, don’t you?”
“Well I can never keep them states straight,” I says. “I knew it was up in the North somewhere, but what was it He done?”