Personality Plus - Edna Ferber

When men began to build cities vertically instead of horizontally, there passed from our highways a picturesque figure, and from our language an expressive figure of speech, that oily tongued, persuasive, soft stepping stranger in the rusty Prince Albert and the black string tie, who had been wont to haunt our back steps in front offices with his carefully wrapped bundle, retreated in bewildered defeat before the clanging blows of steel on steel that meant the erection of the first twenty

story skyscraper. As slick, we used to say, as a lightning rod agent of what use his wares on a building whose tower was robed in clouds, and which used the chain lightning for a necklace. The Fourth Avenue antique dealer had another curio to add to his collection of andiron knockers, snuff boxes and warming pans. But even as this quaint figure vanished, there sprang up a new and

glittering one to take his place. He stood framed in the great plate glass window of the very building which had brought about the defeat of his predecessor, a miracle of close shaving. His face was and a marvel of immaculateness's linen dapper, he was and dressy, albeit inclined to glittering effects, and a certain plethory. At the back of the neck. Back of him stood shining shapes that reflected his glory in enamel and brass and glass. His language

was floral but choice. His talk was of gearings and bearings, and cylinders and magnetos. His method differed from that of him who went before, as the method of a skilled aeronaut differs from that of the man who goes over Niagara in a barrel. And as he multiplied and spread over the land, we coined a new figure of speech. Smooth, we chuckled, as smooth as an automobile salesman. But even as we listened fascinated by his fluid verbiage, there stood

within us a certain resentment. Familiarity with his glittering wares bred a contempt of them, so that he fell to speaking of them as necessities instead of luxuries. He juggled figures and thought nothing of four of them in a row. We looked at our five thousand dollars salary so strangely shrunken and thin. Now, and even as we looked, we saw that the method of the unctuous, anxious stranger had become antiquated in its turn. Then from his ashes emerged

a new being, neither urger nor spellbinder. He the twentieth century was stamped across his brow and on his lips forever the word service, silent, courteous, watchful, alert. He listened while you talked. His method, in turn, made that of the silk lined salesman sound like the horse hoots of the ballyhou manned at a country fair. Blithely, he accepted five hundred thousand dollars and gave in return a promise.

And when we would search our soul for a synonym to express all that was low voiced and suave and judicious and patient and sure, we began to say as alert as an advertising expert. Jock mc chesney, looking as fresh and clear eyed as only twenty one and a cold shower could make one look, stood in the doorway of his mother's bedroom. His toilet had halted abruptly at the bathrobe stage. One of those bulky gorments swathed his slim figure, while over his left arm hung a gray

tweed Narfolk coat. From his right hand dangled a pair of trousers in pattern. A modish black and white jock eyed the gray garment on his arm with moody eyes. Well, I'd like to know what's the matter with it, he demanded a trifle irritably. Emma mc chesney, in the act of surveying her back hair in the mirror, paused hand glass poised half way to regard her son. All right, she answered, cheerfully. I'll tell you it's too young. Young. He held it at arm's length and stared at it.

What do you mean, young? Imma mc chesney came forward, wrapping the folds of her kimono about her. She took the disputed garment in one hand and held it aloft. I know that you look like a man on a magazine cover in it, but Narfolk suits spelled tennis and sea shore and elegant leisure. And you're going out this morning's sun to interview business men. You're going to try to r us the advertising world with the fact that

it needs your expert services. You walk into a business office in a Norfolk suit, and everybody from the office boy to the president of the company will ask you what your score is. She tossed it back over his arm. I'll wear the black and white, said Jock resignedly and turned toward his own room. At his doorway, he paused and raised his voice slightly. For that matter, they're looking for young men. Everybody's young. Why the biggest men of

the advertising gamer just kids. He disappeared within his room, still talking. Look at mc quirk, advertising manager of the Combs car company. He's so young he has to disguise himself in bone trimmed eyeglasses with a black ribbon to get away with it. Look at Hooper of the berg Scheider company, pulls down ninety thousand a year, and if he's thirty five, I'll well, you asked my advice, interrupted his mother's voice with that muffled effect which is caused

by a skirt being slipped over the head. And I gave it. Wear a white duck sailor suit with blue anchors, and carry a red tin pail and a shovel. If you want to look young, only get into it in a jiffy son because breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. I can tell by the way Annie's crashing the cups. So step lively if you want to pay your lovely

mother's subway fare. Ten minutes later, the slim young figure in its English fitting black and white, sat opposite Emma mc chesney at the breakfast table, and between excited gulps of coffee, outlined a meteoric career in his chosen field. And the more he talked and the rosier his figures of speech became, the more silent and thoughtful fell his mother.

She wondered if five o'clock would find a droop to the set of those young shoulders, if the springy young legs in their absurdly scant, modish trouser would have lost some of their elacticity, if the buoyant step in the flat heel shoes would not drag a little. Thirteen years of business experience had taught her to swallow smilingly the bitter pill of rebuff, But this boy was to experience

his first doze to day. She felt again that sensation of almost physical nausea, that sickness of heart and spirit which had come over her when she had met her first sneer and intolerant shrug. It had been her maiden trip on the road for the t a buck featherloom Petticoat company. She was secretary of that company now and moving spirit in its policy, But the wound of that first insult still ate. A word from her would have placed the boy and saved him from kurt refusals. She

withheld that word. He must fight his fight alone. I want to write the kind of ad Jock was saying, excitedly that you see him staring at him the subways and street cars and l trains. I want to sit across the aisle and watch their upturned faces staring at that oblong and reading it aloud to each other. Isn't that an awfully obvious necktie you're wearing, Jock inquired his mother irrelevantly. This you ought to see some of them.

This is a Quaker stock in comparison. He glanced down complacently at the vivid hued silken scarf that the season's mode demanded. Immediately he was off again. And the first thing you know, missrus mcchestey, ma'am, we'll have a motor truck backing up at the door once a month, and six strong men carrying my salary to the freight elevator

in sacks. Emma mc chesney buttered her bit of toast, then looked up to remark quietly, hadn't you better qualify for the trial heats, Jock before you jump into the finals trial heats? Sneered Jock. They're poky. I want real money now. It isn't enough to be just well to do in these days. It needs money. I want to be rich, not just prosperous, but rich, so rich that I can let the bast soap float around on the water without any pricks of conscience, so successful that they'll say,

and he's a mere boy to imagine. And Jock, dear Emma McChesney, said, you still to learn that plans and ambitions are like soap bubbles. The harder you blow and the more you inflate them, the quicker they burst. Plans and ambitions are things to be kept locked away in your heart, son, with no one but yourself to take an occasional peep at them. Jock leaned over the table with his charming smile. You're a jealous blonde, he laughed, because I'm going to be a Captain of finance, an

advertising wizard. You're a afraid I'll grab the glory all the way from you. Missus mc chesney folded her napkin and rose. She looked unbelievably young and trim and radiant to be the mother of this boasting boy. I'm not afraid, she drawled a wicked little glint in her blue eyes. You see, they'll only regard your feets and say, hm, no wonder he ought to be able to sell ice

to an Eskimo. His mother was Immam Chesney, and then, being a modern mother, she donned smart autumn hat and tailor's suit coat and stood ready to reach her office by nine point thirty. But because she was as motherly as she was modern, she swung open the door between kitchen and dining room to advise with Annie the adept lamb chops tonight a Annie and sweet potatoes, Jock loves him, and carnal grotten and some head lettuce. She glanced toward

Jock in the hallway, then lowered her voice. Annie, she teased, just give us one of your peach cobblers, will you. You see, he's going to be awfully tired when he gets home. So they stepped off to work together, mother and son, a mother of twenty five years before, would have watched her son with tear dimmed eyes from the vine wreathed porch of a cottage. There was no watching a son from the tenth floor of an uptown apartment house. Besides, she had her work to do. The subway swallowed both

of them together. They jostled and swung their way downtown in the close packed train. At the twenty third Street station, Jock left her You'll have dinner tonight with a full fledged professional gent. He bragged in his youth and exuberance, and was off down the aisle and out of the platform. Emma McChesney managed to turn in her nine inch space of train seat so that she watched the slim, buoyant young figure from the window until the train drew away

and he was lost in the stairway jam. Just so Rachel had watched the boy Joseph go to meet the Persian caravans in the desert. Don't let them buffalo you, Jock, Emma had said, just before he left her. They'll try it if they give you a broom and tell you to sweep down the back stairs, Take it and sweep, and don't forget the corners and if while you're sweeping you notice that that kind of broom isn't suited to the stairs, go in and suggest a new kind. They'll

like it. Brooms and back stairways had no place in Jock mc chesney's mind as the mahogany and gold elevator shot him up to the fourteenth floor of the great office building that housed the Berg Shriner Company. Down the marble hallway he went and into the reception room. A

cruel test. It was that reception room with the cruelty peculiar to the modern in business, with its soft shaded lamp, it's two toned rug, its Jacobean chairs, its magazine laden cathedral oak table, its pot of bright flowers making a smart touch of color in the somber richness of the room. It was no place for the shabby, the down and out, the cringing, the rusty, or the mendicant. Jock McChesney, from the tips of his twelve dollar shoes to his radiant face,

took the test and stood it triumphantly. He had entered with an air in which was mingled the briskness of assurance with the languor of ease. There were times when Jock mc chesney was every inch the son of his mother. There advanced towards Jock, a large, plump, dignified personage, a personage courteous yet reserved, inquiring yet not offensively curious, A very Machiavelli of reception room ushers. Even while his lips questioned,

his eyes appraised close character conduct. Mister hup, please, said Jock, serene in the perfection of his shirt, tie, collar and scarf pin upon which the appraising eye now rested. Mister mc chesney, he produced a card appointment. No, but he will see me. But Machiavelli has seen too many over confident callers. Their very confidence had taught him caution. If you will please state your er business, Jock smiled a little patient smile, and brushed an imaginary fleck of dust

from the sleeve of his very correct coat. I want to ask him for a job, his office boy, he gibed, and answering grin overspread the fat features of the usher. Even an usher likes his little joke. The sense of humor dies hard. I have a letter from him, asked kmy to call, said Jock. To clinch it this way, the keeper of the door led Jock toward the sacred

inner portal and held it open. Mister Hups in the last door to the The door closed behind him, Jock found himself in the big, busy, light filled central office. Down either side of the great room ran a row of tiny private offices, each partitioned off, each outfitted with desk and chairs and a big bright window. On his way to the last door at the right, Jock glanced into each tiny office, glimpsing busy men bent upsorbidly over papers,

girls busy with dictation. Here and there a door revealing two men are three deep in discussion of a problem, heads close together, Foye's low faces earnest. It came suddenly to the smartly modish, overconfided boy walking the length of the long room that the last person needed in this marvelously perfected and smooth running organization was a somewhat odd

young man named Jock mc chesney. There came to him that strained sensation which comes to every job hunter, that feeling of having his spiritual legs carry him out of the room, passed the door, down the hall and into the street, even as in reality they bore him on to the very presence which he dreaded and yet wished to see. Two steps more, and he stood in the last doorway right. No matinee Idol, nervously awaiting his cue in the wings, could have planned his entrance more carefully

than Jock had planned. His ease was the thing, ease, bordering on nonchalance mixed with a brisk and business like assurance. The entrance was lost on the man at the desk. He did not even look up. If Jacket entered on all fours doing a double tango to vocal accompaniment. It is doubtful if the man at the desk would have looked up. Pencil between his fingers, had held a trifle to one side in critical contemplation of the work before him,

eyes narrowed judicially, lips pursed. He was the concentrated essence of do it now. Jock waited a moment in silence. The man at the desk worked on his head was semibald. Jock knew him to be thirty. Jock fixed his eye on the semi bal spot and spoke, my name's mc chesney, he began. I wrote you three days ago. You probably will remember, you replied, asking me to call, and I minute exploded. The man at the desk still absorbed. Jock faltered, stopped.

The man at the desk did not look up a moment of silence except for the sound of the busy pencil traveling across the paper. Jock, glaring at the semi ball spot, spoke again. Of course, mister Hupp, if you're too busy to see me, hum, a preoccupied hum, such as a busy man makes when he is trying to give attention to two interests. Why I suppose there's no sense in staying. But it seems to me that common courtesy.

The busy pencil paused, quivered in the making of a final period, enclosed the dot in a proofreader's circle, and rolled away across the desk. It's work done now, said Sam Hup, and swung around, smiling to face the affronted Jock. I had to get that out there waiting for it. He pressed a desk button, and what can I do for you? Sit down? Sit down. There was a certain abrupt geniality about him. His tartest rimmed glasses gave him an oddly owlish look, like a small boy taking liberties

with grandfather's spectacles. Jock found himself sitting down, his anger slipping from him. My name's mc chesney, he began, I'm here because I went to work for this concern. He braced himself to present the convincing reason why arguments with which he had prepared himself, whereupon sam Hup the brisk proceeded to whisk his breath and arguments away with an unexpected all right, what do you want to do? Jock's

mouth fell open. Do, he stammered, do why anything? Sam Hup's quick eye swept over the slim, attractive radiant correctly garbed the young figure before him. Unconsciously, he rubbed his ball spot with a rueful hand. Know anything about writing or advertising? Jock was at ease immediately Quite a lot. Yes, I practically rewrote the Gridiron play that we gave last year, and I was assistant advertising manager of the College Publications for two years. It gives a fellow a pretty broad

knowledge of advertising. Oh Lord, groaned sam Hup and covered his eyes with his hand, as if in pain. Jock stared. The affronted feeling was returning. Sam Hup recovered himself and smiled a little wistfully. Mc jestney When I came up here twelve years ago, I got a job as reception room usher. A reception room usher is an office boy in long pants. Sometimes, when I'm optimistic, I think that if I live twelve years longer, I'll begin to know

something about the rudiments of this game. Oh course, began Jock apologetically, but Hup's glance was over his head. Involuntarily, Jock turned to follow the direction of his eyes. Busy, said a voice in the doorway. Come in, Dudge, come in, boomed up. The man who entered was of the sort that the Boldness might well hesitate to address as Dutch. A tall, slim, elegant figure, vandyked, bronzed mcjestney. This is von Herman, head of our art department. Their hands met

in a brief clasp. Von Herman's thoughts were evidently elsewhere. Just wanted to tell you that that cussed model skipped out, gone with the show, just when I had the whole series blocked out in my mind. He was a wonder no brains, but a marvelful looks and style. These people want real stuff. Don't know how I'm gonna give it to them now, Hup sat Up got too, he snapped, campaign as late as it is, can't you get an ordinary man model and fake the Greek god beauty? Yes,

but it'll look faked. If I could lay my hands on a chapel, could wear clothes as if they belonged to him. Up, Rose, here's your man, he cried, with a snap of his fingers. Clothes look at him, he invented them. Why you could photograph him and he'd look like a drawing. Mont Hermann turned surprise, incredulous, hopeful, his artist eye brightening at the ease and grace and modishness

of the smart, well knit figure before him. Me exploded Jock, his face suffused with a dull, painful red me pose for a clothing head Well, Hup reminded him, you said you'd do anything. Jock McChesney glared belligerently. Hupp returned the stair with a faint gleam of amusement shining behind the

absurd glasses. The amused look changed to surprise as he beheld the glare in Jock's eyes fading for even as he glared, there had come a warning to Jock, a warning scent, just in time, from that wireless station located in his subconscious mind. A vivid face full of pride and hope and encouragement flashed before him. Jock, it said, don't let em buffalo you. They'll try it if they give you a broom and tell you to sweep down the back stairs. Jock was smiling his charming, boyish smile.

Lead me to your north light, he laughed at Von Hermann. Got any Robert W. Chambers heroines tucked away there? Hup's broad hand came down on his shoulder with a thwack. That's the spirit, McChesney, that's the he stopped abruptly say are you related to missus Emma McChesney of the Featherloom Skirt Company. Slightly? She's my one and only mother. She you mean her son, Well, I'll be dorn. He held out his hand to Jock. If you were a real

son of your mother. I wish you'd just call the office boy as you step down the hall with Von Herman and tell him to bring me a hammer and a couple of spikes. I'd better nail down my desk. I promise not to crowd you for a year or two, grinned Jock from the doorway, and was off with the pleased von Herman, pass the double row of beehives, again into the elevator, out again, up a narrow iron stairway, into a busy, cluttered, skylighted room. Pictures, posters, photographs hung

all about. Some of the pictures Jock recognized as old friends that had gazed familiarly at him from subway trains and street cars and theater programs. Golf clubs, tennis rackets, walking sticks, billiard cues were stacked up in corners, and yet there was a bare and artily look about the place. Two silent shirt sleeved men were busy at drawing boards. Through a doorway beyond, Jock could see others similarly engaged

in the next room. On a platform in one corner of the room posed a young man in one of those costumes, the coat of which is a mongrel mixture of cutaway and sack. You see them worn by clergymen with unsecular ideas in dress, and by the leaders of the counterfeiter's gang in the moving pictures. The pose was that met with in the backs of magazines, the head lifted, eyes fixed on an interesting object unseen, one arm crooked to hold a cane one foot advanced, the other, trailing

slightly to give a fifth avenue four o'clock air. His face was expressionless. On his head was a sadly unroned silk hat. Von Hermann glanced at the drawing, tes to the board of one of the men. That'll do Flynn, he said to the model. He glanced again at the drawing. Bring out the hat a little more mac. They won't burnish it if you don't, to the artist. Then, turning about,

where's that girl? From a far corner, sheltered by long green curtains, stepped a graceful, almost childishly slim figure in a bronze green Norfolk suit and close fitting hat from beneath which curled a fluff of bright golden hair. Von Herman stared at her. You're not the girl, he said, You won't do you sent for me? Retorted the girl.

I'm miss Michelin, Gelda Michelin. I posed for you six months ago, but i've been out of town with the show, says then Von Herman, frowning, opened a table drawer, pulled out a card, index ran his long fingers through it and extracted a card. He glanced at it, and then the frown deepening read it aloud. Michelin Glinda telephone Bryan four seven five nine, brunette, medium build, good neck and eyes, good figure, good clothes. He glanced up. Well that's me,

said miss Michelan calmly. I've got the same telephone number and eyes and neck and clothes. Of course my hair is different and I am thinner, but that's business. I'd like to know what chance the fat girl would happen the chorus these days. Von Hermann groaned, I'll pay you for the time you've waited in for your trouble. Can't use you for these pictures. Then, as she left, he turned a comically despairing face to the two men at

the drawing boards. What are we going to do? We've got to make a start on these pictures, and everything has gone wrong. They want something special two figures, young man and woman said expressly. They didn't want a chicken, No ropping curls and none of that eyes and lips fool girl stuff. This Chap's ideal for the man, he pointed to Jock. Jock had been staring fascinated at the shaded zigzag marks which the artist, dark skinned velvet eyed, foreign looking youth was making on the sheet of paper

before him. He had scarcely glanced up during the entire scene. Now he looked briefly and coolly at Jock. Where did you get him, he asked, with a precise annunciation of the foreign born good figure. And he was his clothes, not like a cab driver as the others do. Thanks drawled Jock, flushing a little, then boyous curiosity getting the better of him, say tell me, what in the world

are you doing to that drawing? He of the velvety eyes smiled a twisted little smile, his slim brown fingers never stopping in their work of guiding the pin in its zig zag path. It is look, he sneered, to delight the soul of an artist. I am now engaged in the police of putting the bones in a herring bone suit. But Jock did not smile. Here was another man, he thought, who had been given a broom and told to sweep down the stairway. Von Hermann was regarding him,

almost wistfully. I hate to let you slip, he said, then, his face brightening by jove. I wonder if miss Galt would pose for us, if we told her what a fix we were in. He picked up the telephone receiver. Miss Galt, please, he said, then aside, of course, it's nerve to ask a girl who's earning three thousand a year to leave her desk and come up and pose for hello. Miss Galt. Jock, seated on the edge of

the model's platform, was beginning to enjoy himself. Even this end of the advertising business had its interesting side, he thought. Ten minutes later he knew it had. Ten minutes later there appeared Miss Galt. Jock left off swinging his legs from the platform and stood up. Miss Galt was that kind of girl. Smooth black hair parted and coiled low as only an exquisitely shaped head can dare to wear its glory crown, a face whose expression was sweetly serious

in spite of its youth. A girl whose clothes were the sort of clothes that girls ought to wear in offices. And don't this is mighty good of you, Miss Galt, began von Herman. It's the cool Comfort Clothes Company's summer campaign stuff. We'll only need you for an hour or so to get the expression and general outline poster stuff. Really, then this young man will pose for the summer Union suit pictures. Don't apologize, said Miss Galt. We had a hard enough time to get that cool comfort account. We

don't want to start wrong with the pictures. Besides, I think posting's real fun. Jock thought so too. Quite suddenly, just as suddenly Von Herman remembered the conventions and introduced them, mc chesney repeated Miss Cult crisply, I know a missus mc chesney of the Ta Buck my mother proudly your mother? Then why she stopped? Because, said Jock, I'm the royest rookie in the berg Shriner company, and when I begin to realize what I don't know about advertising, I'll probably

want to plunge off the palisades. Miss Cult smiled up at him, her clear, frank eyes meeting his. You'll win, she said, even if I lose, I win now, said Jock, suddenly, audacious, HI hold that pose, called Von Herman. Happily. End of

chapter one, Chapter two personality Plus. There are seven stages in the evolution of that individual whose appearance is the signal for a listless Who do you want to see from the white, bloused, drabhaired, anemic little girl who sits in the outer office forever reading last month's magazines, the

badge of fear brands. The novice standing had in hand, nervous, apprehensive, gulpy, With the elevator door clanging behind him and the sacred inner door closed before him, he offers up a silent and paradoxical thank Heaven at the office girl's languid not in, and dives into the friendly shelter of the next elevator going down. When at that same message he can smile as with a certain grim agreeableness, he says, I'll wait. Then.

Has he reached the seventh stage and taken the orders of the regularly ordained Jock McChesney had learned to judge an unknown perspective by glancing at his hall rug and stenographer, which marks the fifth stage. He had learned to regard office boys with something less than white hot hate. He had learned to let the other fellow do the talking. He had learned to condense a written report into twenty

five words. And he had learned that there was as much difference between the profession of advertising as he had thought of it and advertising as it really was, as there was between a steam calliope and a cathedral pipe organ in the big office of the Berg Shriner Advertising Company. They had begun to chuckle a bit over the McChesney solicitor's reports. These same reports indicated that young McChesney was beginning to find the key to that maddening jumble of

complexities known as human nature. Big Sam Hupp, who was the pet cage to copyrighting genius of the place, used even to bring an occasional example of Jock's business bandage into the old man's office, and the two with grin in secret, as when they ran thus pepsin ail manufacturing company. Mister Bum is the kind of gentleman who curses his subordinates in front of the whole office force very touchy,

crumpled his advertising manager. Our chance to get at him is when he is in one of his rare good moods or e V Cress Company Cress, very difficult to reach. Permanent address seems to be in Italy, Egypt and other foreign ports. Occasionally his instructions come from palm Beach, at which there rose up before the reader a vision of Cres himself, backy eyed, cultivated English accent, interested in polo, fast growing contemptuous of things. American are still another Hodge

manufacturing company. Mister Hodge is a very conservative gentleman, sits still and lets others do the talking. Has gained quite a reputation for a business acumen with this one attribute. Spent five hundred dollars last year holding his breath preparatory

to taking another plunge. It was about the time that Jock McChesney had got over the novelty of paying for his own clothes and had begun to talk business in a slightly patronizing way to his clever and secretly amused mother, missrus Emma McChesney, secretary of the t A Buck Featherloom Petticode Company, that Sam Hupp noticed a rather cocky over assurance in Jock's attitude toward the world in general, whereupon

he sent for him. On Sam Hupp's broad flat desk stood an array of diminutive jars and bottles and tiny pots that would have shamed the toilet table of a musical comedy star's dressing room. There were rows tinted salves and white bottles. There were white creams and rose tinted jars. There were tins of ointment and boxes of fragrant soap. Jock McChesney, entering briskly, I the array in s some surprise. Then he grinned and glanced wickedly at Sam Hup's prematurely

bald head. No use, mister, Hup, They say, if it's once gone, it's gone, get it to pay. Shut up, growled Sam hup. Good humoredly, Stay in this game long enough, and you'll be a hairless wonder yourself. Ten years ago, the girls used to have to tie their hands or wear mittens to keep from running their white fingers through my waving silken locks. And sit down a minute. Jock reached forward and took up a jar of cream. He frowned in thought, then thought, I recognize this stuff. Mother

uses it. I've seen it on the bathroom shelf. You bet she uses it, retorted sam hup. What's more, millions of other women will be using it in the next few years. This woman, he pointed to the name on the label, has hit upon the real thing in toilet fluff. She's made a little fortune already, and if she don't look out, she'll be rich. They've got quite a plant. When she started, she used to put the stuff together herself over the kitchen stove. They say it's made of

cottage cheese, stirred, smooth and tinted pink. Well, anyway, they're nationally known now, or will be when they start to advertise. Right. I've seen some of their stuff advertised somewhere, interrupted Jack, but I don't remember. There you are, you see, the head of this concern is a little bit frightened at the way she seems slated to become a lady cold cream magnate. They say she's scared pink for fear somebody

will steal her recipes. She has a kid nephew who acts as general manager, and they're both on the job all the time. They say, the lady herself looks like the spinster in Abergosh drama. You can get a boy to look up your train schedule, train schedule across Jock.

But Jestney's mind there flashed a vision of himself, alert, confident, brisk, taking the luxurious nine o'clock for Philadelphia or maybe the Limited to Chicago, dashing down to the station in a taxi, of course, strolling down the car aisle to take his place among those other thoroughbreds of commerce men whose shammy gloves and walking sticks and talk of golf and baseball and motoring spelled elegant leisure, even as their keen eyes and shrewd faces and low voiced exchange of such terms

as stocks and sales and propositions proclaimed them intent on bagging the day's business. Sam Hup's next words brought him back to reality with a jerk. I'll think you have to change at Buffalo. It gets you to Tonawanda in the morning, Rod and train Dona Wanda repeated, Jock, Now, listen, kid. Sam Hup leaned forward, and his eyes, behind their great, round, black rimmed glasses were intent on Jock. I'm not going to try to steer you. You think that advertising is

a game, It isn't. There are those who think it's a science, but it isn't that either. It's white magic, that's what it is. And you can't learn it from books any more than you can master trout fishing from reading the complete Angler. He swung about and swept the beauty lotions before him in a little heap at the end of his desk. Here, take this stuff and get chummy with it. Need it, if necessary, Learn it somehow Jock stood up a little dazed. But what how I mean?

Sam Hup glanced up at him, sending you down. There isn't my idea, it's the old man's. He's got an idea that you. He paused and put a detaining hand on Jock muc Chesney's arm. Look here, you think I I know a little something about advertising, don't you? You laughed, Jack. You're the guy who put the whitening in the Great White Way. Everyone knows you worthy. Mum, thanks, interrupted sam Hup a little dryly. Let me tell you something, young, and I've got what you might call a thirty horse

power mind. I keep it running on high all the time with the muffler cut out, and you can hear me coming from miles. But the old man he leaned forward impressively. The old man boy has the eighty power kind built like a watch, no smoke, no dripping, and you can't even hear the engine perr. But when he throws her open, well he can pass anything on the road. Don't forget that. He turned to his desk again and reached for a stack of papers and cuts. Good luck

to you. If you want any further details, you can get him from Hayes. He plunged into his work. There arose in Jack mcchesney's mind that instinct of a man in his hour of triumph, the desire to tell a woman of his greatness. He paused a second outside Sam Huff's office, turned and walked quickly down the length of the great central room. He stopped before a little glass door at the end, tapped lightly, and entered. Gray Skalt, copywriter,

looked up, frowning a little, then she smiled. Miss Scalt had a complete layout on the desk before her scrap books, cuts, copy magazines. There was a little smudge on the end of her nose. Gray Skalt was writing about magnetos. She was writing about magnetos in a way to make you want to drop your customer, or your ironing, or your game and go downtown and buy that particular kind of magneto at once, which is the secretest part of the

wizardry of advertising copy. To look at Gray Skalt, you would have thought that she should have been writing about the rose tinted jars in Jock mcchestey's hands, instead of about such things as ignition and insulation and ball bearings and induction windings. But it was gray Scalt's gift that she could take such hard, dry technical facts and weave them into a story that you followed to the end. She could make you see the romance and condensers and transformers.

She had the power that caused a reader to lose himself in the charm of magnetic poles, are ball bearings and high tension sparks. Just dropped in to say goodbye, said Jock, very casually. I'm going to run upstate to see the Athena Company, Tarlette's specialties. You know it ought to be a big account Athena. Gray Scalt regarded him absently, her mind still on her work. Then her eyes cleared, you mean it, Tonawanda, and they're sending you well. She

put out a congratulatey hand. Jock gripped it gratefully. Not bad, eh, he boasted bad, echoed gracecult Her face became serious. Do you realize that there are men in this office who have been here for five years, six years or even more, and who have never been given a chance to do anything but stenography or perhaps some private secretary. I know it, agreed Jock, but there was no humbleness in his tone. He radiated self satisfaction. He seemed to grow and expand

before her eyes. A little shadow of doubt crept across Grace Gult's expression of friendly interest. Are you scared, she asked, just the least bit. Jock flushed a little, Well, he confessed ruefully. I don't mind telling you I am a little good good. Yes, the head of that concern is a woman. That's one reason why they don't send me. I suppose I I'd like to say something. If you don't mind anything you like, said Jock graciously. Well, then don't

be afraid of being embarrassed and fussed. If you blush and stammer a little, she'll like it. Play up the Koi stuff. The Koi stuff, echoed Jock. I hadn't thought much about my attitude toward the uh the lady a little stiffly. Well, you'd better answered miss Gald crisply. She put out her hand in much the same manner as Sam Hup had used. Good luck to you. I'll have

to ask you to go now. I'm trying to make this magneto sound like something without which no home is complete, and to make people see that there's as much difference between it and every other magneto, as there is between the steam shovels that dug out the Panama Canal and the junk that the French left there. She stopped, her eyes took on a far away look. Her lips were parted slightly. Why that's not a bad idea, that last I'll use that, I'll she began to scribble rapidly on

the sheet of paper before her. With a jolt, Jock McChesney realized that she had forgotten all about him. He walked quietly to the door, opened it, shut it very quietly, and made for the nearest telephone. He knew one woman he could count on to be proud of him. He gave his number, waited a little eager moment, then featherloon

petticoat company missus mc chesney, and waited again. Then he smiled, you don't need to sound so official, he laughed, Ats holy you's son, listen I He took on an elaborate carelessness of tone. I've got to make a little jump out of town on business. Oh a day or so, rather important, though, I'll have time to run up to the flat and throw a few things into a bag I'll tell you I really ought to keep a bag packed down here in case of emergency. You know what,

it's the Athena Tarlet Preparations Company. Well, I should say it is. I'll wire you you bet, thanks my what oh toothbrush? Now goodbye. So it was that at three ten Jock mc chesney took himself, his hopes, his dread, and his smart Walrus bag aboard a train that halted and snuffed and backed and bumped and halted with maddening frequency. But it landed him at last in a little town

bearing the characteristics of all American little towns. It was surprisingly full of six cylinder cars and five and ten cent stores, and banks with doric columns and paved streets. After he had registered at the hotel, and as he was cleaning up a bit, he passed an amused eye over the bare, ugly, fusty little hotel bedroom. But somehow, as he stood in the middle of the room, a graceful, pleasing figure of youth confidence, the smile faded. Towel in hand,

he surveyed the barrenness of it. He stared at the impossible wallpaper, at the battered furniture, the worn carpet. He sniffed the stuffy smell of what was that smell anyhow, straw and matting and dust, and the ghost odor of hundreds who had occupied the room before him. He came over him with something of a shock that this same sort of room had been his mother's only home in the ten years she had spent on the road as a traveling saleswoman for the t A Buck featherloom petticoat company.

This was what she had left in the morning to this she had come back at night. As he stared ahead of him, there rose before him a mental picture of her, the brightness of her, the sunniness, the indomitable energy, the pluck and courage. With a sudden burst of new determination, he wadded the towel into a moist ball, flung it at the washstand, seized hat, coat and gloves, and was

off down the hall. So it was, with something of his mother's splendid courage in his heart, but with nothing of her canny knowledge in his head, Jock mcchestney fared forth to do battle with the merciless god business. It was ten thirty of a brilliant morning just two days later that a buoyant young figure swung into an elevator in the great office building that housed the Berg Shriner

Advertising Company. Just one more grain of buoyant swing, and the young man's walk might have been termed a swagger, as it was, his walrus bag just saved her. Stepping out of the lift, he walked as from habit to the little unlettered door which admitted employees to the big, bright, inner office, but he did not use it. Instead, he turned suddenly and walked down down the hall to the

double door which led into the reception room. He threw out his legs stiffly and came down rather flat footed, the way George Kohan does when he's pleased with himself. In the second act, Hello Mack, he called out jovially. Mac, the usher so called from his Machiavellian qualities, turned to survey the radiant young figure before him. Good morning, mister mc chesney, He made answer smoothly. Mack never forgot himself. His keen eyes saw the little halo of self satisfaction

that hovered above Jack mcchesney's head. A successful trip. I seeing Jack McChesney, laughed a little pleased, conscious laugh. Well Rather, he drawled and opened the door leading into the main office. He had been loath to lose one crumb of the saber of it. Still smiling, he walked to his own desk with a nod here and there, dropped his bag, took off his coat and hat, selected a cigarette, tapped it, smartly, lighted it, and was off down the big room to

the little cubby hole at the other end. But Sam Hup's plump, keen, good humored face did not greet him. As he entered. The little room was deserted. Frowning, Jock sank into the empty desk chair. He cradled his head in his hands, tilted the chair, pursed his mouth over the slender white cylinder, and squinted his eyes up toward the lazy blue spirals of smoke, the very picture of content and satisfaction. Hupp was in attending some conference in

the old Man's office. Of course, he wished they'd hurry. The business of the week was being boiled down there. Those conferences were great cauldrons into which the day's business, or the weeks was dumped to be boiled, summered, stirred, skimmed, cooled. Jock had never been privileged to attend one of these meetings. Perhaps by this time next week he might have a spoon in the stirring too. There came a murmur of voices as a door was opened. The voices came nearer,

then quick footsteps. Jock recognized them. He rose, smiling. Sam Hup, vibrating electric energy breezed in. Oh hello, he said, surprised, Jock's smile widening to a grin. You back, hello, hop, he said coolly. It was the first time that he had omitted the prefix. You just bet I'm back there flashed across Sam Hup's face. A curious little look. The next instant it was gone, well, said Jock, and took a long breath. Mister Burgh wants to see you. Hup

plunged into his work. Me the old man wants to see me, yes, snapped Hup sharply, then in a new tone, Look here, son, if he says, He stopped and turned back to his work again. Navy says, what nothing? Better run along? What's the hurry I want to tell you about? Better tell him? Oh all right, said Jock stiffly. If that was the way they treated a fellow who had turned his first real trick, Why very well. He flung out of the little room and made straight for the

old Man's office. Seated at his great flat table desk, Bartholomew Burgh did not look up as Jock entered. This was characteristic of the old man. Everything about the chief was deliberate, sure, unhurried. He finished the work in hand as though no other person stood there waiting his pleasure. When at last he raised his massive head, he turned his penetrating, pale blue eyes full on Jock. Jock was

conscious of a little trimmor running through him. People were apt to experience that feeling when that steady, unblinking gaze was turned upon them. And yet it was just a clear, unwavering look with which Bartholomew Burg former boy had been wont to gaze out across the fresh plowed fields to the horizon beyond which lay the city he dreamed about. Tell me your side of it, said Bartholomew Burg, urtling all of it. Jock's confidence was returning till I stop

you well, began Jock. And standing there at the side of the old Man's desk, his legs wide apart, his face aglow, his hands on his hips, he plunged into his tail. It started off with a bang from the minute I walked into the office of the plant and met Snyder, the advertising manager. We shook hands and sparked just like that. He snapped his thumb and finger. What do you think we belonged to the same frat? He's ninety three. Inside of ten minutes, he and I were

a sigh washing around like mad. He introduced me to his aunt. I told her who I was and all that, but I didn't start off by talking business. We got along from the jump. They both insisted on showing me through the place. I well, he laughed a little ruefully. There's something about being shown through a factory that sort

of paralyzes my brain. I always feel that I ought to be asking keen alert, intelligent questions like the ones Kipling always asks are the Japs when they're taken through the stockyards, But I never can't think of any Well, we didn't talk business much, but I could see that they were interested. They seemed to. He faltered and blushed a little two like me. You know. I played golf with Snyder that afternoon, and he beat me won two balls.

The next morning. I've found there's been a couple of other advertising men there, And while I was talking to Snyder, he was telling me about the time he climbed up and muffled the chapel bell that fellow Flynn of the Dowt Agency came in. Snyder excused himself and talked to him for oh half an hour perhaps, but that was all. He was back again in no time after that. It

looked like plain ceiling. We got along wonderfully. When I left, I said, I expect to know you both better, I guess, interrupted the old man slowly, that you'll know them better, all right. He reached out with one broad, freckled hand and turned back the page of a desk memorandum. The Athena account was given to the Dowed Advertising Agency yesterday. It took Jock mc chesney one minute, one long, sickening minute,

to grasp the full meaning of it all. He stared at the massive figure before him, his mouth ludicrously opened, his eyes round, his breath for the moment suspended. Then, in a queer, husky voice, do you mean the dowd But they couldn't. I mean, said Bartholomew Berg, that you've scored what the dramatic critics call a personal hit. But that doesn't get the box office anything. But mister Perkh, they said, sit down a minute, boy. He waved one great heavy hand toward a nearby chair. His eyes were

not fixed on Jock. They gazed out of the window toward the great white tower, toward which hundreds of thousands of eyes were turned daily, the tower, fourfaced, but faithful, but jesting. Do you know why you fell down on that Athena account? Because I'm an idiot, blurted Jock. Because I'm a double barreled, corn fed, handpicked chump. And that's one reason, drawled the old man grimly. But it's not the chief one. The real reason why you didn't land

that account was because you're two drned charming. Charming, Jock stared, just that. Personality is one of the biggest factors in business today. But there are some men who are so likable that it actually counts against them. The client he's trying to convince is so taken with him that he actually forgets the business he represents. We say of a man like that, that he is personality plus personality is like electricity. McChesney. It's got to be tamed to be useful.

But I thought, said Jock miserably, that the idea was not to talk business all the time. You got it, agreed Berg. But you must think it all the time, every minute. It's got to be working away in the back of your head. You know, it isn't always the biggest noise that gets the biggest result. The Great American hen yields a bigger income than the Steel Trust. Look at miss Galt. When we have a job that needs a woman's eye, do we send her no? Why because

she's too blame charming, too much personality. A man just naturally refuses to talk business to a pretty woman, unless she's so smart that my mother interrupted Jock suddenly, and then stopped, surprised at himself. Your mother, said Bartholomew Burg slowly, is one woman in a million. Don't never forget that. They don't turn out models like Emma mc chesney more than once every blue moon. Jock got to his feet slowly. He felt heavy. Old I suppose he began that this

ends my my advertising career? Is it? The old man stood up and put a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. It only begins it unless you want to lie down and quit. Do you quit, cried Jock mc chesney. Quit, Not on your white space, good, said Bartholomew Burgh, and he took Jock mc chesney's hand in his own, great, friendly grasp. An instinct as strong as that which had made him blatant in his hour of triumph, now caused him to avoid, in his hour of defeat, the women

folk before whom he would fain be a hero. He avoided Grace gult. All that long, dreary afternoon, he thought wildly of staying down town for the evening, of putting off the meeting with his mother, of avoiding the dreaded explanations, excuses, confessions. But when he let himself into the flat at five thirty, the place was very quiet, except for Annie humming in a sort of nasal sing song of content. In the kitchen. He flicked on the light. In the living room, a

new magazine had come. It lay on the table, its bright cover staring up invitingly. He ran through its pages. By force of habit. He turned to the back pages. Ads stared back at him, clothing ads, paint ads, motor ads, ads of portable houses and vacuum cleaners, and tarlet preparations. He shut the magazine with a vicious slap. He flicked off the light again, for no reason except that he seemed to light the dusk. In his own bedroom, it was very quiet. He turned on the light there too,

then turned it off. He sat down at the edge of his bed. How was it in the stories? Oh, yes, the cub always started out on an impossibly difficult business stunt and came back triumphant to be made a member of the firm. At once A vision of his own rosy in hopes and dreams rose up before him. It grew very dark in the little room, then all together dark. Then an imputed square of yellow from a light turned on in the apartment next door, flung itself on the

bedroom floor. Jock stared at it moodily. A key turned in the lock, A door opened and shut A quick step then jock al light flashed in the living room. Jock sat up. Suddenly he opened his mouth to answer. There issued from his throat a strange and absurd little croak. Jock Home. Yes, answered Jock, and straightened up. But before he could flick on his own light, his mother stood in the doorway, a tall, straight, buoyant figure. I got your wire. And why dear, in the dark, what must

have fallen asleep? I guess, muttered Jock. Somehow he dreaded to turn on the lights. And then very quietly Emma mc chesney came in. She found him there in the dark, as surely as a mother bear finds her cubs in a cave. She sat down beside him at the edge of the bed, and put her hand on his shoulder,

and brought his head down gently to her breast. And at that the room, which had been a man's room, with its pipe, its tobacco jar, its tie rack, filled with cravats of fascinating shapes and ewes, became all at once a boy's room again, and the man sitting there, with straight, strong shoulders and his little air of worldliness, became, in some miraculous way, a little boy again. End of chapter two. Chapter three dictated but not read about the time that Jack mc chesney began to carry a yellow

walking stick down to work each morning. His mother noticed a growing tendency on his part to patronize her. Now, missrus Emma mc chesney, successful capable business woman that she was, could afford to regard her young son's attitude with a quiet and deep amusement. In twelve years, Emma mc chesney had risen from the humble position of stenographer in the office of the T. A. Buck, Featherloon Petticot Company to

the secretaryship of that firm. So in her young son, backed by the profound business knowledge gained in his one year with the Berg Shriner Advertising Company, hinted gently that her methods and training were archaic, ineffectual, and lacking in those twin condiments known to the twentieth century as pep and ginger. She would listen, eyebrows raised, lower lip caught between her teeth, a trick which gives a distorted expression

to the features, calculated to hide any lurking tendency to grin. Besides, though Emma mc chesney was forty, she looked thirty two, as business women do, and knew it. Her hard working life had brought her in contact with people and things and events, and had kept her young. Thank fortune, missrus mc chesney often said that I wasn't cursed with the life of ease. These massage at ten fitting at eleven bridget one women always looked such hags at thirty five,

but repetition will ruin the rarest of jokes. As the weeks went on and Jock's attitude persisted, the twinkle in Emma mc chesney's eye died. The glow of growing resentment began to burn in its place. Now and then there crept into her eyes a little look of doubt and bewilderment. You sometimes see that same little, shocked, dazed expression in the eyes of a woman whose husband has just said, isn't that hat too young for you? Then one evening,

Emma mc chesney's resentment flared into open revolt. She had announced that she intended to rise half an hour earlier each morning in order that she might walk a brisk mile or so on her way down town before taking the subway. But won't it tire you too much? Mother, Jock had asked, with maddeningly tender solicitude. His mother's color heightened, her blue eyes glowed dark. Look here, Jock, will you

kindly lean on me? Grandma? Stuff To hear you talk, one would think I was ready for a wheelchair in gray woolen bedroom slippers. Why I didn't mean. I only thought that, perhaps over exertion and a woman of your that is you need your energy for. Don't wallow around, and it snapped, Emma McChesney. You'll only sink in deeper in your efforts to crawl out. I merely want to warn you that if you persist in this pose of tender solicitude for your dollaring old mother, I'll I'll present

you with a stepfather a year younger than you. Don't laugh. Perhaps you think I couldn't do it, good lord mother, of course you don't mean it, but mean it. Cleverer woman than I have been driven by their children to marrying bell boys. In self defense, I warn you that stopped it for a while. Jock ceased to bestow upon his muther the judicious advice from the vast storehouse of

his own experience. He refrained from breaking out with elaborate advertising schemes, whereby the Ta buck, Featherloon Petticoat company might grind every other skirt concern to dust. He gave only a startled look when his mother mischievously suggested raspberry as the color for her new autumn suit. Then, quite suddenly circumstance caught Emma mc chesney in the meshes, and before she had fought her way free, wrought trouble and change

upon her. Jock McChesney was seated in the window of his mother's office at noon of a brilliant autumn day. A little impatient frown was farming between his eyes. He wanted his luncheon. He had called around expressly to take his mother out to luncheon, always a festive occasion would taken together. But missus McChesney, seated at her desk, was bent absorbidly over a sheet of paper, whereon she was adding up two columns of figures at a time, a

trick on which she rather prided herself. She was counting aloud, her mind leaping agilely. Thus eleven twenty nine, forty three, sixty sixty nine. Her pencil came down on the desk with a whack. Sixty nine, she repeated in capital letters. She turned around to face Jock sixty nine. Her voice bristled with indignation. Now what do you think of that? I think you'd better make it an even seventy or whatever it is you're counting up, and come on out

to luncheon. I'm an appointment at two fifteen, you know, luncheon. She waved the paper in the air. With this outrage on my mind, nectar would curdle in my system. Jock rose and strolled lazily over to the desk. What is it, he glanced idly at the sheet of paper. Sixty nine? What missus mcchae pressed the buzzer at the side of her desk. Sixty nine dollars, that's what, representing two days' expenses in the six weeks missionary trip that fat admirers

just made for us, and in Iowa too. When you gave that fellow the job began, Jock hotly, I told you, and Buck told you that, Missus mc chesney interrupted wearily. Yes, I know you'll never have a grander chance to say, I told you so. I hired him because he was out of a job and we needed a man who

knew the Middle Western trade. And then because well, poor fellow he begged so and promised to keep straight, as though I oughtn't to know that a pe nuckle and poker traveling man can never be anything but a p nuckle and poker traveling man. The office door opened as there appeared an answer to the buzzer, a very alert, very smiling and very tight office girl Emma mc chesney had tried office boys and found them wanting tell mister Myers, I want to see him. Just gone out to lunch.

She turned like a racehorse, trembling to be off, putting on his overcoat in the front office. Shall I catch him? Listen here, began Jock uncomfortably. If you're going to call him, perhaps I'd better vanish to save Ed Myers's tender feelings.

You don't know him. Fat Ed Meyers could be court martialed, tried, convicted, and publicly disgraced, with his epaulets torn off and his sword broken, and likely as not, he stooped down, pick up a splinter of steel to use as a toothpick, and Castle walked down the aisle to the tune with which they were drumming him out of the regiment. Stay right here, Myers's explanation ought to be at least amusing,

if not educating. In the corridor outside could be heard someone blithely humming in the throaty tenor of the fat Man. The humming ceased with a last high note as the door opened, and there entered fat admirers Rosy Cherubic, smiling his huge frame looming mountainous in the rippling folds of a loose hung London plaid top coat. Greetings boomed the cheery vision. Raising one hand palm outward in mystic salute, he beamed upon the frowning Jock. How's the infant prodigy?

The fact that Jock's frown deepened to a scowl ruffled him not at all. And what went on? He crossing his feet and leaning negligently against missus mc chesney's desk. And what can I do for thee fair lady for me, said Emma mc chesney, looking up at him through narrowed eyelids.

I'll tell you what you can explain to me in what they call a few well chosen words, just how you or any other living creature could manage to turn in an expense account like that on a six weeks missionary trip through the Middle West, dear lady, in the bland tones that one uses to an unreasonable child. He will need no explanation, if you will just remember to lay the stress on the word missionary. I went forth through the Middle West to spread the light among the

benightedskir trade. This wasn't a selling trip, dear lady, it was a buying expedition, and I had to buie, didn't I all the way from Michigan to Indiana? He smiled down at her, calm, self assured, impudent. A little flush grew in Emma mc chesney's cheeks have always said. She began, crisply, that one could pretty well judge a man's character, temperament, morals, and physical make up by just glancing at his expense account. The trouble with you is that you haven't learned the

art of spending money wisely. It isn't always the man with the largest expense sheet that gets the most business, and it isn't the man who leaves the greatest number of circles on the tabletop in his hotel room either. She paused a moment, Edmires's smile had lost some of its heartiness. Mister Buck's out of town, as you know, he'll be back next week. He wasn't in favor of now, missus,

McChesney interrupted admirers nervously. You know, there's always one live one in every firm, just like there's always one star in every family. You're the I'm the one who wants to know how you could spend sixty nine dollars for two days incidentals in Iowa, Iowa. Why look here, Admires, I made Iowa for ten years when I was on the road. You know that, and you know and I know that in order to spend sixty nine dollars for incidentals in two days in Iowa, you have to call

out the militia. Not when you're trying to win the love of every skirt fire from Sioux City to Des Moines. Emma McChesney rose impatiently. Oh, that's nonsense. You don't need to do that these days. Those are old fashioned methods. They're out of date. They at that. A little sound came from Jock. Emma heard it, glanced at him, turned away again in confusion. I was foolish enough in the first place to give you this job. For old time's sake,

she continued, hurriedly. Fat Admires's face drooped dolefully. He cocked his round head on one side, fatuously for old time's sake, he repeated, with tremulous pathos, and heaved a gusty sigh, which goes to show that I need a guardian, finished

Emma McChesney cruelly. The only old times that I can remember, or when I was selling feather looms and you were out for the Sands Silk Skirt Company, both covering the same territory, and both running a year round race to see which could beat the other at its own game. The only difference was that I always played fair, while you played low down whenever you had a chance. Now, my dear missus McChesney, that'll be all, said Emma McChesney,

as one whose patience is fast slipping away. Mister Buck will see you next week, then turning to her son, as the door closed on the drooping figure of the erstwhile boyant myers, where are we lunch? Jock? Mother, Jock broke out hotly, Why in the name of all that's foolish do you persist in using the methods of Mathuselah. People don't sell goods anymore by sending out fat, old extra traveling men to jolly up the trade? Jock repeated Emma mc chesney slowly. Where shall we lunch? It was

a grim little meal, eaten almost in silence. Emma mc chesney had made it a rule to use luncheon time as a recess, she played mental tag and hopscotch, so that, returning to her office refreshed in mind and body, she could attack the afternoon's work with new vicar, and never

did she talk or think business today. She ate her luncheon with a forced appetite, glanced about with a listlessness far removed from her usual alert interest, and followed Jock's attempts to conversation with a polite effort that was more insulting than downright inattention dessert mother Jock had to say it twice before she heard what, oh, no, I think not. The waiter hesitated, coughed, discreetly lifted his eyebrows, insinuatingly. The

French pastries particularly nice, to madame. If you care to try something, Eclaire Madam, peach tart mocha, tart caramel. Emma mc chesney smiled. It does sound tempting, she glanced at Jock. And we're wearing our gowns so floppy this year that it makes no difference whether one's fat or not. She turned to the waiter. I never can tell till I see them. Bring your pastry tray, will you? Jock mcchestey's

finger and thumb came together with a snap. He leaned across the table toward his mother, eyes glowing, lips parted and eager. There you've proved my point point about advertising. No, don't stop me. Don't you see what applies to pastry applies to petticoats. You didn't think of French pastry until he suggested it to You advertised it really, and then you wanted a picture of them. You wanted to know what they look like before buying. That's all there is

to advertising. Telling people about a thing, makin em want it, and showIn em how it will look when they have it. Get me, Emma mc chesney was gazing at Jock with a curious, fascinated stare. It was a blank little look, such as we sometimes wear when the mind is working furiously. If the insinuating waiter presenting the laden tray for her inspection was startled by the rapt expression which she turned upon the cunningly wrought wares, he was too much a

waiter to show it. A pause that one, said missus mc chesney, pointing to the least ornate. She ate it down to the last crumb in a silence that was pregnant with portent, she put down her fork and sat back. Jock, you win. I I suppose I have fallen out a step. Perhaps I've been too busy watching my own feet. T A will be back next week. Could your office have an advertising plan roughly sketched by that time? Good today? His tone was exultant. Watch him. Hup's been crazy to

make Featherloums famous. But look here, son, I want a hand in that copy. I know Featherloums better than your Sam Hupp will ever, Jock shook his head. They won't stand for that, mother, It never works. The manufacturer always thinks he can write magic stuff because he knows his own product, but he never can. You see, he knows too much. That's it, no perspective, we'll see, said Emma

McChesney curtly. So it was that ten days later the first important conference in the interests of the Featherloom Petticot Company's advertising campaign was called. But in those ten days of hurried preparation, a little silent tragedy had come about. For the first time in her brave, sunny life, Emma McChesney had lost faith in herself and with such malicious humor, does fate work her will that she chose sam Hup's new dictograph as the instrument with which to prick the

bubble of missus mcchesney's self confidence. Sam Hupp, one of the copywriting marvels of the berg Shriner firm, had a trick of forgetting to shut off certain necessary currents when he paused in his dictation to throw in conversational asides.

The old and experienced stenographers had learned to look out for that, and to eliminate from their typewritten letters certain irrelevant and sometimes irreverent sides, which sam Hup evidently had addressed to his pipe or the office boy, and was not intended for the tube of the all devouring dictograph. There was a new and nervous little stenographer in the outer office, and she had not been warned of this. We think very highly of the plan you suggest, sam Hupp,

had said into the dictograph's mouthpiece. In fact, then one of your valuable copies of questions you. Without changing his tone, he glanced over his shoulder at his colleague Hopper, who was listening and approving. Let the old girl think the

ideas her own. She's virtually the head of that concern, and they've spoiled her successful and used to being caught out to doesn't know her notions of copy are ten years behind the advertising game, and went on with his letter again, after which he left the office to play golf, and the little blond numbskull in the outer office dutifully took down what the instrument had to say word for word, marked it, dictated but not read, signed, neat initials, and with a sigh, went on with the rest of her

sheaf of letters. Emma mc chesney read the letter next morning. She read it down to the end and then again. The two readings were punctuated with a little gasp, such as we give when an icy douche is suddenly turned upon us. And that was all. A week later, an intent little group formed a ragged circle about the big table in the private office of Bartholomew Burg, head of

the Berg Schrider advertising Company. Bartholomew Berg, himself massive, watchful, taciturn, managing to give an impression of power by his very silence, sat at one side of the long table. Just across from him, a sleek haired stenographer bent over her notebook, jotting down every word that the conference might make business history. Hopper at one end of the room, studied his shoe

heel intently. He was unbelievably boyish, looking to command the fabulous salary reported to be his advertising men mentioning his name, pulled a figurative forelock as they did so. Near Missus. McChesney sat Sam hupp heave of the lightning brain in the sure Fire copy. Emma McChesney, strangely silent, kept her eyes intent on the faces of the others. T a buck interested, enthusiastic, but somewhat uncertain, glanced now and then at his silent business partner, found no satisfaction in her

set face, and glanced away again. Gray Skalt, unbelievably young and pretty to have won a place for herself in that conference of business people, smiled in secret at Jock mc chesney's evident struggle to conceal his elation at being present at this his first staff meeting. The conference had lasted one hour now. In that time, frethloom petticoats had been picked to pieces, bit by bit from him to waistband.

Nothing had been left untouched. Every angle had come under the keen vision of the advertising experts, the comfort of the garment, its durability, style, cheapness service which to emphasize hm novelty campaign. In my opinion, said Hopper, breaking one of his long silent lenses. There's nothing new in petticoats themselves.

You know, you've got to give them a new angle. Yep, agreed, hup, start out with a feature skirt might illustrate with one of those freaked drawings they're crazy about now, slinky figure, you know, hollow chested, one foot, trailing and all that. They're crazy, but they do retract attention, no doubt of that. Bartholomew Berg turned his head slowly. Oh what's your opinion, missus McChesney, he asked. I'm I'm afraid I haven't any, said Emma McChesney listlessly. Ta Buck stared at her in

dismay and amazement. How about you, mister Buck? Why? Of course this advertising game's new to me. I'm really leaving it in your hands. I really thought that missus mcchesney's idea was to make a point of the fact that these petticoats were not a freak petticoat, but skirts for the everyday woman. She gave me what I thought was a London argument a week ago. He turned to her. Helplessly. Missus McChesney sat silent. Bartholomew Burgh leaned forward a little

and smiled one of his rare smiles. Won't you tell us, missus McChesney, we'd all like to hear what you have to say. Missus McChesney looked down at her hands. Then she looked up and addressed what she had to say straight to Bartholomew Burgh. I simply don't want to interfere in this business. I know nothing about it. Really. Of course I do know featherloom petticoats, I know all about them.

It seemed to me that just because the newspapers and magazines were full of pictures showing spectacular creatures and impossible attitudes wearing tango tea skirts, we are apt to forget that those types form only a thin upper crust, and that down beneath there are millions and millions of regular everyday women doing everyday things in regular everyday clothes, women who wash on Monday and iron on Tuesday, and bake one egg cakes, and who have to harry home to

get supper when they go downtown in the afternoon. They're the kind who go to market every morning and take the baby along the go kart. And they're not wearing crape de shine tango petticoats to do it in either. They're wearing skirts with the draw string in the back and the label and the band guaranteed to last one year. Those are the people I'd like to reach and hold. Hmmm, said Hopper from his corner cryptically. Bartholomewburg looked at Emma

McChesney admiringly. Sounds reasonable and logical, he said. Sam hup sat up with a jerk. It does sound reasonable, he said, briskly, But it isn't. Pardon me, won't you, missus McChesney. But you must realize that this is at extravagant age. The very workmen's wives have caught the spind fever. The time has passed when you can attract people to your goods with the promise of durability and wear. They don't expect goods to wear. They'd resent it if they did. They

get tired of an article before it's worn out. They're looking for novelties. They'd rather get two months wear out of a skirt that slashed a new way than a year's wear out of one that looks like the start that mother used to make. Missus McChesney, her cheeks very pink, her eyes very bright, subsided into silence. In silence, she sat throughout the rest of the conference, in silence. She descended in the elevator with t a Buck, and in silence she stepped into his waiting car. T a Buck

eyed her worriedly. Well, he said, then, as Missus McChesney shrugged none, Tomilla's shoulders, tell me, how do you feel about it? Emma McChesney turned to face him, breathing rather quickly. The last time I felt as I do just now was when Jock was a baby. He took sick and the doctors were puzzled. They thought it might be something wrong with his spine. They had a consultation, five of them,

with the poor little chap on the bed naked. They wouldn't let me go in, so I listened in the hallway, pressed against the door with my face to the crack. They prodded him and poked him and worked his little legs and arms, and every time he cried, I prayed and wept and clawed the door with my fingers and called them beasts and torturers and begged them to let me in. Though I wasn't conscious that I was doing

those things at the time. I didn't know what they were doing to him, though they said it was all for his good and they were only trying to help him. But I only knew that I wanted to rush in and grab him up in my arms and run away with him, Run and run and run. She stopped, lips trembling, eyes suspiciously bright, And that that's the way I felt in there this afternoon. Ta Buck reached up and patted her shoulder. Don't, old girl, It's going to work out splendidly,

I'm sure. After all, those chaps do know best. They may know best, but they don't know featherlooms retarded Emma mc chesney. True, but perhaps what Jock said when he walked with us to the elevator was pretty nearly right. You know. He said, we were criticizing their copy of the way a plumber would criticize the Parthenon, so busy finding fault with the lack of drains that we failed to see the beauty of the architecture, Ta said Emma mc chesney solemnly t A, we're getting old, old you.

I ha. You may ha all you like, But do you know what they thought of us in there. They thought we were a couple of fogies, and they humored us. That's all they did. I'll tell you, t A. When the time comes from me to give Jock up to little pink faced girl, I'll do it and smile if it kills me. But to hand my feather looms over to a lot of cold blooded experts who well, she paused, biting her lip. We'll see, Emma, We'll see they did see.

The featherloom Petticoat campaign was launched with a great splash. It sailed serenely into the sea of national business. Then suddenly something seemed to go wrong with its engines. It began to wobble and showed a decided list to port. Jock, who at the beginning was so puffed with pride that his gold fountain pen threatened to burst. The confines of his very modestly tight vest, lost two degrees of pompishness a day, and his attitude toward his unreproachful mother was

almost humble a dozen times a week. Ta would stroll casually into Missus mcchesney's office. I think it's going to take hold, he would ask. Our men say that the dealers have laid in, but the public doesn't seem to be tearing itself limb from limb to get our stuff. Emma mc chesney would smile and shrug none committal shoulders when it became very painfully apparent that it wasn't taking hold. Ta Buck, after asking the same question, now worn and

frayed with asking, broke out crossly. Well, really, I don't mind the shrug, but I do wish you wouldn't smile. After all, you know, this campaign is costing us money, real money, and large chunks of it. It's very evident that we shouldn't have tried to make a national campaign of this thing. Whereupon Missus mcchesney's smile grew into a laugh. Forgive me, Ta, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing because, well, I can't tell you why. It's a woman's reason, and

you wouldn't think it a reason at all. Well, that matter, I suppose it isn't. But anyway, I've got something to tell you. The fault of this campaign has been the copy. It was perfectly good advertising, but it left the public cold when they read those ads. They might have been impressed with the charm of the garment, but it didn't fill their breasts with any while longing to possess one. It didn't make the women feel unhappy until they had one of those skirts hanging on the third hook in

their closet. The only kind of advertising that is advertising, it's the kind that makes the reader say, I'll have one of those ta buck through out helpless hands. What are we going to do about it? Do I've already done it done? What written? The kind of copy that I think feather Looms ought to have. I just took my knowledge of feather looms, plus what I knew about human nature, sprinkled in a handful of good humor and sincerity, and they are going to feed it to the public.

It's the same recipe that I used in selling feather looms on the road. It used to go by word of mouth. I don't see why it shouldn't go on paper. It isn't classic averavertising, It isn't scientific, It isn't even what they call psychological. I suppose, but it's human, and it's going to reach that great, big, solid safe spot cash mass known as the middle class. Of course, my copy may be wrong. It may not go after all. But but it did go. It didn't go with a

rush or a bang. It went slowly, surely, hand over hand, but it went, and it kept on going, and watching it climb and take hold. There came back to Emma mcchesney's eye, the old sparkle to her step, the old buoyancy to her voice, the old delightful ring. And now when t A Buck strolled into her office of a morning with his it's taking hole, missus Mack, she would dimple like a girl as she laughed back at him

with a grip that won't let go. It looks very much as though we were going to be millionaires in our old age. You and I went on, buck, Emma McChesney opened her eyes wide, Old old you, I ha. End of chapter three, Chapter four, The Man within Him. They used to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of scarlet in the crisp clear morning, to the winding of horns and the baying of hounds, to the thud thud of hoofs and the crackle of underbrush

Across fresh plowed fields. They went, crashing through forest paths, leaping ditches, taking fences, scrambling up the inclines, pelting down the hillside helter skelter, until panting, wide eyed, eager, blood hungry. The hunt closed in at the death. The scarlet coat has sobered down to the somber gray in the snuffy brown of that unromantic garment known as the business suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes

are the tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh plowed field is a blueprint. The forest maye a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Each ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color,

all the joy. But two things remain the same. The look in the face of the hunter as he closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the coveted contract lying ready for the finishing stroke of his pen, and his words are those of the hunter of long ago. As eyes a gleam, teeth bared, muscles still taut with the tenseness of the chase. He waves the paper high in the air and cries,

I've made a killing. For two years, Jock McChesney had watched the field as it swept by in its patient, davious rule game of hunt the contract, but he had never been in at the death. Those two years had taught him how to ride, to take a fence, to leap a ditch. He had had his awkward bumps and his clumsy falls. He had lost his way more than once, but he had always groped his way back again, stumblingly

through the dusk. Jock mc chesney was the youngest man on the Berg Shriner Advertising Company's big staff of surprisingly young men, so young that the casual glance did not reveal to you the marks that the strain of those two years had left on his boy's face. But the marks were there, nature etches with the most delicate of points.

She knows the cunning secret of light and shadow. You scarcely realize that she has been at work a faint line about the mouth, a fairy tracing at the corners of the eyes, a mere, vague touch just at the the nostrils, and the thing is done. Even Emma mc chesney's eyes, those mother eyes which make the lynx seem a mole, had failed to note the subtle changes. Then suddenly,

one night, the lines leaped out at her. They were seated at opposite sides of the book littered library table in the living room of the cheerful Uptown apartment, which was the realization of the nightly dream which missus Emma mc chesney had had in her ten years on the road for the t a Buck featherloom petticoat company. Jock mcchesney's side of the big table was completely covered with the mass of copy paper, rough sketches, photographs and drawings

which make up an advertising layout. He was bent over the work, absorbed intent, his forearms resting on the table. Iimma mc chesney glanced up from her magazine just as Jock bent forward to reach a scrap of paper that had fluttered away. The lamp light fell full on his face, and Emma mc chesney saw the hand that held the magazine fell to her lap. Her lips were parted slightly. She sat very quietly, her eyes never leaving the face

that frowned so intently over the littered table. The room had been very quiet before, Jock busy with his work, his mother interested in her magazine. But this silence was different. There was something electric in it. It was a silence that beats on the brain like a noise. Jock mc chesney, bent over his work, heard it, felt it, and oppressed by it, looked up. Suddenly he met those two eyes opposite spooks or is it my god like beauty which told you thus? Or is my face dirty? Emma mc

chesney did not smile. She laid her magazine on the table, face down, and leaned forward, her staring eyes still fixed on her son's face. And look here, young un, are you working too hard me? Now? This uf? You mean? No? I mean, in the last year? Are they piling it up on you? Jock laughed, a laugh that was nothing less than a failure. So little of real mirth did it contain? Piling it up? Lord? No, I wish they would. That's the trouble. They don't give me a chance, a chance.

Why that's not true, son, you've said yourself that there are men who have been in the office three times as long as you have, who never have had the opportunities they've given you. It was as though she had touched a current that thrilled him to action. He pushed back his chair and stood up, one hand thrust into his pocket, the other passing quickly over his head from brow to nate with a quick, nervous gesture that was new to him. And why he flung out, Why not

because they like the way I part my hair. They don't do business that way up there. It's because I've made good and those other dubs haven't. That's why they've let me sit in at the game, but they won't let me take any tricks. I've been an apprentice hand for two years now. I'm tired of it. I want to be in on a killing. I want to taste blood. I want a chance at some money, real money. Emma McChesney sat back in her chair and surveyed the angry

figure before her with quiet, steady eyes. I might have known that only one thing could bring those lines into your face, son, she paused a moment. So you want money as badly as all that, do you Jock's hand came down with a whack on the papers before him. Want it, you bet I want it? Do I know her? Asked Emma McChesney quietly. Jock stopped, sharp in his excited pacing up and down the room. Do you know why

I didn't say there? What makes you think that when a youngster like you, whose greatest worry has been whether Harvard'll hold of again this year with Baxter out begins to howl about not being appreciate sheiated in business, and to wear a late fall line of wrinkles where he had been smoothed before. I feel justified in saying do I know her? Well? It isn't any one at least, it isn't what you mean you think it is when you say you careful there, you'll trip never you mind

what I mean? I think it is when I say count ten and then just tell me what you think you mean. Jock passed his hand over his head again with that nervous little gesture. Then he sat down a little wearily. He stared moodily down at the pile of papers before him. His mother faced him quietly across the table. Grace Galtz getting twice as much as I am. Jock broke out with savage suddenness the first year, I didn't mind.

A fellow gets accustomed these days to see women breaking into all the professions and getting away with men's size salaries. But her paycheck doubles mine more than doubles it. It's been my experience, observed Emma mc chesney, that when a firm condescends to pay a woman twice as much as a man, that means she's worth six times as much. A painful red crept into Jock's face. Maybe two years ago,

that would have sounded reasonable to me. Two years ago, when I walked down Broadway at night, a fifty foot electric sign at forty second was just an electric sign to me, just part of the town's decoration, like the Chorus girls and the midnight theater crowds now. Well, now every blink of every red and yellow globe is crammed full of meaning. I know the power that advertising has, how it influences our manners and our morals, and our

minds and our health. It regulates the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and the books we read, and the entertainment we seek. It's colossal that's what it is. It's keep on like that for another two years, Sonny, and no business banquet will be complete without you. The next thing you know, you'll be addressing the YMCA advertising classes on the young Man in business. Jock laughed, a rueful little laugh. I didn't mean to make a speech.

I was just trying to say that I've served my apprenticeship. It hurts a fellow's pride. You can't hold your head up before a girl when you know her salaries twice yours, and you know that she knows it. Why look at Missus Hoffman, who's with the Dout Agency. Of course, she's a wonder. Even if her face does look like the fifty eighth variety, she can write copy that lifts a campaign right out of the humdrum class and makes it luminous.

Her husband works in a bank somewhere. He earns about as much as Missus Hoffman, pays the least of her department's subordinates. And he's so subdued that he side steps when he walks, and they call him the human jellyfish. Emma mc chesney was recording her son with a little puzzled frown. Suddenly she reached and tapped the topmost of the scribbled sheets strewn the length of Jock's side of the table. What's all this, Jock tipped back his chair

and surveyed the clutter before him. That said, he is what is known on the stage as the papers, and it's the real plot of this piece. Hmm, I thought, so, just favor me with a scenario, will you? Half grinning? Half serious? Jock stuck his thumbs and the armholes of his waistcoat and began scene offices of the Berg Shriner Advertising Company. Time the present characters, Jock McChesney, handsome, daring, brilliant. Suppose you are skip the characters, however fascinating, and get

to the action. Jock McChesney brought the chair down on all fours with a thud and stood up. He was as serious as he had been in the midst of his tirade of five minutes before. All right, here it is, and don't blame me if it sounds like cheap melodrama. This stuff, and he waved a hand toward the paper laden table. He's an advertising campaign plan for the Griebler Gum Company of Saint Louis, Oh don't look impressed. The

office hasn't handed me any such commission. I just got the idea like a flash, and I've been working it out for the last two weeks. It worked itself out almost the way a really scorching idea does. Sometimes. This Griebler has been advertising for years, you know, the Greebler gum but it hasn't been the right start of advertising. Old Greebler, the original gum man, had foggy notions about advertising, and as long as he lived they had to keep it down. He died a few months ago. You must

have read of it, left a regular mint. Ben Griebler, the oldest son, started right in to clean out the cobwebs. Of course, the advertising end of it has come in for its share of the soap and water. He wants to make a clean sweep of it. Every advertising firm in the country has been angling for the contract. It's going to be a real one two thirds of the crowd of submitted plans. And that's just where my kick comes in. The berg Shiner Company makes it a rule

never to submit advance plans. Excuse me if I seem a trifle rude. Interrupted missus MC Chesney. But I'd like to know where you think you've been wronged in this Right here, replied Jock, and he slapped his pocket. And here, he pointed to his head. Two spots so vital that they make Old Akelles's heels seem armor plated. Ben Griebler is one of the show me kind. He wants value

received for money expended. And while everybody knows that he has a loving eye on the berg Shriner crowd, he won't sign the thing until he knows what he's getting. A firm's record, standing staff, equipment mean nothing to him. But Jock, I still don't see. Jock gathered up a sheaf of loose paper and brandish them in the air. This is where I come in. I've got a plan here that will fetch this Griebler person. Oh I'm not dreaming. I outlined it for sam Hup and he was crazy

about it. Sam Hup had some sort of plan outlined himself, but he said this made his sound as dry as cigars in Denver. And you know yourself that sam Hup's copy is so brilliant that he could sell brewery advertising to her Temperance magazine. Emma mc chesney stood up. She looked a little impatient and a trifle puzzled. But why all this talk, I don't get you. Take your plan

to mister Berg. If it's what you think it is, he'll see it quicker than any other human being, and he'll probably fall on your neck and invest you in royal robes and give you a mahogany desk all your own. Oh what's the good, retorted Jock, disgustedly. This griebler has an appointment at the office tomorrow. He'll be closeted with the old man they call in hup. But never a plan will they reveal. It's against their code of ethics. Ethics.

I'm sick of the word. I suppose you say I'm lucky to be associated with the firm like that, and I suppose i am. But I wish, in the name of all the gods of business that they weren't so blooming conservative ethics. They're all balled up in him like Henry James in his style. Emma mc chesney came over from her side of the table and stood very close to her son. She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the sullen, angry, young face.

I've seen older men than you are, Jock, and better men and bigger men wearing that same look, and for the same reason. Every ambitious man or woman in business where is it at one time or another. Sooner or later, Jock, you'll have your chance at the money end of this game. If you don't care about the thing you call ethics, it'll be sooner. If you do care, it will be later.

It rests with you, but it's bound to come, because you've got the stuff in you, maybe, replied Jock the cynical, but his face lost some of its sullenness as he looked down at that earnest, vivid countenance upturned to his Maybe it sounds all right, mother in the story books, but I'm not quite solid on it. These days, it isn't so much what you've got in you that counts

as what you can bring out. I know. The young man's slogan used to be work and wait or something pretty like that, but these days they've boiled it down to one word, produce. The marvel of it is that there aren't more of em, observed Emma mc chesney, sadly more what more lines here? She touched his forehead, and here she touched his eyes lines Jock swung to face a mirror. Good I'm so infernally young looking that no

one takes me seriously. It's darned hard trying to convince people you're a captain of finance when you look like an errand boy. From the center of the room, Mistress mc chesney watched the boy as he surveyed himself in the glass, and as she gazed, there came a frightened look into her eyes. It was gone in a minute, and in its place came a curious little gleam, half amused,

half pugnacious. Jock mc chesney. If I thought that you meant half of what you said to night about honor and ethics and all that, i'd spike me, I suppose, said the young six footer. No, and all the humor had fled I, Jock, I've never said much to you about your father, but I think you know that he was what he was to the day of his death. You were just about eight when I made up my

mind that life with him was impossible. I said then, and you were all I had son that I'd rather see you dead than to have you turn out to be a son of your father. Don't make me remember that wish shock. Two quick steps and his arms were about her. His face was all contrition. Why mother, I didn't mean you See, this is business and I'm crazy to make good and it's such a fight. Don't I

know it, demanded Emma mc chesney. I guess your mother hasn't been sitting home and broadering lunch cloths these past fifteen years. She lifted her head from the boy's shoulder. And now, son, considering me not as your doting mother, but in my business capacity as secretary of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, suppose you reveal to me the inner workings of this plan of yours. I'd like to know if you really are the advertising wizard that you

think you are. So it was that, long after Annie's dinner dishes had ceased to clatter in the kitchen, long after she had put her head in at the door to ask eggs or cakes for breakfast, Long after those two two busy brains should have rested in sleep, The two sat at either side of the light flooded table, the face of one glowing as he talked the face of the other, sparkling as she listened, And at midnight,

why you infant wonder, exclaimed Emma McChesney. At nine o'clock next morning, when Jock McChesney entered the offices of the Berg Shriner Advertising Company, he carried a flat compact bundle of papers under his arm, encased in protecting covers of pasteboard and further secured by bands of elastic. This he carried to his desk, deposited in a drawer, and locked the drawer. By eleven o'clock, the things which he had

predicted the night before had come to pass. A plump little man with a fussy manner and western clothes had been ushered into Bartholomew Burg's private office. Instinct told him that this was griebler. Jock left his desk and strolled up to get the switchboard operator's confirmation of his guests. Half an hour later, Sam Hup hustled by and disappeared into the old man's sanctum. Jock fingered the upper left hand drawer of his desk, the maddening blankness of that

closed door. If only he could find some excuse for walking into that room, any old excuse, no matter how wild, just to get a chance at it. His telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, his eye on the closed door, his thoughts inside that room. Mister Bergh wants to see you right away, came the voice of the switchboard operator. Something seemed to give way inside, something in the region of his brain. No, his heart, no, his lungs. Well, can you beat that? Said Jock mc chestney aloud, in

a kind of trance of joy. Can you beat that? Then he buttoned the lower button of his coat, shrugged his shoulders with an extra wiggle of the collar, the modern hero's method of girding up his loins, and walked calmly in into Bartholomew Burgh's very private office. In the second that he lapsed between the opening and the closing

of the door, Jock's glance swept the three men. Bartholomew Burgh, quiet, inscrutable, seated at his great table desk, Griebler lost in the depths of a great leather chair, smoking fussily and twitching with a hundred little, restless, irritating gestures. Sam up standing at the opposite side of the room, hands in pockets, attitude argumentative. This is mister mc chesney, said Bartholomew Burgh. Mister Griebler. McChesney Jock came forward, smiling that charming smile

of his. Mister Griebler, he said, extending his hand, this is a great pleasure. Hmm, growled Ben Griebler. I didn't know they picked him so young. His voice was a piping falsetto that somehow seemed to match his restless little eyes. Jock thrust his hands hurriedly into his pockets. He felt his face getting scarlet. They're using them young this year, said Bartholomew Berg. His voice sounded bigger and smoother and pleasanter than ever in contrast with that other's shrill tone.

I prefer him young myself. You'll never catch McChesney using in the last analysis to drive home an argument. He has a new idea about every nineteen minutes, and every other one's a good one, and every nineteenth or souls an inspiration. The old man laughed, one of his low chuckling laughs. Hmm, that's so piped up, Ben Griebler. Hop in my neck of the woods, we aren't so long on inspiration. We're just working men, and we wear working clothes.

Oh now, protested Berg, his eyes twinkling. Mcjestney's necktie and socks and handkerchief may form one lovely, blissful color scheme, but that doesn't signify that his advertising schemes are not just as carefully and artistically blended. Ben Griebler looked shrewdly up at your through his narrowed lids. Maybe I'll talk to you in a minute, young man, that is, he turned quickly upon Berg. If that isn't against your crazy principles too, why not at all, portholemew Berg assured him,

not at all. You to me an injustice. Griebler moved up closer to the broad table. The two fell into a low voiced talk. Jock looked rather helplessly around at Sam Hupp. That alert gentleman was signaling him frantically with head and wagging finger. Jock crossed the big room to Hup's side. The two moved off to a window at the far end. Give heed to your unkie, said Sam Hup, talking very rapidly, very softly, and out of one corner of his mouth. This Griebler is looking for an advertising manager.

He's as pig headed as a a well a pig, I suppose. But it's a carking chance, youngster, and the old man's just recommended you strong now me exploded, Jock shut up his top. Two or three years with that firm would be the making of you. If you make good, of course, and you could. They want to move their factory here from Saint Louis within the next few years. Now, listen when he talks to you. You play up the

keen alert stuff with a dash of sophistication. See if you can keep your mouth shut and throw a kind of a canny I get you look into your eyes all the better. He's gabby enough for two Try a line of talk that is filled with the fire and enthusiasm of youth combined with the good judgment and experience of middle age. And you've say, look here, stammered Jock.

Even if I was Warfield enough to do all that, do you honestly think me an advertising manager with a salary that griebler, You nervy little shrimp, go in and win. He'll pay five thousand if he pays a cent, but he wants value for money expended. Now, I've tipped you off. You make the killing, oh Mcjestney, called Bartholomew Burgh, glancing around. Yes, sir, said Jock, and stood before him in the same moment. Mister Griebler is looking for a competent, enthusiastic, hard working

man as advertising manager. I've spoken to him of you. I know what you can do. Mister Griebler might trust my judgment in this, but I'll trust my own judgment, snapped Ben Griebler. It's good enough for me very well, returned Bortholomew Burgh suavely. And if you decide to place your advertising future in the hands of the Berg Shriner company, now look here, interrupted Ben Griebler again. I'll tie up with you people when you shaken something out of your cuffs.

I'm not the kind that buys a pig in a poke. We're going to spend money, wi you money in this campaign of yours, but I'm not such a come hotist to hand you half a million or so and get a promise in return. I want your plans and I want him full. A little exclamation broke from Sam Up checked it, but not before Berg's curiously penetrating pale blue eyes had glanced up at him and away again. I've told you, mister Griebler, went on Bortholomew Bergh's patient voice.

Just why the thing you insist on is impossible? This firm does not submit advance copy. Every business commission that comes to us is given all the skill and thought and enthusiasm and careful planning that this office is capable of. You know our record. This is a business of ideas, and ideas are too precious, too perishable, to spread in the marketplace for all to see. Ben Griebler stood up. His cigar wagged furiously between his lips as he talked.

I know something else that don't stand spreading in the marketplace, Berg, and that's money. It's too darn perishable too. He pointed a stubby finger at Chuck. Does this fool rule of years apply to this young fellow? To Bartholomew burg seemed to grow more patient, more self contained, as the other man's self control slipped rapidly away. It goes for every man and woman in this office, mister Greebler. This young chap mc chesney here might spend weeks and months building

up a comprehensive advertising plan for you. He'd spend those weeks studying your business from every possible angle. Perhaps it would be a plan that would require a year of waiting before the actual advertising began to appear, and then you might lose faith in the plan. A waiting game

is a hard game to play. Some other man's idea that promised quicker action might appeal to you, and when it appeared, we'd very likely find our own original idea incorporated in Say, look here, squeaked Ben Griebler his face, bully, rent, Do you mean to imply that I steal your plan? Do you mean to sit there and tell me to my face, mister Griebler, I mean that that thing happens constantly in this business. We're all most powerful to stop it.

Nothing spreads quicker than a new idea. Compared to it, a woman's secret is a seal book. Ben Griebler removed the cigar from his lips. He was stuttering with anger. With the mingling of despair and boldness. Jock saw the advantage of that stuttering moment and seized on it. He stepped close to the broad table desk, resting both hands on it and leaning forward slightly in his eagerness, mister Berg, I have a plan. Mister Hupp can tell you. It came to me when I first heard that the Grieblers

were going to broaden out. It's a real idea. I'm sure of that. I've worked it out in detail. Mister Hupp himself said it. Why. I've got the actual copy and it's new. Absolutely it never trot it out, shouted Ben Griebler. I like to see one idea anyway around this shop. Mc chesney said Bartholomew Berg, not raising his voice. His eyes rested on Jock with the steady, penetrating gaze. It was peculiar to him, more foolhardy men than Jock.

Mucchesney had faltered and paused, abashed under those eyes. McChesney, your enthusiasm for your work is causing you to forget one thing that must never be forgotten in this office. Jock stepped back. His lower lip was caught between his teeth. At the same moment, Ben Griebler snatched up his hat from the table, clapped it on his head at an absurd angle, and, bristling like a fighting cock, confronted the three men. I've got a couple of rules myself, he cried,

And don't you forget it. When you get a little spare time, you look up Saint Louis and find out what stated then the slogan of that state is my slogan. You bet. If you think I'm gonna make you a present of the money that it took my old man fifty years to pile up, then you don't know that Griebler is a German name. Good day, gents, He stalked to the door. There he turned dramatically and leveled a forefinger at jock Man. Got you roped and tied, But

I think you're a comer. If you change your mind, kid, come and see me. The door slammed behind him. Whew, whistled Sam Hupp, passing a handkerchief over his ball spot. Bartholomewburg reached out with one great capable hand and swept toward him a pile of papers. Oh well, you can't blame him. Advertising has been a scream for so long. Griebler doesn't know the difference between advertising, publicity and bunk. He'll learn, but it'll be an awfully expensive course. Now, hup,

let's go over this kalamazoo account. That'll be all my chesney, Jock turned without a word. He walked quickly through the outer office into the great main room. There he stopped at the switchboard. Uh, miss Grimes, he said, smiling charmingly, where's this, mister Griebler of Saint Louis stopping? Do you know? Say we are? Would he stop? Retorted the wise miss Grimes, look at him. The walled off. Of course, thanks, said Jock, still smiling, and went back to his desk. At five

Jock left the office. Under his arm, he carried the flat pastepoort package secured by elastic mans. At five point fifteen, he walked swiftly down the famous corridor of the Great red Stone Hotel. The colorful, glittering crowd that surged all about him he seemed not to see. He made straight for the main desk with its battalion of clerks. Mister Greebler in, mister ben Griebler, Saint Louis, the question said

in motion, the hotel's elaborate system of investigation. At last, not in do you know when he will be in? That feudle question? Can't say? He left no word? Do you want to leave your name, No would he does? He stop at this desk when he comes in. He was an unusually urbane hotel clerk. Why usually they leave their keys and get their mail from the floor clerk, But mister Greebler seems to prefer the main desk. I'll wait, said Jack, and seated in one of the great thrown

my chairs. He waited. He sat there, slim and boyish, while the laughing, chattering crowd swept all about him. If you sit long enough in that fire, you will learn all there is to learn about life. An amazing sight. It is that crowd Barriboo helped swell it, and Spokane and Berlin and Budapest and Pekuing and Paris and Waco, Texas so varied. It is so cosmopolitan that if you sit there patiently enough and watch sharply enough, you will even see it, chanced New Yorker from door to desk.

Jock's eyes swept the afternoon tea crowd and paradise feathers and furs and frock coats swam back and forth. He saw it give way to the dinner throng satin shod bejeweled, hurrying through its oysters swallowing unbelievable numbers of cloudy amber drinks and golden brown drinks and maroon drinks, then gathering

up its furs and rushing theater woods. He was still sitting there when that crowd, its eight o'clock freshness somewhat sullied, its sparkle, a trifle dimmed, swept back for more oysters, more cloudy ambering golden brown drinks, at half hour intervals, then at hourly intervals. The figure in the great chair stirred, rose and walked to the desk. Has mister Griebler come in the supper throng its laugh a little ribbled, its talk, a shade high pitched, drifted toward the street, or was

wafted up in elevators. The throng thinned to an occasional group. Then these became rarer and rarer. The revolving door admitted one man, too, perhaps, who lingered not at all In the unaccustomed quiet of the great glittering lobby. The figure of the watcher took on a pathetic droop. The eyelids grew leaden to open them mint an almost superhuman effort. The stare of the new night clerks grew more and

more hostile and suspicious. A grayish pallor had settled down on the boy's face, and those lines of the night before stood out for all to see in the stillness of the place. The big revolving door turned once more complainingly for the thousandth time. Jock's eyes lifted heavily. Then they flew wide open. The drooping figure straightened electrically. Half a dozen quick steps, and Jock stood in the pathway of Ben Griebler, who rather ruffled and untidy, had blown

in on the wings of the morning. He stared for a moment. Well, what I've been waiting for you here since five o'clock last evening? It will soon be five o'clock again. Will you let me show you those plans now? Ben Griebler had surveyed Jock with the stony calm of the out of town visitor who was prepared to show surprise at nothing in New York. There's nothing like getting an early start, said Ben Griebler. Come on up to my room, key in hand. He made for the elevator.

For an almost imperceptible moment, Jock paused, then with a little rush, he followed the short, thick set figure. I knew you had it in you, mc chesney. I said, you looked like a comer, didn't I. Jock said nothing. He was silent while Griebler unlocked his door, turned on the light, fumbled at the windows and shades, picked up the telephone receiver. And while you have nothing. Jock had cleared the center table and was opening his flat bundle

of papers. He drew up two chairs. Let's not waste time, he said, I've had a twelve hour wait for this. He seemed to control the situation obediently. Ben Griebler hung up the receiver, came over and took the chair very close to Jock. There's nothing artistic about gum, began Jock mc chesney, and his manner was that of a man who was sure of himself. It's a shirt sleeve product and it ought to be handled from a shirt sleeve standpoint.

Every gum concern in the country has been thousands on a better than candy campaign before it realized that gum is a candy and drugstore article, and that no man is going to push a five cent package of gum at the sacrifice of the sale of an eighty cent box of candy. But the health note is there if only you strike it right now, here's my idea. At six o'clock. Ben Griebler, his little shrewd eyes sparkling, his voice more squeakily fall settled than ever, surveyed the youngster

before him, with a certain awe. This this thing will actually sell our stuff in Europe. No gum concern has ever been able to make the stuff go outside of this country. Why inside of three years, every airyan area in england'll be chewing it on bank holidays. I don't know about Germany. But he pushed back his chair and got up. Well, I'm sold on that, and what I say goes now. I'll tell you what i'll do, kid, I'll take you down to Saint Louis with me at

a figure that'll make your jock looked up. Or if you don't, let the tried a crowd to get wise, I'll fix it this way. I'll go over there this morning and tell him I've changed my mind. See the campaign's there. See then I refuse to consider any of their suggestions until I see your plan. And when I see it, I fall for it like a ton of bricks old Burgle never know he's so darn high Principal Jock McChesney stood up. The little, drawn, pinched look which

had made his face so queerly old was gone. His eyes were bright, his face was flushed. There you said it. I didn't realize how raw this steal was until you put it into words for me. I went to thank you. You're right, Bortholomew Berg is so darned high principles that two muckers like you and me, roveling around in the dirt can't even see the tips of the heights to

which his ideals have swored. Don't stop me. I know I'm talking like a book, but I feel like something that has just been kicked out into the sunshine after having been in jail. You're tired, said Ben Griebler. It's been a strain. Something always snaps after a long tension. Jock's flat palm came down among the papers with a crack. You bet something snaps. It just snapped inside me. He began quietly to gather up the papers in an orderly

little way. What's that for, inquired Griebler, coming forward. You don't mean I mean that I'm going to go home and square this thing with a lady you've never met you, and she wouldn't get on if you did. You don't talk the same language. Then I'm going to have a cold bath and a hot breakfast, and then, Griebler, I'm going to take this stuff to bartholomew Burg and tell him the whole nasty business. He'll see the humor of it, but I don't know whether he'll fire me or make

me vice president of the company. Now, if you want to come over and talk to him fair and square, why come, candawan he fires you, remarked Greebler as Jock reached the floor. There's only one one person I know who's game enough to take you up on that, and it's going to take more nerve to face her at six point thirty than it will to tackle a whole battalion of Bartholomew birds at nine. Well, I guess I could get into three hours sleep before or before what

said Jock Bucchesney from the door. Ben Griebler laughed, a little shame faced laugh. Before I see you at ten, Sonny. End of chapter four, Chapter five, The Self Starter. There is nothing in the sound of the shrill little bell to warn us of the import of its message. Moore's the pity. It may be that bore whose telephone conversation begins, well, what do you know today? It may be your lawyer to say you've inherited a million. Hence the arrogance of

the instrument. It knows its voice will never willfully go unanswered, so long as the element of chance lies concealed within it. Missus. Emma mc chesney heard the call of her telephone across the hall. Seated in the office of her business partner, T. A Buck, she was fathoms deep in discussion of the T. A Buck featherloom petticoat company's new spring line. The buzzer's insistent voice brought her to her feet, even while she frowned at the interruption. That'll be Bumgartner phoning about those

silk swatches. Back in a minute, said Emma mc chesney, and hurried across the hall, just in time to break the second call. The perfunctory hello, yes, was followed by a swift change of countenance, a surprised little cry, then, in quite another tone, Oh it's you, Jock. I wasn't expecting. No, not too busy to talk to you, you young chump, go on a moment of silence while missus mc chesney's face smiled and glowed like a girl's as she listened to the voice of her son. Then suddenly glow and

smile faded. She grew tense. Her head that had been leaning so carelessly on the hand that held the receiver, came up with a jerk. Jock mc chesney, She gasped, you why you don't mean now. Emma mc chesney was not a woman given to jerky conversations interspersed with exclamation points. Her poise and balance had become a proverb in the business world. Yet her lips were trembling now. Her eyes were very round and bright. Her face had flushed, then

grown white. Her voice shook a little. Yes, of course, I am only I'm so surprised. Yes, I'll be home early five thirty at the latest. She hung up the receiver with a little fumbling gesture. Her hand dropped to her lap, then came up to her throat a moment dropped again. She sat, staring straight ahead with eyes that saw one thousand miles away from his office. Across the hall, t a buck strolled in casually, did bum gardener say he'd he stopped as missus mc chesney looked up at

him a quick step forward. What's the matter, emma, jock? Jock jock? What's happened to the boy? Then, as she still stared at him, her face pitiful, his hand patted her shoulder. Dear girl, tell me he bent over her all solicitude, don't, said Emma mc chesney faintly, and shook off his hand. Your stenographer can see. What will the office think? Please? Oh darn the stenographer? What's this bad

news of jock? Emma mc chesney sat up, She smiled a little nervously and passed her handkerchief across her lips. I didn't say it was bad, did I? That is not exactly bad. I suppose t a buck ran a frenzied hand over his head. My dear child, with careful politeness, will you please try to be sane. I find you sitting at your desk, staring into space, your face white as a ghost's your whole appearance that of a person who has received a death blow. And then you say,

not exactly bad. It's this, explained Emma mc chesney in a hollow tone. The Berg Shriner Advertising Company has a pointed jock manager of their new Western branch. They're opening offices in Chicago in March. Her lower lip quivered. She caught it sharply between her teeth. For one surprised moment. Ta Buck stared in silence. Then a roar broke from him. Exactly bad, he boomed between laughs, not exactly but not exactly A. Then he was off again. Missus McChesney surveyed

him in hurt and dignified silence. Then well, really, t a don't mind me, which you find so exquisitely funny. That's the funniest part of it, that you, of all people, shouldn't see the joke. Not exactly bad. He wiped his eyes. Why do you mean to tell me that, because your young cub of a son, by a heaven sid stroke of good fortune, has landed a job that men twice

his age would give their eye teeth to get. I find you sitting at the telephone looking as if he had run off with any the cook, or had had a leg cut off. I suppose it is funny, only the joke's on me. That's why I can't see it. It means that I'm losing him. That's the first selfish word I've ever heard you utter. Oh, don't think I'm not happy at his success. Happy? Haven't I hoped for it and work for it and pray for it. Haven't

I saved for it and skipped for it. How do you think I could have stood those years on the road if I hadn't kept up courage with the thought that it was all for him? Don't I know how narrowly Jock escaped being the wrong kind. I'm his mother, but I'm not quite blind. I know he had the making of a first class cad. I've seen him start off in the wrong direction a hundred times. If he has turned out a success, it's because you steered him right. I've watched you make him over, and now, when his

big chance has come you. I don't expect you to understand, interrupted Emma mc chesney a little wearily. I know it sounds crazy and unreasonable. There's only one sort of human being who could understand what I mean. That's a woman with a son. She laughed, a little shame facedly. I'm talking like the chorus of a minor whale sob song. But it's the truth. If you feel like that, Emma, tell him to stay. The boy wouldn't go if he thought it would make you unhappy. Not go, cried Emma

mc chesney, sharply. I'd like to see him dare to refuse it. Well, then what in began? Buck bewildered. Don't try to understand it, Ta, it's no use. Don't try to poke your finger into the whirligig they call women's sphere. Its mechanism is too complicated. It's the same quirk that makes women pray for daughters and men for sons. It's the same kink that makes women read the marriage and death notices first in the newspaper. It's the same queer strain that causes a mother to lavish the most love

on the weakest, wilfulest child. Perhaps I wouldn't have loved Jock so much if there hadn't been that streak of yellow in him, and if I hadn't had to work so hard to dilute it until now it's only a faint cream color. There ought to be a special prayer for women who were bringing up their sons alone. Buck stirred a little uneasily. I've never heard you talk like this before, you probably never will again. She swung round to her desk. Ta Buck, strolling toward the door, still

wore the puzzled look. I don't know what makes you take this so seriously. Of course the boy will be a long way off, but then you've been separated from him before. What's the difference now, Ta, said Emma mc chesney solemnly. Jock will be drawing a man's size salary. Now. Something tells me I'll be a grandmother in another two years. Girls are letting men like Jock run around loose. He'll be gobbled up. Just you wait, Oh, I don't know,

drawled Buck mischievously. You just said he's a headstrong young cub. He strikes me as a kind who'd raised the dickens if his three minute egg happened to be five seconds over time. Emma McChesney swung round in her chair. Look here, Ta, As business partners, we've quarreled about everything from silk samples to traveling men and his friend. We've wrangled on every subject,

from webs to war. I've allowed you to criticize my soule theories and my new spring hat, but understand that I'm the only living person who has the right to vilify my son, Jock McChesney. The telephone buzzed a punctuation to this period. Bumgardner inquired Buck humbly. She listened a moment, then over her shoulder Bumgardner grimly, her hand covered the mousepiece. And if he thinks he can work off a lot of last year's silk swatches on Hello, Yes, missus McChesney talking.

Look here, mister Baumgardner, and for the time being, Emma McChesney, mother was relegated to the background, while Emma McChesney, secretary of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticot Company, held the stage. Having said that she would be home at five point thirty. Missus McChesney was home at five thirty, Being that kind of a person, Jock came in at six breathless, bright eyed,

eager and late. Being that kind of a person. He found his mother on the floor before the chiffonaire in his bedroom, surrounded by piles of pajamas, socks, shirts and colors. He swooped down upon her from the doorway. What do you think of you, blue eyed boy? Poor a Imma McChesney looked up absently, Jock, These medium weights of yours didn't wear it all, and you paid five dollars for them? Medium weights? What in't you've done? Off? Silk socks to

last you the rest of your natural life? Handkerchiefs too, But you'll need pajamas. Jock stooped, gathered up an armful of miscellaneous undergarments and tossed them into an open drawer. Then he shut the drawer with a bang, reached over, grasped his mother firmly under the arms, and brought her to her feet with a swing. We will now consider the question of summer underwear ended? Would it bore you too much to touched lightly on the subject of your

son's future. Imma McChesney, tall, straight, handsome, looked up at her son, taller, straighter, handsomer. Then she took him by the coat lapels and hugged him. You were so bursting with your own glory that I couldn't resist teasing you. Besides, I had to do something to keep my mind off off Why Blondie, dear, you're not no, I'm not gulped. Emma McChesney, don't flatter yourself, young and tell me just how it happened from the beginning. She perched at the

side of the bed, jock hands in pockets. Harry, a little rumpled, paced excitedly up and down before her as he talked. There wasn't any beginning, That's the stunning part of it. I just landed right into the middle of it with both feet. I knew they had been planning to start a big Western branch, but we all thought

they'd picked some big man for it. There are plenty of medium class doves to be had, the kind that answer is the ad man as you wanted, young men preferably married, able to furnish a one reference ver as thick as advertising men in Detroit on Monday morning. But we knew that this Western branch was going to be

given an equal chance with the New York office. Those big Western advertisers like to give their money to Western firms if they can, so we figure that they pick a real top notcher, even Hopper or Houp maybe, and start out with a bang. So when the old man called me into his office this morning, I was as unconscious as a babe. Well you know Berg, He's as unexpected as a summer shower. And twice as full of

electricity Morning mc chesney. He says, that is a New York necktie you're wearing strictly, says I ever try in Chicago ties not from choice. That time my suitcase went astray. M Yes, he drummed his fingers on the tabletop a couple of times. Then, Jesney, what have you learned about advertising in the last two and a half years. I was wise enough as to Betholomew Berg to know that he didn't mean any cut and dried knowledge. He didn't

mean rules of the game. He meant tricks. Well, I said, I've learned to watch a man's eyes when I'm talking business to him. If the pupils of his eyes dilate, he's listening to you and thinking about what you're saying. When they contract, it means that he's only faking interest. Even though he's looking straight at you and wearing a rapt expression, his thoughts are miles away. That's so, said Berg,

and sorto grinned. What else I've learned? That one negative argument is worth six positive ones, That it never pays to knock your competitor, that it's wise to fight shy of that joker known as editorial cooperation. That's so, said Burg. Anything else, I made up my mind. I could play the game as long as he could. I've learned not to lose my temper when I'm in the middle of a white hot, impassioned business appeal and the office boy bounces in to say to the boss missus Jones is waiting.

She says, you were going to help her pick out wallpaper this morning, and Jones says, tell her I'll be there in five minutes. Sure you've learned that, said Berg. Sure, says I. And I've learned to let the other fellow take your argument's his own. He likes it. I've learned that the surest kind of copy is the slow and

citious kind, like the Featherloom Petticoat Company's campaign. That was an ideal campaign because it didn't urge and insist that the public buy featherlooms, just ease the idea to them. It started by sketching a history of the petticoat, beginning with Eve's fig leaf, and working up before they knew it. They were interested, not so that campaign was your mother's eye, Dear mic Chesney. You know, mother, he thinks you're a one, So I am agreed, Emma McChesney, calmly go on, well,

I went on. I told him that I had learned to stand so that the light wouldn't shine in my client's eyes when I was talking to him. I lost a big arder once because the glare from the window irritated the man I was talking to. I told Berg all the tricks I'd learned, and some I hadn't thought of till that minute. Berg put in a word now, and then I thought he was sort of guiding me, as he sometimes does, not unkindly, you know, but in

that quiet way he has. Finally I stopped for breath or something, and he said, now let me talk a minute. Mc chesney. Anybody can teach you the essentials of the advertising business if you've any advertising instinct in you. But it's what you pick up on the side, by your own efforts and out of your own experience, that lifts you out of the scrub class. Now, I don't think you're an ideal advertising man by any means, mc chesney. You're shy on training and experience, and you've just begun

to acquire that golden quality known as balance. I could name a hundred men that are better all round advertising men than you will ever be. Those men have advertising ability that glows steadily and evenly, like a well banked fire. But you've got the kind of ability that flares up, dies down, flares up. But every flare is a real blaze that lights things red while it lasts and sends

a new glow through the veins of business. You've got personality, and youth and enthusiasm and a precious spark of the real thing known as advertising genius. There's no describing it. You know what I mean. Also, you know enough about actual advertising not to run an ad for a five thousand dollar motor car in the police gazette. All of which leads up to this question, how would you like to buy your necktars in Chicago? Mc chesney, Chicago, I've blurted out. We've taken a suite of offices in the

new Lakeview Building on Michigan Avenue. Would you like your office done in Mahogany or oak? Jack came to a full stop before his mother. His cheeks were scarlet, hers were pale. He was breathing quickly. She very quiet. His eyes glowed, so did hers, but the glow was dimmed by a mist. Mahogany's richer, but make it oak Son, it doesn't show finger marks. So then quite suddenly she stood up, shaking a little, and buried her face in the boy's shoulder. Why why, mother, don't don't Blondie. We'll

see each other every few weeks. I'll be coming to New York to see the sights like the rest of the Rubes, and I suppose the noise and lights will confuse me so that I'll be glad to get back to the Sylvan quiet of Chicago. And then you'll run out there. Eh, we'll have regular bats, missus mac enterant theater and supper. Yes, yes, said Emma mc chesney in muffled tones that totally lacked enthusiasm. Chicago's really only a suburb of New York anyway these days, And Emma mcchesney's

head came up sharply. Look here, Son, if you're going to live in Chicago, I advise you to cut that suburb talk and start to forget New York. Chicago's quite a village for an inland settlement, even if it has only two or three million people, and the lake as big as all outdoors that kind of talk won't elect you to the university club, son. So they talked all through supper and during the evening. Rather, Jock talked and

his mother listened, interrupting with only an occasional remark. When the bubble of the boy's elation seemed to grow too great. Quite suddenly, Jock was silent. After the almost incessant rush of conversation, quiet settled down strangely on the two Seated there in the living room with its soft shaded lamps, Jock picked up a magazine, twirled its pages, put it down,

strolled into his own room, and back again. Mother, he said, suddenly, standing before her, there was a time when you were afraid I wasn't going to pan out, wasn't there Not exactly afraid, dear, just a little doubtful, Perhaps Jock forced a tolerant forgiving smile. You see, Mother, you didn't understand. That's all a woman doesn't. I was all right. A man would have realized that. I don't mean, Dear, that you haven't always been wonderful, because you have. But it

takes a man to understand a man. When you thought I was going bad on your hands, I was just developing that's all. Remember that time in Chicago, mother, Yes, answered Emma mc chesney. I remember now, A man would have understood that that was only kid foolishness. If a fellow's got the stuff in him, it'll show up sooner or later. If I hadn't had it in me, I wouldn't be going to Chicago as manager of the Berg Shriner Western Office, would I. No, Dear Jock looked at her.

In an instant he was all contrition and tenderness. You're tired. I've talked you to death, haven't I? Lordy, It's midnight, and I want to get down early tomorrow conference with mister Berg and hup. He tried not to sound too important. Emma mc chesney took his head between her two hands and kissed him once on the lips, then, standing a tiptoe, kissed his eyelids with infinite gentleness, as you kiss a baby's eyes. Then she brought his cheek up against hers,

and so they stood for a moment silently. Ten minutes later there came the sound of blythe whistling from Jock's room. Jock always whistled when he went to bed and when he rose, even these years of living in a New

York apartment had not broken him of the habit. It was a cheerful, disconnected whistling, sometimes high and clear, sometimes under the breath, sometimes interspersed with song, and sometimes seizing altogether at critical moments, say during shaving, or while bringing the foreign hand up tight and snug under the collar. It was one of those comfortable little noises that indicate a masculine presence, one of those pleasant, reassuring men in

the house, noises that every woman loves. Emma mc chesney, putting herself to bed in her room across the hall, found herself listening, brush poised, lips parted as though to the exquisite strains of celestial music. There came the thump of a shoe on the floor, an interval of quiet, then another thump. Without having been conscious of it, Emma mc chesney had grown to love the noises that accompanied Jock's retiring and rising. His dressing was always signaled by

bangings and thumpings. His splash in the tub were tremendous. His morning plunge could be heard all over the six room apartment. Missus mc chesney used to call gaily through the door. Mercy Jock, you sound like a school of whales coming up for air. You'll think I'm a school of sharks. When it comes to breakfast, Jock would call back, Tell Annie to make enough toast. Mum, she's the tightest thing with the toast I ever did. The rest would be lost and a final surging splash. The noises in

the room across the hall had subsided. Now she listened more intently. No, a jar banged another. Then hasn't my gray suit come back from the tailors? It was to be sponged too, you know, he said he'd bring it Wednesday. This is Tuesday. Oh another bang? Then night mother, good night. Dear creaking sounds and a long, comfortable sigh of complete relaxation.

Emma mc chesney went on with her brushing. She brushed her hair with the usual number of swift, even strokes from the top of the shining head to the waist. She braided her hair into two plaits, Gretchen fashion. Millions of scantily locked women would have given all they possessed to look as Emma mc chesney looked, standing there in kimono and gown. She nicked out the light. Then she too relaxed upon her pillow with a little sigh. Quiet fell on the little apartment. The street noises came up

to her, now roaring, now growing faint. Emma mc chesney lay there, sleepless. She lay flat, hands clasped across her breast, her braids spread out on the pillow. In the darkness of the room. The years rolled before her in panorama, Her girlhood, her marriage, her unhappiness, Jock, the divorce, the struggle for work. Those ten years on the road, Those ten years on the road, How she had hated them

and loved them. The stuffs, the jarring sleepers, the bare little hotel bedrooms, the bad food, the irregular hours, the loneliness, the hard work, the disappointments, the temptations. Yes, but the fascination of it, the dear friends she had made, the great human lessons of it. All and all for Jock, that Jock might have good schools, good clothes, good books, good surroundings, happy times. Why Jock had been the reason for it all. She had swallowed insult because of Jock.

She had borne the drudgery because of Jock. She had resisted temptation, smiled under hardship, worked, fought, saved, succeeded, all because of Jock. And now this pivot about which her whole life had revolved was to be pulled up, wrenched away. Over Emma McChesney, lying there in the dark, there swept one of those unreasoning night fears, the fear of living, the fear of life, a straining of the eyeballs in the dark, the pounding of heartbeats. She sat up in bed,

Her hands went to her face. Her cheeks were burning, and her eyes smarted. She felt that she must see Jock at once, just to be near him, to touch him, to take him in her arms, with his head in the hollow of her breast, as she used to when he was a baby. Why he had been a baby only yesterday, and now he was a man, big enough to stand alone, to live alone, to do without her. Emma mc chesney flung aside the covers and sprang out

of bed. She thrust her feet in slippers, groped for the kimono at the foot of the bed, and tiptoed to the door. She listened no sound from the other room. She stole across the hall, stopped, listened, gained the door. It was opened an inch or more, just to be near him, to know that he lay there sleeping. She pushed the door very very gently. Then she stood in the doorway a moment, scarcely breathing, her head thrust forward, her whole body tense with listening. She could not hear

him breathe. She caught her breath again in that unreasoning fear, and took a quick step forward. Stop or I'll shoot, said a voice. Simultaneously. The light flashed on. Emma McChesney found herself blinking at a determined young man who was steadily pointing a short, chubby, businesslike looking steel affair in her direction. Then the hand that held the steel dropped. What is this anyway? Demanded Jock rather crossly at George Cohan comedy. Emma mc chesney leaned against the foot of

the bed rather weakly. What did you think? What would you think if you heard someone come sneaking along the hall, stopping listening, sneaking to your door, and then opening it and listening again and sneaking in. What would you think it was? How did I know you were going to go around making social calls at two o'clock in the morning. Suddenly, Emma McChesney began to laugh. She leaned over the footboard and laughed hysterically, her head in her arms. Jock stared

a moment in offended disapproval. Then the humor of it caught him, and he buried his head in his pillow to stifle unseemly shrieks. His legs kicked spasmodically beneath the bedclothes. As suddenly as she had begun to laugh, missus McChesney became very sober. Stop it, Jock, Tell me, why weren't you sleeping? I don't know, replied Jock, as suddenly solemn. I sort of began to think, and I couldn't sleep.

What were you thinking of? Jock looked down at the bedclothes and traced the pattern with one forefinger on the sheet. Then he looked up, thinking of you, oh, said Emma McChesney, like a bashful schoolgirl, of me. Jock sat up very straight and clasped his hands about his knees. I got to think, in as what I had said about having made good all along, that's rot. It isn't so. I was striped with yellow like a stick of lemon candy. If I've got this far. It's all because of you.

I've been thinking all along that I was the original electric self starter when you really had to get out and crak me every few miles. Into Emma mc chesney's face there came a wonderful look. It was the sort of look with which a newly made angel might receive her crown and harp. It was the look with which a war hero sees the metal pinned on his breast. It was the look of one who had come into

her reward. Therefore, what nonsense, said Emma mc chesney. If you hadn't had it in you, it wouldn't have come out. It wasn't in me in the first place, contested Jock, stubbornly, you planted it from her stand at the foot of the bed. She looked at him, her eyes glowing brighter and brighter with that wonderful look. Now see here, severely, I want you to go to sleep. I don't intend to stand here and dispute about your ethical innards at

this hour. I'm going to kiss you again. Oh well, if you must, grinned Jock resignedly and folded her in a bear hug. To Imma McChesney, it seemed that the next three weeks leaped by, not by days, but in

one great bound. And the day came when a little, chattering, animated group clustered about the slim, young chap who was fumbling with his tickets, glancing at his watch, signaling a porter for his bags, talking, laughing, trying to hide the pangs of departure under a cloak of gaiety and bandage that deceived no one, least of all did it deceive the two women who stood there. The eyes of the older woman never left his face. The eyes of the younger one seldom were raised to his, but she saw

his every expression. Once Emma mcchesney's eyes shifted a little so as to include both the girl and the boy in her gaze. Grace Skult, in her blue surge and smart blue hat, was worth a separate glance. Sam Hupp was there t a buck hopper who was to be with him in Chicago for the first few weeks. Three or four of the younger men in the office. Frankly envious and heartily congratulatory, they followed him to his train,

all laughter in animation. If this train doesn't go in two minutes, said Jock I'll get scared and chuck the whole business funny. But I'm not so keen on going as there was three weeks ago, his eyes rested on the girl in the blue surge and the smart hat. Emma mc chesney saw that. She saw that his eyes still rested there as he stood on the observation platform when the train pulled out. The sight did not pain

her as she thought it would. There was success in every line of him as he stood there, hat in hand. There was assurance in every breadth of him. His clothes, his skins, in his clear eyes, his slim body, all were as they should be. He had made a place in the world. He was to be a builder of ideas. She thought of him, and of the girl in the blue serge, and of their children to be. Her breast swelled exultingly. Her head came up. This was her handiwork. She looked at it and found that it was good.

Let's strike for the afternoon and call it holiday, suggested Buck. Emma McChesney turned. The train was gone. Ta, Yu'll never grow up, never want to come on. Let's play hooky, Emma, can't I've a dozen letters to get out and miss Lowe wants to show me that new knickerbocker design of hers. They drove back to the office almost in silence. Emma mc chesney made straight for her desk and began dictating letters with an energy that bordered on fury. At five o'clock,

she was still working. At five point thirty, t A Buck came in to find her, still surrounded by papers, set, apples, models. What is this, he demanded, wrathfully, an all night's session. Emma mc chesney looked up from her desk. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright, but there was about her an indefinable air of weariness. Ta I'm afraid to go home. I'll rattle around in that empty flat like a hickory nut in a barrel. We'll have dinner down town and go to the theater. No use, I'll have to go

home sometime now, Emma remonstrated, Buck. You'll soon get used to it. Think of all the years you got along without him. You were happy, weren't you happy? Because I had somebody to work, for, somebody to plan, for somebody to worry about. When I think what that flat will be without him? Why just to wake up and know that you can say good morning to someone who cares. That's worth living for, isn't it, Emma said, Ta evenly, do you realize that you are virtually hounding me into

asking you to marry me? A gasped Emma mc chesney. Well, you said you wanted somebody to worry about, didn't you. A little whimsical smile lay lightly on his lips, Timothy Buck, I'm over forty years old, Emma. In another minute, I'm going to grow sentimental, and nothing can stop me. She looked down at her hands. There fell a little silence. Buck stirred, leaned forward. She looked up from the little watch that ticked away at her wrist. The minutes up,

ta said Emma mc chesney. End of chapter five in of Personality Plus by Edna Ferber