Smyrna times., 1883-01-31
That Office Boy.
A CAREFUL AND ACCURATE STUDY OF
HIS AMUSING FRANKS AND CHILD
IsH SORROWS.

He takes about as much interest in
the work he is hired to do as would a
young bear similarly circumstanced,
and little is the wonder. He is simply
as human machine to run,
fetch, carry and hold things. The
Office is to him a prison.
He is frowned upon, reproved, sat
down upon and snubbed by everybody.
There is no one left for the Office boy
to snub. He is the lowest in the class.
He has no one to kick. He brings
with him a noon lunch and eats it at
10 o'clock. He retires into corners
and eats between whiles. He may at
times be heard munching and MUNICH
ing. Which makes the nervous clerk |
more nervous, who bids the Office boy |
" stop that munching." Which the
Office boy does not always stop. But |
goes into another corner and resumes
munching, and renders himself there
by obnoxious to some other nervous
official. The Office boy has dull jack
knife with which he whittles, some
times a stick, sometimes the furniture.
His initials arc carved about in various
stages of incompletion. He has ten
dency to leave half consumed bread,
butter and meat lunches in odd and
unoCcupied drawers. Which, when by
the enraged owners opened weeks
afterwards emit rank and nusty smells.
By that time the guilty Office boy has
gone. His place is filed by some
other miserable Office boy. There is of
| them constant succession. Their
identity and individuality are of no
earthly Importance. 1t is merely a
small and uneasy boy who munches
and wears out the seat of his panta-
looms as he twists himself about in his
chair and is sworn at and grumbled at
by everybody.
Between his tasks he becomes alb
sorbed in a string. Or plays with the
Office cat. Or draws rude resemblan-
ces to human forms and faces with the
stump of a pencil.
If there be two Office boys it is next
to impossible to keep them apart.
They will graVitate towards each
other like magnets, and chatter in the
piping treble of the ofice-boy era.
When howled at by the nervous per-
son present the piping subsidies into a
confounded whispering. This intensi-
fes the nervous clerks nervousness,
who arises straightway, knocks togeth-
er the heads of the two office boys who
, thereat seperate and shed tears, pune
! tuate the sheddings at intervals of 80
seconds with snifings and repressed
snivelings. Which again attacks the
nerves of the nervous functionary
} present.
If the two Office boys can manage tc
2 get just outside the Office door or OF
a the other side of the board partition
$ they quickly make up for lost time
| and colloquine pipingly and possibly
t scuff1e. Whereat there is more howl
i ing and another twisting ears or knock
e ing of Office boys heads together, will
t the attendant cOursing of silent tear.
q down dirty faces, all being punctuated
a by the usual shifts and snivels of tn
e Office boys.
r Set these two Office boys to do tn,
e performance of any one task and the,
o will together require double the tim
: of any single Office boy. As rule
u the more you have of them the les
d there is done. Three Office boys in on
Office will eventually drive somebod
d into insanity. a.ra ST.. ...
I Life is tiresome, dreary thing t
II that Office boy. Men about him VIII
1t use him are interested and absorbed i
4. their business. He is not. He has nc
N yet arrived at the business stage {
ID being. He is boy, or rather wants t
2. be boy and can't. He longs for MAJ
N bles, tops, kites, traps, skates, dog
er guns, rabbits and Guinea pigs. Fl
In longs for a saw, hammer and mai
IT wherewith he may set to and destro
TX his fathers barn. He is being cheate
ne out of his boyhoOd in that Office. u
ie is the merest uneonsidered adjunct
id the great business machine--a peg,
re nail, screw therein, to be used, wor
ut and tagged out in the process of NAL
ou ing somebody's fortune. .f
re Is it any wonder that the dime nov
X. has such fascination for the off
es boy? That it is his constant compa
I'M ion? That he pores over it when n
on in service? That he revels in prairie
mo- buffaloes, bears and Indian fight!
ou Where, otherwise is his recreation9 ?
err Oh, man absorbed in business, tn
II. aside for a moment, contemplate yo
ur office boy, put yourself in his plaC
w. and give him a moments consider
an tion. Think of the blood of youth
ok manding action now stagnating
your close, heated, stuffy office. "
!. can go in and out at pleasure. B
|, your Office boy nrlst remain to qua
your desk and papers; to say that v
are engaged when for the unwelcor
'eo caller it is expedient that you are Q
,er IS, and that none shall know precisely t
nis time of your return. True, you q
Afu bringing him up in the way he shou
JAIL go, from q business and eommerc
wh standpoint of view. 3" -. 81 >"
'Sr ~ Yet for him it is now dreary roi
-. ne He is as happy rs an Italian orgs
sns grinders monkey, who inwardly p
ana tossing, performs his tricks wishing
" the while he was climbing the trees
rso- his native tropics. s9
1Iu- tHft Ha fi------sss- .---- 5ili.ilH a.
'oid 49," Hazel Kirke y caused a arcbellior
ices the Chester Military Academy on M