Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-20
HAVE YOU
EYER NOTICED?

Have You even noticed how easy it is
to draw a crowd In the street, Just watch
some day when business is dull. some real
pleasant rainy day when It is easier To ge-
Hetty Green to give you a share OF bank
stock than II is to get a customer to buy
more than 20 cents worth OF goods Take
plenty OF time and watch the streets. See
how many other idle people there are I'm
the world. and maybe you Will no longer
wonder that the newspapers are full of
stories OF gold bricks and green goods and
near-minc booms.
On. yes II is easy to fool a crowd. simply
because the average crowd of people
the street wants to be fooled II just beE;s
to be buncoed. Not always in terms OF
dollars and cents. however. But think
of the time wasted in watching fool things,
II Is positively sinful
Nine people out of ten Will stop and look
at a drunken man In the street Nice.
pleasant spectacle. a drunken man. Cheers
you up. makes you feel proud of your race
and period. and all that. Just the kind of
mental picture to carry around with YOU
all day Yet you will stare at that poor
self-cheated wretch and waste your time.
and IL a policeman comes along and arrests
him you will congregate and loiier and an
lawfully assemble, and then you will per
haps go home and tell what funny thing
you saw on the street. That is one of tho
worst time-wasting schemes going. because
pays high price for the privilege.
A man painting A fagpole inva iapiy
draws a crowd. Why? Goodness knows.
unless It is because the folks who are gap
ing really hope the rigging will break and
the painter will fall. and they will see
something shocking. There is nothing very
thrilling in the job itself-just plain.
common man sitting in a sling slappins
paint on a sick. But there's always a
chance to be in the front rank when the
ambulance backs up to the curb
The chaps who have goods to sell in she
street are to this trait of human ma
ture. They are the king pins of the pro-
fession of timewasters. There's one line Of
trinkets they sell that has probably cost
this country several million years In lost
minutes-those little dancing toys that
strung on a black thread and worked by
a surreptitious juggling Of finger. Great
scheme. this. for getting twenty or thirty
people In bunch. The whole thing is just
as familiar to every person present as the
phenomenon of a sound occurring when a
dog opens its face and losses its head and
jerks its body. Nobody is fooled, and yet
those crafty chaps get their audiences much
more easily than a first-class lecturer who
has tremendous stock OF useful infor-
nation can draw a corporafs guard.
-
Everybody is familiar with the old plot
of going out into the street and looking
straight up in the air for couple of min
utes. 1t never fails. Inside of one minute
there will be twenty other people trying 10
see the same thing-possibly a few less in
Alexandria or Laurel. but let us stick TO
estimate. In seventy seconds there
will be fifty people trying to pierce tho
mystery of the heavens. and in ninety sec
onds the street will be so full of stretch
ers the police will begin tn take notice.
Old as this trick is it never fails. 1t works
in sophisticated Washington just as easily
in trusting and innocent New York.
because human curiosity is not a matter
of longitude or tax rates but runs true 10
type.
Busy men are not immune from this
tendency. Indeed the more rushed "A man
is at his store office the more apt he
is to yield just bit to the temptation to
waste little time. 1t is like man on a
diet The doctor was probably very, very
solemn when he told you on no account TO
eat beefsteak. and yet really in your heart
you believe that he didn't mean it literally.
Queer old world. this one call our
own, after all. Just packed to the crust
with contradictions and absurdities, and
riddles and follies. That is what makes it
the most interesting world we have ever
lived in. Why. If it were not for these
same silly little qurks that make men
and women-do foolish things, and waste
time. and bump the conventions il would
be just about stupid as a page of gov
eminent statistics. It's these nonsenslcal
kinks in all of US that make every fellow
feel that he is just few moral Inches
higher than all the rest.
This is all right as a line of talk In print.
But never try it on in the open unless YOU
want to get frost-bitten. It is not popu-
lar style of delivery. There is probably
no man living who hasn't a keen, true
conception of his own time values, and
who will not reward your solicitude with
stern and scornful silence If you reproach
him with wasting his minutes watching
man painting a pole or juggling a black
thread or writing calling cards or frying
pancakes. There are a good many pretty
disagreeable nuisances in the world. but
none worse than the chap who has ap-
pointed himself your own individual moral
guide 1t is all right to hire teachers,
and every man ought to go to church. But
there's difference as big as that which
distinguishes pipe organ from a jewsharp
between the man ask for help and the
one who prescrlbes for us without even
being introduced.