Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-01-09

chance to study law within a few years, and
in time he became Judge of the Supreme
Court of his State.
Now, if we hadn't bulldozed that boy into
acting as our scout on that occasion, and if
myself-the first of the bunch to see that
boy Wanted" sign-had gone right into the
got it instead of the boy who did get it. why,
/ might at this very hour be seated the
bench, drawing pictures of cows and things on
my Judges blotting pad while learned counsel
argued their cases, and paying no attention
whatever to the arguments of learned counsel
and However, as l said awhile back, there's
no sense in grievlng over these overlooked or
neglected chances of our youth.
A Thing to Be Forgotten
A N even more grueling experience which l, in
common with lot of other boys, had
owing to our choicyness-due to too much ex-
perience-in the matter of jobs is the cause of
so much poignant misery in recalling it even
to the present day that l hate to set it down
This didn't happen through a Boy Wanted
placard. 1t was a "Boy Wanted" advertise
ment in a newspaper The advertisement was
for " a neat, tidy, healthy, good looking boy Of
cheerful disposition and good manners" OF
course all of who that advertisement
felt that responded perfectly to everything
the advertisement called tor.
Judge, then. of our disgust when starting
for the address given in the advertisement.
found that it was huge bone fertilizer factory
far on the outskirts of the town l never got
nearer than half mile from that bone fertilizer
factory. Even at that distance the air per-
meated with effuvium that caused me to turn
up my nose and flee back to the region of more
familiar aromaS. | remember yet the sense of
outrage felt that the proprietor of such Scan
dalous smelling plant as a bone fertilizer fac
tory should advertise for a neat, tidy healthy,
good looking boy of cheerful disposition and
good manners" Most of the other boys whose
eyes caught the advertisement, whose investi-
cations took them only within half mile of the
bone fertilizer factory, felt the same way as
did about it.
All except one. This boys olfac tory nerves
must have been blunted or something. Any
how, he went all the way to the bone fertilizer
factory and applied for the job.
Really, hate to write about this. Well any,
how, this is the kind of job it was: The pro-
prietor of the bone fertilizer factory. million
aire, living in the finest suburban house in our
county, was a widower with a ten-year-old boy
He wanted boy to act as playmate and COM
panion to this little son. And so it wasn't
didn' permit his nose to stand in the way of his
success in life nailed the job. He went to live
after awhile at the magnificent home of the
bone fertilizer man. Eventually the bone fer
tilizer millionaire adopted him as his foster son.
and the youngster came in for big wad of the
bone fertilizer fortune when the old man died,
and he fell easily into the habit of spending his
winters in the South of France and his sum-
merS cruising around the North cape with his
foster brother. and
Oh, WELL what's the use? But to think that
l could have fallen into that snap if only |
hadn't been VICTIM even in the earliest youth,
of olfactory supersensitivenessi
Never a Reply by Mail
7 CAN'T write with authority of boy
Wanted jobs that had to be applied for
by letter. Not that didn't apply by letter for
many job of this kind: but l never got an
swers to any such applications-never even
one. 1t wasn't for lack of trying, either ]
spent many futile hour. with my tongue
lolling out, clutching fiercely at pen. and
writing, in stiff, sprawlng script. DEAR SIR
In reply to your advertisement blot t" for
an office boy"-splotch- beg to state
another blot" that am twelve years old =
two blots-" and that" etc, etc, with blots
ad lib. right down to the bottom of the page
And I've sent scores and maybe hundreds of
lese ferociously difficult applications to Box
L-3O5 this Office but l never got even
symptom of a reply from any of EN-. don't
exactly know why Maybe the blots had some
thing to do with it.
All the same, those years when you had the
alert eye for the I" Boy Wanted" signs were the
halcyon years!
The trouble is that boys-and grown ups too
are quite unable to identify the halcyon
years while those years being unreeled.
None of us has more than one Boy Wanted"
period. If we had another one a-comng-due
RIGHT now Say-ShOu1dn't we know how tn he