The Washington times., 1911-01-21
Andrew and Imogene
BY Roe Fulkerson.
f<(Y HOS your friend?' asked
" ''Hulda Gladman," said

Imogene, succinctly.
Got secret sorrow of some sort?"
asked Andrew.
Yes" said Imogene. They are wait
ing for her to die"
''Elucidate, my dear" said Andrew.
Your remark is ambiguous l don't
know whether the lady has money that
her heirs want, or whether she has
some fatal disease eating at her vitaIs
like a worm'A the bud,' as your friend
Shakespeare puts it,"
'Oh, it's simply that she is employed
in the Pension Office" said Imogene,
1T seems to that she is of a nervous
and melancholy disposition, and 1t was
only recently announced that it was the
policy of the Government to allow the
clerks in the Pension Office to die out
with the pensioners. 1t has almost
shattered her health to know that every
night the Commissioner of Pensions sits
down with pad and pencil and figures
out the average of deaths among the
pensioners and,the clerks.
"She says she feels that she is an
inmate of home for incurabIes or the
fatal ward of hospital. You see there
are approximately 100000 pensioners and
pensioners to look after, and if the
death rate among the pensioners takes
a sudden squirt there is a consequent
depression in the facial expression OF
the commissioner and the chief clerks,
and they will go round to the desks OF
the old and infirm clerks or the ones
who look sickly, and ask after their
health in a manner that is perfectly
dreadful, and then they go upstairs and
look over the sick-leave list, and Won
ddr how many of the sick people won't
come back.
"She tells me that they get as excited
over it as these stock gamblers do over
reading hte returns from the market off
of a ticker tape. and when the mortal
ity record of the office is worse than
that of the pensioners the head people
down there rub their hands with glee
and chortle, and tell each other that the
office is winning.
You see to be a peEsiOner of the
civil war a person must have been
twenty-one years old in 1854, so that
would make all those pensioners sixty
eight or in round numbers seventy years
old, and the department feels that the
people now in the Pension Office will
last as long as the pensioners do, and 50
they are making no new appointments,
but have borrowed a stamp from the
condemns ton committee of the Board
of Health and have stamped the pay
roll down there like the committee does
a crate of overripe eggs CONDEMNED,
and HuIda says she feels nervous over
it.
only the other day she says one o.
the laborers went through the main
court of the building singing that old
hymn, which goes When this poor
lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in
the grave and the clerks from the Of
fees above threw vouchers. medical
works and other books down on his
head till it took the entire force of
laborcrs of the office till II o'clock that
night to dig him out.
She says the older clerks down there
get hysterical If they meet a funeral
in the street, and when an undertaken
stopped in the office to see about his
pension recently the clerks just sat at
their desks and shivered!
"Hulda says that it is common report
around the office that It will be only
a few Years till the office force will have
Ill died OUT except TWO OF ItlTet, anu
will he gathered in an upstairs corner
room doing the clerical work for
bunch of widows and Spanish war PEN
sioners, and that there is talk of Or
ganiZing a tontine savings plan, but
| there seems to be a general opinion that
the winner would be either Walter
KIopfer, DIR. Coolidge. or DR.. Woodman.
and with them such favoTites it is hard
| to get the slender, anaemiC clerks to go
into the tOntine.
II tell you, Andrew, it's a shame FOR
people to have to work under sentence
of death that way, and some of the
nervous people are getting positively
sick about 1t. and then when they get
sick the terrible thought of their life
sentence in that department comes to
them, and that. Don't trim your
nails with your penknife!'
"Well, they are getting in bad shape,
he complained. You don't tend to them
regularly"
We'll. I'll get the manicure things
and fix them at once. There is no need
for you to have them done down
town.
NJ~4o - EzLskLs