The Coconino sun., 1921-02-18

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 A. F. Grimmell, cashier of the First National bank, tells this one, which to some extent reflects the way lot of people feel nowadays: A Texas bank received a letter from one of its customers who had been re- quested to pay off or reduce a loan which was getting rather old. This was the letter:
 "I got your letter asking me to pay off my loan. ain't forgot you, and when them as owe me pay up, l am going to pay you, but if you ain't no better prepared to meet your God on Judgment Day than am prepared to pay that loan now, you will go to hell sure. Goodbye"
 Instead of waiting for the officers of the chamber of commerce to do it all, each member of the organization should personally be active. You can't go out and build the good roads we need. You can't build the hotel we need. You can't dam Swift ger Canyon and make a lake there.
 Those things require organized eff fort and money; and your part will be to help with all your might when the proper time comes.
 But you can do lot in building and populariZing this town and making it and yourself more prosperous. It won't cost you cent to do it.
 This is your part: Give the strang- CT in town the glad hand Act friend ly. Show little interest in him. Crack a smile out of that stone face of yours; even go so far as to crack a joke if you have no conscientious ob- jections. Answer the strangers ques- tions. Give him information. Tell him without waiting for him to ask what there is to see around here. As sure him he is in the finest town in the finest state in the country and that you are mighty glad he is here.
 The tourist may be wet; he may have come in over disgraceful roads; he may have been held up at various points on the road by exorbitant prices.
 He may not like our hotel accom- modations.
 But if we act really friendly toward him, really interested in him, really as though we want to be of use to him and would like to see him comfort able, he'll forget all his other troubles at least will not take his accumulat- ed grouch out on us--will stay here longer and will go away and tell other people what fine town this is.
 Strangers get their main impress sions of any town from the attitude toward them of the people they meet in the town. If we are friendly, oblig ing, courteous, they like the town. If we are grouchy, indifferent, uncivil, they hate the town.
 A prosperous tourist and his family here last summer approached a local man who gets his living chiefly from strangers. They had heard about Sunset mountain and asked the local man how far it was from here.
 "It's far enough he replied, with out looking up from his finger nails, which he was pairing
 The atmosphere in that room went down forty degrees in a fortieth of a second. They were cultured people, patrons of the discourteous Flagstaff hihi' iuCy "Sic SpCHuiIlS lIoItS here, willing to spend more. He vir- tually slapped them in the face.
 Isn't it a fact that you remember most pleasantly those towns you have visited in which the people have been friendly to you? Don't it make you feel good all over when you go away and the clerk of the hotel where you register remembers you and greets you by name; or when the walters know you? Recognition and friendliness in a strange town mean just as much to the other fellow as they do to you.
 It is up to every member of the chamber of commerce, if he really has the best interests of Flagstaff at heart to make himself reception commit tee of one to act like a friend toward strangers. If all of us will do that we'll build up Flagstaff despite all