Evening star., 1944-02-21
This and That
BIZ Charles E. Tracepell.

Templeton Jones sometimes Won
dered why store clerks did not show
more interest in the things they sold
Especially drug store statesmen.
If there is any place in the world
which intrigues Jones, it is the modern
drug store, with its prescription depart
ment, its candies, magazines, toilet
goods, soda fountain-and people
Everything about such a place fas-
cinates him, and he thinks that it should
those who work in it, but at times they
seem to be terribly bored.
y
II Jones were clerk in such store,
he thinks he would be so intrigued by
the things he sold that he would talk
about them to the customers
His kick against the clerks Is that
they seem to know nothing about the
things they sell, and worse than that,
they are not interested to find out.
Vitamins, for instance
Templeton Jones is vitamin en-
thusiast. He bought the first packaged
vitamins, many years ago, and since
then has followed the discovery of new
ones, and their sales, as perhaps no
other man in Washington has
He knows all the brand names, and
all the firms. Nothing that any one else,
even doctor, can say against them
has any effect on him. He is loyal to
vitaminS.
Vitamins, Of course, are found in foods,
and some persons, including some medi-
cal men, think that therefore there is
no need to take them regularly in any
other way.
But when one thinks Of all the ways
in which foods can be deprived of their
vitamins, and how easily these precious
food factors may be lost from foods,
it may be believed that the vitamin
craze" as some call it, is worthwhile
Templeton Jones can tell you the
potencies of most of the popular brands
of manufactured vitamins. He has taken
them in pills, pellets, tablets, sirups,
eliXirs, etc. He knows them by taste,
sight, and smell
And he has never found fellow en-
thusiast among the clerks who have
sold them to him. No doubt they are
too busy selling other things to stop
and talk much to him about their vita
min products.
The endless array of bottles and boxes
OF capsules, tablets, sirups excited in
Jones something of the amazed wonder
and delight of old Omar in his wines
He, too, wonders what the druggist
buys with his money one-half so mar
velous as the vitaminS he sells.
Jones plays with these pills as musi-
clan does with his notes.
He likes to try different ones and to
determine If they are any better than
the last ones he took.
He specializes In the B complex. as
1t is called, that marvellous and wonder
working modern and scientific tonic,
the real tonic for which the ancients
One day Jones went into his favorite
drug store
He came up to the counter and dis
covered a new clerk
He asked for favorite brand of vita
Minis.
'The best in the shop" explained the
man, with delighted smile
Templeton Jones inwardly thrilled.
A fellow enthusiast!
They spent nice half hour talking
about vitamins. Jones learned few
new facts, and he hoped that he had
given his friend few, too.
He was altogether thrilled.
X X X
A few days later he thought that he
would just stop in the store to talk
with that interesting fellow who knew
his vitamins.
When he got in, he looked around
in vain. The clerk was not there.
He asked about him.
"Oh, Mr.. Smith, you mean? He has
left u.s."
Jones politely inquired.
The fascinating clerk had left, all
right. He had gone, it developed, with
the sales force Of the particular brand
OF vitamins he had been boosting.