United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


His own life, Bowman was inclined to believe, is typical of most civilised men, in that it is passed in constant terror of his inferiors. The people whom he hires to serve him strike fear into Bowman's soul. He is habitually afraid of janitors, train-guards, elevator-boys, barbers, bootblacks, telephone-girls, and saleswomen. But his particular dread is of waiters.

Rogers not only rendered waste products valuable, but he utilized human energies, often to the great surprise of the owner. That gentle Tarbell slant to the effect that "even the elevator-boys in The Standard Oil offices are hired with an idea of their development," is a great compliment to a man who was not only a great businessman, but a great teacher.

He was burly and selfish as a hog, and was often so designated by work-weary women, whom he forced to stand while he read his market reports in callous absorption. His associates greeted him with a nod, unsmiling and curt, and the elevator-boys at the Pratt building were careful not to elbow him.

After all, we were in the midst of the Atlantic, and in a crisis the elevator-boys themselves would have more authority than any passenger, however gorgeous. A thought salutary for gorgeous passengers that they were in the final resort mere fool bodies to be controlled!

And so every employee on every floor of the hotel was working individually for the success of the ball, from the engineers in charge of the electric light plant in the cellar, to the night-watchman on the ninth story, and the elevator-boys who belonged to no floor in particular. Miss Celestine Terrell, who was Mrs.

"I shouldn't ever advise any one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for the same reason.

These were the simpler folk of the official world with which circumstance housed him for eight hours daily, bootblacks, elevator-boys, porters, doormen. For to the big, clean, wholesome personality which appeals irresistibly to these humbler people, Barclay added an astonishing memory for faces, and for the names and circumstances connected with them.

But also they do not complain about repairs; they are not fussy about demanding a certificate of moral perfection from the janitor. They speak cheerily to elevator-boys and slink off into saloons. Not all of them keep Yom Kippur; they all talk of being "broad-minded." Mr. Wilkins's office was small and agitated.

Kenton ran the gauntlet of welcome from the black elevator-boys and bell-boys and the head-waiter, who went before him to pull out the judge's chair, with commanding frowns to his underlings to do the like for the rest of the family; and as his own clumsy Irish waiter stood behind his chair, breathing heavily upon the judge's head, he gave his order for breakfast, with a curious sense of having got home again from some strange place.

Write it up with lots of live-stock wandering in and out, bring in janitors and elevator-boys and butchers, show up some of the humors of flat life, if there be any such, call it A Hole in the Flat, and put it on the stage. Nine hundred nights is the very shortest run it could have, which at fifty dollars a night for the author is $45,000 in good hard dollars. Mr.