On glancing the other day through the only human column of my
newspaper--that headed "Personal"--I was much intrigued by the
advertisement of a gentleman who styled himself a "busy commercial
magnate," and who announced his urgent need of a "right-hand man." The
duties of the post were not particularised, but their importance was
made clear by the statement that "any salary within reason" would be
paid to a really suitable person.
No, I did not think of applying for the post myself; a twelve months'
adjutancy to a dyspeptic Colonel had long cured me of the desire to
bottle-wash for anyone again, however lavish the remuneration. But, I
thought to myself, it must evidently be a profitable notion to employ
a right-hand man, or why should this magnate person be so airy on the
subject of salary? Would it not then pay me to engage somebody in
a similar capacity? Increased production, in spite of Trade Union
economics, is emphatically a need of the moment. With a right-hand man
at my right hand (when he wasn't at my left) I could, I felt sure,
increase my own output enormously; and I began to plan out my daily
work under the reconstruction scheme.
I will call him "Snaggs"; that will save me the trouble of having to
write "my right-hand man" every time I want to refer to him; but when
he enters my service such economy of labour will not, of course,
be necessary. Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at nine every
morning--no, on second thoughts he will sleep in, in case an
inspiration that needs recording arrives after I have gone to bed. (I
shrink from estimating how much wealth I have lost through going to
sleep on my nocturnal inspirations, which the most thorough search
next morning never avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, with
alarm attachment, running into Snaggs's room will alter all that.)
His first duty of the day will be to wade through all the newspapers
and cut out any paragraphs that may serve as pegs for an article or a
set of verses. My own difficulty in this respect has always been that
I can never manage to get through more than one paper in a working
morning, and not all of that; invariably my attention gets caught
by some long and instructive but (for my purposes) hopelessly
unsuggestive dissertation on Pedigree Pigs or The Co-operative
Movement in Lower Papua, and I consequently overlook many of those
inspiring little "stories" that inform us, for example, that a
distinguished physician advocates the use of tomato-sauce as a
hair-restorer.
By the time I have finished breakfast, I reckon, Snaggs will have
found me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, neatly arranged with
a few skeleton suggestions for the treatment of each. I shall first
decide which are to be handled in prose and which in verse, and in the
case of the latter shall jot down a few words and phrases that will
obviously have to be dragged in as line-endings. Then I shall put
Snaggs on to the purely mechanical drudgery of finding all the
possible rhymes to these words (_e.g._, fascinate, assassinate,
pro-Krassinate--you know the sort of thing that's called for), and by
the time he has catalogued them all I shall have dashed off most of
the prose articles, which Snaggs will then proceed to type while I am
engaged in the comparatively simple task of piecing together the verse
jigsaws. In this way I should easily be able to earn an ordinary
week's takings in a morning.
The next task will be the placing of this material, and that is how
Snaggs's afternoons will be spent. I have always had an unnecessarily
tender feeling for editors, and often, after laboriously giving birth
to an article, have concealed it in a drawer rather than run the risk
of boring anyone with its perusal. Snaggs, however, will be fashioned
of more pachydermatous material and will daily make himself such a
nuisance that they'll give him an order, and possibly a long contract,
to get rid of him. By a proper system of book-keeping he will also
save me from the occasional blunder of sending the same article to the
same paper twice.
My wife, to whom I have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first
job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange
about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to
moot. But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as
to the stability of his princely salary. Perhaps it will be best if,
before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited
company, "for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business
and goodwill of the private enterprise known as Percival
Trumpington-Jones, Esq." A sufficient number of shares will be issued
to guarantee Snaggs at least his first year's screw; that done, the
proposition should be practically gilt-edged. So who's coming in on
the bargain-basement floor?
* * * * *
[Illustration: =THE PHILANTHROPIST.=
_Customer._ "WHY, YOU'VE PUT YOUR PRICES UP AGAIN!"
_Fishmonger._ "WELL, MUM, I ASK YER, 'OW ELSE ARE WE TO FIGHT THE
PROFITEER AT 'IS OWN GAME?"]
* * * * *