To this day I do not know what impulse moved Fred O'Brien to decide
that he wanted me as his stenographer. His was an important department,
and he could have had as good a stenographer as fifteen dollars a week
will get, and that's a fair salary for work of that kind. Here was I,
palpably a green girl, who could not type a line! No man's voice ever
sounded nicer than that gruff young Irishman's when he said that I
could stay, that for the first week I could do the letters by hand; but
I was to practise every opportunity I got, and I could help him a lot
if I would write the letters without making it necessary for him to
dictate them.
In justification of my boast to O'Brien that I would "make good," let
me say that I stayed in his department all the time I was at the yards,
and this is the reference he gave me when he himself left to take
charge of the New York office:
To Whom it may Concern:
This is to certify that Miss Nora Ascough, who has been in my
employ for the past few months as stenographer and typewriter, is
an A No. 1 Crack-a-Jack.
Smith & Co. Per, Fred O'Brien, Mgr.
Some one once said of me that I owed my success as a writer mainly
to the fact that I used my sex as a means to help me climb. That is
partly true not only in the case of my writing, but of my work as a
stenographer. I have been pushed and helped by men who liked me, but in
both cases I _made good_ after I was started.
I think it would have broken my heart not to have "made good" to Fred
O'Brien after he had trusted me in this way. This man, the first I
worked for in America, was probably the best friend I ever had or will
have. I do not mean so much while I worked for him, but later in my
life.
I have spoken of the mild sensation I made as I walked down that
main aisle. All through the day, in whatever direction I looked, I
encountered interested eyes bent upon me. Some were those of girls
like myself, some office boys, a number of department managers, and
nearly all the clerks in my vicinity. Some craned their necks to get a
glimpse of me, some came officiously to talk to O'Brien. Thus it was
an embarrassing day for me, especially at luncheon-hour, when I did
not know quite what to do. Then a girl from another department came
over and asked me to go to luncheon with her. She said that her "boss,"
whose name was Hermann, and who was a chum of O'Brien, had bade her
look out for me.
She pointed Hermann out to me as we passed along, and he seized his
hat, and came after us; but as he was passing our department, O'Brien
seized him, and, looking back, I saw them both laughing, and I felt
sure O'Brien was telling him about me.
Hermann was about twenty-five. He had a stiff thatch of yellow
hair which he brushed up straight, and which stood up just like
bristles on his head. He had wide-awake eyes, and looked like a human
interrogation-point, dressed very dudishly, and flirted right and
left with all the girls. Though born in America, and wiry and active,
nevertheless there was the stamp of "Made in Germany" everywhere
upon him. Later in the afternoon he stuck so insistently about our
department that O'Brien finally introduced us, and then said with a
grin:
"Now clear out. You got what you wanted."
Two or three departments to the left of me I had noticed a very blond,
plumpish, rather good-looking young man, who watched me unceasingly
throughout the day, but, whenever I looked at him, would blush, just
like a girl, and look down and fuss with papers on his desk. Well,
about the middle of the afternoon, and while O'Brien was away from the
department, a boy came over and laid a note on my desk. It was folded
ingeniously, twisted into a sort of bowknot, and it was addressed,
"Stenographer, Soap Dept."
I thought it was some instruction from O'Brien, especially as the boy
said:
"Any answer?"