By Miles Wolff
I shall have to admit that with the coming of the hot weather in the early part of June, all my ambition vanished. As the degrees on the thermometer rose, the degrees at which I worked dropped in converse ratio. And, sad to relate, one of the very first things to suffer was my Occasional Column which had been such a success since I started it in the pleasant days of last winter.
Of course I realized at the time that it was working a hardship on the readers of The Times and Tribune. Poor readers, though I, as they eagerly grasp the paper and scan it hurriedly one, closely a second time and minutely a third, only to find that there is no Occasional Column for their diversion. I could even see them as they threw the sheet away in disgust, exclaiming that now there was nothing to read.
As time went on, it was even worse.
Husbands came to me in regard to their wives. Since the Occasional Column stopped, they would exclaim, my wife has lost her health. Such pleas made life miserable for me.
One poor distracted man wrote to me as follows: “My wife has been a constant sufferer for years with a stomach disorder. She was troubled with headaches, sore throat, short breath, heartburn, nausea, liver trouble, cramps and corns. After reading one of your columns, she was much better and by the time she had finished several, she was so much improved that she would take in washing and I did not have to work any more. When you stopped writing your column, all her old troubles returned and in addition she had developed an acute case of varicose veins and enlarged valves of the heart. Would it be possible for you to write more or must I go to work?”
A group of employees approached me with a view to getting the column back from vacation. Said they: “It was just a snap for us last spring when you were writing. In the afternoon, the boss would get the paper and when your pieces came out in it, he would at once become so bored reading it that he almost immediately fell into a deep slumber. So sound was his sleep that he almost did not wake up at all and we could leave the office for the rest of the evening. Now, er—er—how much would you take to run it again on any day of the week except Thursday, say Monday and Friday? Name your price?”
Quite naturally I rose and ordered the bribing employees out of my office, or sanctum as it is called in newspaper jargon, delivering at the same time a forceful lecture on the evils of bribery, quoting freely from the scriptures to prove my point and concluding with a stanza from Scott: “Oh what a tangled web we weave
“When first we practice to deceive.”
As for the husbands, I was sympathetic as I could be, informing them that as soon as I could see my way clear to going in for literary work again, I should do so but that until the muse moved me, simply nothing could be accomplished. They departed disconsolate.
Rosa (whom you surely must remember from the letters she used to write me) sent me another of her terse epistles. I quote it although I ask my readers to remember that the Aunt is a bit cross and sharp-tongued in her old age. With misgivings, it is as follows:
Dear Nephew:
You are a lazy and good-for-nothing as you ever were, I do believe. I was led to think by your family that you were really working here of late but there hasn’t been a thing in either rof the papers as rotten as you write. Have you stopped work?
Affectionately,
Aunt Rosa
P.S. Have you your flannel underwear ready for the Fall?
All of these things had a great deal of weight.
Of course the weather was still hot, seldom less than 105 in the shade, but it was at that much cooler than it had been. Then too, the daily newspapers had been full of stuff about sleeping under blankets which made me hopeful of winter with its more invigorating climate, so I decided to resume my column.
On one of the days soon after this decision, a contribution came in from a reader. I quote: “Have you ever noticed,” writes Miss X, “how it is that doctors and dentists invariably accompany their duties with little snatches of song? It is positively terrible at time.
“For instance, I had occasion to have some work done on my teeth several weeks ago ($56.55 worth to be exact) and all the time the dentist was prying around my molars on the first day he was whistling Onward Christian Soldiers. As he gave those most annoying yanks, there was the constant tune drumming in my ears. It was even worse than having him ask questions when he had that sloppy rubber thing covering my mouth or wanting to know who my beau was, while he had both fists rammed down my throat.
“There was no improvement on the next day. I had to have a diseased tooth extracted and what did he choose to whistly on that day but the doleful dirge, I Need Thee Every Hour.
“On each subsequent visit he had a different tone which gave rise to much speculation on the part of my family when I acquainted them with the facts. It was suggested that he took the hymn book and before starting the day’s work, chose which one would be used as an accompaniment of his labors.
From page 2 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, Sept. 19, 1925. The last sentence of the column doesn't have the punctuation that would close Miss X's letter. Was there something omitted from the column?
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-09-19/ed-1/seq-2/
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