.. surrounded by piles of
pajamas, socks, shirts and collars"
"'Well, you said you wanted somebody to worry about, didn't you?'"
PERSONALITY PLUS
I
MAKING GOOD WITH MOTHER
When men began to build cities vertically instead of horizontally
there passed from our highways a picturesque figure, and from our
language an expressive figure of speech. That oily-tongued,
persuasive, soft-stepping stranger in the rusty Prince Albert and
the black string tie who had been wont to haunt our back steps and
front offices with his carefully wrapped bundle, retreated in
bewildered defeat before the clanging blows of steel on steel that
meant the erection of the first twenty-story skyscraper. "As
slick," we used to say, "as a lightning-rod agent." Of what use
his wares on a building whose tower was robed in clouds and which
used the chain lightning for a necklace? The Fourth Avenue antique
dealer had another curio to add to his collection of andirons,
knockers, snuff boxes and warming pans.
But even as this quaint figure vanished there sprang up a new and
glittering one to take his place. He stood framed in the great
plate-glass window of the very building which had brought about
the defeat of his predecessor.
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