Personality Plus | Page 2

when we would search our soul for a
synonym to express all that was low-voiced, and suave, and judicious,
and patient, and sure, we began to say, "As alert as an advertising
expert."
Jock McChesney, looking as fresh and clear-eyed as only twenty-one
and a cold shower can make one look, stood in the doorway of his
mother's bedroom. His toilette had halted abruptly at the bathrobe stage.
One of those bulky garments swathed his slim figure, while over his
left arm hung a gray tweed Norfolk coat. From his right hand dangled a
pair of trousers, in pattern a modish black-and-white.
Jock regarded the gray garment on his arm with moody eyes.
"Well, I'd like to know what's the matter with it!" he demanded, a trifle
irritably.
Emma McChesney, in the act of surveying her back hair in the mirror,
paused, hand glass poised half way, to regard her son.
"All right," she answered cheerfully. "I'll tell you. It's too young."
"Young!" He held it at arm's length and stared at it. "What d'you
mean--young?"
Emma McChesney came forward, wrapping the folds of her kimono
about her. She took the disputed garment in one hand and held it aloft.
"I know that you look like a man on a magazine cover in it. But
Norfolk suits spell tennis, and seashore, and elegant leisure. And you're
going out this morning, Son, to interview business men. You're going
to try to impress the advertising world with the fact that it needs your
expert services. You walk into a business office in a Norfolk suit, and
everybody from the office boy to the president of the company will ask
you what your score is."

She tossed it back over his arm.
"I'll wear the black and white," said Jock resignedly, and turned toward
his own room. At his doorway he paused and raised his voice slightly:
"For that matter, they're looking for young men. Everybody's young.
Why, the biggest men in the advertising game are just kids." He
disappeared within his room, still talking. "Look at McQuirk,
advertising manager of the Combs Car Company. He's so young he has
to disguise himself in bone-trimmed eye-glasses with a black ribbon to
get away with it. Look at Hopper, of the Berg, Shriner Company. Pulls
down ninety thousand a year, and if he's thirty-five I'll--"
"Well, you asked my advice," interrupted his mother's voice with that
muffled effect which is caused by a skirt being slipped over the head,
"and I gave it. Wear a white duck sailor suit with blue anchors and
carry a red tin pail and a shovel, if you want to look young. Only get
into it in a jiffy, Son, because breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. I
can tell by the way Annie's crashing the cups. So step lively if you want
to pay your lovely mother's subway fare."
Ten minutes later the slim young figure, in its English-fitting black and
white, sat opposite Emma McChesney at the breakfast table and
between excited gulps of coffee outlined a meteoric career in his
chosen field. And the more he talked and the rosier his figures of
speech became, the more silent and thoughtful fell his mother. She
wondered if five o'clock would find a droop to the set of those young
shoulders; if the springy young legs in their absurdly scant modish
trousers would have lost some of their elasticity; if the buoyant step in
the flat-heeled shoes would not drag a little. Thirteen years of business
experience had taught her to swallow smilingly the bitter pill of rebuff.
But this boy was to experience his first dose to-day. She felt again that
sensation of almost physical nausea--that sickness of heart and spirit
which had come over her when she had met her first sneer and
intolerant shrug. It had been her maiden trip on the road for the T.A.
Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She was secretary of that
company now, and moving spirit in its policy. But the wound of that
first insult still ached. A word from her would have placed the boy and

saved him from curt refusals. She withheld that word. He must fight his
fight alone.
"I want to write the kind of ad," Jock was saying excitedly, "that you
see 'em staring at in the subways, and street cars and L-trains. I want to
sit across the aisle and watch their up-turned faces staring at that
oblong, and reading it aloud to each other."
"Isn't that an awfully obvious necktie you're wearing, Jock?" inquired
his mother irrelevantly.
"This? You ought to see some of them. This is a Quaker stock in
comparison." He glanced down complacently at the vivid-hued silken
scarf that the season's mode demanded. Immediately he was off again.
"And the first