第95章 Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer (5)

Bok's secretary told him one day that there was in the outer office the most irate woman he had ever tried to handle; that he had tried for half an hour to appease her, but it was of no use.She threatened to remain until Bok admitted her, and see him she would, and tell him exactly what she thought of him.The secretary looked as if he had been through a struggle."It's hopeless," he said."Will you see her?""Certainly," said Bok."Show her in."

The moment the woman came in, she began a perfect torrent of abuse.Bok could not piece out, try as he might, what it was all about.But he did gather from the explosion that the woman considered him a hypocrite who wrote one thing and did another; that he was really a thief, stealing a woman's money, and so forth.There was no chance of a word for fully fifteen minutes and then, when she was almost breathless, Bok managed to ask if his caller would kindly tell him just what he had done.

Another torrent of incoherent abuse came forth, but after a while it became apparent that the woman's complaint was that she had sent a dollar for a subscription to The Ladies' Home Journal; had never had a copy of the magazine, had complained, and been told there was no record of the money being received.And as she had sent her subscription to Bok personally, he had purloined the dollar!

It was fully half an hour before Bok could explain to the irate woman that he never remembered receiving a letter from her; that subscriptions, even when personally addressed to him, did not come to his desk, etc.; that if she would leave her name and address he would have the matter investigated.Absolutely unconvinced that anything would be done, and unaltered in her opinion about Bok, the woman finally left.

Two days later a card was handed in to the editor with a note asking him to see for a moment the husband of his irate caller.When the man came in, he looked sheepish and amused in turn, and finally said:

"I hardly know what to say, because I don't know what my wife said to you.But if what she said to me is any index of her talk with you, Iwant to apologize for her most profoundly.She isn't well, and we shall both have to let it go at that.As for her subscription, you, of course, never received it, for, with difficulty, I finally extracted the fact from her that she pinned a dollar bill to a postal card and dropped it in a street postal box.And she doesn't yet see that she has done anything extraordinary, or that she had a faith in Uncle Sam that I call sublime."The Journal had been calling the attention of its readers to the defacement of the landscape by billboard advertisers.One day on his way to New York he found himself sitting in a sleeping-car section opposite a woman and her daughter.

The mother was looking at the landscape when suddenly she commented:

"There are some of those ugly advertising signs that Mr.Bok says are such a defacement to the landscape.I never noticed them before, but he is right, and I am going to write and tell him so.""Oh, mamma, don't," said the girl."That man is pampered enough by women.Don't make him worse.Ethel says he is now the vainest man in America."Bok's eyes must have twinkled, and just then the mother looked at him, caught his eye; she gave a little gasp, and Bok saw that she had telepathically discovered him!

He smiled, raised his hat, presented his card to the mother, and said:

"Excuse me, but I do want to defend myself from that last statement, if I may.I couldn't help overhearing it."The mother, a woman of the world, read the name on the card quickly and smiled, but the daughter's face was a study as she leaned over and glanced at the card.She turned scarlet and then white.

"Now, do tell me," asked Bok of the daughter, "who 'Ethel' is, so that Imay try at least to prove that I am not what she thinks."The daughter was completely flustered.For the rest of the journey, however, the talk was informal; the girl became more at ease, and Bok ended by dining with the mother and daughter at their hotel that evening.

But he never found out "Ethel's" other name!

There were curiously amusing sides to a man's editorship of a woman's magazine!