Edna Ferber

“ Jock McChesney was the youngest man on the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company's big staff of surprisingly young men. So young that the casual glance did not reveal to you the marks that the strain of those two years had left on his boyish face. But the marks were there.
Nature etches with the most delicate of points. She knows the cunning secret of light and shadow. You scarcely realize that she has been at work. ”

“ Grace Galt, unbelievably young and pretty to have won a place for herself in that conference of business people, smiled in secret at Jock McChesney's evident struggle to conceal his elation at being present at this, his first staff meeting.
The conference had lasted one hour now. In that time Featherloom petticoats had been picked to pieces, bit by bit, from hem to waist-band. Nothing had been left untouched. Every angle had come under the keen vision of the advertising experts—the comfort of the garment, its durability, style, cheapness, service. Which to emphasize? ”

“ So when her young son, backed by the profound business knowledge gained in his one year with the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company, hinted gently that her methods and training were archaic, ineffectual, and lacking in those twin condiments known to the twentieth century as pep and ginger, she would listen, eyebrows raised, lower lip caught between her teeth—a trick which gives a distorted expression to the features, calculated to hide any lurking tendency to grin. Besides, though Emma McChesney was forty she looked thirty-two (as business women do) , and knew it. ”

“ When we have a job that needs a woman's eye do we send her? No. Why? Because she's too blame charming. Too much personality. A man just naturally refuses to talk business to a pretty woman unless she's so smart that—"
"My mother," interrupted Jock, suddenly, and then stopped, surprised at himself.
"Your mother," said Bartholomew Berg slowly, "is one woman in a million. Don't ever forget that. They don't turn out models like Emma McChesney more than once every blue moon."
Jock got to his feet slowly. He felt heavy, old. "I suppose," he began, "that this ends my—my advertising career." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Emma McChesney came over from her side of the table and stood very close to her son. She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the sullen, angry young face.
"I've seen older men than you are, Jock, and better men, and bigger men, wearing that same look, and for the same reason. Every ambitious man or woman in business wears it at one time or another. Sooner or later, Jock, you'll have your chance at the money end of this game. If you don't care about the thing you call ethics, it'll be sooner. ”

“ Jock smiled a little patient smile and brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from the sleeve of his very correct coat.
"I want to ask him for a job as office boy," he jibed.
An answering grin overspread the fat features of the usher. Even an usher likes his little joke. The sense of humor dies hard. ”

“ The scarlet coat has sobered down to the somber gray and the snuffy brown of that unromantic garment known as the business suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. ”

“ You're right. Bartholomew Berg is so darned high-principled that two muckers like you and me, groveling around in the dirt, can't even see the tips of the heights to which his ideals have soared. Don't stop me. I know I'm talking like a book. But I feel like something that has just been kicked out into the sunshine after having been in jail."
"You're tired," said Ben Griebler. "It's been a strain. Something always snaps after a long tension."
Jock's flat palm came down among the papers with a crack. ”

“ His mother faced him quietly across the table.
"Grace Galt's getting twice as much as I am," Jock broke out, with savage suddenness. "The first year I didn't mind. A fellow gets accustomed, these days, to see women breaking into all the professions and getting away with men-size salaries. But her pay check doubles mine—more than doubles it."
"It's been my experience," observed Emma McChesney, "that when a firm condescends to pay a woman twice as much as a man, that means she's worth six times as much." ”

“ And 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. ”

“ Sam Hupp leaned forward, and his eyes behind their great round black-rimmed glasses were intent on Jock. "I'm not going to try to steer you. You think that advertising is a game. It isn't. There are those who think it's a science. But it isn't that either. It's white magic, that's what it is. And you can't learn it from books, any more than you can master trout fishing from reading 'The Complete Angler.'" He swung about and swept the beauty lotions before him in a little heap at the end of his desk. "Here, take this stuff. ”

“ Jock, who at the beginning was so puffed with pride that his gold fountain pen threatened to burst the confines of his very modishly tight vest, lost two degrees of pompousness a day, and his attitude toward his unreproachful mother was almost humble.
A dozen times a week T.A. Buck would stroll casually into Mrs. McChesney's office. "Think it's going to take hold?" he would ask. "Our men say the dealers have laid in, but the public doesn't seem to be tearing itself limb from limb to get to our stuff."
Emma McChesney would smile, and shrug noncommittal shoulders. ”

“ It's the same quirk that makes women pray for daughters and men for sons. It's the same kink that makes women read the marriage and death notices first in a newspaper. It's the same queer strain that causes a mother to lavish the most love on the weakest, wilfullest child. Perhaps I wouldn't have loved Jock so much if there hadn't been that streak of yellow in him, and if I hadn't had to work so hard to dilute it until now it's only a faint cream color. There ought to be a special prayer for women who are bringing up their sons alone."
Buck stirred a little uneasily. ”

“ But this silence was different. There was something electric in it. It was a silence that beats on the brain like a noise. Jock McChesney, bent over his work, heard it, felt it, and, oppressed by it, looked up suddenly. He met those two eyes opposite.
"Spooks? Or is it my godlike beauty which holds you thus? Or is my face dirty?"
Emma McChesney did not smile. She laid her magazine on the table, face down, and leaned forward, her staring eyes still fixed on her son's face.
"Look here, young 'un. Are you working too hard?"
"Me? Now? This stuff you mean—?" ”

“ Don't! Don't, Blonde. We'll see each other every few weeks. I'll be coming to New York to see the sights, like the rest of the rubes, and I suppose the noise and lights will confuse me so that I'll be glad to get back to the sylvan quiet of Chicago. And then you'll run out there, eh? We'll have regular bats, Mrs. Mack. Dinner and the theater and supper! Yes?"
"Yes," said Emma McChesney, in muffled tones that totally lacked enthusiasm. ”

“ T.A. Buck ran a frenzied hand over his head. "My dear child," with careful politeness, "will you please try to be sane? I find you sitting at your desk, staring into space, your face white as a ghost's, your whole appearance that of a person who has received a death-blow. And then you say, 'Not exactly bad'!"
"It's this," explained Emma McChesney in a hollow tone: "The Berg, Shriner Advertising Company has appointed Jock manager of their new Western branch. They're opening offices in Chicago in March." ”

“ McChesney, ma'am, we'll have a motor truck backing up at the door once a month and six strong men carrying my salary to the freight elevator in sacks."
Emma McChesney buttered her bit of toast, then looked up to remark quietly:
"Hadn't you better qualify for the trial heats, Jock, before you jump into the finals?"
"Trial heats!" sneered Jock. "They're poky. I want real money. Now! It isn't enough to be just well-to-do in these days. It needs money. I want to be rich! Not just prosperous, but rich! ”

“ Written the kind of copy that I think Featherlooms ought to have. I just took my knowledge of Featherlooms, plus what I knew about human nature, sprinkled in a handful of good humor and sincerity, and they're going to feed it to the public. It's the same recipe that I used to use in selling Featherlooms on the road. It used to go by word of mouth. I don't see why it shouldn't go on paper. It isn't classic advertising. It isn't scientific. It isn't even what they call psychological, I suppose. But it's human. ”

“ But it takes a man to understand a man. When you thought I was going bad on your hands I was just developing, that's all. Remember that time in Chicago, Mother?"
"Yes," answered Emma McChesney, "I remember."
"Now a man would have understood that that was only kid foolishness. If a fellow's got the stuff in him it'll show up, sooner or later. If I hadn't had it in me I wouldn't be going to Chicago as manager of the Berg, Shriner Western office, would I?"
"No, dear."
Jock looked at her. In an instant he was all contrition and tenderness. "You're tired. ”

“ Obediently Ben Griebler hung up the receiver, came over, and took the chair very close to Jock.
"There's nothing artistic about gum," began Jock McChesney; and his manner was that of a man who is sure of himself. "It's a shirt-sleeve product, and it ought to be handled from a shirt-sleeve standpoint. Every gum concern in the country has spent thousands on a 'better-than-candy' campaign before it realized that gum is a candy and drug store article, and that no man is going to push a five-cent package of gum at the sacrifice of the sale of an eighty-cent box of candy. ”

“ No, don't stop me. Don't you see that what applies to pastry applies to petticoats? You didn't think of French pastry until he suggested it to you—advertised it, really. And then you wanted a picture of them. You wanted to know what they looked like before buying. That's all there is to advertising. Telling people about a thing, making 'em want it, and showing 'em how it will look when they have it. Get me?"
Emma McChesney was gazing at Jock with a curious, fascinated stare. It was a blank little look, such as we sometimes wear when the mind is working furiously. ”