Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1881 — A Chapter on Clerks. [ARTICLE]

A Chapter on Clerks.

How difficult it is to distinguish them from proprietors until you are used to them. Then it is easy. Proprietors wear dotes that clerks u ould not be seen wearing to sift ashes inj At the start, however, clerks always speakof themselves as “salesmen.” They have a faint idea that the word is in the directory and Jnieans something. The king clerk Is the “floor walker.’? He is a drum major without bearskin cap or baton, and fills an importan position in an important manner. Poor humanity always feels its knees quake when before hifl awful presence, until he says, “show these ladies some hose,” and it is proved that he is but mortal, . The active clerk shows all the good in his department, talks, a steady stream and wears a customer out, He makes a- few sales and doesn’t stay long in a place. The listless clerk, with drooping eyes and pale necktie, drops his goods on the counter in a doift-care-a-tive sort of way, wearied by the exertion, and the customer trades with him because he is so refreshingly lazv. The poorly dressed clerk, 'fhere are no facts in regard to this nonenity. The “masher” as a clerk. He is engaged because of his superlative attraction to silly women, who. call on him every day and buy some little knick-knack in order to bask in the sunshine of his radient and charming smiles. The genuine business man sometimes begins life as a clerk, but he pushes out of the position in an ainazinghurry, The lady eJerk, Who would he so ungallant as to say she is not interegtIngb Bhels. Gentlemen always like to trade at the counter where she presides, and she is usually assigned to a department where they are sure to come on little errands.