Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1887 — The Hired Escort. [ARTICLE]

The Hired Escort.

It is a common practice in New York City for ladies to hire male escorts to places of evening entertainment, the engagement usually being made with some of the messenger companies, which keep a corps of youths for that purpose. In Philadelphia a young man has branched out on his individual account. He tells the Press business isn’t good as it might be, but it is improving. He keeps an advertisement in the paper, and says of his mode of procedure: r “If they want me they write me to call. Igo in the afternoon, show my references, which are good, and make arrangements as to whether they want a carriage or not, for instance, and whether I shall wear evening dress, in which case I charge $1 extra. Then in the evening I appear, send up my card, and no one knows, I think, that lam not wasting my own money in taking my affianced, my mother, my wife, as the case may be, to the play, and, by Jove, I don’t myself sometimes.” “You mean then ” “Nothing, nothing,” said the young man, giving a slight curl to his left whiskerlet. “Still, you’d be surprised, sir, to know how much even a hired escort is to some women. ’Pon my word they hang on my arm— I don’t mean all of them—when we cross the gutters and they chatter—l really believe they’re a good deal more interested in keeping up the make-be-lieve than I am. In fact, lam quite certain that that Lancaster woman—she ordered me a dress suit, by the way —has formed her idea of a city society man completely from my make-up. But you musn’t say anything abdut that. It would injure the business.” “You spoke of staying through some performances and merely taking to and calling for others. Can you make two engagements in a night ?” “ ‘Places of amusements,’ my adver-. tisement reads,” answered the hired escort. “There are a great many amusements besides the theater—lectures, concerts and tableaux. Most of these are out an hour before the theaters close. In Boston, wh re there are so many old maids, you know, and yet such a large amusement-loving population, I almost always had two engagements a night. ” “You have lately come from there?” The hired escort sighed. “I have,” he said. “Would that I could have stayed there.” “Ah!” “Yes, I took a young lady three times to the museum. The third time—well, her father was an invalid. I am very glad he was. If he possessed his full vigor I do not think that I would have been able to do what I did —that is to say, leave town.”