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Show TO CaUELCII THE ' "OLD HASHES" The prettiest g-irl I know came to me In a perfect fury of Indignation the other day. ... "What in the world is the matter with all the old scarecrows of men!' she said. "I've g-one into business, you know, and I'm making- a go of It, too, but It does make me so mad to have an old fool of a made-up old man making eyes at me across my counter every day. "I can get along all right with the young men; they come in and order flowers flow-ers for their sweethearts or wives or the other man's wife, or whoever it is they're sending flowers to, and- they never even look at me, or if they do look at me, they're Just Jolly and good humored and Joke a little, perhaps, but they're always perfectly respectful. "The old men, though well, I've got to the point that every time I see a man over forty-five coming into the shop I hide behind be-hind the chrysanthemums and make one of he errand boys wait on him. You can freeze a young fellow up if he tries to be a little too friendly, but you can't even chill one of those horrid old men. They'll manage to get hold of your hand some way if they have to fall over the biggest potted palm 'In the shop to do It, and then their Idotic compliments and their sickening leers.- .. . "One of them almost drove me crasy last week, coming in and buying flowers for a second and trying to talk to me for an hour every day. I pretended I didn't recognize him. "I didn't hear what he said to me. "I didn't see the box of candy he put on the counter. ' "But when he got to standing outside the door, and making eyes at me through the .window, I couldn't stand it another minute and I tapped on the window and called him -In. "You ought to have seen his face when I tapped on that window. It would haunt you for weeks. Ugh! it fairly frightened me, but ft changed a good deal when he got Inside the shop and I led him to a mirror and stood there beside him. ' " 'Look in that glass,' I said. -Look closely; you may not see very well. Tou've looked at me often enough to show that I am young and that - my hair Is well brushed and that I earn money enough to. buy myself rather decent frock. Now look at yourself, look at those bleared old eyes, and at that bluish old nose and at that . sagging chin. Where are your shoulders? Oh. I don't mean the ones the tailor made for you. I mean your owq. " ' Now, what do you suppose a moderately moder-ately attractive, fairly successful woman of my age, would want to spend her time making eyes at a poor old wreck like you for?' "Well, that man turned white, and then he turned red and then he began to shake as If he had the palsy, and then he went out of the shop. I've never seen him since. I was so unstrung and upset by the whole thing that I went home and cried all night. 1 know It was awful of me to do such a terrible thing, but I was Just about persecuted to death. "That man polluted the air so that I could hardly breathe and I had to get rid of him some way." What do you think, gentle reader, of this girl's method of disposing of the old nuisance that every woman .has to meet sooner or later,- no matter how or where she lives? It wss pretty rough and perhaps per-haps even a little cruel, but I felt like handing the girl who Invented it a solid gold medal when she told me about It. .Women of experience know the antiquated anti-quated masher the minute they set eyes upon him. He has a peculiar leer that betrays him the Instant he lifts his eyes, and he never loses time in lifting them. The woman of experience knows exactly how to get rid of him. She begins to talk about the Civil war and asks him. if it wasn't Interesting to be alive when It began be-gan and then she leads the subject gently up to children and asks him how many grandchildren he has and if he is really fond of them. She does It all as if she thought htm the most charming old gentleman in the world and was only doing her best to make herself agreeable to him. The old masher doesn't bother the woman wo-man of experience very much, but he frightens and persecutes young girls almost al-most to the limit of their endurance. Isn't there some way of getting rid of him? Winifred Black. |