January, 1933
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
12
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Q t e a r i h f j t a r h c v t l i (ilrYOUNG READERS . . . B y F lorence N ye W hitwell
It was of this that Uncle Alan and Maria were talking. He read this offensive sentence aloud and raised his eyes to her lovely, flushed, smiling countenance. “ I needed the money—and every one’s doing it,” she said defensively. Uncle Alan evidently regarded this last as an unim portant item. Maria went on. “ Turn over a few pages, and you’ll find your own Mrs. Satterlee De Trobiant, in an advertisement for Charmian glisten for the nails, and a— ” “ I am aware that many well-known families are doing this. It makes mu think of the way the old Roman aristo crats went, when that civilization began to decline. Some o f their noble and high-minded matrons warned them, but to no avail. Once you get started, it’s a rapid slide.” Maria looked up and Maria looked down, and seemingly could not find whereupon to rest her eyes. ^ “ I know I ’m very bad,” she murmured, finally. “ But you’d like me better if you knew the real me.” Maria was irresistible. Uncle Alan smiled. “ It’s because I believe in the real you that I’m talking with you now,” he said. “ I believe that in your heart of hearts you want to know God’s best. Is it not so?” “ I can say this much honestly,” she finally replied, “ I— I have learned to look for the glimpses— how shall I say it?_ithe glimpses of Christ that I discover in you and in that wonderful Constance and the Thin Red Line. And I ’m disappointed if I fail to find what I seek. As for Franz Josef— I wish I had .a joy down in my heart like his. Y e s ! I can say that.” Franz Josef walked quietly in. “ I am now one o f the great army o f the unemployed,” he said casually. But qs he dropped into a chair, they no ticed a drawn, tired look in the young man’s face. “ Was your employer angry?” Maria asked. “ He said I was too foolish to employ. He said, ‘With out money one is nothing over here. W e have no titled class. You are missing the chance of your life.’ ” • “ Is that final?” “ I think so.” Maria looked thoughtful. “ Now that I’ve made the plunge, I ’d go and do it for you, Franz— just to win the battle for the family, as it were. But I ’m afraid I would never be a suitable advertisement for What-a-Shave, not being a bearded lady.” “ Have you told Constance ?” ; “ Not yet.’? -;U.: - ; - , v i f , Y ?A-,.': Maria gave a sympathetic murmur. She knew that the Princeling and Constance had hoped to be married in the spring. And she knew, too, that the whole What-a-Shave catastrophe never would have occurred if she had not, in a mad moment, done the very thing her nephew would not do. The corpulent man had said, “ You told me it was not in good taste, and now your aunt has done i t !” And then all the rest had followed. “ What are you going to do?” she asked forlornly. ■; “ W e are going to pray,” announced Uncle Alan. “ Are we down-hearted? N o! N o! N o ! ‘Even now, Lord — you remember that, Franz?” “ Pray about business?” asked Maria incredulously. “ Why not ? It’s one of the ‘all things.’ ” “ Aren’t you dragging your prayer life down to a level of,. ‘Give me this, and I ’ll be good’ ?”
PUBLICITY “ Their sorrows shall he multiplied that hasten after another god . . . The Lord is the portion o f mine inheritance . . . The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places . . . I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel” (Psa. 1( k 4^7). [ l \ , G rand D uchess looked at Uncle Alan. And Uncle Alan looked at the Grand Duchess. “ What are you doing with Franz Josef ?” she asked with a laugh. Uncle Alan’s deep-set eyes, clear hazel in color, looked at, regarded, searched, and finally probed her. She felt for her cigarette case. Y e s ! It was there. But somehow it would not do! It did not fit in. Cigarettes, and especially cigarettes in feminine fingers, just simply were not, that was all— not in the presence of a certain shining something, in the serene face before her.' She dropped the case back into its hiding place. It surprised her somewhat to discover that she could not coolly light one of the things and blow its smoke slowly out through her nostrils with a reflective air, as she would have done, and had done many times in the presence of men whom she wished to coerce or subdue to her purposes. The long and short o f it was that Franz Josef and the What-a-Shave Company had had an argument. The cor pulent and complacent advertising genius ( soi disant ) who headed the company was making new and strange demands upon the Princeling. Maria was in full sympathy, but the stately Theresa had turned slightly faint and cried, “ W ha t! Exhibit my child’s face, covered with lather, smiling his genial smile, upon the billboards and in the pub lications of America with—what do they call it ?— a telling caption saying that royalty finds What-a-Shave the ‘Onli- ShaveM Monstrous! Never!” Franz Josef himself had looked sober. He did wish to get on. But this— . He’d rather not! He had a talk with the advertising genius, who stood firm. Business was busi ness, and the market needed strengthening. It was in vain that Franz Josef explained that, while business was some thing in which to be diligent, it was not an altar on which to sacrifice one’s holiest purposes. “ You see,” he finally said, “ since I ’ve come to Amer ica and met some of your young Americans, I ’ve found out what it is to dedicate one’s life wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what I ’ve done in the past year, and you see there are certain things that one just cannot do—not wrong.things, but things that are not expedient. And I ’m sorry, but I must say no.” And then, the very next week, out had come a full-page advertisement o f the Grand Duchess Maria who, it seemed, was a constant user o f Palm Milk, for the skin! “ If they palm off anything else on you, you are skinned” was the caption. The lovely Maria insisted that she had not been guilty o f this slangy sentence. Theresa began to pack her trunks in order to return to a sane Europe. “ But it’s not sane, Mother,” the Princeling had said. “ It’s just as mad as can be— look at Russia.” “ Y e s ! And look at what they’ve induced your aunt to do,” cried the indignant Theresa, pointing to a paragraph beneath her sister’s photograph. “ Old favorite o f European courts says Palm Milk effaces— nay obliterates—the lines o f fatigue left by late hours, etc.”
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