s. Mustering courage to ask faintly for Mr. Charles
Scribner himself, he finally brought up in that gentleman's office only
to meet a man just turning thirty-three!

"This is a young-looking crowd," said Mr. Scribner one day, looking over
his young men. And his eye rested on Bok. "Particularly you, Bok.
Doubleday looks his years better than you do, for at least he has a
moustache." Then, contemplatively: "You raise a moustache, Bok, and I'll
raise your salary."

This appealed to Bok very strongly, and within a month he pointed out
the result to his employer. "Stand in the light here," said Mr.
Scribner. "Well, yes," he concluded dubiously, "it's there--something at
least. All right; I'll keep my part of the bargain."

He did. But the next day he was nonplussed to see that the moustache had
disappeared from the lip of his youthful advertising manager. "Couldn't
quite stand it, Mr. Scribner," was the explanation. "Besides, you didn't
say I should keep it: you merely said to raise it."

But the increase did not follow the moustache. To Bok's great relief, it
stuck!

This youthful personnel, while it made for esprit de corps, had also its
disadvantages. One day as Bok was going out to lunch, he found a
small-statured man, rather plainly dressed, wandering around the retail
department, hoping for a salesman to wait on him. The young salesman on
duty, full of inexperience, had a ready smile and quick service ever
ready for "carriage trade," as he called it; but this particular
customer had come afoot, and this, together with his plainness of dress,
did not impress the young salesman. His attention was called to the
wandering customer, and it was suggested that he find out what was
wanted. When Bok returned from lunch, the young salesman, who, with a
beaming smile, had just most ceremoniously bowed the plainly dressed
little customer out of the street-door, said: "You certainly struck it
rich that time when you suggested my waiting on that little man! Such an
order! Been here ever since. Did you know who it was?"

"No," returned Bok. "Who was it?"

"Andrew Carnegie," beamed the salesman.

Another youthful clerk in the Scribner retail bookstore, unconscious of
the customer's identity, waited one day on the wife of Mark Twain.

Mrs. Clemens asked the young salesman for a copy of Taine's Ancient
Regime.

"Beg pardon," said the clerk, "what book did you say?"

Mrs. Clemens repeated the author and title of the book.