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One thing stands out above all others in advertisements for help wanted. This is the land of hustle. Tinker, tailor, candlestick-maker; lawyer, merchant, priest; if you are not a “live-wire” you are not “help wanted”–“Cook wanted. On dairy farm, twelve miles from town. White, industrious. Must be a live-wire! One that can get results. No stick-in-the-muds need apply!”

Uplifters and governments do not deal a more telling blow at the demon rum than do want “ads.” There is no longer any job for the drinker. “Bartender wanted. In a very low place. Must be strict teetotaler!” The student of the help-wanted columns will come to regard it as a very great mystery who floats all our “public-houses.”

Persons whose outlook on life is restricted to the dull round of one occupation and to one class of society will find a decidedly broadening influence in the perusal of help-wanted “ads,” a liberal and a humane education in the subject of the variety and picaresque quality of humanity’s manifold activities. And such persons will be made aware of their dark ignorance of many matters. What, for instance (they will say) is a “bushelman”? A great many bushelmen are continually “wanted.” It might be well to be one so much in constant demand as a bushelman. Has this welcome character something to do with the delectable grocery trade? No, my dears (for though I never saw a bushelman, I’d rather see than be one), he engages in the tailoring business, in the sweatshop way (as well as I can make out).

There are people wanted in help-wanted “ads” (but not in real life) to do nothing but travel in pleasant and historic places as companions to wealthy, “refined” persons in delicate health. There are people wanted (in want “ads”) to share attractive homes in fashionable country places whose duties will be to smoke excellent cigars and take naps in the afternoon.

And there are as romantic things to be found among help-wanted “ads” as there are in the most romantic romances. Now, lest it may be thought that some of the help-wanted “ads” which I have written right out of my head to illustrate the type of each are somewhat fanciful, I will copy out of yesterday’s paper an advertisement which “Robinson Crusoe” hasn’t anything on, to put it thusly. Here you are.

“WANTED–A man (or woman) to live alone on an island, eight miles from shore; food, shelter, clothing furnished; no work, no compensation. Summer time, Box G, 532 Times, Downtown.”

I knew a man once who got several replies to advertisements for help wanted. He bought ten New York papers one Sunday and a dollar’s worth of two cent stamps. At ten o’clock in the evening he went out and stuffed the ballot-box, I mean the letter box. He said in his own handwriting that he was an excellent man to be manager of “the upper floors of an apartment house”; that he was uncommonly experienced in the moving-picture business and knew “the screen” from A to izzard; that he had edited trade journals from the time he could talk; that he had an admirable figure for a clothing model; that he was very successful in interviewing bankers and brokers; that he was fond of children; that he would like to add a side line of metal polisher to his list; and that he certainly knew more about Bolivera than anybody else in the world, and would be prepared to head an expedition there by half-past two the following day.

That man already had a job that he had got from a want “ad.” He had been “copying letters” at home, “light, genteel work for one of artistic tastes.” But he found that one could not make any money out of it. Because, after one had bought the “outfit” necessary one discovered that it was humanly impossible to copy the bloomin’ letters in the somewhat eccentric fashion required.