PRIVATE SECRETARY’S STORY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2682, 11 December 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

PRIVATE SECRETARY’S STORY.

Any of you ever a private secretary ? Fine job that. Nothing to do but help your boss watch you work. He dictates to you. and you put it down. That’s different from being married. Your wife dictates to you, and you put up with it. As private secretary you nave to know eyerything, until the first thing you know you know too much, but you have to know enough not to know anything. Then you know as much as the boss does. . , Don’t be like the private secretary for the armless wonder. He was told to write a letter, and he started: I take my pen in my hand—” The next thing he knew he took his hat in his hand. You have to humor your boss. I asked my boss for a day off. He asked me if I cared what day it was. “No, l said. Then he gave me an off day off. Oh, he was a tightwad, that man. When he’d got a roll of bills he’d sew ’em together. I advised him to have them bound. He threw them on the floor several times to make them bound, but they wouldn’t. Another thing he did—he made me press his trousers in the letter-press. One time I took them out and posted them by mistake to a man we’d been dunning. The man wrote back and said he hadn’t expected us to start a suit so soon. . He used to smoke cigars, he did. and blow the smoke in my face. I didn t mind that when they wore good cigars, only lie made me take deep breathing exercises to keep the room clear of smoko. ’ ' , , Whenever he’d want to nay something private over the telephone, he d make me stick my head in a bucket of water, so I oouldn’t hear. Sometimes he’d talk so long I’d get peevish m there. ■“ So he let me have a little rockery in the bucket, like the goldfish have. That kept me amused, and him. too. But he was very good to me. Wben I lof+ be gave me a letter of recommendation. He- recommended me to try for a job currying sea-horses in the aquarium.