Caricature Wit and Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song and Story (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Caricature Wit and Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song and Story Mr. Hicket Retires By William John Barr Moses Mr. Hicket didnt look it. He was a rather stout, flabby, middle-aged man, with a low forehead, oily black hair, small, blue, bloodshot eyes, an angular nose, pufly lips, big ears, a complexion bluish white, mottled red and purple, and a mouthful of irregular, tobacco-stained teeth. He wore a pair of skeleton nose-glasses tied to a black cord, and his clothes, which had been flashy and loud in their time, were now wrinkled, misshapen and decorated with grease and dandruff. Mr. Hicket didnt look it, but he was a literary bureau, a financial bureau, a correspondence university, an astrologer, a matrimonial exchange, a handwriting expert, and a few other things of the same general character. Mr. Hicket began his days work by looking over the mail. Among the letters this morning there was one from a young lady in Arkansas, complaining that, although she had taken Mr. Hicket sten-dollar course in journalism, and his twenty-five-dollar course in shortstory writing, and his fifteen-dollar post-graduate course besides, her manuscripts came back from the magazines with the same promptness as of yore, and accompanied by the very same polite little slips, while the newspapers, as a rule, neither returned her manuscripts, nor the stamps that accompanied them, nor sent her checks in their stead. Mr. Hicket answered this letter with a printed slip, which announced that the Universal School of Journalism and Short Story Writing was in the hands of a receiver, and that the whereabouts of the former proprietors was unknown. The next letter contained a check for ten dollars from a simple-minded clergyman in Nebraska, the same being a payment in advance for the degree of doctor of philosophy, which the clergyman had earned by completing, in nine months, the three years course of reading outlined by the professors of the Hicket Correspondence University. Mr. Hicket drew from a drawer of his desk an elaborate blank, ornamented with gold and red, and bearing several imitation seals, filled it up in due form, placed it in a pasteboard mailing tube and addressed it to the clergyman. Other letters contained fees of various sizes from young men and young women who wished to be taught journalism, or short-story writing, or the art of advertising, or acting, or oratory, or magnetic healing, or astrology, or some other art or science of making money quickly without work, from older men and women, as well as younger ones, who sent specimens of their handwriting, or the date of their birth, and wished to know what fortune awaited them, or wished advice in the matter of purchasing stocks or making investments, or who wished to correspond with ladies or gentlemen matrimonially inclined, or who trusted to Mr. Hicket sgreat abilities for something else. The letters came from all over the United States, save for a five-hundred-mile safety zone around the city. Mr. Hicket didnt advertise in that five-hundred-mile zone. His was a strictly correspondence business, and he did not care to have personal interviews with his clients and pupils. Most of them were poor, and five hundred miles of railway journey was sufficient to keep them at bay. Mr. Hicket was a lazy man who had made the great discovery that labor can be minimized by method and regularity. He had in his office thousands of printed slips, and letters in imitation typewriting, fit to answer almost any possible communication which his numerous advertisements might bring to him, and he kept careful lists of all of his patrons. It usually took him about two hours to get through and answer a days mail, and the two hours chosen for this labor were from seven until nine in the morning. The rest of the day and night Mr. Hicket devoted to cashing the checks received and spending the money. The large gilt letters on his door said nothing of the nature of his business, and mere