Sinclair Lewis - Our Mr. Wrenn; the romantic adventures of a gentle man

DEAR ISTRA, I am back in New York feeling very well & hope this finds you the same. I have been wanting to write toyou for quite a while now but there has not been much news of any kind & so I have not written to you. But now I am backworking for the Souvenir Company. I hope you are having a good time in Paris it must be a very pretty city & I haveoften wished to be there perhaps some day I shall go. I [several erasures here] have been reading quite a few books since Igot back & think now I shall get on better with my reading. You told me so many things about books & so on & Ido appreciate it. In closing, I am yours very sincerely,

WILLIAM WRENN.

There was nothing else he could say. But there were a terrifying number of things he could think as he crouched by thewindow overlooking West Sixteenth Street, whose dull hue had not changed during the centuries while he had been trampingEngland. Her smile he remembered and he cried, Oh, I want to see her so much. Her gallant dash through the rain andagain the cry.

At last he cursed himself, Why dont you do something that d count for her, and not sit around yammering forher like a fool?

He worked on his plan to bring the South into line the Souvenir Companys line. Again and again he sprang up from thewriting-table in his hot room when the presence of Istra came and stood compellingly by his chair. But he worked.

The Souvenir Company salesmen had not been able to get from the South the business which the company deserved if rightand justice were to prevail. On the steamer from England Mr. Wrenn had conceived the idea that a Dixieland Ink-well, withthe Confederate and Union flags draped in graceful cast iron, would make an admirable present with which to draw theattention of the Southem trade. The ink-well was to be followed by a series of letters, sent on the slightest provocation,on order or re-order, tactfully hoping the various healths of the Southland were good and the baseball season important; allto insure a welcome to the salesmen on the Southem route.

He drew up his letters; he sketched his ink-well; he got up the courage to talk with the office manager.... To forgetlove and the beloved, men have ascended in aeroplanes and conquered African tribes. To forget love, a new, busy, muchabsorbed Mr. Wrenn, very much Ours, bustled into Mr. Guilfogles office, slapped down his papers on the desk, and demanded:Heres that plan about gettin the South interested that I was telling you about. Say, honest, Id like awful much to tryit on. Id just have to have part time of one stenographer.

Well, you know our stenographers are pretty well crowded. But you can leave the outline with me. Ill look it over,said Mr. Guilfogle.

That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.d the plan. To enthusiastically O. K. is an office technologyfor saying, gloomily, Well, I dont suppose it d hurt to try it, anyway, but for the love of Mike be careful, and let mesee any letters you send out.

So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern merchants, sending him a Dixieland Ink-well and inquiring aboutthe crops. He had a stenographer, an efficient intolerant young woman who wrote down his halting words as though they wereexamples of bad English she wanted to show her friends, and waited for the next word with cynical amusement.

By gosh! growled Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, Ill show her Im running this. Ill show her shes got another thinkcoming. But he dictated so busily and was so hot to get results that he forgot the girls air of high-class martyrdom.

He watched the Southern baseball results in the papers. He seized on every salesman on the Southern route as he came in,and inquired about the religion and politics of the merchants in his district. He even forgot to worry about his next risein salary, and found it much more exciting to rush back for an important letter after a quick lunch than to watch the timeand make sure that he secured every minute of his lunch-hour.

When October came October of the vagabond, with the leaves brilliant out on the Palisades, and Sixth Avenuemoving-picture palaces cool again and gay Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercury-vapor lights, making card cross-filesof the Southern merchants, their hobbies and prejudices, and whistling as he worked, stopping now and then to slap the deskand mutter, By gosh! Im gettin em gettin em.

He rarely thought of Istra till he was out on the street again, proud of having worked so late that his eyes ached. Infact, his chief troubles these days came when Mr. Guilfogle wouldnt let him put through an idea.

Their first battle was over Mr. Wrenns signing the letters personally; for the letters, the office manager felt, were asmuch Ours as was Mr. Wrenn, and should be signed by the firm. After some difficulty Mr. Wrenn persuaded him that one of thebest ways to handle a personal letter was to make it personal. They nearly cursed each other before Mr. Wrenn was allowed touse his own judgment.

Its not at all certain that Mr. Guilfogle should have yielded. Whats the use of a manager if his underlings usejudgment?

The next battle Mr. Wrenn lost. He had demanded a monthly holiday for his stenographer. Mr. Guilfogle pointed out thatshed merely be the worse off for a holiday, that it d make her discontented, that it was a kindness to her to keep hermind occupied. Mr. Wrenn was, however, granted a new typewriter, in a manner which revealed the fact that the SouvenirCompany was filled with almost too much mercy in permitting an employee to follow his own selfish and stubborn desires.

You cannot trust these employees. Mr. Wrenn was getting so absorbed in his work that he didnt even act as though it wasa favor when Mr. Guilfogle allowed him to have his letters to the trade copied by carbon paper instead of having themblurred by the wet tissue-paper of a copy-book. The manager did grant the request, but he was justly indignant at the curtmanner of the rascal, whereupon our bumptious revolutionist, our friend to anarchists and red-headed artists, demanded araise and said that he didnt care a hang if the [qualified] letters never went out. The kindness of chiefs! For Mr.Guilfogle apologized and raised the madmans wage from seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week to his former nineteendollars. [He had expected eighteen dollars; he had demanded twenty-two dollars and fifty cents; he was worth on the labormarket from twenty-five to thirty dollars; while the profit to the Souvenir Company from his work was about sixty dollarsminus whatever salary he got.]

Not only that. Mr. Guilfogle slapped him on the back and said: Youre doing good work, old man. Its fine. I just dontwant you to be too reckless.

That night Wrenn worked till eight.

After his raise he could afford to go to the theater, since he was not saving money for travel. He wrote small letters toIstra and read the books he believed she would approve a Paris Baedeker and the second volume of Tolstois War andPeace , which he bought at a second-hand book-stall for five cents. He became interested in popular and inaccurateFrench and English histories, and secreted any amount of footnote anecdotes about Guy Fawkes and rush-lights and the divineright of kings. He thought almost every night about making friends, which he intended just as much as ever to do as soonas Sometime arrived.

On the day on which one of the Southern merchants wrote him about his son fine young fellow, sir has every chance ofrising to a lieutenancy on the Atlanta police force Mr. Wrenns eyes were moist. Here was a friend already. Sure. He wouldmake friends. Then there was the cripple with the Capitol Corner News and Souvenir Stand in Austin, Texas. Mr. Wrennsecreted two extra Dixieland Ink-wells and a Yale football banner and sent them to the cripple for his brothers, who were inthe Agricultural College.