Word: bootblack
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...stood about a chair. In the chair he found his Democratic friend, Senator Andrieus Aristieus Jones of New Mexico, white and immobile. "An attack" spluttered a barber. Seeing no couch in the shop, Doctor-Senator Copeland told the barbers to lay Senator Jones on the floor. He despatched the bootblack for whiskey and had a barber telephone for Rear Admiral Grayson.* The bootblack quickly returned with several containers of whiskey and other restoratives. Senator Jones revived. Presently the Doctor-Admiral arrived, and Senator Jones was removed to the Emergency hospital. His condition was pronounced serious. For several years...
Once there was a pudgy-faced newsboy on Chicago's West Side. His name was William Lorimer. His tactics were questionable but he moved fast-bootblack, sign painter, street car conductor, "boss" of Chi- cago Republicanism, banker, U. S. Senator. The higher he rose, the fatter he grew and the more crooked became his methods. In 1912 the Senate ejected him for having obtained his seat by bribery. In 1914 his La Salle Street Trust and Savings Bank crashed; seven years later he was put in jail because the Government found his banking schemes fraudulent...
...unable to speak with authority on the damosels engaged in that profession; they touch nothing that they do not adorn; but . . . should a mediaeval warrior suddenly appear in a modern barbershop, and see a fat man reclining in a chair, with a barber scraping his face, a bootblack energetically rubbing his shoes, and a fair maid clipping his nails, he would doubtless believe that this was some new, elaborate, and efficient method of torture; perhaps he would be right...
...guessed he would have his daily shoeshine (he is an engaged man). Hailing a bootblack, he seated himself on-a park bench. Thought waves began to dizzy him. Some strange association of ideas was rising up his spine. A man came and sat next to him-very agitated-on the park bench ... on the bench . . . bench. Of course, a "bench" was a symbolical term for a branch of the Government. He furtively slipped his hand under the seat, felt a piece of adhesive tape. The tape was supporting some small, cold, metallic object. He wrenched it loose, the Evening World...
Just after he came to this country Mr. Gest worked in Cambridge as a bootblack but he declares bootblacking in Cambridge an unprofitable profession. "Harvard men," he said, "either black their own boots or go without." He later secured a position in the Dorchester Opera House, where he worked as all-around handyman. Once he was the waves in a performance of "Way Down East," and was required to roll to and fro under a great canvas. His later experiences were more impressive, but less appealing...