P. G. Wodehouse: Uneasy Money

Chapter 2 (continued)

'That's awfully good of you.'

'You won't mind my alluding to you as my friend William Smith?'

'William Smith?'

'You can't travel under your own name if you are really serious about getting a job. Mind you, if my letters lead to anything it will probably be a situation as an earnest bill-clerk or an effervescent office-boy, for Rockefeller and Carnegie and that lot have swiped all the soft jobs. But if you go over as Lord Dawlish you won't even get that. Lords are popular socially in America, but are not used to any great extent in the office. If you try to break in under your right name you'll get the glad hand and be asked to stay here and there and play a good deal of golf and dance quite a lot, but you won't get a job. A gentle smile will greet all your pleadings that you be allowed to come in and save the firm.'

'I see.'

'We may look on Smith as a necessity.'

'Do you know, I'm not frightfully keen on the name Smith. Wouldn't something else do?'

'Sure. We aim to please. How would Jones suit you?'

'The trouble is, you know, that if I took a name I wasn't used to I might forget it.'

'If you've the sort of mind that would forget Jones I doubt if ever you'll be a captain of industry.'

'Why not Chalmers?'

'You think it easier to memorize than Jones?'

'It used to be my name, you see, before I got the title.'

'I see. All right. Chalmers then. When do you think of starting?'