My Utopia lay before me, scintillating in the snowy pages of an application blank. Something about it gripped me and held me motionless. Nocturnal longings filled my soul, and an aura of wistfulness seemed to penetrate the very room. I allus felt that someday Madam Luck would smile upon me, but knowing that she a woman, and, as all of them are, very fickle. I was not able to prophesy just when or how the inevitable would happen.

Once again I fondly touched the elegant blanks of application. My thoughts went soaring high above the tree tops. But my wandering mind ceased as abruptly as the squawking of a rooster when the ax is laid upon his head. I had found a question that I did not know.

“Oleo,” I questioned, “What are the three modern means of communication?” The bulk of humanity that was quietly reposing in the revolving chair moved.

“What in the…Say, Lehte, you have more troubles than an epileptic billposter on a windy day. If you aim to be accepted as a waiter in that there hotel, you gotta be able to answer simple things like that. Them three methods are telegraph, telephone, and telawoman.”

I quickly saw that there was not help coming from him. Needless to say, I got them filled out to the best of my ability, an’ strange as it may seem, I also got the job! The manager told me that I must be brilliant, and that he felt that all my friends were from well-to-do families. He yodeled that he wuz charmed to have me in his service!

I donned my uniform, and as Abe Lincoln said at the Battle of Waterloo, “Lafayette, I wuz there!” My first customer was one of them high powered salesmen. I waltzed over to his table, and made one of the patented Nildem bows.

“Sonny,” he asked, “do you serve meals Table d’Horte or A La Carte?”

“Why er-er-I think we serve them on a little two wheeled cart!” He let out a peal of laughter so sound that I bet a Chinaman in Shanghai herd him. I don’t know yet what made him explode, but he did!

The next day the manager again honored me by saying that I was chosen to write the advertisement for the day. I worked and worked. Finally I had my masterpiece finished, and then it appeared in the paper:

“For a frogskin we will give you the swellest feed in the U.S.A..” I saw the manager turn up his nose when he read it, but I just guessed it was because of the weather. Just about the same time those majestic portals again opened, and I ankled forth to do my duty, and to win the favor of my lord and master. I opened my eyes, and as I did, Oleo Maragarine Green tapped me affectionately on the shoulder.

“Well, Lehte, here ye are…one whole frogskin, an’ it dried for good measure. I’ll bet I spent three hours trying my durndest to jog him, but I guess your swell feed will recompense for my trouble. Most worthy Lehte, I do hereby render unto Lehte what is Caesars!”

Mr. Manager’s nose tilted still higher, and I was certainly thankful that it was not raining. “Young man” --- addressing Oleo --- “do you know Lehte Nildem well?”

I shook my head at Oleo so hard that I actually rattled my brains, but I had just as wll been talking to a broomstick. “Do I know Lehte? Say, Mr., I knew him when…well, when he wore pink aprons. He’s the cat’s pajamas, he is. But you’d better watch him, Mr., ‘cause he’ll eat you outta hotel. Why one time…”

“That shall do, Mr. Greene. I must ask you to leave my fashionable resort. As for you, Lehte Nildem, I no longer need you. You may…” But Mr. Manager was only talking to the four walls of his elegant resort, for Oleo, the frogskin, and yours truly were well on our way to Bow Wow Ranch, leaving my Utopia far behind in a thick cloud of dust.

And as the monkey said when he backed into the lawnmower, that ends my tale!