Did Sammy show up? He did, velvet pants, patent leather shoes, white collar and all. Only a circus could have kept him away.
We blindfolded him, and put him through a course of sprouts in the barn, including making him ride a pig bareback around the floor, and walk the plank which was a beam above the hay mow, and to which he hung like a cat, squalling and whimpering, until Skinny Mason stepped on his fingers and made him let go.
Having exhausted the resources of the barn, we marched him out into the yard planning to hang him by the heels from a tree, when to our delight we discovered a two-wheeled iron barrel of tar, which the workman who had been mending our driveway, had left uncovered when he knocked off for the day.
Instinctively, we marched Sammy up to the tarbarrel, and I liberally daubed his hateful and, wonderful to relate, still clean collar with its contents, taking more pains to get it on his collar, than to keep it off his clothes. It was hard work, for the tar was lukewarm and naturally heavy; but I was making a pretty good job of it, when I heard Fred Allen yell, "Look Out!"
I turned just in time, and saw charging full tilt across the yard my old billy goat. The Brothers scattered in all directions, but Sammy who was blindfolded and did not sense his danger, stood patiently waiting his fate. Billy struck him squarely amidships, and Sammy leaving his feet, described a beautiful curve in the air, and landed head first in the tar barrel, just as his mother, who had been visiting my mother, stepped out on the porch to see how her darling was enjoying himself with his little playmates.
I only mentioned Sammy, to show you that you got off easy. The next time you are called upon to perform, do whatever is asked willingly. There's no fun in making a person do what he wants to do, and if you show no great indignation at doing a few tricks, you'll soon be let alone. Don't try to be funny, if you succeed you will have to give encores, and I take it that is not what you are after.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
P. S. I did not get a sled; but I did saw three cords of wood, stove length.
Lynn, Mass.
October 30, 19—
Dear Ted:
Somehow the price of cut soles is worrying me more, just now, than the fact that you have not been elected to one of the school clubs.
I realize that your not making one of the school clubs yet, is a terrible tragedy in your young life; but I feel as though you are going to survive, and perhaps you will be elected to one after all. I've found it a pretty good rule, not to figure a shipment of shoes a total loss even when the jobber writes that he's returning them, and if I were you I wouldn't borrow trouble until it's necessary. Trouble is the easiest thing in the world to borrow, and about the hardest to discount at the bank.
Maybe it's just as well you are having your touch of society chills and fever young, for it may save you from making a bigger fool of yourself later on. No one minds a young fool much, but an old one is about as sad an object as a Louisville distiller attending a Supreme Court decision on the prohibition law.
Society is all right, some of it; but just because you eat dessert at the end of your dinner, is no reason why you should make a meal of it. A little society, like the colic, goes a long way, and you want to remember that a man, like a piece of sole leather, usually figures out to what he is.
Burns, not Frankie the lightweight, but Bobbie who used to edit the Edinborough Daily Blade, back in the days when freshmen wore whiskers and plug hats, hit the nail on the head when he said, "A man's a man, for a' that."
I'll never forget when Aunt Carrie caught the society fever, nor will she. It was a couple of years before I was married, and it didn't make me want to postpone having a home of my own, although it did influence me to choose a girl who was society proof.
After your Grandmother Soule died, Carrie ran our old house and was doing a pretty good job of it, until Algernon Smiley came to Epping as principal of the grammar school. Algernon wore spectacles, a lisp, and long hair, and he could spout more poetry than a gusher well can oil. At that, he was a harmless sort of insect, if the girls of the town hadn't taken him seriously.
Algernon was a graduate of Harvard, and the only thing I ever had against that university. It didn't take him long to discover there was no real society in Epping, and not being at all backward about coming forward when he had anything to say, Carrie and her girl friends soon had the same idea. Now Epping had staggered along over two hundred years without the help of society, and was doing quite well thank you, with its church sociables, bean suppers, and candy pulls, until Algy butted in.
Everything we did was all wrong. "There wasno culture," and having the hearty backing of all the girls he set out to culturate us. His first offense was a series of lectures, but after the young men had listened to him rave about the art of Early Egyptian Dancing, and the history of Nothing before Something, they unanimously had previous engagements when Algy sprang a lecture.
Next Algernon started a Browning Club, which consisted, so near as I could judge, in his reading a poem, and then everyone in the club expressing a different opinion as to what the poem meant. It may be good business for a poet to write a poem no one can understand, but believe me when I buy a rhyme for a street car ad it's got to be one every woman will recognize as advertising "The Princess Shoe."
To get back to Algy, after a while the attendance at the Browning clubs began to get mighty poor, and he had to think up a new scheme to keep the town from getting decultured. Somehow, the little cuss had scraped an acquaintance with some pretty solid men on the Harvard faculty, and he managed to drag several of them up to Epping to deliver lectures, with the result that the culture business began to show a healthy growth. Epping was not stupid, it had been bored.
Now while Algy had been trying to culturate Epping, he'd worn considerable horsehair off the sofa in Farmer Boggs' parlor, sitting up nights with his daughter Ruby. Ruby was a nice cow-like girl,who hadn't much to say and proved it when she talked, and as Algy was never so happy as when he was doing all the talking, he got along with her fine. Then, too, Pa Boggs owned free and clear the best farm in the township, and had $15,000 salted away in Boston and Maine stock, and Algy, for all his culture, wasn't overlooking any bets like those.
Where Algy went wrong, was in patronizing people he thought didn't know as much as he. Whenever old man Boggs juggled beans with his knife, Algy would smile upon him so condescendingly the old man would almost bust with rage; and when Mrs. Boggs said "hain't" he would raise his eyes as though calling upon heaven to forgive her; but what blew the lid off came at a Browning Club meeting that Carrie had insisted upon having at our house.
Algy imported a noted Professor to give a talk on Prehistoric Fish, and when the great man had finished, we all stood around, the girls telling him how much they enjoyed it, and the men wishing he would go, so they could retire to the kitchen and shirt sleeves. Poor Ruby, during a lull in the general conversation, started the old chestnut about Ben Perkins the light keeper at Kittery falling down the light house stairs, ending with, "and you know he had a basket of eggs in one hand, a pitcher of milk in the other, and when he reached the bottom they had turned into an omelette. Ain't spinal stairs awful?"
At the word "spinal" the Professor snickered, and Algy who was always nasty when Ruby made a break, said, "I'm surprised at your ignorance Ruby: you mean spiral."
Ruby began to cry, and everyone looked uncomfortable. I was hopping mad. I guess maybe it was the tight patent leather shoes I had on. Anyway I'd seen about enough of Algy.
"Shut up, you Goat," I snapped at him. "Haven't you brains enough to know she meant the back stairs!"
Algy claimed he was insulted.
I allowed it wasn't possible.
Then he said he was a fool to have tried to culturize Epping.
I said I reckoned his allowing he was a fool, made it unanimous, and invited him out in the yard to settle things, although I never could have hit him, if he had accepted my invitation.
In two weeks Algy left town, and the next fall Ruby married Will Hayes over at George's Mills, and has been happy ever since.
Ted, I wouldn't think too much about those clubs. There's no use worrying about what people think of you; probably they don't. You've only been at Exeter a few weeks, so if I were you I wouldn't jump into the river yet. Now I'll admit it will please me if you are elected to a club, but if you aren't, I'm not going to go around with my head bowed inshame, and neither are you, for ten years from now, no one will be greatly interested whether you belonged to the Belta Pelts or the Plata Dates, and above all things don't toady. Eating dirt never got anyone anything. Look at Russia.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
November 6, 19—
Dear Ted:
I'm glad you've been elected to the Plata Dates, if for no other reason than because now that you have stopped worrying whether you would be, you will have time to worry about your studies. Don't you fool yourself that because E stood for excellent at the high school, I don't know that it stands for Execrable at Exeter. Now you are on the football team, it's better to have an E on your sweater, than on your report.
I thought when you were elected to the Plata Dates, you would be bubbling over with joy, but your letters are about as cheerful as a hearse. The teachers are picking on you, the football coach doesn't recognize your ability, and even the seniors so far ignore your presence, by failing to remove their hats and step into the gutter when you come along.
Whatever you do, don't get sorry for yourself. There's nothing in the world more silly than a person who is sorry for himself, and the ones who are, are always the ones who have no cause to be. Now I don't believe for a minute that the teachers at Exeter have picked you alone, out of five hundred boys, to jump on; they're too busy, and I guess your coach's main idea is to get a team together that canlick Andover, so it might be well, if you are finding people hard to please, to ask yourself if it's their fault.
If you go into your classrooms with only part of your lessons learned, you aren't going to fool your teachers very long, and if you go on to the football field with an air that the coach can't show you anything he's not likely to try. Half knowledge, is the most dangerous thing in the world. I never saw a successful shoe manufacturer who only had half knowledge of making shoes, and I guess Walter Camp isn't putting anyone on his All American, who only knows how to play his position half way.
You might as well make up your mind, Ted, to learn Virgil, from the "Arma virumque cano" thing to Finis. And it's just as well to let the coach think he can show you something about football: he only played three years on the Harvard 'Varsity, and even if you do know more than he, it will make him feel good.
Being sorry for yourself is a bad habit. I had it once for a whole year, and believe me it was the worst year I ever put in, and I'm counting the panic of 1907 too.
I'd been super. over at Clough & Spinney's in Georgetown for three years, and had the little shop running like a high-grade watch, when Henry Larney of Larney Bros. in Salem died and left the whole show to his son Claude. "But in trust" nevertheless, as the wills say, and it's a mighty good thing he didfor Claude spent most of his time and all his money at Sheepshead Bay and Saratoga Springs, and couldn't tell a last from a foxing.
Old Josiah Lane was trustee, and having about as much respect for Claude's ability as a shoemaker as I have for the Bolsheviki as business men, he looked around for someone to run the factory and lighted on me.
When I got over being dizzy at the thought of running a five thousand pair factory, I grabbed the job, because I was afraid I'd refuse it if I stopped to consider the responsibility. That's a pretty good plan for you to follow, Ted. Don't let a big job scare you, just lay right into it, and if you keep both feet on the floor and don't rely too much on the bridge to make fancy shots, pretty soon the job begins to shrink, and you begin to grow, and before long you fit.
I had every possible kind of trouble with the factory: a strike that tied us up flat for eight weeks in the middle of the summer, to a fire in the storehouse that destroyed five thousand cases of shoes and every blamed time I was in the midst of a mess, old Josiah Lane would blow in, and blow up. It seemed like the old cuss was always hovering around like a buzzard over a herd of sick cattle, and when he lighted on me I felt as though he went away with chunks of my hide in his skinny fingers.
I was the worst shoemaker in the world, couldn'thandle help, was a rotten financial man, had no head for details, and was so poor a buyer, it was a wonder some of the leather companies didn't run me for governor. As for production, he could make more shoes with a kit of cobbler's tools, than I could turn out with the help of the S. M. Co.
That old bird used to sit in the office chewing fine cut, and drawling out sarcastic remarks, until I could have knocked him cold; but even then I realized that a man who made shoes from pegs to welts, knew something, and I needed all the knowledge I could get.
After every bawling out, old Josiah used to creak to his feet, remarking, "I'll give ye another trial though I'm foolish to do it," while I stood by trembling with rage, wishing I wasn't married so I could bust his ugly old head open with a die.
Gosh! I used to get mad for the things that happened weren't my fault. First, I thought how foolish I'd been to leave my soft job at Clough & Spinney's, then, I began to get mad at the factory, myself, and all the daily troubles that were forever piling in on me, and I determined I'd lick that job if it killed me.
I gave more time to listening to old Josiah at my periodical dressing downs, and less time to hating him, and I lived in that old ark of a factory, until I knew every nail in every beam in its dirty ceiling, and could run any machine in it in the dark.
Along in the late fall, the monthly balance sheets began to look less like the treasury statements of the Dominican Republic, but they weren't so promising that there was any danger of J. P. Morgan coming to me for advice on how to make money, and on the 15th of December I wrote out my resignation, and handed it to old Josiah. The old man never even read it. Just tore it up, threw it under the desk, and sat chewing his fine cut, until I thought I'd jump out the window if he didn't say something.
"Want to git through do ye?" he drawled at last.
"I don't want to, I am," I snapped back.
Old Josiah reached in his pocket and handed me a paper. I opened it and nearly fainted. It was a three year contract calling for an annual $1000 increase in salary.
When I hit the earth again, I looked at the old man sitting there wagging his jaws and grinning, but somehow his smile had lost its sarcasm, and he seemed less like one of these gargoyle things that the foreigners hang on the outside of their churches, and more like a shrewd kindly old Yankee shoemaker.
Ted, I learned something that year besides how to run a big shoe factory. I learned that a rip snorting bawling out doesn't necessarily mean your superior thinks you a lightweight: if he couldn't see ability, he wouldn't take the trouble to cuss you. So when your teachers, or the coach, land on you don't think of "Harry Carey", (that isn't right butit's the nearest I can come to Jap for suicide) but if they land on you twice for the same mistake, pick out a nice deep spot in the jungle. If you don't the ivory hunters will get you.
Cheer up Ted crepe is expensive, and when you get blue be glad of the things you haven't got. I will be in Exeter Saturday afternoon. Look for me on the 1:30.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
November 20, 19—
Dear Ted:
I didn't say anything about it when you were home last Sunday, for you were so happy basking in the glory of that thirty-five yard drop-kick that won the Andover game I hadn't the heart to cast any gloom, but honestly Ted, as a deacon in the First Church I don't enjoy walking to service with a son who looks like a combination of an Italian sunset and a rummage sale of Batik draperies.
It's perfectly true that clothes don't make the man, but they help to, and because Joseph wore a coat of many colors and was chosen to rule a nation, is no reason for a young fellow to get himself up like an Irish Comedian at Keith's and expect to do likewise.
Customs have changed a little in the last few thousand years, and although it may still be true that a South Sea Islander may rule the tribe by virtue of being the proud possessor of a plug hat and a red flannel petticoat, it doesn't follow that a passionate pink tie with purple dots, and pea green silk socks with bright yellow clocks, will help you to sell a bill of goods to a hard-headed buyer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
I don't want to rub it in too hard, for I realize that in boys there's an age for loud clothes, the sameas there is in puppies for distemper, and that if given the right treatment they usually survive and are none the worse for their experience.
I won't hire a salesman who wears sporty clothes and carts around a lot of jewelry, for when one of my men is calling on the trade he is not exhibiting the latest styles in haberdashery, but the latest samples of the "Heart of the Hide" line, for I've learned that a buyer whose attention is distracted from the goods in question is a buyer lost.
All this reminds me of an experience I had when I was in my first and only year at Epping Academy. The Academy was really a high school although I believe my father did pay $10 a year for my tuition, and the teachers were called professors.
Well anyhow, at that time my one ambition in life was to own a real tailor-made suit, vivid color and design preferred.
Now buying my clothes had always been a simple matter, for when I needed a new suit which in my father's estimation was about once in two years, my mother and I drove over to the "Golden Bee Emporium: Boots & Shoes, Fancy Goods & Notions" at Bristol Centre, where, after much testing for wool between thumb and finger, and with the aid of lighted matches, and in direct opposition to my earnest request for brighter colors, I was always fitted out in a dark gray, or blue, or brown, ready made, and three sizes too large so I could grow into it.
One afternoon on my way home from school, I stopped in at the Mansion House, to see if I could persuade Cy Clark, the clerk, to go fishing on the following Saturday. As I entered the door an array of tailors' samples, on a table by a front window, caught my eye. All thoughts of Cy promptly left my mind as I let my eyes feast longingly upon their checks and plaids and stripes.
The salesman, seeing that his wares had me running in a circle, assured me that the Prince of Wales had a morning suit exactly like one of his particularly violent black and white checks and that Governor Harrison had just ordered three green and red plaids.
The salesman informed me that $25 was the regular price but as a special favor I could buy at $20. Now I had $18 at home which I had earned that summer picking berries and doing chores, and finally protesting so violently I was sure he was going to weep, the drummer gave in and I raced home, broke open my china orange bank, and was back at the hotel having my measurements taken inside of ten minutes, for I was mortally afraid some one else would snap up the prize in my absence.
For the next three weeks I hung around the express office so much that old Hi Monroe threatened to lick me if I didn't keep away and not pester him.
Finally my suit came.
To tell the truth, I was somewhat startled, when I opened the box, for although the sample was prettynoticeable, the effect of the cloth made up in a suit was wonderful. From a background of stripes and checks of different colors, little knobs of brilliant purple, yellow, red, blue, and green broke out like measles on a boy's face, and I felt that maybe after all I had been a little hasty in my choice.
But when I tried the suit on, and gazed at myself in the mirror, my confidence returned, and I felt I had the one suit in town that would make people sit up and take notice. I was right.
I entered the dining room that evening just as my father was raising his saucer of tea to his lips.
"Good heavens!" he cried, spilling the tea in seven different directions.
"Why William, what have you got on?" my mother asked.
My brother Ted answered for her, "A rug."
Do you know Ted, blamed if that suit didn't look like a rug, an oriental one made in Connecticut, and your Uncle called the turn, although I never forgave him for it. That's why I named you after him.
At first, my father vowed no son of his was going to wear play actor's clothes around the village, but when he heard I had paid $18 for the suit, he changed his mind and said he wouldn't buy me another until it was worn out.
Your Uncle Ted made a lot of cheap remarks about rugs, which I put down to jealousy, and general soreheadedness, because I had made him pay methe day before, a dollar he owed me for six months. Even Grandma Haskins vowed it looked more like a crazy quilt than a suit of clothes, and I was feeling pretty blue until my mother made them lay off.
Next morning, I started for school, full of pride in my new clothes for I was sure my folks didn't know a nobby suit when they saw it, although there were knobs enough on that one for a blind man to see.
Ted had sneaked out ahead of me though, and when I reached the school yard I was greeted with cries of "Rug," and "Good morning, your Royal Highness," and "How's Governor Harrison this morning?" Ted had told them all.
On the way home, I met old Jed Bigelow in the square driving a green horse. Just as the horse got along side of me he shied, and then ran away throwing Jed into the ditch and ripping a wheel off his buggy. I always thought it was a piece of paper that did the trick, but Jed swore it was the suit and threatened to send the constable after me.
How I hated that suit. At the end of two days I would never have worn it again but my father hid my other clothes and would only let me wear them to church on Sundays. Then I did my best to spoil it by wrestling and playing football in it, but the cloth was about an inch thick, it wouldn't tear and mud came off it like cheap blacking comes off a pair of shoes.
Finally, at the end of the month, my mother came to my rescue and sent it to the poor in Boston and I want to state right here that it's probably still being worn somewhere in the slums of that city, for it never would wear out. It was the only indestructible suit ever made.
Of course I know that as end on the football team you have a certain position to uphold, and I want you always to look well dressed; but I do wish you would try to choose clothes that I can't hear before you turn the corner, and by the way Ted, everything's going up except your marks. Now the football season's over perhaps you'll have more time to study. I'd try if I were you, it can't hurt you any.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
December 1, 19—
Dear Ted:
I can't say I was totally unprepared for the news, when your report came yesterday, for I met Professor Todd at the club a week ago and much against his will he had to admit, that when he asked you in your oral English exam., who wrote "The Merchant of Venice," you weren't sure whether it was Irvin Cobb or Robert W. Chambers.
Naturally, I expected a disaster when the fall marks came, but I was not prepared for a massacre. I had hoped for a sprinkling of C's with maybe a couple of B's thrown in careless like for extra poundage; but that flock of D's and E's got under my hide. It's all very well, for you to say that you can't see how it's going to help you make shoes to know how many steps A must take to walk around three sides of a square field two hundred feet to a side, if he wears number eight shoes and stops two minutes when half way round to watch a dog fight; but let me tell you one thing, son, any training that will teach you to think quickly, and get the right answer before the other fellow stops scratching his head, is valuable. And to-day, in the shoe business, the man who can trim all the corners and figure his product to fractions, is the man who buys the limousines, whilethe fellow who runs on the good old hit or miss plan is settling with the leather companies for about fifteen cents on the dollar, and his wife is wondering whether she can make money by giving music lessons.
Probation is a good deal like the "flu": easy to get, and liable to be pretty serious if you don't treat it with the respect it deserves.
It isn't as if you were a fool. No son of your Ma's let alone mine could be, and your Grandfather Soule could have made a living selling snowballs to the Eskimos. It's pure kid laziness, and shiftlessness, mixed in with a little too much football, and not enough curiosity to see what's printed on the pages of your school books.
Now you're on probation, there's only one thing to do, and that's what the fellow did who sat down by mistake on the red hot stove, and the quicker you do it the more comfortable it's going to be for all concerned including yourself.
So far as I've been able to see, there's no real conspiracy among the teachers at Exeter to prevent your filling your pockets with all the education you can carry away, and if I were you I'd be real liberal in helping myself. Education is a pretty handy thing to have around, and it stays by you all your life. Just because I've succeeded without much, is no sign you can, and anyway you'll feel a lot more comfortable later on when the conversation turnsto history, and you know the Dauphin was the French Prince of Wales, and not a fish, as I always thought, until I looked the word up in the Encyclopedia.
Now I want you to sail into that Math., just as you hit the Andover quarter when he tried your end, and drop old J. Cæsar with a thud before he can get started. I know J. C. was a pretty tough bird, and how he ever found time to write all those books between scraps, I never could quite understand, unless he only fought an eight hour day, but it's your job to get him and get him hard.
One thing, Ted, that's going to save you heaps of trouble if you can only get it firmly fixed in that head of yours, is that you can't get anywhere or anything without WORK.
Just because you're the old man's son, isn't going to land you in a private office when you start in with William Soule. There's only one place in this factory a young fellow can start, whether he's a member of the Soule family or the son of a laborer, and that's bucking a truck in the shipping room at twelve per, where he'll get his hands full of splinters from the cases, and a dressing down from Mike that'll curl his hair whenever he makes a fool mistake.
There's no short cut to achievement, and work is what'll land you on the top of the heap quicker than anything else, although I've seen a lot of lightweightswho spent enough time working hard to avoid work, to succeed with half their energy if spent in the right direction.
That reminds me of a fellow named Clarence I hired some years ago to make himself generally useful around the office. He said he was looking for work and he told the truth all right. He wanted to find out where it was, so he could keep away from it.
I let him stay a couple of months because I rather enjoyed watching his methods. In the morning, he would spend the first two hours scheming how to get the other clerks to do his work for him, and in the afternoon he was so blame busy seeing they had done it, he had little time to do anything else. I had seen people who hated work, but I had never seen anyone before who avoided it as though it were the plague.
The last straw came one afternoon when old Cyrus White of Black & White, the big St. Louis jobbers, walked out of my private office just after giving me an order for three thousand cases and tripped in a cord that fool work avoider Clarence had rigged up, so he could raise or lower the window shade without leaving his desk.
Now old Cy weighs about two twenty and Clarence who had looped one end of the string around his wrist weighed about ninety-eight pounds with a straw hat on, so when Cy went down with a crash that shook the whole factory, he just naturallyyanked Clarence right out of his chair, and the two of them became so tangled up in the cord, they lay like a couple of trussed fowls while the water cooler which had also capsized gurgled spring water down old Cy's neck.
You're right, I lost that three thousand case order, and it was ten years before I could sell old Cy another bill of goods, and to make matters worse, I had to pay Clarence $200 damages, for in his rage Cy nearly bit off one of his ears. Ever since, when I find anyone on my pay roll who is working to avoid work, he gets a swift trip to the sidewalk.
Now I'm not going to stop your allowance because you're on probation, I've more heart for the suffering Exeter shopkeepers than to do that. Neither am I going to forbid your going to the Christmas house party: those would be kid punishments and you're no longer a kid, although you've been acting like one for some time.
I'm simply putting it up to you as a man to get off probation by New Year's, and I want you to remember that as a 'varsity' end you've got to set a good example to the "preps." Think it over.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
December 10, 19—
Dear Ted:
I always thought J. Cæsar, Esq., and one Virgil wrote Latin, but when I was in your room last Saturday afternoon I saw you had copies of their books in English.
Now I'll admit that an English translation is the only way I could ever read those old timers. Latin is as much a mystery to me as the income tax; but one reason I am sending you to Exeter, is so you can play those fellows on their home grounds with a fair chance of winning.
I always thought you were a pretty good sport Ted, and I have always tried to teach you the game, and to play it square. I still think you're a good sport, and the only reason you are using those "trots" is because you haven't stopped to consider how unfair it is to J. Cæsar & Co.
I have a sneaking sort of liking for those old birds. J. Cæsar was the world's first heavyweight champion, and in his palmy days could have made Jack Dempsey step around some, and as for Virgil he could make words do tricks even better than I. W. W. meaning I. Woodrow Wilson. So it was a sort of shock to me to see you giving them a raw deal.
When you get right down to cases, son, your lessons are one of the few things that can't beat you if you study 'em, so it's pretty small punkins to try to rig the game against 'em. A shoemaker can buy his leather right, and figure his costs correctly on an order, but the buyer may get cold feet and refuse them, or the unions may call a strike, or one of about a hundred other things may happen to knock the profits higher than one of Babe Ruth's home runs.
With lessons it's different. Study them and they can't beat you. You wouldn't expect much glory if the Andover team you beat had been made up of one legged men. What about the handicap you're making the All-Romans play under when you tackle them with a couple of "trots" in your fists.
There's another reason I don't want you using "trots", and it's because it's liable to get you into the habit of doing things the easiest way. Now anyone is a boob if he doesn't do a thing the easiest way provided it's the right way; but he's more of a boob if he does a thing the easiest way only because it's the easiest way. And using English translations on your Latin is like paying number one prices for a block of poor damaged leather: it may be easier to get the leather, but when it's made into shoes and you begin to hunt for the profit you find it's gone A. W. O. L.
I don't remember ever having told you about Freddy Bean, but speaking of doing things the easiestway reminds me of him, so while I have the time I'll tell you.
Freddy's Pa ran a little store in Epping just across from the railroad station, where according to its sign he sold Books, Magazines, Newspapers & Stationery, and as he owned his own house and had a thrifty wife he managed to make a living although Epping was not a literary community. Pa Bean was an inoffensive little fellow who always wore a white tie with his everyday clothes, and loved to work out the piano rebuses in the newspapers in the evenings. He had advanced ideas on politics, was a single taxer, and to-day would be classed as a radical. Then we used to call him Half-Baked.
Freddy was a good average boy and likeable enough except for his one bad habit of wanting to do everything the easiest way, and believe me he carried it to extremes.
He used to sleep in his clothes because it was easier than dressing in the morning, but his Ma walloped that out of him. Then he had the bright idea of putting a sign with the price marked on it on most of the articles in his Pa's shop and going to the ball game, when the old gentleman went over to Bristol Centre Saturday afternoons on business. This worked all right at first for the Epping folks were honest, but one Saturday some strangers carried off about $100 worth of goods and Freddy got his from his father and got it good.
I could tell you a lot about the messes Freddy got into trying to do things the easiest way, but the super. is hanging around with a lot of inventory sheets so I'll have to cut this short with Freddy's prize performance. One summer morning Freddy's Pa and Ma went away for the day, but before they started Half Baked led Freddy out into the yard, shoved an axe into his unwilling hands and ordered him to cut down an oak that stood close to one side of the house, and was growing so big it was shutting out a lot of sunlight.
Now there wasn't a boy in Epping at that time who hadn't had considerable experience in chopping wood, unless it was Sammy Smead and he never counted anyway except on the afternoon we initiated him into the Brothers of Mystery, and there wasn't one of us who didn't hate it; but Freddy loathed it more than anything else, principally I guess, because there wasn't any easy way out. If you had to cut wood you had to cut it, and that's all there was to it.
Along about two that afternoon, a crowd of us boys bound for the swimming hole happened by Freddy's house, and found him pretty limp and blistery. He'd only hacked about half through the tree, but I think his mental anguish was worse than his physical exhaustion, because scheme as he might he had hit on no easy way to fell that oak, and the job looked as though it would last till sundown.
Freddy was a good diplomat, and he tried all theTom Sawyer stuff on us he carried, but not a chance. There was not one of us who would chop wood when he didn't positively have to, and it looked as though Freddy was going to chop until the job was finished, when Dick Harris said something about blowing it up with some gunpowder his father had stored in a keg in his corn crib.
There was not one of us who would have helped Freddy cut down the tree, neither was there one of us who would refuse to help him blow it up, and Freddy, because he saw an easy way out, was the most enthusiastic of all.
We did it. First we dug a hole about four feet deep at the foot of the tree and buried the keg of powder after boring a hole in the top for a fuse. We packed the dirt down tight all around the keg leaving just enough loose to run the fuse through. Then Freddy as master of ceremonies lighted the fuse and we stepped back to wait results.
We didn't wait long. There was a roar and we found ourselves on the grass in the midst of what resembled a volcano on the war path. Dirt, stones, grass, sticks, and heaven knows what else were milling around us in clouds, and out of the corner of one eye I saw Ma Bean's geranium bed sail gaily across the street and drape itself over Mrs. Harry Brown's front gate. Glass was falling around us like shrapnel, for every window in the Bean's house shivered itself out onto the lawn. The tree—well,Sir, it fell on the house, knocked off a chimney and broke down the piazza roof, and the next day Half Baked had to hire Jed Snow's team of oxen to pull it clear before they could even start cutting it up.
I've a very vivid recollection of what my father gave me, and I rather think Freddy's was the same only more so, in fact none of the crowd slid bases for some time, and Half Baked made Freddy cut six cords of wood during the next month.
I don't know what has become of Freddy, but I have never seen his name in the headlines, so I guess he's still hunting for easy ways to do things, but you can bet he's left gunpowder out of his schemes for the last forty years.
Now Ted you just mail me those "trots." I'll enjoy them, and you give those old timers a fair show from now on. It's not sporting Ted to pull a "pony" on them, for they can't win any way if you don't want them to. Play the game.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
January 27, 19—
Dear Ted:
That notice from Professor Todd stating that you had been taken off probation was the most welcome bit of news I've had in a long time, and the enclosed check is my way of saying thank you.
I knew if you once stopped fooling and got right down to cases, that none of those old best sellers like J. C. or Virgil could hold you for downs, and as for Quadratic Equations, your instructor writes me that if you'll take 'em seriously you can make 'em eat out of your hand.
Now you're again on speaking terms with your lessons, you can keep their friendship by visiting with them a couple of hours a day, and when they once learn you mean business they'll follow you around like a hungry cat follows the milk man.
There's nothing succeeds like success, whether it's getting respectable marks in your studies, or selling shoes, and if you don't believe it ask Charlie Dean.
Probably you've always thought of Charlie as my star salesman and you're right, but it wasn't many years ago Charlie couldn't have sold five dollar gold pieces for a quarter, even if he gave a patent corn cutter away with each as a premium.
Charlie came to work for me right out of the highschool, and as he was always willing to do a little more than his share around the office, I decided to give him a try on the road, where he'd have a chance to make real money. So when a younger salesman left me one New Year's, I put Charlie through a course of sprouts in the factory to be sure he knew how the "Heart of the Hide" line was made, gave him a couple of trunks full of new samples, and shipped him out to the middle west.
Charlie was gone three months and he didn't sell enough goods to pay the express on his samples, but realizing a cub salesman's first trip is always his hardest, I swallowed my tongue and sent him out again.
I couldn't understand it. Charlie was no loafer, and I felt sure he was working hard each day, but he had no more success in persuading buyers to stock "The Heart of the Hide" line than old King Canute had in bossing the sea around. If he had done fairly well, I'd thought he was just green and would develop, but when he had been out six months and his sales record sheet was as white as a field of new fallen snow, I decided too much was enough, and wired him to return to the factory, for Fair Bros. were getting more solid in that territory every day, and I simply had to have distribution there.
When Charlie arrived in Lynn, I was going to fire him, for I never believed in putting a man back in the office who has been on the road. He's too liableto be down on the house, and afflict all the other clerks with the same poison; but Charlie pleaded so hard to stay, I finally gave him back his old job, and, as he showed no signs of being a trouble maker, I paid him no further attention.
The next winter, I had a hunch that women's fall styles would run heavy on calfskin, so I loaded up with a hundred thousand pairs of heavyweight cut soles and patted myself on the back that I had put one over on the trade. A few weeks later, the buyers made so loud a noise about Vici Kid a deaf mute could have heard 'em.
There I was, caught flatfooted with a hundred thousand pairs of soles stored in the basement, and the market on them dropping every day so fast I got dizzy when I tried to figure out how much I stood to lose.
I tried to take a loss and turn them back to the manufacturer. Nothing doing, nor would any other cut sole house take them except at a price that would have come near to busting me. Next I tried the manufacturers of women's shoes, not a chance. Then as the soles ran pretty heavy I tried boys' makers, again nothing doing.
I was getting desperate, for I had a lot of money tied up in those soles, and so far as I could see I was liable to own 'em for some time unless the sheriff took 'em.
One morning, I happened to think of Al Lippincott. You know his factory in Dover, the red one you can see from the station? Al makes a line of boys' and youths', but he is the hardest buyer in the whole trade, a regular rip tearing snorter who begins to yell the minute a salesman steps into his office, and keeps it up until the salesman either wants to lick him or to beat it.
I got Al on the long distance, and finally, after his usual outburst that nearly melted the wire, he allowed he was going to be in Lynn that afternoon and would drop in.
I went home feeling somewhat better, but while I was eating lunch the telephone rang, and I learned your Ma had been badly smashed up in an automobile accident, and had been taken to the Salem Hospital.
I never thought of Al again until I was going to bed that night, and then I was so worried about your Ma I didn't care much whether he'd called or not.
The next morning, when I rolled back the top of my desk, I found an order for the whole hundred thousand pairs of cut soles made out in Charlie Dean's handwriting and billed to Al Lippincott at two cents a pair more than I had paid for 'em.
I never asked Charlie how he made the sale, and he never told me, but when he asked for anotherchance on the road he got it, and knowing he'd sold the toughest man in the United States he made good from the kick-off.
I only mention Charlie because when you were on probation you were in the same kind of fix he was before he sold Al Lippincott. Now you know you can lick those studies of yours. I want you to crowd 'em so hard the teachers will mark down at least a B for you when you get up to recite.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
February 10, 19—
Dear Ted:
This trouble you seem to be having with your eyes, is causing your Ma a great deal of worry. She has visions of a blind son tapping his way through life with a cane and I expect in a few days, she'll have reached the dog on a leash stage. I'd be more worried, if I hadn't happened to remember that the mid-years are only two weeks off, and that eye trouble is one of the best known alibis.
Your suggestion of coming home early Sunday, so you can give your eyes a rest, I agree to most heartily. We'll go into Boston and have an oculist examine you. Then if you need glasses, I'll see that you get them, and if you don't, you're out of luck if you're trying to establish an alibi for flunking your exams.
Eyesight is a mighty curious thing. Some folks get so nearsighted they'll step over a ten dollar bill to pick up a nickel, and others can see a dollar a pair profit in a shipment of shoes the ordinary manufacturer would be glad to sell at cost. It takes pretty good eyesight to be a successful shoe manufacturer nowadays, for it's the ability to see profits where they don't exist, and then handle your output so that you make two little profits grow where onlyone grew before, that buys new tires for the car, and sends sons to "prep" schools.
Somehow, your reports don't make me feel you've strained your eyes studying. If you had, you wouldn't have made the break you did in your oral English exam. when according to Professor Todd you stated that Ben Johnson was president of the American League. Then, too, I haven't had an excess electric light bill from the school, so it's hard for me to believe your eyesight has been ruined by your burning the midnight electricity.
I remember a clerk I once had in the office, who had a terrible time with his eyes, especially, when he was about due for a bawling out for some fool mistake. He once made out a lot of shoe tags with the specifications calling for eight iron soles on comfort slippers, and when I was about to claw his hide for such a blunder, he claimed his desk was so far from a window he couldn't half see. I remembered that a lot of folks can read real well by electric light, and there was a hundred candle power bulb right over him; but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and moved him over beside a window.
Two weeks later, he made a mistake in a bill that cost me several hundred dollars, and then it was the bright light that dazzled him. I was suspicious, but he pleaded so hard for a day off, to rest his poor eyes in a darkened room, I told him to go ahead, and the next noon as I was driving home along theboulevard I spotted him fishing from some rocks, in a glare that would have made an Arab see green.
I meant to fire him, but I was so busy I forgot it, and for a month he went along without making a noticeable mistake. Then he came to me one day for a raise. I told him that his eyesight was so poor, that if the cashier put any extra money in his envelope he'd never even see it, and that he'd better strain his eyes a little looking for another job, as I couldn't have the responsibility on my shoulders of his going blind while working for me.
The old man wasn't born yesterday, Ted, and having had considerable experience with eyesight alibis he's a bit gun shy.
Perhaps one reason I'm a little suspicious of this eye trouble of yours, is that I have a very vivid recollection of your Uncle Ted the first year he was at boarding school. Ted started out like a whirlwind that fall, all A's and B's in his studies, until along in November he began to get more interested in wrestling with a flute he was trying to learn to play, than with his lessons, so that in December his marks had a striking resemblance to those of the present-day Germany.
In January, he developed serious eye trouble. He wrote home that his eyes were so bad he couldn't study, and was sure to fail at mid-year. Whether my father believed the first part of his wail I never knew, but I'm sure he did the second. Anyway he collaredTed one Saturday afternoon, and drove him over to the oculist at Bristol Centre taking me along as ballast.
Ted put up some pretty good arguments against going, claiming a terrible headache and a violent pain in his stomach. My father made him though, and when we finally reached the oculist, Ted really did look sick enough to have had not only eye trouble, but about all the other known diseases, as well.
Doctor Boggs, who was a queer little scrap of a man, as quick tempered as gunpowder, plumped Ted down in a chair, and began to peer at his eyes through a magnifying glass. The more he looked, the more nervous Ted became. Finally, the doctor asked him if his eyes felt any better, and Ted allowed they did.
Then the doctor put a lot of charts up about twenty feet away, and asked Ted to read the letters on them, which he did so quickly the doctor couldn't change the charts fast enough. I grinned, for by then I was sure Ted was faking. Ted also realized that for a boy whose eyes had been causing him so much trouble, he'd been giving a remarkable exhibition so when Doctor Boggs began trying different glasses on him, Ted protested that he couldn't see a thing with any of them.
The doctor was very patient, trying on pair after pair, Ted groaning louder with each new one. At last, the old fellow stopped for a few minutesand rummaged around in a desk drawer where he kept a lot of his eyeglasses. Suddenly, he turned to Ted clapped a new pair on his nose, and stood back smiling sweetly at him.
"There my boy," he said, as sweet as honey. "Those are much better, aren't they!"
I took a look at Ted and almost choked. Then I realized what was coming to him, so I tried to pass him the high sign. It was too late.
"Those are the only ones I've been able to see through, doctor," Ted chirped innocently.
The next instant, the doctor with one word "Fraud!" grabbed Ted by an ear and marched him to the door, while father followed looking about as pleasant as a thunder storm.
You've probably guessed the reason why already. There was no glass in the last frames. After we got home, father and Ted retired to the woodshed and I heard the most heartrending sounds. When Ted returned to school his marks began to improve at once, and they kept on getting better and better until the end of the year, and since that day Ted has never had on a pair of glasses. It was one of the quickest and most complete cures of eye trouble ever recorded, and it also proved that old Doctor Boggs knew his job.
Faking is mighty poor business Ted, whether it's trying to establish an alibi for flunking your school exams, or making army shoes with paper soles for thegovernment. The first is apt to get you into the habit of shirking your work, and the second is mighty likely to land you in jail. Some business men, not many, by faking the quality of their goods shoot up like a sky rocket, but when the time for repeat orders comes along, they come down like the stick, and if there's anything any more useless than the spent stick of a sky rocket, it's a man who tries to ease his way through life on alibis.
Do your best and stand by it. If it is your best, you have no cause to be ashamed no matter how it turns out, and remember that a man who never made a mistake never made anything.
My boy, if there really is something the matter with your eyes, we can't have them attended to any too quickly, and if there isn't I somehow feel a little frankness now, on my part, may effect almost as rapid a cure as your Uncle Ted's and without any painful ending.
Your affectionate father,
William Soule.
Lynn, Mass.
February 20, 19—
Dear Ted:
My boy, I owe you an apology for doubting you had eye trouble. It was hard for me to believe you were faking; but the circumstantial evidence against you was pretty strong. I should have known better, though, for you have always played fair with me so I ask your pardon.
That letter from the oculist, in Portsmouth, saying you needed glasses was a relief and a disappointment. A relief, to know you weren't trying to slip one over, and a disappointment to learn you must wear glasses. Don't let wearing glasses disturb you. You won't need them when you are playing football, and if you only wear them when you read your nose won't be disfigured by the strain.
It's funny how a young fellow like you, who has the time and the education to appreciate them, don't seem to care about reading good books, while an old rough and ready like your dad, can't have enough of them. When I was your age, I was too busy trying to help support the family, to find time to read much besides the Epping Bugle, whereas, you seem to be too busy figuring out how to have a good time, to care what the biggest men of the world thought about things.
You've wanted to know why I am always buying so many books, and although I never realized it before, I guess it's because I couldn't have them when I was young.
Yes, on that house party at Manchester, Ted, go ahead and have a good time and while I remember it here's a check that may come in handy for a few extras. If I were you, I'd take all the extras in the way of clothes you can cram into a suit case.
Forewarned is forearmed you know, and it's just as well when going to a house party, or to a fight, to carry all the heavy artillery you muster, for you never can be sure you won't need it.
I've been to only one house party, and I don't expect I shall ever go to another; but if I do even if it's only for a week end, I'm going to take every rag of clothing I own from oilskins to dress suit, not forgetting rubber boots and pumps, especially the pumps.
I believe a person is supposed to have a good time at a house party, but my only offense was about as enjoyable as the time I had typhoid.
Perhaps you remember the summer your Ma and I went to Pittsfield for two weeks, and left you with your Aunt Sarah over at Marblehead.
Well anyway we did, and I haven't thought much of Pittsfield since. We got there on a Friday, and the next morning I went down town for something and ran slap into Jack Hamilton.
Jack and I were boys together in Epping, and used to do considerable business trading rabbits and whatever live stock we happened to own.
Jack left Epping when he was seventeen, went to work for a stock broker in Boston, and made barrels of money, incidently marrying a Philadelphia girl who had callouses on her thumbs from cutting coupons.
Jack has always been my broker and handled all my finances, but for a good many years we hadn't seen much of each other socially, so when he suggested your Ma and I go out that afternoon to his cottage in Lenox, and stay over Sunday, I was glad to accept, thinking we'd have a chance to talk over old times. I went back to the hotel and told your Ma, and then promptly forgot all about it, for there was an old fellow living in Pittsfield who'd just invented an extension last that looked good to me.
I spent most of the afternoon in the old inventor's shop and when I returned to the hotel along about five, I found a high-wheeled cart outside which Jack had sent over to get us, and your Ma having duck fits for fear I wouldn't show up.
She said she'd put everything in my suit case I'd need, so I only slicked up a bit and we were off.
It was a mighty pretty ride over to Lenox, but when we turned in at the gate to Jack's cottage, I thought our driver had made a mistake, for the place looked bigger than the Boston Public Library,and about as homelike as a New York apartment house.
A frozen-faced individual in brass-buttoned red vest and a waiter's uniform met us at the front door, and when I told him I was William Soule of Lynn he led the way into the hall and disappeared.
We hung around for some time. Then a maid came along and showed us to our rooms. It was a mighty nice room I had, with pink silk wall coverings and gray wicker furniture, and with a tiled bath off it, that gleamed like a Pullman porter's smile. I looked the bed over carefully, decided it was comfortable, and then thought I'd go out in the yard and walk around. As I stepped on to the piazza, a haughty-faced woman disentangled herself from a group of ladies who were playing cards, and came towards me murmuring, Mr. Soule?
I pleaded guilty, and she extended two cold fingers, that had about as much cordiality in them as a dead smelt, and said she was pleased to meet me. From her tone, I judged she wasn't going to lead any cheers over the fact, so I bowed politely and marched on out to the stables in front of which I saw a boy exercising a mighty likely-looking colt. Jack had some fine horses, and a wonderful herd of Jerseys. His head groom was a real human sort of chap, who knew more about cattle than any man I ever met, and we were having a real good visit together whena gong like a fire alarm started somewhere in the house.
I made the piazza in three jumps, tore through the hall and up the stairs determined to get your Ma out before the house burned down, for what I'd seen of the Lenox Fire Department, sitting in his shirt sleeves before the door of the hose house as we drove over from Pittsfield, hadn't inspired me with any great amount of confidence in his ability to put out anything bigger than a bonfire.
As I rushed into the upper hall, I thought it funny I didn't smell smoke, so when I ran smack into a maid I grabbed her and asked her where the fire was.
"Fire!" she squealed.
"Yes," I answered, "wasn't that a fire gong?"
Ted, you should have seen her face. I thought she'd choke. She did her best to keep it straight, and not laugh, but it was some struggle.
At last she managed to stammer, that the gong wasn't for fire at all, but to let the guests know it was time to dress for dinner.
I felt as big as a man on Broadway looks from the tower of the Woolworth building, so I slipped her a dollar and ducked for my room.
There I sat down to get my breath, hoping that girl wouldn't tell on me, and wishing I was back in Lynn, for I saw rough weather ahead unless I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.
I shaved, and started to climb into my regimentals. Your Ma had put in shirts, studs, collars, tie, vest, coat, silk socks, pants, and every last article of necessary trappings except pumps, and pumps were about as necessary to me then as a little leather is to a pair of shoes.
I had a horrible sort of feeling as though my stomach was slowly revolving around inside of me, and my legs felt as if they were trying to go two ways at once, for I had worn a pair of tan shoes over from Pittsfield, and I knew from the glimpse I'd caught of Mrs. Hamilton's friends, that if I didn't wear my dress suit I'd rank lower than the deuce in that game.
Just how to wear that dress suit I couldn't quite figure out. It had to be done, that was certain, but as raw as I was on society stuff, I knew tan shoes and full dress would not get by. Then I remembered the bell in the wall beside the bed. In two jumps I had a thumb on it squeezing for dear life, for I thought if one of the servants answered, I could get word out to my friend the head groom to lend me a pair of black shoes. What size didn't matter, I'd have made any size fit.
Then I heard someone running along the hall outside, and yanked open the door in the face of the same maid I'd asked about the gong.
I slammed the door shut and looked at my watch. It was seven o'clock, and I figured half an hour atthe most, was all the time I had to get a pair of black shoes, and from the way I was located, a pair of black shoes seemed as easy to get as money from the government on a war contract.