I
have here quoted one of the grandest flights of the human fancy, and with a purpose. If God, who is perfection, and in whose image we are faintly formed, watches the weakliest of his lambs, supports the weariest of his poor sparrows, should not we, in trying to be true men, endeavor to pay equal care to all things intrusted to our attention, be they great or be they small! And more than that. The little errors beget myriads of their kind. "Many mickles make a muckle." The habit sooner or later, leads some of us into an awful abyss, where it had been better we had not lived. Errors creep into character just as ideas get into our brain. Says Moore:
And how like forts, to which beleaguers winUnhoped-for entrance through some friend within,One clear idea, wakened in the breastBy memory's magic, lets in all the rest.
Says Franklin: "A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the driver was lost; being overtaken and slain by an enemy, all for the want of care about a horse-shoe nail." "In persons grafted with a serious trust," says Shakspeare "negligence is a serious crime." And so it is.
STORY OF SAG BRIDGE.
In September, 1873, a conductor on the Chicago and Alton Railroad started south with a freight train. He was to stop at a station a few miles from Joliet and wait for the incoming passenger train from St. Louis. He consulted his watch. That unhappy piece of mechanism told him that he had time to reach the next station. He spoke to the operator of the telegraph. That person could give him no information as to where the passenger train was, and he, determining not to wait, pulled out. As his train was still within hearing, the operator rushed to the platform with the news that the passenger train had left the nearest station! The operator knew that
TWO TRAINS WERE ABOUT TO COME IN COLLISION,
a knowledge that has sometimes deprived railroad men of their minds forever. Soon the awful shock reverberated afar, and from nine to fifteen persons were killed in a horrible manner. One of the most prominent men of Chicago was scalded so that the flesh left his skeleton. An unkind fate preserved the conductor to confront his ignominy. It was found that
HE HAD FORGOTTEN TO WIND UP HIS WATCH!
How could such a butchery have been brought about, save by a course of small errors which had eaten into his moral nature, leaving him a great ghoulish fiend of Carelessness, running his pitiless Juggernaut up and down the highway between two great cities! The hideous errors made by men are always indicative of those particular men. Some people never make errors at all! Why? Because they are careful. Simple, is it not—like Napoleon's tactics? Yet that constant care is so wonderful in its effects that human science cannot peer into the mystery of its action. Men laboring under total aberration of the mind have been known to carefully wind a clock at a given hour, and evince no other power to do a reasonable thing. Begin early in life to do all these little things with the greatest care.
IMITATE THE CELEBRATED DETECTIVES,
who actually pay little attention to things gross and palpable, but follow the more closely those minute clews which, interlacing and concentering, often as a whole, lead them, with the greatest certainty, to the dark hand that did the foul deed. Here is
A RIDICULOUS ERROR:
On Tuesday, the third of May, 1881, Scranton, Willard & Co., brokers, of New York City, sold to Decker & Co. stocks to the enormous sum of $127,000. For this property Decker & Co. wrote a check on a bank for $127,000, and a messenger was sent by the cashier of Scranton, Willard & Co., to have the check certified—that is, to have the bank officials write across the face of the check in red ink "Certified," meaning that the money was there and would thenceforth be dedicated to the redemption of that particular piece of paper. The boy returned with the check, the cashier put upon his own file a "tag" representing the amount of money, along with many other similar records, and the boy was sent with the check to the Bank of North America. The boy handed to the banker, with the check, a similar "tag" from the cashier, which was also filed. When you deposit money, at many banks, you fill out a "tag" or deposit-check, and offer it with the money, which "tag" is used by the banker as a safeguard against errors and lapses of all kinds. When Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier reckoned up his "tags" he found no record of a check for $127,000. He immediately accused the boy of purloining the check, and inquiry at the bank (met by the reply that no such check had been deposited, as shown by the depositor's own "tags") strengthened his suspicions.
ALL THE BANKS OF NEW YORK
were at once notified of the loss of the great check, and costly engagements were made to advertise the matter all over the country. The boy was not arrested, but his case was not neglected, you may be assured. Repeated cross-questioning failed to shake his simple statement, that he had done as he had been told to do.
THE ACCOUNTS OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA
were behind that afternoon, and the cashier stayed until late in the day to get them balanced. After he had finally secured the totals of the day's transactions, he found that he had received, according to the depositors' "tags," $114,300 less than he had paid out. In some perturbation he recalled the notice of Scranton, Willard & Co., and at once sent to them, to see if that affair had anything to do with his immense discrepancy. Following this line of inquiry, Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier found that, in attempting to put the figures "127,000" on the "tag" of deposit he had neglected to write the last cipher, and the "tag" for $12,700 which had been made in its place, added to $114,300 which the banker lacked in "tags," exactly made up the $127,000 which the bank had in reality credited to Scranton, Willard & Co.'s account. How could a man leave off
A CIPHER WHICH MEANT $114,300?
Simply by a course of instruction and development in error, until, probably nothing save the most colossal sums would command his unqualified attention. Let us suppose your mother or sister gives you a letter to mail. Do not put that letter in your pocket. Carry it in your hand until you reach the place to post it. Do this for years. After that drill, when you get a letter to mail, you will not need to keep it in your hand, for you will feel it in your hand just as long as it is in your pocket, as the one-armed man has sensations in both hands!
"WE NEVER MAKE MISTAKES!"
I spoke in the preceding chapter of the ancient shield with its "Be Bold! Be Bold!" Now, on our modern shield we would put "Be Correct! Be Correct!" and it would not be necessary to put on the reverse side "Be not too Correct!" You cannot afford to make errors! Last year a gentleman drew a sum of money from the First National Bank of New York City. As he was about to leave the building, he discovered an error. He returned to the paying teller. He said: "I think you have made a mistake in paying me." The cashier stood there, by chance. "No, sir," said he, "we never make mistakes!" "But," said the gentleman, "you gave me twenty dollars too much money!" "No, sir!" thundered the cashier, "wenevermake mistakes!" Not for twenty dollars in cash would that banker admit that the establishment with which he was connected ever made a mistake. And you can be assured that
SUCH A SPARTAN SPIRIT WEEDS OUT
most of the ordinary blunders of business. Now if this great rich banker could not afford to indulge in mistakes, how much less can you, who have your whole fortune to make, be anything less than strictly accurate in all your operations? Study the spirit of that banker's answer. Imitate his horror of an error. He must have had good reasons for that feeling.
A HOMELY EXAMPLE.
A customer comes in from the country. He says: "I have brought a load of wheat to town to-day—about fifty bushel I should guess. I'll be in after noon and settle my account with you." Very good; you, the clerk, hurry to your books, to make out his account. When he comes in, he glances over it, and says: "Good gracious! you haven't given me credit for four dollars and seventy-five cents I paid you last May. I recollect it because I was in town to get a corn-planter when I paid it. And I've got your receipt, too." Sure enough, there is the receipt, which you have filled out yourself. And yet you failed to make an entry of the fact in his account. Shame covers you.
THE FARMER BEGINS TO HAVE SUSPICIONS.
Your employer begins to talk of the fall plowing as soon as he can, but the farmer goes over to your unscrupulous competitors in business, relates to them the fact that his scrupulous attention to details has saved him four dollars and seventy-five cents, and asks their opinion as to whether or not an attempt were not made to cheat him. His listeners talk about you in a mild-mannered way—
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
Off goes your customer in his lumber-wagon, carrying that gross libel upon your place of business, to fill the prairies and the openings with its brood of gossiped offspring, until, some day, it comes back that your employer is a horsethief and has served a term in the penitentiary!
The errors which are often made in handling figures are just as annoying. It is a trifling error to call eight and four thirteen, but it often may disconcert an immense calculation. Like the pebble in the shoe, small in itself, it may do great injury. Some years ago there traveled through the country a genuine "lightning calculator." You could put down any number, big or little, while his back was turned, and he would turn again and mark the total with far greater rapidity than he could speak, and he thought out the total far quicker than he could mark it. Of course, he had a magic book to sell, but when you came to read his magic book and see how he did it, you found it was the same old way, only he was more expert than you. He could add four thousand two hundred and twenty eight and three thousand six hundred and fifty four as easily as you could forty two and thirty six, or perhaps four and three, so you see that the scheme of running up a single column of figures is at best a clumsy one.
YOU EXPOSE YOURSELF
to additional errors by enlarging the possible additions in a body of numbers. We are taught the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve. We never stumble up to that point. But it ought to continue up to one hundred times one hundred. We could then always add two figures to two figures easier then to parcel the operation out into two jobs. The "lightning calculator" had probably carried it up to five thousand times five thousand. Take an interest in "sums." Learn
THE FREAKS OF FIGURES.
For instance, to multiply any set of figures by 11—say 54—add the 5 and 4 together and put the 9 between the 5 and the 4. To multiply 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 by 11, do the same way, only carry your 10's. Thus 6 and 5 are 11, put down 1 before the 6; 5 and 4 are 9 and 1 to carry is 10; put down the before the 16, etc. Again to multiply, say 18 9's by 9, bring down a 1, then make 170's and a 9 out to the left. Again to square numbers, call even 10's the body; call the rest the surplus,—104—add surplus to body making it 108; now square the surplus (4) making 16 and put it after the 108, or 10,816. This is simply taking advantage of the 10s. Take 33 and you will see. Here 3 is the surplus; add the surplus, making 36; multiply 36 by 30, making 1,080; square the surplus, 3 times 3—9; add to 1,080—making 1,089. You see you get an even thirty to multiply by and load up the sum to be multiplied sufficiently to balance. Above 5 call it a deficit and go to your next 10 for your body.
I MENTION THESE TRICKS
not because they are good for anything practical, but to get you to take up figures and be quick with them. Get yourself up a multiplication table running to 50 times 50—there's something practical. The man quick and accurate at figures is always esteemed.
OUR LANGUAGE
is a vast record of the changes in pronunciation which have been brought about by affected people as well as careless and ignorant people. "'Tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." But you cannot change it by spelling "balance" with twols, or "sure" with anh. Be accurate in your spelling. Restrict yourself to such words as you can spell, and you will soon improve if you are guilty of such errors. In conclusion, if you go fishing and catch three perch and one black bass, say that you caught those fish, and not that you caught three black bass and one perch. Right there is where you can form habits that will shine out in your face as you grow to the full dignity of manhood. You see I lay special stress on habit. The Duke of Wellington said that habit was ten times nature. Horace Mann said
"HABIT IS A CABLE.
We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it." Dr. Locke said with a wonderful knowledge of life: "Habit works more constantly and with greater facility than reason; which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed." Thus, you see, when a man is spoken of as a person "of good habits," it means something more than is usually conceived. It means he is under chains which he cannot break—and, in reality, that he could not be a bad man without suffering and discomfort.
success
Nothing succeeds so well as success.—Talleyrand.
T
he man Talleyrand, who made the above mocking assertion, was one of the closest observers of human nature who have ever lived. And yet what he said in a spirit of uncommon hatred of his fellow-beings is really another way of saying the exact truth—that success comes only after so many trials and disappointments that the world, considering it a safe rule, admires the result, and feels that the reflected credit for a great result belongs to him upon whom it falls. Beside you toils a young man of your own age. He does not seem to care to rise. He dislikes the few duties of the present, and would be inclined to shrink from further responsibilities. It may be that he is the happier as compared with you, but men must not consult simply their own individual happiness. Sooner or later all men take on a broader burden than merely their own support. Try early in life to get the start which the experience of others furnishes you. You are lucky that you were born in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Men before you have, by ambition and energy, made the affair of living easier for you. Right here in youth is the time to begin the battle. You are now a private.
OFFICERS ARE VERY SCARCE.
Make up your mind to have shoulder-straps early in the campaign. You cannot afford to miss a single battle. Every opportunity which opens to you is a city to be taken, and you are to be put in command. See that it surrenders. No city ever properly besieged evaded final capitulation. The chances are all in your favor. Remember, when you contemplate your unambitious comrade, that he is likely to change his tastes as he grows older. If he cannot give a reasonable degree of encouragement to those tastes he will then become crabbed and sour. Wherever you see men crusty and difficult to please, be sure they have had cities to take and failed to capture them.
ALEXANDER SMITH,
a Scotch poet who died at a very early age, said very appropriately: "To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required—just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and strawberries." Now how are you to catch this marvelous sunshine of prosperity? Simply, do not shut it out. Your comrade has had the moral ague. He fears that, if the sun shine on him, it will bring a return of his fever. When the sun shines on you, do not miss a ray. It makes you grow.
YOUR PARTICULAR DUTIES
are soon learned. Why is it that the affairs of walking behind a counter and actually knowing what your employer pays for his goods so soon lose the magic there once was in them? It is because the human brain is supple, and comprehends quickly. By the time certain problems are solved others spring up. See that you solve them. The mind should be pacified in its desire for new conquests.
THE SAFE RULE
as to whether or not you are fitted for new endeavors is to find to your own true satisfaction that you can do your duties better than anyone not in daily practice of the same kind of work. If your employer can take hold and do a thing once a week better than you who do it a hundred times a day, then it should still have considerable charm for you, for your mind is strangely unfamiliar with the procedure. When a clerk stays in one position all his life, it is certain to be from
LACK OF BOTH AMBITION AND ABILITY,
and he lacks a good deal of each. Every little while, through the sickness, advancement, or bad judgment of others, a place just a little more responsible than your own is left vacant. Somebody is wanted badly. You are the man, and are put there for the interval. There is the pivotal point. By unusual endeavor you can probably fill the place better than it was filled by the regular occupant. Your employer, expecting less of you, gets more, and praises you. Now, by praising you, he is, somehow or other,
"TAKING STOCK IN YOU."
If he "keeps you down," he shows his poor judgment, and he is not going to do that if he can help it. On the other hand, your comrade is put in the vacant place. The duties are hard and perplexing. He is compelled to go and ask a man for some money. The man is mean. He not only refuses the money, but addresses some personal considerations to your comrade which sicken him to the heart. He returns to your employer with a tale of failure well tinged with his own morbid feelings and wounded vanity. Your employer is irritated, and attributes the fiasco to the ambassador. To satisfy his own views of things, he prophesies that your comrade never will amount to anything, anyhow. Now, to see this prediction verified is, unfortunately for your comrade, just as necessary to your employer's self-love as to see you succeed. The point of the first opportunity, the first impression on your employer, is really central, pivotal. If you get a big iron safe on such a spot, you can turn it with extraordinary ease.
There is no road to practical business so good as practice. You read of clerks being educated by sham forms of business. You might as well read of men gambling with counterfeit money. Business men want clerks who have been private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain. When a man starts in as captain he is likely to get discharged as private. In the great printing houses
PROOF READERS
are required, to see that the types are spelled out, one by one, into the right words, and that the right words are rightly spelled. Now let a college graduate apply for such a position. He knows Greek and Latin. He can spell—or thinks he can. He can turn you out a sentence, which, after going about so far, refers to what it is talking about, cuts a pigeon-wing like the boys on the ice, tells a little tale between two dashes, and one inside of that between two parentheses ("finger-nails," the printers call them), again refers to what it is talking about, and closes up with three unaccented syllables following a heavy sound. Sometimes folks hire this gentleman. The proof-slip is thrown in wet, greatly to his horror, and after drying it he finds they are waiting for it outside, and some other proof-reader is compelled to take it. Then he learns he must read it wet, as it is. Pretty soon the foreman of the printers brings in a proof-slip which is set in three sizes of type where the gentleman discovered but one size. Then the foreman of the proof-room has a discouraging way of taking the gentleman's proof and marking from eight to ten glaring typographical errors which the gentleman has overlooked, and eight or ten typographical absurdities, which he has approved, and, horrors upon horrors! eight or ten errors of "style." Now, for the first time, the gentleman has learned that every time the word "President" appears in the newspaper it is either capitalized or uncapitalized, while he had naturally supposed that it took its chances, the way a picnic does!
THUS THE GENTLEMAN GETS AN IDEA
of his utter incompetency to fill the place of a trained man. And he never gets half so complete a view of his uselessness as do those around him. Such proof-readers rarely work two nights. They are corporals in captains' places. Or, perhaps, they are captains of artillery in the infantry service. What do folks do when the best proof-reader is missing? They go out into the type-setting room and take the brightest printer they can find. He cannot tell French from Latin, but he can see a fair share of the errors in a proof-slip, and will not let the telegraphic abbreviation for government go into the paper as "goat," nor that for Republican as "roofer," as I have seen collegiates do.
HE IS ALREADY A LIEUTENANT.
Give him a little practice and he is a captain. With energy and ambition failure never comes if you only know the difficulties. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is as good in business as in poetry. In the great cities there are long streets lined with retail store-rooms of every quality of location. They rent at from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a month. Many a store-room has not had an occupant in it for ten years who did not grow poorer. No good business man could be induced to enter into a business at such a point. But
THE FOOLS HAVE RUSHED IN,
like the collegiate into the proof-room, convinced that they could do what good business men know to be impossible,—that is take in eight dollars a day and pay fifty dollars rent, on forty per cent profit. Here and there is a grocer who gets up at half past five in the morning, opens up, puts out his eggs, oranges, berries, lemons, potatoes, beans, and bananas, sweeps out, gets out his horse, goes to the market-street, does a day's buying there and elsewhere, and by eight o'clock is ready for business, just about as the man who expects to share in trade with him is unlocking his doors. Speak to the eight o'clock man and he will tell you that he has to stay up till ten at night, and that he cannot burn the candle of life at both ends. But, for all that, he is grievously disappointed when the final collapse comes. Nothing succeeds like success because very few things are like success. Nothing on the street succeeds like this grocery, because nowhere else on the street is so much work done by so few men. Nowhere else does the proprietor put all of his time and his money into his business, and, in strawberry time, for instance, retail thirty-five dollars' worth of strawberries in one day with only one clerk, one delivery-boy and a cashier! At the same time, this successful grocer would not invest one cent in the store-room opposite, where, with so much confidence, the eight-o'clock man has put all his money.
THE MAN OF SUCCESS KNOWS THE DIFFICULTIES.
"Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off," says the Bible, yet that is precisely what we are doing when we smile at the sally of some envious dealer about the "luck" of our grocer—that "nothing succeeds as well as success." But the landlord goes on renting his store-room, and thanking his stars that the fools are not all dead yet. Do not desire a position two grades ahead of you. The one that is next to you is your proper goal. Over the shoulder of the companion who holds it you can get many a glance long before your chance comes to do the work, and, even then, what looked so very easy to you before it came your turn to do it, will now "shoot light horrors through you." In a large measure people are bought at their own prices. If they are worth those figures, their fortune is made. A celebrated painter was once asked how he mixed his colors. He replied that
HE "MIXED THEM WITH BRAINS."
Mix brains with your business. Like the opium or chloral slave you will be able to endure a larger quantity each day, and the effect will not be darkness and death, but light and life. Simply because you think you can do a thing is no great sign you can do it. You must have brains and probabilities in your favor. You must absolutely have done something very nearly like it. I never saw a more signal instance of the general self-conceit of the race than in the experience of a young man who once sold a little rubber reed which he laid on his tongue, and with which
HE MOCKED ALL KINDS OF BIRDS.
After seeing him do it, the crowd would gather about in great herds, with their "quarters" high in the air, anxious to purchase, and just as sure they could do the same thing as the eight o'clock man that he can get a crowd into his store. I do not remember a solitary instance where a purchaser ever acquired the least facility in imitating the sounds of birds, and I have been tempted to believe the "machine" was a "dummy" by which the salesman conveyed to the gaping crowd the hope of acquiring his wonderful art. Do not, in the journey of life, attempt impossible stages of travel because they look easy at the start. Stop at each inn which the experience of years has shown to be necessary for your continued comfort. But never, on any account, lie down between the inns, for the outlaws called Failure and Discredit will fall upon you and work your destruction. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave." "In the morning sow thy seed." "Let us crown our selves with rosebuds before they be withered."
center
Companions
But to our tale.—Ae market nightTam had got planted unco rightFast by an ingle bleezing finelyWi reaming swats that drank divinely;And at his elbow Souter Johnny,His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;Tam lo'ed him like a very brither—They had been fou for weeks thegither!—Burns.
I
cannot but feel much apprehension in approaching a subject so nearly allied to the actual inner character of a man. "A man is known by the company he keeps." I cannot admonish the blind that they should see. I cannot suggest to Tam O'Shanter that he should not associate with Cobbler Johnny. Why, he loves him like a very brother! Indeed, as the last sublime token of friendship, have they not been drunk for weeks together? Besides, are they not such worthless wights that they will do less harm in associating with each other than in enlarging their power of evil by operating on new material? If you are Tam O'Shanter, I cannot very well advise you to seek out some worthy young man for an associate and attaint his character and his reputation by clinging to him. Now the only thing I can consistently do is to hope you are a young man
FAR REMOVED FROM TAM O'SHANTER IN HABITS
and selfishness. I can hope that you are a young man who, in going on a fishing excursion with some reputable person of your age, will not cast a cloud on the mind of that person's employer, and cause him to fear that his clerk is falling instead of rising in self-esteem. Let my hope be taken as an enduring fact. Now I feel I am on safe ground. You are building a structure. On your west party-wall your neighbor is also erecting one. He is building it so that it will fall down—that is plain. When it falls it will involve you in its ruins because the middle wall supports both edifices. What do you do? You go to the authorities, and they make him take down his house brick by brick. In this way the law surrounds you with its beneficent protection, and you need not suffer from the faults of others. But alas!
picture
"Adieu, valor! rust, rapier! be still, drum: For your manager is in love; yea, he loveth."
MORALLY,
when you put up a party-wall you must abide by the conclusion. If your companion reflect credit on you, then you are doubly strong, but if he pull you down, then there is no relief and little sympathy. Let us suppose that, in an absolutely evil hour, you have learned to play billiards. A brother-clerk says: "Let us play a string at dinner-time!" Across your mind flits the bright green table, the beautiful ivory balls, the wonderful angle which you discovered the last time you played, and, compared with the dull routine of the store, you momentarily feel that
A GAME OF BILLIARDS
would be truly beneficial. So, at noon you go. There never was a game of billiards that would end precisely at the moment you should leave for duty. There never were two employes who played billiards who did not cheat their employers out of considerable time. There never was an employer who would not resent this injustice. The comrade who does not play billiards will, sooner or later, get an absolute advantage over you. You will come in, complaining of your luck only to find that your slow-going comrade has "got something" which you have missed. Employers do not want head-clerks or partners who hang around billiard saloons or livery stables. "He who comes from the kitchen smells of its smoke." What can you get at a billiard saloon? You can get the good opinion of some person who is never civil to anybody. His incivility has a charm for your young mind. You naturally imitate him.
YOU TRY IT ON A CUSTOMER.
He says: "Have you any buttons like this?" showing one about fourteen years old. You look at him insolently and say "Nah!" (meaning "No, sir"). This makes the other clerk (who plays billiards with you) laugh very heartily, but it makes your employer laugh out of the other corner of his mouth, for he has no business to keep such a clerk, and the customer knows it. The customer may avenge himself by refusing an extension on a note which he holds, and that note, possibly, may have your employer's name on it! The mistake you make in this particular case is in applying the manners of a billiard-saloon to the uses of a place of business. A very ordinary-looking old man was one day standing in a great bank in New York City. He was talking with a friend, and the friend spoke of desiring to have a draft cashed which had been drawn in his favor. Knowing that the old man banked at that place, he asked him to step up to the paying teller and identify the drawer of the money. This the old man, naturally, attempted to do. He said: "I know this gentleman to be Alvin H. Hamilton." The paying teller looked at the old man and judged him by his clothes. He said: "I don't know you at all, sir! Pass along." This did not please the old man. He expostulated. "Pass along!" yelled the teller, looking ominously toward the policeman, who edged toward the group.
"I'LL PASS ALONG!"
said the old man, hotly. And he drew a blank check, engraved in a costly manner, from his pocket, and wrote on the "please-pay" line "Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars." Then he signed his name to it, turned it over, put his name on the back of it, and got in line again. By the time he was at the window the word had gone along the line. The receiving teller, the collecting clerk, the certifying clerk and the examiners, had passed the news to
THE CASHIER AND THE PRESIDENT
that something unusual was about to happen, and those magnates had rushed to the paying teller's side. "Do you know that signature?" said the old man with a gleam in his eye. Now it was the teller's turn to feel wretched. "Pay five hundred and fifty thousand—Babbit, soap man! oh! what an idiot I am!" All this went through his head. The president, the cashier, abased themselves before the irate old man. It was all a mistake! They assured him! They assured him! Beg pardon! Impertinence of new teller. And a' that, and a' that. But it would not do! The money went to another bank, and a business worth thousands of dollars annually was lost, together with the natural prestige of such patronage. There was what I should call
A CASE OF BILLIARD-ROOM MANNERS,
and a costly one. Drop that style. Says Bishop Horne: "It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world; who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted." "He that walketh with wise men" says the Bible, "shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." Try to frequent the company of your betters. Good books are safe companions. Good men, a little older than yourself, are still better. Perhaps good women, who take an interest in young men, are better than all others, for they are more unselfish, and often have a spare thought for the young man that makes his life happier.
LEARN TO ADMIRE RIGHTLY.
The leer of the man who has sold lemonade in a circus has a strange charm for a young man. It has a strange repulsiveness for the "solid man" of business. The look of a man with a cigar put in his mouth at a sharp upward angle and with a hat lurched like the cargo of a bad sailer, has a strong fascination for a young man. It is a strong irritant to the man whose companionship is an honor. You cannot do better than to frequent some church, rent a sitting, and have a positive engagement two or three times a week. You are a great gainer by this. It may cost you a little; but you will get all that back in moral capital—just as valuable in business as money. Says George Washington: "The company in which you will improve most will be least expensive to you." In your church you will meet men who do not live all for themselves, as does the dominant mind in the bar-room. Their drill and discipline have made them more unselfish. They will help you in many ways. They will throw a rope to you and pull you aboard. Sooner or later your association with them will get you position, respect, family, happiness, success, and above all, that peace which passeth all understanding. Do not take this as preaching. It is as practical as anything in this book. Chesterfield says: "No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint." What makes mankind revere Shakspeare Because he said fine things? No. But because he said true things. Listen to him: "It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases of one another."
on the road
Conference maketh a ready man.—Lord Bacon.Now stirs the lated traveler apaceTo gain the timely inn.—Macbeth, ActIII., Sc. 3.
W
hat is there about going to a strange town on business which should make a man's heart feel like a cold biscuit inside of him? A young man may have been to a certain village on endless excursions of pleasure, when his pulse beat as gloriously as the bass drum on a grand circus-entry into town, yet when he has to go to the depot to take the cars for that same town to sell goods there for the first time in his life, it is harder to carry his heart to the train than it is to lug his grip-sacks. When you feel that way, do not feel ashamed. All the "old heads" on the road have been in that predicament. Talk to your heart the way you think about a mother when she mourns for her child. You say "Let her feel bad. It's natural. It'll do her good." Now when your home begins to drop out of sight behind, and the conductor comes along to punch your ticket rather than to comfort you, say to your heart "Go it, you you old ninnyhammer! It's natural for you to thump, but you can't interfere with business, you know!" Your mind is all right. It's your body. Now, while
YOU ARE NEARING THAT FATAL TOWN,
you look back over the goods in the store. Of course, you are positively familiar with everything in stock. You came out on the road either because you asked to go, or because other folks had espied a faculty of persuasion in you which they thought would sell goods. Sometimes a man looks persuasively, sometimes he talks persuasively; sometimes he both looks and talks it. This is after he has had practice. "Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Now this town you are going to is a band of enemies. How can you make a conquest? By doing as Napoleon did. Set your own time for the fight, pitch upon one man at a time, always pick out one not used to your mode of warfare, and then clean him out before he thinks the action has begun. "Formerly," says Bovee, naively, "when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."
HERE IS THE TOWN NOW.
How dirty those houses look! O, yes, they are the habitations of the poor. You know the hotel you are going to, of course. You know where it is. Now you grab your valises, your overcoat is on, and you climb down. Want a 'bus? It's only fifty cents for a ride of a block and a half! Well, you will get along without it. The labor will get your blood going. You have thus made a sale already, equal to two dollars. Put that down to your credit. By this time, although you are among the Philistines, you are yourself again. You go into the wash-room of the hotel, enter the dining-room, eat a very poor meal, and get up to begin the fight. Now sit down a half-hour and let your food get started in your stomach.
GETTING YOUR MIND.
Does not the General spread his maps before him? You probably have a certain firm in your mind, either by chance or direction from your employer. This, of course, is the weak point in the enemy's lines. Here he has trusted to the ground as it looked from his side of the field, when, in reality, it presented few difficulties from yours. Some experience in the world has led me to believe that if a salesman has come to the opinion, even in the most absurd manner, that he can sell a certain man goods, he can do it, almost beyond the chance of a doubt. I once knew a successful solicitor who seemed to do all his work at his desk. He would sit in the greatest gloom
CANVASSING HIMSELF!
That was a fact. He was really revolving the weak places of the enemy in his mind. Suddenly he would start up, seize his paraphernalia, make his expedition, and return rich-laden. This taught me the wonderful power of persuasion when directed in exactly the right way. One of the first things to forget is yourself. I think possibly the finding in your mind of a man to whom you can sell goods depends principally upon your belief that when you make your dash on him you forget what he will think ofyou. You have the willingness to sacrifice all that to the one object before you. In the possible places of attack which you reject, you are not yet willing to make that sacrifice. You know
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
was a great man. Why? Well, here is one reason. The little men came to him one day with horror spread upon their narrow features. Said they: "O, Mr. Lincoln, we have just discovered that Grant drinks whisky. We have come to ask you to put a Temperance General in control of the more important of his actions. He has the lives of our children and our friends in his hands. Save us from his liability to plunge us all in general blood!" Now this was after Vicksburg. Mr. Lincoln took an interest in this revelation that elated the petitioners. "You are quite sure he drinks whisky, are you?" "O, yes.
HE WAS DRUNK AT SHILOH."
"Well, will you not try hard to find out where he gets his whisky?" said Old Abe; "I want some of it for my other generals!"
This man Abraham Lincoln wanted to put down the Rebellion for the sake of both the North and the South. Anything that would contribute to that end was what he wanted in large quantities.
YOU ARE DRESSED
as you have always dressed—with easy-fitting business garments. Absolutely nothing on your person gives offense, either in newness or oldness. You enter the store to whose proprietor you intend to sell goods. If you know him and he is busy, you nod and avoid a talk. This is both difficult and unlucky. If he is at your service, you state that you have come to show him your samples. You do not hope he needs anything at the start. Of course, he needs nothing. That does not enter into the question. He will buy at the end. You now, if your samples are with you, pick out some medium bargains. Reserve your powerful arguments. Try to make him understand the true value of these goods. Nothing under the sun is so powerful as example. Now, to furnish examples, you must state who sells this particular line of goods. Mention the names with all the precision, volubility and confidence in the world. He may evince no interest, but it has moved him greatly to hear all those names! Now he begins to talk prices to you. The chances are that he is "drawing the long bow"—that is, that he is putting the prices at which he buys full low enough! Do not dispute him. Never argue with him. Accept all he says as gospel. Very soon he will be on the other tack. You will be talking, and you can judge whether he has told the truth or not. Now you are both on excellent terms. He thinks you are a very decent young fellow.
BRING ON YOUR "LEADERS."
You ought to have some little line that you are selling for less than it is worth. Give him the solemn privilege of getting some of it. He wavers, he is lost. This is the entering wedge. If he is sharp enough to buy only "leaders," he is too sharp for you, and for your house. Ten chances to one he would never pay anyway. You must have picked out a poor man to start on. But if you have an ordinary gentlemanly man of business, he will take some goods of you. Canvass him for everything. Do not neglect your work now it has come. He is wavering everywhere. He is contradicting by his acts nearly every assertion he made behind his entrenchments. Never mind that. Do not leave him until there is "no more buy in him." Now, after you have all the items—and
NEVER STOP HIM
when he is giving them—sum them up, read them over, take his name (firm name), his post-office (not his railroad station), his railroad station, his express company, his railroad, absolutely everything. Make his name "Owens," not "Owen," "Ransom's Sons" not Ransom & Sons, "Smythe" not "Smith," if that be the way he puts it. A man is very tender about his name. Never forget that. Impress those things on your shipping-clerk at home. Tell him you have sold Edwards Pierrepont a bill of goods, and that this particular buyer has
A PRIVATE GRAVEYARD
for shipping-clerks who mark it "Edward." You have already consulted your commercial "testament" to see if the firm will pay. If the bill be too large for the credit allowed in the "testament," telegraph to your firm about it and get instructions. Of course, you cannot have mistaken prices or sold below the necessary profit. A firm in Boston started out a confident young man, and he sold tremendous bills of goods. He took no account of the value of the goods, freight, or time of payment. All those merchants who had friends on his "beat" telegraphed to them to be sure and give him an order. He was the rage. There was also some rage at Boston when the orders began coming in. They telegraphed to Madison
TO HEAD HIM OFF,
but he had "taken a shoot" to Rockford. They telegraphed to Dubuque, but he had doubled down toward Galesburg. They telegraphed to Galesburg but he had escaped into Iowa. Finally they sent, to every town on three parallel lines of railroad in Iowa, a postal card with "Come Home!" covering one side of it, and captured him somewhere about the middle of the State, also in the middle of the greatest of all his campaigns. The firm settled his expenses, but refused to deliver the goods, and hired an extra lawyer or two to contest
THE LARGE CROP OF LEGAL SUITS
which brought up the rear of his triumph, like the tail of a gorgeous comet. This young man was peculiar. I only mention his flight through the western commercial sky to make you smile when you think of it and lighten your heart, when this remembrance comes in a lonesome hour. If you are unacquainted with the gentleman to whom you are to sell, use your habitual salutation. A majority of successful men say "How are you, sir?" You have your card right side up, close to his hand. You say: "My name is Bennington—I am from Chicago—Remington & Company—let me talk to you a little about some of our goods." You have accompanied some such speech as this by an expeditious display of your samples. If your choice of attack was sound, he is already looking at your goods.
THE BOARD AT THE HOTEL
has greatly improved this evening, so you will find. Make up your mind that when a man does not accord you a fair hearing you have erred in your approach. There are some men who have to be approached through a personal introduction. If you take advantage of the chances that come in your way, you can afford to accept the misfortunes which befall you, for it is a real misfortune to attack a cold, hard-surfaced man in his moment of strength and get a full broadside from his guns. Go in force against such men. Two men would have him at a disadvantage.
IN CONCLUSION,
do not be in a hurry to get back home. Have books with you. Shun traveling men, as they cannot benefit you. The desire to have company often makes a man "lose a town." It often keeps him up nights. What is the reason you dread the attack? Because you have no electricity in you. You have not slept enough. Have you not often felt you could walk ten miles as easily as one? That was just the moment to "fall up against" the hard-surfaced man. Have you not often felt you would like to be in the little white cottage, reading what a wonderful place New York is? Just then you ought to be in bed,
MANUFACTURING SNAP AND SPARKLE.
In all your expedition, judgment has been at work. Judgment sent you out, and judgment pointed out your attack. You therefore have sold goods to responsible people, and your firm are delighted. You now have the most powerful lines of money-making in the world right in your hands. You are the man who can "place the goods." You are practically a partner. If you have perfected yourself in your art, and if you are not in business for yourself, it is because you do not want it so to be.
Examples
Lives of great men all remind usWe may make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind us,Footprints on the sands of time.—Longfellow.