Part 7 (1/2)
As night came on the self-adjusting couches spread themselves on either side; patent bootjacks rolled up and took your boots off; unseen fingers tucked the damask covers all about you, and the porter took your pocket-book to keep till morning, returning it then with twice what you had in it at nightfall. After a while the train slackens to one hundred and seventy-five miles an hour, and the conductor, in his dream, announces that they are coming near the terminus. More brakes are dropped and they are running but ninety miles the hour; and some one, looking out of the window, says, ”How slow we go!” ”Yes,” says the conductor, ”we are holding up.” Now they have almost stopped, going at only seventy miles the hour.
The long line of depot lamps are flas.h.i.+ng along the track. On the platform of the station are the lovers who are waiting for their betrothed, and parents who have come down to greet their children, returned with a fortune, and wives who have not been able to eat or drink since their spouses went away three weeks before. As the cus.h.i.+oned train flashes into the depot and stops, wedding bells peal, and the gong of many banquets sounds, and white arms are flung about necks, reckless of mistake, and innumerable percussions of affection echo through the depot, so crisp and loud that they wake the conductor, who thought that the boisterous smack was on his own cheek, but finds that he is nothing but a bachelor railroad man, with a lantern, at midnight getting out into a snow bank.
Application: Get an easy position when you sleep, if you have any choice between angels and gorgons. At midnight, seizing a chair, I ran into the next room, resolving to kill, at the first stroke, the ruffian who was murdering a member of my household. But there was no ruffian. The sweet girl had, during the day, been reading of St. Bartholomew's ma.s.sacre, and was now lying on her back, dreaming it all over again. When dreams find anyone lying flat on the back, they cry out, ”Here is a flat surface on which to skate and play ball,” and from scalp to toe they sport themselves. The hardest nag in all the world to ride is the nightmare.
Many think that sleep is lost time. But the style of your work will be mightily affected by the style of your slumber. Sound Asleep is sister of Wide Awake. Adam was the only man who ever lost a rib by napping too soundly; but when he woke up, he found that, instead of the twelve ribs with which he started, he really had nigh two dozen. By this I prove that sleep is not subtraction, but addition. This very night may that angel put balm on both your eyelids five minutes after you touch the pillow!
CHAPTER XXII.
PUSH & PULL.
We have long been acquainted with a business firm whose praises have never been sung. I doubt whether their names are ever mentioned on Exchange. They seem to be doing more business and have more branch houses than the Stewarts or Lippincotts. You see their names almost everywhere on the door.
It is the firm of Push & Pull. They generally have one of their partners'
names on outside of the door, and the other on the inside: ”Push” on the outside and ”Pull” on the inside. I have found their business-houses in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, London and Edinburgh. It is under my eye, whether I go to buy a hat, a shawl, or a paper of pins, or watch, or ream of foolscap. They are in all kinds of business; and from the way they branch out, and put up new stores, and multiply their signboards on the outside and inside of doors, I conclude that the largest business firm on earth to-day is Push & Pull.
When these gentlemen join the church, they make things go along vigorously.
The roof stops leaking; a new carpet blooms on the church floor; the fresco is retouched; the high pulpit is lowered till it comes into the same climate with the pew; strangers are courteously seated; the salary of the minister is paid before he gets hopelessly in debt to butcher and baker; and all is right, financially and spiritually, because Push & Pull have connected themselves with the enterprise.
A new parsonage is to be built, but the movement does not get started.
Eight or ten men of slow circulation of blood and stagnant liver put their hands on the undertaking, but it will not budge. The proposed improvement is about to fail when Push comes up behind it and gives it a shove, and Pull goes in front and lays into the traces; and, lo! the enterprise advances, the goal is reached! And all the people who had talked about the improvement, but done nothing toward it, invite the strangers who come to town to go up and see ”our” parsonage.
Push & Pull are wide-awake men. They never stand round with their hands in their pockets, as though feeling for money that they cannot find. They have made up their minds that there is a work for them to do; and without wasting any time in reverie, they go to work and do it. They start a ”life insurance company.” Push is the president, and Pull the secretary. Before you know it, all the people are running in to have their lungs sounded, and to tell how many times they have had the rheumatism; how old they are; whether they ever had fits; and at what age their father and mother expired; and putting all the family secrets on paper, and paying Push & Pull two hundred dollars to read it. When this firm starts a clothing house, they make a great stir in the city. They advertise in such strong and emphatic way that the people are haunted with the matter, and dream about it, and go round the block to avoid that store door, lest they be persuaded in and induced to buy something they cannot afford. But some time the man forgets himself, and finds he is in front of the new clothing store, and, at the first gleaner of goods in the show window, is tempted to enter. Push comes up behind him, and Pull comes up before him, and the man is convinced of the shabbiness of his present appearance--that his hat will not do, that his coat and vest and all the rest of his clothes, clean down to his shoes, are unfit; and before one week is past, a boy runs up the steps of this customer with a pasteboard box marked, ”From the clothing establishment of Push & Pull. C.O.D.”
These men can do anything they set their hands to--publish a newspaper, lay out a street, build a house, control a railroad, manage a church, revolutionize a city. In fact, any two industrious, honorable, enterprising men can accomplish wonders. One does the out-door work of the store, and the other the indoor work. One leads, the other follows; but both working in one direction, all obstacles are leveled before them.
I wish that more of our young men could graduate from the store of Push & Pull. We have tens of thousands of young men doing nothing. There must be work somewhere if they will only do it. They stand round, with soap locks and scented pocket-handkerchiefs, tipping their hats to the ladies; while, instead of waiting for business to come to them, they ought to go to work and make a business. Here is the ladder of life. The most of those who start at the top of the ladder spend their life in coming down, while those who start at the bottom may go up. Those who are born with a gold spoon in their mouth soon lose the spoon. The two school bullies that used to flourish their silk pocket-handkerchiefs in my face, and with their ivory-handled, four-bladed knives punch holes through my kite--one of them is in the penitentiary, and the other ought to be.
Young man, the road of life is up hill, and our load heavy. Better take off your kid gloves, and patent leathers, and white vest, and ask Push, with his stout shoulder, and Pull, with his strong grip, to help you. Energy, pluck, courage, obstinate determination are to be cultured. Eat strong meat, drop pastries, stop reading sickly novelettes, pray at both ends of the day and in the middle, look a man in the eye when you talk to him, and if you want to be a giant keep your head out of the lap of indulgences that would put a pair of shears through your locks.
If you cannot get the right kind of business partner, marry a good, honest wife. Fine cheeks and handsome curls are very well, but let them be mere incidentals. Let our young men select practical women; there are a few of them left. With such a one you can get on with almost all heavy loads of life. You will be Pull, and she Push; and if you do not get the house built and the fortune established, send me word, and I will tear this article up in such small pieces that no one will ever be able to find it.
Life is earnest work, and cannot be done with the tips of the fingers. We want more crowbars and fewer gold toothpicks. The obstacles before you cannot be looked out of countenance by a quizzing gla.s.s. Let sloth and softliness go to the wall, but three cheers for Push & Pull, and all their branch business houses!
CHAPTER XXIII.
BOSTONIANS.
We ran up to the Boston anniversaries to cast our vote with those good people who are in that city on the side of the right. We like to go to the modern Athens two or three times a year. Among other advantages, Boston always soothes our nerves. It has a quieting effect upon us. The people there are better satisfied than any people we know of. Judging from a few restless spirits who get on some of the erratic platforms of that city, and who fret and fume about things in general, the world has concluded that Boston is at unrest. But you may notice that the most of the restless people who go there are imported speakers, whom Boston hires to come once a year and do for her all the necessary fretting.
The genuine Bostonian is satisfied. He rises moderately early, goes to business without any especial haste, dresses comfortably, talks deliberately, lunches freely, and goes home to his family at plausible hours. He would like to have the world made better, but is not going to make himself sick in trying to cure the moral ailments of others.
The genuine Bostonian is, for the most part, pleased with himself, has confidence that the big elm will last another hundred years, keeps his patriotism fresh by an occasional walk near the meat market under Faneuil Hall, and reads the ”Atlantic Monthly.” We believe there is less fidgeting in Boston than in any city of the country. We think that the average of human life must be longer there than in most cities. Dyspepsia is a rarity; for when a mutton chop is swallowed of a Bostonian it gives up, knowing that there is no need of fighting against such inexorable digestion.
The ladies of Boston have more color in their cheeks than those of many cities, and walk as though they would live to get round the next corner. It is not so fas.h.i.+onable to be delicate. They are robust in mind and always ready for an argument. State what you consider an indisputable proposition, and they will say: ”Yes, but then--” They are not afraid to attack the theology of a minister, or the jurisprudence of a lawyer, or the pharmacy of a doctor. If you do not look out, the Boston woman will throw off her shawl and upset your logic in a public meeting.