Part 9 (1/2)
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 compet.i.tors 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--
d.a.m.n with faint praise, a.s.sent 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 two _ls_, or ”sure” with an _h_. 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 fis.h.i.+ng and catch three perch and one black ba.s.s, say that you caught those fish, and not that you caught three black ba.s.s and one perch. Right there is where you can form habits that will s.h.i.+ne 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.