Part 10 (1/2)
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 cas.h.i.+er! 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 quant.i.ty 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.”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
COMPANIONS.
But to our tale.--Ae market night Tam had got planted unco right Fast by an ingle bleezing finely Wi 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 a.s.sociate with Cobbler Johnny. Why, he loves him like a very brother!
Indeed, as the last sublime token of friends.h.i.+p, have they not been drunk for weeks together? Besides, are they not such worthless wights that they will do less harm in a.s.sociating 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 a.s.sociate 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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!