________________________________________________
Title: More Than Twice-Told Tales; or, Every Man his Own Hero
Author: Stephen Leacock [
More Titles by Leacock]
(I)
The familiar story told about himself by the Commercial Traveller who sold goods to the man who was regarded as impossible.
"What," they said, "you're getting off at Midgeville? You're going to give the Jones Hardware Company a try, eh?"--and then they all started laughing and giving me the merry ha! ha! Well, I just got my grip packed and didn't say a thing and when the train slowed up for Midgeville, out I slid. "Give my love to old man Jones," one of the boys called after me, "and get yourself a couple of porous plasters and a pair of splints before you tackle him!"--and then they all gave me the ha! ha! again, out of the window as the train pulled out.
Well, I walked uptown from the station to the Jones Hardware Company. "Is Mr. Jones in the office?" I asked of one of the young fellers behind the counter. "He's in the office," he says, "all right, but I guess you can't see him," he says--and he looked at my grip. "What name shall I say?" says he. "Don't say any name at all," I says. "Just open the door and let me in."
Well, there was old man Jones sitting scowling over his desk, biting his pen in that way he has. He looked up when I came in. "See here, young man," he says, "you can't sell me any hardware," he says. "Mr. Jones," I says, "I don't want to sell you any hardware. I'm not here to sell you any hardware. I know," I says, "as well as you do," I says, "that I couldn't sell any hardware if I tried to. But," I says, "I guess it don't do any harm to open up this sample case, and show you some hardware," I says. "Young man," says he, "if you start opening up that sample case in here, you'll lose your time, that's all"--and he turned off sort of sideways and began looking over some letters.
"That's all right, Mr. Jones," I says. "That's all right. I'm here to lose my time. But I'm not going out of this room till you take a look anyway at some of this new cutlery I'm carrying."
So open I throws my sample case right across the end of his desk. "Look at that knife," I says, "Mr. Jones. Just look at it: clear Sheffield at three-thirty the dozen and they're a knife that will last till you wear the haft off it." "Oh, pshaw," he growled, "I don't want no knives; there's nothing in knives--"
Well I knew he didn't want knives, see? I knew it. But the way I opened up the sample case it showed up, just by accident so to speak, a box of those new electric burners--adjustable, you know--they'll take heat off any size of socket you like and use it for any mortal thing in the house. I saw old Jones had his eyes on them in a minute. "What's those things you got there?" he growls, "those in the box?" "Oh," I said, "that's just a new line," I said, "the boss wanted me to take along: some sort of electric rig for heating," I said, "but I don't think there's anything to it. But here, now, Mr. Jones, is a spoon I've got on this trip--it's the new Delphide --you can't tell that, sir, from silver. No, sir," I says, "I defy any man, money down, to tell that there Delphide from genuine refined silver, and they're a spoon that'll last--"
"Let me see one of those burners," says old man Jones, breaking in.
Well, sir, in about two minutes more, I had one of the burners fixed on to the light socket, and old Jones, with his coat off, boiling water in a tin cup (out of the store) and timing it with his watch.
The next day I pulled into Toledo and went and joined the other boys up to the Jefferson House. "Well," they says, "have you got that plaster on?" and started in to give me the ha! ha! again. "Oh, I don't know," I says. "I guess this is some plaster, isn't it?" and I took out of my pocket an order from old man Jones for two thousand adjustable burners, at four-twenty with two off. "Some plaster, eh?" I says.
Well, sir, the boys looked sick.
Old man Jones gets all his stuff from our house now. Oh, he ain't bad at all when you get to know him.
(II)
The well-known story told by the man who has once had a strange psychic experience.
...What you say about presentiments reminds me of a strange experience that I had myself.
I was sitting by myself one night very late, reading. I don't remember just what it was that I was reading. I think it was--or no, I don't remember what it was. Well, anyway, I was sitting up late reading quietly till it got pretty late on in the night. I don't remember just how late it was--half-past two, I think, or perhaps three--or, no, I don't remember. But, anyway, I was sitting up by myself very late reading. As I say, it was late, and, after all the noises in the street had stopped, the house somehow seemed to get awfully still and quiet. Well, all of a sudden I became aware of a sort of strange feeling--I hardly know how to describe it--I seemed to become aware of something, as if something were near me. I put down my book and looked around, but could see nothing. I started to read again, but I hadn't read more than a page, or say a page and a half--or no, not more than a page, when again all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming sense of--something. I can't explain just what the feeling was, but a queer sense as if there was something somewhere.
Well, I'm not of a timorous disposition naturally--at least I don't think I am--but absolutely I felt as if I couldn't stay in the room. I got up out of my chair and walked down the stairs, in the dark, to the dining-room. I felt all the way as if some one were following me. Do you know, I was absolutely trembling when I got into the dining-room and got the lights turned on. I walked over to the sideboard and poured myself out a drink of whisky and soda. As you know, I never take anything as a rule --or, at any rate, only when I am sitting round talking as we are now--but I always like to keep a decanter of whisky in the house, and a little soda, in case of my wife or one of the children being taken ill in the night.
Well, I took a drink and then I said to myself, I said, "See here, I'm going to see this thing through." So I turned back and walked straight upstairs again to my room. I fully expected something queer was going to happen and was prepared for it. But do you know when I walked into the room again the feeling, or presentiment, or whatever it was I had had, was absolutely gone. There was my book lying just where I had left it and the reading lamp still burning on the table, just as it had been, and my chair just where I had pushed it back. But I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. I sat and waited awhile, but I still felt nothing.
I went downstairs again to put out the lights in the dining-room. I noticed as I passed the sideboard that I was still shaking a little. So I took a small drink of whisky--though as a rule I never care to take more than one drink--unless when I am sitting talking as we are here.
Well, I had hardly taken it when I felt an odd sort of psychic feeling--a sort of drowsiness. I remember, in a dim way, going to bed, and then I remember nothing till I woke up next morning.
And here's the strange part of it. I had hardly got down to the office after breakfast when I got a wire to tell me that my mother-in-law had broken her arm in Cincinnati. Strange, wasn't it? No, not at half-past two during that night--that's the inexplicable part of it. She had broken it at half-past eleven the morning before. But you notice it was half-past in each case. That's the queer way these things go.
Of course, I don't pretend to explain it. I suppose it simply means that I am telepathic--that's all. I imagine that, if I wanted to, I could talk with the dead and all that kind of thing. But I feel somehow that I don't want to.
Eh? Thank you, I will--though I seldom take more than-- thanks, thanks, that's plenty of soda in it.
(III)
The familiar narrative in which the Successful Business Man recounts the early struggles by which he made good.
...No, sir, I had no early advantages whatever. I was brought up plain and hard--try one of these cigars; they cost me fifty cents each. In fact, I practically had no schooling at all. When I left school I didn't know how to read, not to read good. It's only since I've been in business that I've learned to write English, that is so as to use it right. But I'll guarantee to say there isn't a man in the shoe business to-day can write a better letter than I can. But all that I know is what I've learned myself. Why, I can't do fractions even now. I don't see that a man need. And I never learned no geography, except what I got for myself off railroad folders. I don't believe a man needs more than that anyway. I've got my boy at Harvard now. His mother was set on it. But I don't see that he learns anything, or nothing that will help him any in business. They say they learn them character and manners in the colleges, but, as I see it, a man can get all that just as well in business--is that wine all right? If not, tell me and I'll give the head waiter hell; they charge enough for it; what you're drinking costs me four-fifty a bottle.
But I was starting to tell you about my early start in business. I had it good and hard all right. Why when I struck New York--I was sixteen then--I had just eighty cents to my name. I lived on it for nearly a week while I was walking round hunting for a job. I used to get soup for three cents, and roast beef with potatoes, all you could eat, for eight cents, that tasted better than anything I can ever get in this damn club. It was down somewhere on Sixth Avenue, but I've forgotten the way to it.
Well, about the sixth day I got a job, down in a shoe factory, working on a machine. I guess you've never seen shoe-machinery, have you? No, you wouldn't likely. It's complicated. Even in those days there were thirty-five machines went to the making of a shoe, and now we use as many as fifty-four. I'd never seen the machines before, but the foreman took me on. "You look strong," he said "I'll give you a try anyway."
So I started in. I didn't know anything. But I made good from the first day. I got four a week at the start, and after two months I got a raise to four-twenty-five.
Well, after I'd worked there about three months, I went up to the floor manager of the flat I worked on, and I said, "Say, Mr. Jones, do you want to save ten dollars a week on expenses?" "How?" says he. "Why," I said, "that foreman I'm working under on the machine, I've watched him, and I can do his job; dismiss him and I'll take over his work at half what you pay him." "Can you do the work?" he says. "Try me out," I said. "Fire him and give me a chance." "Well," he said, "I like your spirit anyway; you've got the right sort of stuff in you."
So he fired the foreman and I took over the job and held it down. It was hard at first, but I worked twelve hours a day, and studied up a book on factory machinery at night. Well, after I'd been on that work for about a year, I went in one day to the general manager downstairs, and I said, "Mr. Thompson, do you want to save about a hundred dollars a month on your overhead costs?" "How can I do that?" says he. "Sit down." "Why," I said, "you dismiss Mr. Jones and give me his place as manager of the floor, and I'll undertake to do his work, and mine with it, at a hundred less than you're paying now." He turned and went into the inner office, and I could hear him talking to Mr. Evans, the managing director. "The young fellow certainly has character," I heard him say. Then he came out and he said, "Well, we're going to give you a try anyway: we like to help out our employes all we can, you know; and you've got the sort of stuff in you that we're looking for."
So they dismissed Jones next day and I took over his job and did it easy. It was nothing anyway. The higher up you get in business, the easier it is if you know how. I held that job two years, and I saved all my salary except twenty-five dollars a month, and I lived on that. I never spent any money anyway. I went once to see Irving do this Macbeth for twenty-five cents, and once I went to a concert and saw a man play the violin for fifteen cents in the gallery. But I don't believe you get much out of the theatre anyway; as I see it, there's nothing to it.
Well, after a while I went one day to Mr. Evans's office and I said, "Mr. Evans, I want you to dismiss Mr. Thompson, the general manager." "Why, what's he done?" he says. "Nothing," I said, "but I can take over his job on top of mine and you can pay me the salary you give him and save what you're paying me now." "Sounds good to me," he says.
So they let Thompson go and I took his place. That, of course, is where I got my real start, because, you see, I could control the output and run the costs up and down just where I liked. I suppose you don't know anything about costs and all that--they don't teach that sort of thing in colleges--but even you would understand something about dividends and would see that an energetic man with lots of character and business in him, If he's general manager can just do what he likes with the costs, especially the overhead, and the shareholders have just got to take what he gives them and be glad to. You see they can't fire him--not when he's got it all in his own hands--for fear it will all go to pieces.
Why would I want to run it that way for? Well, I'll tell you. I had a notion by that time that the business was getting so big that Mr. Evans, the managing director, and most of the board had pretty well lost track of the details and didn't understand it. There's an awful lot, you know, in the shoe business. It's not like ordinary things. It's complicated. And so I'd got an idea that I would shove them clean out of it--or most of them.
So I went one night to see the president, old Guggenbaum, up at his residence. He didn't only have this business, but he was in a lot of other things as well, and he was a mighty hard man to see. He wouldn't let any man see him unless he knew first what he was going to say. But I went up to his residence at night, and I saw him there. I talked first with his daughter, and I said I just had to see him. I said it so she didn't dare refuse. There's a way in talking to women that they won't say no.
So I showed Mr. Guggenbaum what I could do with the stock. "I can put that dividend," I says, "clean down to zero--and they'll none of them know why. You can buy the lot of them out at your own price, and after that I'll put the dividend back to fifteen, or twenty, in two years."
"And where do you come in?" says the old man, with a sort of hard look. He had a fine business head, the old man, at least in those days.
So I explained to him where I came in. "All right," he said. "Go ahead. But I'll put nothing in writing." "Mr. Guggenbaum, you don't need to," I said. "You're as fair and square as I am and that's enough for me."
His daughter let me out of the house door when I went. I guess she'd been pretty scared that she'd done wrong about letting me in. But I said to her it was all right, and after that when I wanted to see the old man I'd always ask for her and she'd see that I got in all right.
Got them squeezed out? Oh, yes, easy. There wasn't any trouble about that. You see the old man worked up a sort of jolt in wholesale leather on one side, and I fixed up a strike of the hands on the other. We passed the dividend two quarters running, and within a year we had them all scared out and the bulk of the little shareholders, of course, trooped out after them. They always do. The old man picked up the stock when they dropped it, and one-half of it he handed over to me.
That's what put me where I am now, do you see, with the whole control of the industry in two states and more than that now, because we have the Amalgamated Tanneries in with us, so it's practically all one concern.
Guggenbaum? Did I squeeze him out? No, I didn't because, you see, I didn't have to. The way it was--well, I tell you--I used to go up to the house, see, to arrange things with him--and the way it was--why, you see, I married his daughter, see, so I didn't exactly need to squeeze him out. He lives up with us now, but he's pretty old and past business. In fact, I do it all for him now, and pretty well everything he has is signed over to my wife. She has no head for it, and she's sort of timid anyway --always was--so I manage it all. Of course, if anything happens to the old man, then we get it all. I don't think he'll last long. I notice him each day, how weak he's getting.
My son in the business? Well, I'd like him to be. But he don't seem to take to it somehow--I'm afraid he takes more after his mother; or else it's the college that's doing it. Somehow, I don't think the colleges bring out business character, do you?
[The end]
Stephen Leacock's essay: More Than Twice-Told Tales
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
