Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 351, 29 January 1903, Page 7

Sketcher.

LETTEBS FROM A SELF-MADE MERCHANT TO HIS SON. Pierrepont—That order for a ■Ck car * oa< * °* Spotless Snow Leaf 4&2W from old Shorter is She kind of back talk I like. Veew stand a little more of the sane sort pf sassing. I have told the cashier that you will draw thirty a week and I want you to have a nice suit of clothes made and bend the bill to the old man. Get something that won't keep people guessing whether you follow the horses or do buck and wing dancing for a living, Tour taste in clothes seems to be lasting longer than the rest of your college education. You looked like a young widow who had raised the second crop of daises over the deceased when you were in here last week. Of course, clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that is a pretty considerable area of the human animal. A dirty shirt may hide a pure heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin. If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven't time to bother with the

dandruff on your shoulders. And if you wear blue and white striped pants and a red necktie you will find it difficult to get close enough to a deacon to be invited to say grace at his table, even if you never play for anything except coffee and beans. Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as: they are there is nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us. I have seen a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousanddollar job, and a cigarette and a pint of champagne knock the bottom out of a million-dollar pork corner. Four or five years ago little Jim Jackson had the bears in the provision pit hibernating and living on their own fat till one morning, the day after he had run the price of mesa pork up to twenty dollars and nailed it there some one saw him drinking a small bottle just before he went on Change, and told it round among the brokers on the floor.! The bears thought Jim must have bad news, to be bracing up at that time in the morning, so they perked up and ever lastingly sold the mess pork market down through the bottom of the pit to solid earth. There wasn't even a grease spot of that corner when they got through. As it happened, Jim hadn't had any bad hews; he just; 'took the drink: because he felt pretty good; and things were coming

his way. * ' f >• s But it isn't" enough to be all right in this world j you've got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think you are all right So you have to be governed by general rules, even though you may be exception. People have seen four and four make eight, and the young man and the small bottle make a condemned fool so often that they are hard to convince that the eombiaatioa can work out any other way. The Lord only allows so much fun for every man that He makes. Some get it going fishing most of the time and making meney the restj some get it making money most of the time and going fishing the rest. You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee. The more money the lesa fish. The farther you go the straighter you've got to walk. I used to get a heap of solid comfort out of chewing tobacco. Picked up the habit in Missouri, and took to it like a Yankee to pie. At that time pretty much eirery one in those parts chewed, except the elder and the women, and most of tbem snuffed. Seemed a nice, sociable habit, and I never thought anything special about it till I came north and your ma began to tell ae it waa a vile relic of barbarism, meaning Missouri, I suppose. Then T confined operations to my office and took to fine cut instead of plug, as being tinier. Well, one day, about, ten years ago, when I was walking through the office I noticed one of the boys on the mailingdesk, a mighty likely-looking youngster, sort of working his jaws as he wrote. I didn't stop to think, but somehow I was mad in a minute. Still, I didn't say a word—just stood and looked at him while he speeded up the way the boys will when they think the old man is nosing around to see whose salary he can raise next. I stood over him for a matter of five minutes, and all the time he was pretending not to see me at all. I will say that he was a pretty game boy, for he never weakened for a second. But at last, seeing he was about to choke to death, I said sharp and sudden—' Spit.' Well, sir, I thought it was a cloudburst. You can bet I was pretty hot, and I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp. But before I got out a word something hit me all of a sudden, and I I just went up to the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, 'Let's swear off, son.' Naturally, he swore off—he was bo blamed soared that ha would have quit breathing if I had asked him, I reckon. And I had to take my stook of fine cut and send it to the heathen. .

I simply mention this little incident in passing as an example of the fact that a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people. can see him. Naturally, as the old man's son, you have a lot of fellows watchinar you and betting that you are no good. If you sucaeed they will say it was an accident; and if you fail they will say it was a cinch. There are two unpardonable sins in this world—success and failure. Those who succeed' can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those' who fail can't forgive him for being a success. If you io succeed, though, you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.

I dwell a little on this matter of appearances because so few men are really thinking animals. Where one fellow reads a stranger's character in his face a hundred read it in his get-up. We have shown a dozen breeds of dukes and droves of college presidents and doctors of divinity through the packing-house, and the workmen never noticed them except to throw livers at thun when they got in their way. But when John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply strut down the plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer dim. You ses>, John looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men that he was the real thing in prizefighters. Of course, when a fellow gets'to the point where hs is something in particular, he doesn't have te care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young fellow isn't anything ia particular it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like something special..

Just here I want to say that while it's all right for the other fellow to be influenced by appearances, it's all wrong for you to go on them. Baok up good looks by good character yourself, and make sure that tho other fellow dres. the same. A suspicious man makes troable for himself, but a o&utieua one saves it. Bscause tft«#e aJ»t atsg xtinbm eaplos in the top Jayesr, it ain't always saw to be bet that the whole barrel is sound.

- A man doesnM: snap up a horse jußt because he looks all right. As a usual thing that only makes him wonder what really w the matter that the other fellow wants to Bell. So he leads the nag out into the middle of the ten-acre lot, where the light will strike him good and strong, and examines every hair of his hide, as if he expected to find it near-seal, or some other base imitation; and he squints under each hoof for the grand hailing sign of distress; and he peeks down his throat for dark secrets. If the horse passes this degree the buyer drives him twenty or thirty miles, expecting him to turn out a roarer, or to find that he balks, or shies, or goes lame, or develops some other horse nonsense. If after aU there are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less than the price asked, on general principles, and for fear he has missed somethingTake men'and horses, by and large, and they run pretty much the same. There's : othing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind yourself to travel very far with him. ]

I remember giving a nice-looking, cleanshaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at figures that I had to fire him at the end of a week. It seemed that the morning he struck me for the place he bad pawned his razor for fifteen cents in order to get a shave. Naturally, if I had known that in the first place I wouldn't have hired him as a human arithmetic.

j Another time I had a collector that I set a heap of store by. Always handled himself just right when he talked to you and kept himself looking right up to the mark. His salary wasn't very big, but he had such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half's worth of value out of every dollar he earned. Never crowded the fashions and never gave 'em any slack If sashes were the thing with summer shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and when the tight trousers were the nobby trick in pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take him fore and aft, Charlie looked all right and talked all right always careful, always considerate, always polite. One noon, after he had been with me for a year or two, I met him coming in from his route looking plum; so I handed him fifty dollars as a little sweetener. I never saw fifty cheer a mas up like that one did Charlie, and he thanked me just right—didn't stutter and didn't slop ever. I ear-marked Charlie for a raise and a better job right there. Just after that I got mixed up with some work in my private office and didn't "look around again till on towards closing time. Then, just outside my door, I met the office manager, and he looked mighty glum, too.. :i. ■•.'•

' I was just going to knock on your door/ said he. « Well ?' I asked. ' Charlie Chasenberry is eight hundred dollars short in his collections.' ' Una—m,* I said, without blinking, but I had a gone feeling just the same. ' I had a plain-clothes man here to arrest him this evening, but he didn't come in.' 'Looks as if he had skipped, eh?' I asked. ' I'm afraid so, but I don't know how. He didn't have a dollar this morning, because he tried to overdraw his salary account and I wouldn't let him, and he didn't collect any bills to-day because he had already collected everything that was due this week and lost it bucking the tiger.* I didn't say anything, but I suspected there was a sucker somewhere in the office. The next day 1 was sure of it, for I got a telegram from the always polite and thoughtful Charlie, dated at Montreal: . ' Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham, for your timely assistance.' Careful as usual, yoa see, about the little things, for there were just ten words in the message. But that ' Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham' was the closest to slopping over I had ever known him to come. I consider the little lesson that Charlie gave me cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars, and I pass it along to you because it may save you a thousand or two on your experience account. Your affectionate father, John Graham.