PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2574, 15 July 1903, Page 83

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S LET-

TERS TO HIS SON.

HOW TO GET ON.

Last week, under the heading of "The Average Man," I told you -what the author thought was necessary to make a good business man, apart from the education which he insists is so necessary for the battle of life. In another chapter he tells his son not to be above taking anything when he is in want of work. He says : "When 1 was a young fellow, and out of a place, I always made it a rule to take the first job that offered, and to use that as a bait. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow. A good fat bass will tempt an otter, and then you've got something worth skinning. . . . I want you to learn right at the outset not to play with the spoon before you take the medicine. Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard thing makes it impossible. Pro crastination is the hardest word in the language, but there's only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet. DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE

TWICE.

"There's one excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only one. When a fellow makes the same mistake twice, he's got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness. Of course, I knew that you would make a fool of yourself pretty often when I sent you to college, and I haven't been mistaken. But I expected you to narrow down the numbr of combinations possible by making a different sort of a fool of yourself every time. That is the important thing, unless a fellow has too lively an imagination, or none at all. KNOW WHEN TO STOP TALKING.

"I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought ; but it'a been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought. A business man's conversation should be reguluted by fewer and simpler rules than any pther function of tlie human animal. They are : — "Have something to say. "Say it.

''Stop talking

"Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on when you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money ; but it's to keep me from going to law.

"It's all right when you arc calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday school excursion, with stops to pick flowers ; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You've got to preach short sermons to catch sinners ; and deacons won't believe that they need long ones themselves. Give fools the fir&t and women the last word. The meat's always in the middle of the sandwich. Of course, a little butter ojj either side of it doesn't do harm if it's intended for a man who likes butter.

"Remember, too, that it's easier to look wise than to talk wisdom.

"Say less than the other fellow, and listen more than you talk ; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself, and he's flattering the fellow who is. Give most men a good listener and most women enough noto paper, and they'll tell all they know. Money talks — but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive. ' Poverty talks too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.

MEN LEARN BY EXPERIENCE.

"I mention these things in a general sort of way. If you can take my word for some of them you are going to save yourself a whole lot of trouble. There aye others which I am not going to speak of, because life is too short, and because it seems to afford a fellow a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger for himself to see if it is loaded ; and a lesson learnt at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten. GIVE YOUR EMPLOYER HIS DUES.

"I haven't any objection to your writing to girls and telling them that they are the real sugar-cured article, for, after all, if you overdo it, it's your breach-of-promise suit ; but you must write before Bor after 6. I have bought that stretch. Your time is money — my money, — and when you take half an hour of it for your own purposes, that is just a petty form of larceny. . . . When the old man is looking about for a fellow to fill the vacancy just ahead of you, he's pretty apt to pick someone who keeps separate ledger accounts for work and fun, and who gives the house sixteen ounces to the pound ; and, on general principles, to pass by the one who is late at the end where he ought to be early and early at the end where he ought to be late." HIS SON DOESN'T LIKE MILLIGAN.

Milligan is one of the bosses under whom "Piggy" has to gain experience, and he writes to his father in rather uncomplimentary terms of him. He gets a reply of which the following isT an extract : — "I understand Milligan. He's a cross, cranky, old Irishman, with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with a bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon ; who puts the black snake on a clerk's hide when he sends a letter to Oshkosh that ought to go to Kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man wants to have him fired for it. Altogether he's a hard, crabed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully old boy, who's been with the house since we took down shutters for the first time, and who's going to stay with it till we put them up for the last time.

"But all that apart, you want to get it firmly fixed in your mind that you're going to have a Milligan over .you all your life, and if it isn't a Milligan it will be a Jones or a Smith, and the chances are that you'll find them, both harder to get along with than this' old fellow. There isn't any such thing as being your own boss in this world unless you're a tramp, and then there's the constable. ... I dwell on this because I am a little disappointed that you should have made such a mistake in sizing up Milligan. He isn't the brightest man in the office ; but he is loyal to me and the house, and when you have been in business as long as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty high value on loyalty. It is the one commodity that hasn't any market value, and it's the one you can't pay too much for. You can trust any number of men with your money, but mighty few with your reputation. Half the men who are with the house on pay day are against it on the other six. . . . I don't know anything that a young business man ought to keep more entirely to himself than his dislikes, unless it is his like.«. It's generally expensive to have either, but it's bankruptcy to tell about them. It's all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but it's better to apply the rule to the living, and especially to the house that's paying your salary. . . Superiority makes every man feel its equal. It is courtesy without condescension, affability without familiarity, self-sufficiency without selfishness, simplicity without snide. It weighs sixteen ounces to the pound without the packages, and it doesn't need a four-coloured label to make it go.

. . . A fellow is a boss simply because he's a better man than those under him, and there's a heap of responsibility in being better than the next fellow. Like Milligan if you can. but give him no cause to dislike yon. Keep your self-respect at any cost, and your upper lip stiff at the same figure. Criticism can properly come only from above, and whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays the salary shares your secret. Learn to give backji bit from the ba"=e burner, to let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in ran^e. and you'll find them make a little room for you in turn. Old men have tender feet, and apologies are poor salvo for aching corns. Remember that when you're in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you're in the wrong you cau't to lose it. TACT. "Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time, of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable with you — of making inferiority fed. like equality- A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung. Some men deal in facts, and call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down. Some men deal in subterfuges, and say that Bill Jones's father was a kettle-rendered liar, and that his mother's maiden name was Sapphira, and that any one who believes in the Darwinian theory should pity rather Ihan blame their son. They get disliked. But your tactful man says that since Baron Munchausen no one has been 30 chock foil of bully reminiscences as Bill Jones ; and when that comes back to Bill he is halftickkd to death, because ho doesn't know

that the higher criticism has hurt th< Baron's reputation. That man gets the trade. . . Consider well before yon say a hard word to a man, but never let a jhance to say a good one go by. Praisr judiciously bestowed is money invested. Never learn anything about your men except from themselves. A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow that can't read human nature can't manage it. The phonograph records of a fellow's character are lined in his face, and a man's days tell the secrets of his nights. WORK QUIETLY AND STEADILY.

"I've heard a good deal in my time about the foolishness of hens, but when it come:, to downright plum foolishness give me a rooster every time. He's always strutting and stretching and crowing and bragging about things with which he ihad nothing to do. When the sun rises you'd think that he was making all the light, instead of all the noise; when the farmer's wife throws the scraps in the hen yard, he crows as if he were the provider for the whole farnv yard, and was asking a blessing on the food. He even wakes up during the night and crows a little on general principles. But when you hear from a hen, she's laid an egg, and she don't make a great deal of noise about it, either. I speak of these things in a general way, because I want you to keep in mind all the time that steady, quiet, persistent, plain work can't be imitated or replaced by anything jjilSfc as good." , The essence of common sense, isnt it?