WHEN Tommy arrived in Dayton he found his secret waiting for him in the
station, because his first thought on alighting from the Pullman was to
place the blame for his uncertain adventure. It was the need engendered
by the secret and nothing else that compelled him to face the unknown,
so that in the glad sunshine of this June day he was about to walk
gropingly.
And because of the secret he must walk alone. There was no one on
whom he might call for aid or guidance. Without anticipating concrete
hostility, he feared vaguely. It forced him to an attitude of defense,
which in turn roused his fighting blood.
He approached a uniformed porter and asked, a trifle sharply, “Can you
tell me where the Tecumseh Motor Company's works are?”
“Sure!” cordially answered the man, and very explicitly told him. Tommy
listened intently. But the busy porter, not content with his own dark,
detailed directions, said at the end: “Come with me; I'll show you
exactly!” and led Tommy to the street, pointed and counted the blocks,
and gave him the turns, twice:
Tommy thanked him, left his valise in the parcel-room, and started to
walk.
The baggage-man's friendliness did not give to Tommy a sense of
co-operation. But as he walked the feeling of solitude within him became
exhilarating. He was still alone in a strange country, and he had burned
his ships. But the fight was on!
He dramatized the battle--Thomas Francis Leigh against the entire world!
When a man confronts that crisis in his life which consists of the utter
realization that he cannot call upon anybody for help, one of two things
happens: He thinks of life and surrenders; or he thinks of death and
fights. To die fighting takes on the aspect of the most precious of all
privileges. To earn it he begins by fighting.
He walked on until he saw the sign, “Tecumseh Motor Company,” over the
largest of a half-dozen brick buildings. He wondered if it would ever
come to mean to him as a man what the college buildings had meant to him
as a boy. He would love to love that weather-beaten sign. But just as
he now saw that his life at college had been a four years' fight against
many things, so, too, there must be fighting here--much fighting
during an unknowable number of years. He was filled with a pugnacious
expectancy. The desire to strike, to strike hard and strike first,
became so intolerable that in the absence of something or somebody to
strike at he forced himself to consider the vital necessity of strategy.
He had forgotten the secret. It was just as well. The secret had done
its work.
He saw the sign “Office,” walked toward it, and opened the door. There
was a railing. Behind it were desks. At the desks were men and women.
Nobody looked up; nobody paid any attention to him. People moved about,
came in, went out, neither friends nor foes. A peopled solitude--the
world!
He approached the nearest desk. A young man was checking up rows of
figures on a stack of yellow sheets. Tommy waited a full minute. The
young man, obviously aware of Tommy's presence, and even annoyed by it,
did not look up.
Tommy could not wait. He said, aggressively, “I want Thompson!”
The clerk looked up. “Who d'ye want?”
“Thompson.”
“What Thompson?”
Tommy wanted to fight, but he did not know which weapons to use in this
particular skirmish. He resorted to the oldest. He smiled and spoke,
quizzically, “Whom does a man mean when he says Thompson in this
office?”
“Do you mean Mr. Thompson?” asked the clerk, rebukingly.
“I may.” Tommy again smiled tantalizingly. He won.
Having been made angry, the clerk became serious. He said, freezingly,
“Mr. Thompson, the president?”
“Exactly!” interjected Tommy, kindly.
“Well,” said the clerk, both rebukingly and self-defensively, “people
usually ask for Mr. Thompson.”
“He himself evidently doesn't. He told me to ask for Thompson.”
The clerk rose. “Appointment?” he asked.
“Yep,” said Tommy.
“What name?”
Tommy pulled out the telegram, folded it, and giving it to the reluctant
clerk, said, paternally, “He'll know!”
The clerk went into an inner office. Presently he returned. “This way,”
he said.
Tommy followed. His mind was asking itself a thousand questions and not
answering a single one.
He walked into a large room. It was characteristic of him that he took
in the room with a quick glance, feeling it was wise to size up the
ground before tackling the enemy, who, after all, might not prove to be
an enemy. There were big windows on three sides. One looked into a shop,
another into the street, and the third into the factory yard. A man sat
at a square, flat desk. There were no papers on it, only a pen-tray with
two fountain-pens and a dozen neatly sharpened lead-pencils. Also a row
of push-buttons, at least ten of them, all numbered. The walls were bare
save for a big calendar and an electric clock. The floor was of polished
hardwood. The desk stood on a large and beautiful Oriental rug. There
were but two chairs; on one of them Mr. Thompson sat. The other stood
beside the desk. Through an open door Tommy, with a quick glance, looked
into an adjoining room and saw a long, polished mahogany table with a
dozen mahogany arm-chairs about it.
“Leigh?” asked the man at the desk. He was a young-looking man, stout,
with smooth-shaven, plump pink cheeks, that by inducing a belief in
potential dimples gave an impression of good nature. His eyes were
brown, clear, steady and bright, with a suggestion of fearlessness
rather than of aggressiveness. His head was well shaped and the hair
was dean-looking and neatly brushed. His forehead was smooth. Tommy felt
that there was a quick-moving and utterly reliable intelligence within
that cranium. It brought to him a sense of relief. In some unexplained
way he was sure that he need not bother to pick and choose his own words
in talking to Thompson. Whatever a man said, and even what he did not
say, would be caught, not spectacularly or over-alertly, but unerringly,
without effort, by this plump but efficient president. It stimulated
Tommy's mind and made it work quickly, and also inclined him to
frankness without exactly inducing an overwhelming desire to confide.
Understanding rather than sympathy was what he felt he would get from
the stranger.
“Yes, sir. Thompson?” replied Tommy.
“Yes.”
Thompson looked at Tommy not at all quizzically, not at all
interestedly, not at all curiously, but steadily, without any suggestion
of the imminence of either a smile or a frown.
Tommy returned the look neither nervously nor boldly. He was certain
that Thompson knew men in overalls and men in evening clothes, old men
and young men, equally well, equally understandingly.
“What makes you think,” asked Thompson, “that you have the makings of a
man in you?” It was plain that he was not only listening, but observing.
Tommy had expected that question, but not in those words. The directness
of it decided him to reply slowly, as the reasons came to him:
“I know I have to be one. I have nobody to help me. I have no grudge
against anybody. I have no grouch against the world. I am not looking
for enemies, but I have no right to expect favors. I never had a
condition at college, but I am no learned scholar. I made the Scrub,
but never played on the Varsity. I held class offices, but never pulled
wires for myself. I did foolish things, but I'd as soon tell them to
you. I don't know any more than any chap of my age knows who never
thought of being where I am to-day, and never studied for a profession.
I have troubles--family troubles not of my own making--and they came to
me suddenly; in fact, the day before yesterday. It was up to me to whine
or to fight. I am here.”
Thompson saw Tommy's face, Tommy's squared shoulders, and Tommy's
clenched fists. “I see!” he said. “And what do you want to do?”
“Anything!” said Tommy, quickly. He saw Thompson's eyes. He corrected
himself. “Something!”
“Experience?”
“I graduated last week,” said Tommy, barely keeping his impatience out
of his voice.
“Ever earn money?”
“Not for myself. I solicited 'ads' for the college paper.”
“Do well?”
“Yes, I did well. I got 'ads' the paper never had before.”
“Had others tried and failed?”
“No. It was this way: I thought that the only advertisers who rightly
should be in the paper already were there. What we had to offer was
limited. I decided that the paper was an institution worth supporting
by others than the tradesmen who sold goods to the fellows. So I tackled
the fathers of my friends, men who ought to take an interest in the
college without thinking of dollars and cents. And I tackled bank
presidents and railroad men and manufacturers, put it up to them to do
good to the paper without expecting direct returns. I asked for 'ads'
in their homes on the ground that it was not business, anyhow, which it
wasn't. It may be bad form to try to make money for yourself out of
your hosts, but I didn't think it was bad form to ask a man anywhere to
subscribe to a worthy object. I didn't pose as a live wire. Anyhow, they
came across. I couldn't do that to-day. I wouldn't ask Mr. Willetts at
his home or on his yacht to buy one of your cars, but I would in his
office.”
Tommy saw Thompson's look. It made him add:
“I wouldn't expect to be as successful in asking them to give me money
for something as I was when I asked them to give me money for nothing.
If I have talked like an ass--”
“You graduated last week,” interjected Thompson. Tommy flushed; then he
smiled. Thompson went on, unemotionally: “You don't talk like an ass. Do
you want to make money for yourself?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Tommy, quickly.
“And for us?”
“That goes without saying. I can't make it for myself unless I first
make it for you.”
“To make money for yourself, eh?”
“Yes.”
“That's why you are here?”
“No. I am here because your advertisement appealed to me more than any
of the others I answered. I thought--Well, mine was an unusual case. And
yours was an unusual 'ad.' I was sure I had what you wanted. I hoped you
might see it.”
“Didn't you think my 'ad' would appeal to thousands of young college
graduates?”
“I didn't think of that. The message was addressed to me as surely as if
you had known me all my life.”
“What made you so sure of that?”
“I think,” said Tommy, thoughtfully, “it must have been my--the nature
of my trouble. You see, I was called upon very suddenly to take an
inventory of myself.” He paused and bit his lips. There were things he
must not hint at.
“Yes?”
“I found,” said Tommy, honestly, and, therefore, without any bitterness
whatever, “that I had nothing. I would have to become something. I
didn't know what, and I don't know now. I was what older people call
a young ass, and younger people call a nice fellow. Don't think I'm
conceit--”
“Go ahead!” interrupted Thompson, with a slight frown.
Tommy felt that the frown came from Thompson's annoyance at the implied
accusation that he might not understand. This gave Tommy courage, and
that made him desire to tell his story to Thompson, withholding only the
details he could not be expected to tell.
“Look here, sir,” he said, earnestly, “whether you take me on or not,
I'll tell you. I have no mother. My father cannot help me. I--I shall
have to send money to him.”
“Who paid for your education?”
“He did, but he--can't now. I--I didn't expect it and--anyhow, there
is nobody that I can ask for help, and I don't want to. I want to earn
money. I may not be worth fifty cents a week to anybody at this moment,
but you might make me worth something to you.”
“How?”
“I don't know what you will ask me to do, and so I can't tell whether I
can make good here. But I'll make good somewhere, as sure as shooting.”
“How do you know?”
“I've got to. I don't expect to have a walkover, but even in my failures
I'll be learning, won't I? I haven't got any conceit that's got to
be knocked out of me. I've a lot to learn and very little to unlearn,
and--well, if you'll ask me questions I'll answer them.”
“You will?”
“Yes, I will,” said Tommy, flushing. He had to fight. He began to
fight distrust. He added, “I'll answer them without thinking whether my
answers will land the job or not.”
“Why will you answer them that way?”
“What's the use of bluffing? It doesn't work in the long run--and,
anyhow, I don't like it.”
“You must learn to think quickly, so that you may always think before
answering,” said Thompson, decidedly.
Tommy felt that this man had sized him for a careless, impetuous little
boy. Probably he had lost the job. If that was the case Thompson plainly
wasn't the man for him. Tommy, without knowing it, spoke defiantly. He
thought he was talking business to a business man. He said:
“Well, I am not selling what you want, but what I've got, and--”
“Where did you hear that?” interrupted Thompson. Then, after a keen
look at Tommy's puzzled eyes, said: “Excuse me, Mr. Leigh. You were
saying--?”
“I think you wish to know what I am, and so I want to answer your
questions as truthfully and as quickly as I can.”
“How much money have you got that you can call your own?” asked
Thompson. He showed more curiosity now than at any other time in their
interview.
Tommy looked at Thompson's chubby, good-natured face and the steady
eyes. “I borrowed fifty dollars from friends to come out here with. But
I had this.” He put his hand in his inside pocket where his mother's
gift was. Then he brought out his hand--empty.
“Yes?” said Thompson. There was an insistence in his voice that
perplexed Tommy, almost irritated him.
“It's--I think' it is--a hundred dollars my mother--” Tommy paused.
“I thought you had no mother?” Thompson raised his eyebrows and looked
puzzled rather than suspicious.
Tommy impulsively took from his pocket the little package of gold
coins--the only money he could take from his father. He hesitated.
Finally he said: “I haven't opened it. Would you like to know what it
is?”
“Please!” said Thompson, gently.
Tommy decided to tell everything and go away, having learned a
lesson--not to talk too much about himself. “My mother died when I was
born. An uncle gave her a hundred dollars in gold. She saved it for
me. She wrote on it, 'For Tommy's first scrape.' I haven't opened it. I
don't want to. I'm in no scrape yet. But that's all I have that's mine,
and--”
Thompson rose to his feet and held out his hand. His face was beaming
with good will. Tommy took the hand mechanically and instantly felt the
warm friendliness in Thompson's grasp.
“Leigh, I'll take you on. And more than that, I'm your friend. I don't
know whether you'll make money or not, but I'll try you. I may have to
shift you from one place to another. I tell you now that I'm going to
give you every chance to find out where you fit best.”
“Thank you, sir. I'll--”
“Don't promise. You don't have to,” cut in Thompson. “Do you want to
know why I'm taking you on?”
“Yes.”
“Because you've sense enough to be yourself. It's the highest form of
wisdom. Sell what you've got, not what the other man wants. Never lie.
That way you never have to explain your blunders. Nobody can explain any
blunders. You told me what you had. I'll help you to acquire what there
is to acquire. Now tell me something--exactly how did you feel when you
walked into the office?” Tommy did not describe his own feelings, but
what he saw. He answered: “Well, I walked in and saw people at work
and nobody to ask me what I wanted. I suppose everybody who comes on
business knows exactly what he wants. But I had to ask for Thompson, and
nobody seemed to be there for the purpose of answering the particular
question I was told to ask. And it struck me that somebody might come
in who might be a little timid about disturbing clerks who were busy at
work, as I had to do.”
“There should have been office-boys there.”
“There weren't, so you haven't enough. It seemed to me every office of a
big concern should have a sort of information bureau. Of course I'm new
to business methods, but there are lots of people who have important
questions to ask and are afraid, and they ought to be encouraged.” Mr.
Thompson smiled.
“Well,” said Tommy, defensively, “I've seen it with Freshmen at college.
It may not pay, but it's mighty comfortable to strangers.”
Tommy, when he had made an end of speaking, was conscious that he had
talked like a kid. Mr. Thompson did not say anything in reply, but
pressed one of the buttons on his desk. Then he said to Tommy:
“As a matter of fact, our main office, where most people usually go, is
not here, but in the Tecumseh Building down-town. I'm going to give you
a desk in the outer office here. You will be the information bureau.
When people come in you will ascertain what they want and direct them
accordingly. After you know where to find anybody and anything in the
plant come and see me again. You start with fifteen dollars a week. Are
you disappointed or pleased?”
“Pleased.”
He knew that Thompson later on would put him where he fitted best. In
the mean time he would be the best office-boy the company ever had.
A clerk entered. Thompson said to him: “Miller, take Mr. Leigh to Mr.
Nevin. Tell him I want Mr. Leigh to know who is in charge of every
department and who is working there and at what, so that Mr. Leigh can
know where to direct anybody who asks for anything or anybody in the
place. If Mr. Leigh thinks there ought to be more office-boys he can
hire them. He'll be in charge of the information bureau. He'll need a
desk. He'll tell you where he wants it.” He turned to Tommy. “Ask for
Thompson--when you've learned your geography. Good luck, Leigh!”
Tommy followed Miller out of the room.