pair factory, I grabbed the job, because I was afraid I'd refuse it if
I stopped to consider the responsibility. That's a pretty good plan for
you to follow, Ted. Don't let a big job scare you, just lay right into
it, and if you keep both feet on the floor and don't rely too much on
the bridge to make fancy shots, pretty soon the job begins to shrink,
and you begin to grow, and before long you fit.
I had every possible kind of trouble with the factory: a strike that
tied us up flat for eight weeks in the middle of the summer, to a fire
in the storehouse that destroyed five thousand cases of shoes and every
blamed time I was in the midst of a mess, old Josiah Lane would blow
in, and blow up. It seemed like the old cuss was always hovering around
like a buzzard over a herd of sick cattle, and when he lighted on me
I felt as though he went away with chunks of my hide in his skinny
fingers.
I was the worst shoemaker in the world, couldn't handle help, was
a rotten financial man, had no head for details, and was so poor a
buyer, it was a wonder some of the leather companies didn't run me for
governor. As for production, he could make more shoes with a kit of
cobbler's tools, than I could turn out with the help of the S. M. Co.
That old bird used to sit in the office chewing fine cut, and drawling
out sarcastic remarks, until I could have knocked him cold; but even
then I realized that a man who made shoes from pegs to welts, knew
something, and I needed all the knowledge I could get.
After every bawling out, old Josiah used to creak to his feet,
remarking, "I'll give ye another trial though I'm foolish to do it,"
while I stood by trembling with rage, wishing I wasn't married so I
could bust his ugly old head open with a die.
Gosh! I used to get mad for the things that happened weren't my fault.
First, I thought how foolish I'd been to leave my soft job at Clough &
Spinney's, then, I began to get mad at the factory, myself, and all the
daily troubles that were forever piling in on me, and I determined I'd
lick that job if it killed me.
I gave more time to listening to old Josiah at my periodical dressing
downs, and less time to hating him, and I lived in that old ark of a
factory, until I knew every nail in every beam in its dirty ceiling,
and could run any machine in it in the dark.
Along in the late fall, the monthly balance sheets began to look less
like the treasury statements of the Dominican Republic, but they
weren't so promising that there was any danger of J. P. Morgan coming
to me for advice on how to make money, and on the 15th of December I
wrote out my resignation, and handed it to old Josiah. The old man
never even read it. Just tore it up, threw it under the desk, and sat
chewing his fine cut, until I thought I'd jump out the window if he
didn't say something.
"Want to git through do ye?" he drawled at last.
"I don't want to, I am," I snapped back.
Old Josiah reached in his pocket and handed me a paper. I opened it
and nearly fainted. It was a three year contract calling for an annual
$1000 increase in salary.
When I hit the earth again, I looked at the old man sitting there
wagging his jaws and grinning, but somehow his smile had lost its
sarcasm, and he seemed less like one of these gargoyle things that
the foreigners hang on the outside of their churches, and more like a
shrewd kindly old Yankee shoemaker.
Ted, I learned something that year besides how to run a big shoe
factory. I learned that a rip snorting bawling out doesn't necessarily
mean your superior thinks you a lightweight: if he couldn't see
ability, he wouldn't take the trouble to cuss you. So when your
teachers, or the coach, land on you don't think of "Harry Carey", (that
isn't right but it's the nearest I can come to Jap for suicide) but if
they land on you twice for the same mistake, pick out a nice deep spot
in the jungle. If you don't the ivory hunters will get you.
Cheer up Ted crepe is expensive, and when you get blue be glad of the
things you haven't got. I will be in Exeter Saturday afternoon. Look
for me on the 1:30.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_November 20, 19--_
DEAR TED:
I didn't say anything about it when you were home last Sunday, for you
were so happy basking in the glory of that thirty-five yard drop-kick
that won the Andover game I hadn't the heart to cast any gloom, but
honestly Ted, as a deacon in the First Church I don't enjoy walking to
service with a son who looks like a combination of an Italian sunset
and a rummage sale of Batik draperies.
It's perfectly true that clothes don't make the man, but they help to,
and because Joseph wore a coat of many colors and was chosen to rule a
nation, is no reason for a young fellow to get himself up like an Irish
Comedian at Keith's and expect to do likewise.
Customs have changed a little in the last few thousand years, and
although it may still be true that a South Sea Islander may rule the
tribe by virtue of being the proud possessor of a plug hat and a red
flannel petticoat, it doesn't follow that a passionate pink tie with
purple dots, and pea green silk socks with bright yellow clocks, will
help you to sell a bill of goods to a hard-headed buyer in Kenosha,
Wisconsin.
I don't want to rub it in too hard, for I realize that in boys there's
an age for loud clothes, the same as there is in puppies for distemper,
and that if given the right treatment they usually survive and are none
the worse for their experience.
I won't hire a salesman who wears sporty clothes and carts around a lot
of jewelry, for when one of my men is calling on the trade he is not
exhibiting the latest styles in haberdashery, but the latest samples
of the "Heart of the Hide" line, for I've learned that a buyer whose
attention is distracted from the goods in question is a buyer lost.
All this reminds me of an experience I had when I was in my first and
only year at Epping Academy. The Academy was really a high school
although I believe my father did pay $10 a year for my tuition, and the
teachers were called professors.
Well anyhow, at that time my one ambition in life was to own a real
tailor-made suit, vivid color and design preferred.
Now buying my clothes had always been a simple matter, for when I
needed a new suit which in my father's estimation was about once in two
years, my mother and I drove over to the "Golden Bee Emporium: Boots
& Shoes, Fancy Goods & Notions" at Bristol Centre, where, after much
testing for wool between thumb and finger, and with the aid of lighted
matches, and in direct opposition to my earnest request for brighter
colors, I was always fitted out in a dark gray, or blue, or brown,
ready made, and three sizes too large so I could grow into it.
One afternoon on my way home from school, I stopped in at the Mansion
House, to see if I could persuade Cy Clark, the clerk, to go fishing
on the following Saturday. As I entered the door an array of tailors'
samples, on a table by a front window, caught my eye. All thoughts of
Cy promptly left my mind as I let my eyes feast longingly upon their
checks and plaids and stripes.
The salesman, seeing that his wares had me running in a circle, assured
me that the Prince of Wales had a morning suit exactly like one of his
particularly violent black and white checks and that Governor Harrison
had just ordered three green and red plaids.
The salesman informed me that $25 was the regular price but as a
special favor I could buy at $20. Now I had $18 at home which I had
earned that summer picking berries and doing chores, and finally
protesting so violently I was sure he was going to weep, the drummer
gave in and I raced home, broke open my china orange bank, and was back
at the hotel having my measurements taken inside of ten minutes, for I
was mortally afraid some one else would snap up the prize in my absence.
For the next three weeks I hung around the express office so much that
old Hi Monroe threatened to lick me if I didn't keep away and not
pester him.
Finally my suit came.
To tell the truth, I was somewhat startled, when I opened the box, for
although the sample was pretty noticeable, the effect of the cloth made
up in a suit was wonderful. From a background of stripes and checks of
different colors, little knobs of brilliant purple, yellow, red, blue,
and green broke out like measles on a boy's face, and I felt that maybe
after all I had been a little hasty in my choice.
But when I tried the suit on, and gazed at myself in the mirror, my
confidence returned, and I felt I had the one suit in town that would
make people sit up and take notice. I was right.
I entered the dining room that evening just as my father was raising
his saucer of tea to his lips.
"Good heavens!" he cried, spilling the tea in seven different
directions.
"Why William, what have you got on?" my mother asked.
My brother Ted answered for her, "A rug."
Do you know Ted, blamed if that suit didn't look like a rug, an
oriental one made in Connecticut, and your Uncle called the turn,
although I never forgave him for it. That's why I named you after him.
At first, my father vowed no son of his was going to wear play actor's
clothes around the village, but when he heard I had paid $18 for the
suit, he changed his mind and said he wouldn't buy me another until it
was worn out.
Your Uncle Ted made a lot of cheap remarks about rugs, which I put down
to jealousy, and general soreheadedness, because I had made him pay
me the day before, a dollar he owed me for six months. Even Grandma
Haskins vowed it looked more like a crazy quilt than a suit of clothes,
and I was feeling pretty blue until my mother made them lay off.
[Illustration]
Next morning, I started for school, full of pride in my new clothes for
I was sure my folks didn't know a nobby suit when they saw it, although
there were knobs enough on that one for a blind man to see.
Ted had sneaked out ahead of me though, and when I reached the school
yard I was greeted with cries of "Rug," and "Good morning, your Royal
Highness," and "How's Governor Harrison this morning?" Ted had told
them all.
On the way home, I met old Jed Bigelow in the square driving a green
horse. Just as the horse got along side of me he shied, and then ran
away throwing Jed into the ditch and ripping a wheel off his buggy.
I always thought it was a piece of paper that did the trick, but Jed
swore it was the suit and threatened to send the constable after me.
How I hated that suit. At the end of two days I would never have worn
it again but my father hid my other clothes and would only let me wear
them to church on Sundays. Then I did my best to spoil it by wrestling
and playing football in it, but the cloth was about an inch thick, it
wouldn't tear and mud came off it like cheap blacking comes off a pair
of shoes.
Finally, at the end of the month, my mother came to my rescue and sent
it to the poor in Boston and I want to state right here that it's
probably still being worn somewhere in the slums of that city, for it
never would wear out. It was the only indestructible suit ever made.
Of course I know that as end on the football team you have a certain
position to uphold, and I want you always to look well dressed; but I
do wish you would try to choose clothes that I can't hear before you
turn the corner, and by the way Ted, everything's going up except your
marks. Now the football season's over perhaps you'll have more time to
study. I'd try if I were you, it can't hurt you any.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_December 1, 19--_
DEAR TED:
I can't say I was totally unprepared for the news, when your report
came yesterday, for I met Professor Todd at the club a week ago and
much against his will he had to admit, that when he asked you in your
oral English exam., who wrote "The Merchant of Venice," you weren't sure
whether it was Irvin Cobb or Robert W. Chambers.
Naturally, I expected a disaster when the fall marks came, but I was
not prepared for a massacre. I had hoped for a sprinkling of C's with
maybe a couple of B's thrown in careless like for extra poundage; but
that flock of D's and E's got under my hide. It's all very well, for
you to say that you can't see how it's going to help you make shoes
to know how many steps A must take to walk around three sides of a
square field two hundred feet to a side, if he wears number eight shoes
and stops two minutes when half way round to watch a dog fight; but
let me tell you one thing, son, any training that will teach you to
think quickly, and get the right answer before the other fellow stops
scratching his head, is valuable. And to-day, in the shoe business, the
man who can trim all the corners and figure his product to fractions,
is the man who buys the limousines, while the fellow who runs on the
good old hit or miss plan is settling with the leather companies for
about fifteen cents on the dollar, and his wife is wondering whether
she can make money by giving music lessons.
Probation is a good deal like the "flu": easy to get, and liable to be
pretty serious if you don't treat it with the respect it deserves.
It isn't as if you were a fool. No son of your Ma's let alone mine
could be, and your Grandfather Soule could have made a living selling
snowballs to the Eskimos. It's pure kid laziness, and shiftlessness,
mixed in with a little too much football, and not enough curiosity to
see what's printed on the pages of your school books.
Now you're on probation, there's only one thing to do, and that's
what the fellow did who sat down by mistake on the red hot stove, and
the quicker you do it the more comfortable it's going to be for all
concerned including yourself.
So far as I've been able to see, there's no real conspiracy among the
teachers at Exeter to prevent your filling your pockets with all the
education you can carry away, and if I were you I'd be real liberal
in helping myself. Education is a pretty handy thing to have around,
and it stays by you all your life. Just because I've succeeded without
much, is no sign you can, and anyway you'll feel a lot more comfortable
later on when the conversation turns to history, and you know the
Dauphin was the French Prince of Wales, and not a fish, as I always
thought, until I looked the word up in the Encyclopedia.
Now I want you to sail into that Math., just as you hit the Andover
quarter when he tried your end, and drop old J. Cæsar with a thud
before he can get started. I know J. C. was a pretty tough bird, and
how he ever found time to write all those books between scraps, I never
could quite understand, unless he only fought an eight hour day, but
it's your job to get him and get him hard.
One thing, Ted, that's going to save you heaps of trouble if you can
only get it firmly fixed in that head of yours, is that you can't get
anywhere or anything without WORK.
Just because you're the old man's son, isn't going to land you in a
private office when you start in with William Soule. There's only one
place in this factory a young fellow can start, whether he's a member
of the Soule family or the son of a laborer, and that's bucking a truck
in the shipping room at twelve per, where he'll get his hands full of
splinters from the cases, and a dressing down from Mike that'll curl
his hair whenever he makes a fool mistake.
There's no short cut to achievement, and work is what'll land you on
the top of the heap quicker than anything else, although I've seen a
lot of lightweights who spent enough time working hard to avoid work,
to succeed with half their energy if spent in the right direction.
That reminds me of a fellow named Clarence I hired some years ago to
make himself generally useful around the office. He said he was looking
for work and he told the truth all right. He wanted to find out where
it was, so he could keep away from it.
I let him stay a couple of months because I rather enjoyed watching
his methods. In the morning, he would spend the first two hours
scheming how to get the other clerks to do his work for him, and in the
afternoon he was so blame busy seeing they had done it, he had little
time to do anything else. I had seen people who hated work, but I had
never seen anyone before who avoided it as though it were the plague.
The last straw came one afternoon when old Cyrus White of Black &
White, the big St. Louis jobbers, walked out of my private office just
after giving me an order for three thousand cases and tripped in a cord
that fool work avoider Clarence had rigged up, so he could raise or
lower the window shade without leaving his desk.
Now old Cy weighs about two twenty and Clarence who had looped one end
of the string around his wrist weighed about ninety-eight pounds with
a straw hat on, so when Cy went down with a crash that shook the whole
factory, he just naturally yanked Clarence right out of his chair,
and the two of them became so tangled up in the cord, they lay like a
couple of trussed fowls while the water cooler which had also capsized
gurgled spring water down old Cy's neck.
[Illustration]
You're right, I lost that three thousand case order, and it was ten
years before I could sell old Cy another bill of goods, and to make
matters worse, I had to pay Clarence $200 damages, for in his rage Cy
nearly bit off one of his ears. Ever since, when I find anyone on my
pay roll who is working to avoid work, he gets a swift trip to the
sidewalk.
Now I'm not going to stop your allowance because you're on probation,
I've more heart for the suffering Exeter shopkeepers than to do that.
Neither am I going to forbid your going to the Christmas house party:
those would be kid punishments and you're no longer a kid, although
you've been acting like one for some time.
I'm simply putting it up to you as a man to get off probation by New
Year's, and I want you to remember that as a 'varsity' end you've got
to set a good example to the "preps." Think it over.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_December 10, 19--_
DEAR TED:
I always thought J. Cæsar, Esq., and one Virgil wrote Latin, but when I
was in your room last Saturday afternoon I saw you had copies of their
books in English.
Now I'll admit that an English translation is the only way I could ever
read those old timers. Latin is as much a mystery to me as the income
tax; but one reason I am sending you to Exeter, is so you can play
those fellows on their home grounds with a fair chance of winning.
I always thought you were a pretty good sport Ted, and I have always
tried to teach you the game, and to play it square. I still think
you're a good sport, and the only reason you are using those "trots" is
because you haven't stopped to consider how unfair it is to J. Cæsar &
Co.
I have a sneaking sort of liking for those old birds. J. Cæsar was the
world's first heavyweight champion, and in his palmy days could have
made Jack Dempsey step around some, and as for Virgil he could make
words do tricks even better than I. W. W. meaning I. Woodrow Wilson. So
it was a sort of shock to me to see you giving them a raw deal.
When you get right down to cases, son, your lessons are one of the
few things that can't beat you if you study 'em, so it's pretty small
punkins to try to rig the game against 'em. A shoemaker can buy his
leather right, and figure his costs correctly on an order, but the
buyer may get cold feet and refuse them, or the unions may call a
strike, or one of about a hundred other things may happen to knock the
profits higher than one of Babe Ruth's home runs.
With lessons it's different. Study them and they can't beat you. You
wouldn't expect much glory if the Andover team you beat had been
made up of one legged men. What about the handicap you're making the
All-Romans play under when you tackle them with a couple of "trots" in
your fists.
There's another reason I don't want you using "trots", and it's because
it's liable to get you into the habit of doing things the easiest
way. Now anyone is a boob if he doesn't do a thing the easiest way
provided it's the right way; but he's more of a boob if he does a thing
the easiest way only because it's the easiest way. And using English
translations on your Latin is like paying number one prices for a block
of poor damaged leather: it may be easier to get the leather, but when
it's made into shoes and you begin to hunt for the profit you find it's
gone A. W. O. L.
I don't remember ever having told you about Freddy Bean, but speaking
of doing things the easiest way reminds me of him, so while I have the
time I'll tell you.
Freddy's Pa ran a little store in Epping just across from the railroad
station, where according to its sign he sold Books, Magazines,
Newspapers & Stationery, and as he owned his own house and had a
thrifty wife he managed to make a living although Epping was not a
literary community. Pa Bean was an inoffensive little fellow who always
wore a white tie with his everyday clothes, and loved to work out the
piano rebuses in the newspapers in the evenings. He had advanced ideas
on politics, was a single taxer, and to-day would be classed as a
radical. Then we used to call him Half-Baked.
Freddy was a good average boy and likeable enough except for his one
bad habit of wanting to do everything the easiest way, and believe me
he carried it to extremes.
He used to sleep in his clothes because it was easier than dressing
in the morning, but his Ma walloped that out of him. Then he had the
bright idea of putting a sign with the price marked on it on most of
the articles in his Pa's shop and going to the ball game, when the old
gentleman went over to Bristol Centre Saturday afternoons on business.
This worked all right at first for the Epping folks were honest, but
one Saturday some strangers carried off about $100 worth of goods and
Freddy got his from his father and got it good.
I could tell you a lot about the messes Freddy got into trying to do
things the easiest way, but the super. is hanging around with a lot of
inventory sheets so I'll have to cut this short with Freddy's prize
performance. One summer morning Freddy's Pa and Ma went away for the
day, but before they started Half Baked led Freddy out into the yard,
shoved an axe into his unwilling hands and ordered him to cut down an
oak that stood close to one side of the house, and was growing so big
it was shutting out a lot of sunlight.
Now there wasn't a boy in Epping at that time who hadn't had
considerable experience in chopping wood, unless it was Sammy Smead and
he never counted anyway except on the afternoon we initiated him into
the Brothers of Mystery, and there wasn't one of us who didn't hate it;
but Freddy loathed it more than anything else, principally I guess,
because there wasn't any easy way out. If you had to cut wood you had
to cut it, and that's all there was to it.
Along about two that afternoon, a crowd of us boys bound for the
swimming hole happened by Freddy's house, and found him pretty limp and
blistery. He'd only hacked about half through the tree, but I think his
mental anguish was worse than his physical exhaustion, because scheme
as he might he had hit on no easy way to fell that oak, and the job
looked as though it would last till sundown.
Freddy was a good diplomat, and he tried all the Tom Sawyer stuff on us
he carried, but not a chance. There was not one of us who would chop
wood when he didn't positively have to, and it looked as though Freddy
was going to chop until the job was finished, when Dick Harris said
something about blowing it up with some gunpowder his father had stored
in a keg in his corn crib.
There was not one of us who would have helped Freddy cut down the tree,
neither was there one of us who would refuse to help him blow it up,
and Freddy, because he saw an easy way out, was the most enthusiastic
of all.
We did it. First we dug a hole about four feet deep at the foot of
the tree and buried the keg of powder after boring a hole in the top
for a fuse. We packed the dirt down tight all around the keg leaving
just enough loose to run the fuse through. Then Freddy as master of
ceremonies lighted the fuse and we stepped back to wait results.