and lighted one. I was looking out the window at the time, and it made
me plumb disgusted to see you swagger off polluting the air with a
cigarette.
Now I never believed in raising a boy on "Don't." When you say "Don't"
do a thing, the average person at once wants to do the very thing you
tell him not to do, although before you had forbidden it, you probably
could not have hired him to do it. "Don'ts" were what got the Germans
in bad.
When I was in Berlin in '99 attending the International Shoe
Manufacturers' Congress, there were "Verboten" signs on pretty nearly
everything. "Verboten" is German for "Keep off the Grass," or something
like that, anyway it means "Don't," and every time I saw one of those
blamed signs, I immediately wanted to do what was forbidden.
One evening Al Lippincott and I strayed away from the bunch, and
wandered into a sort of open air garden. There was a theatre, with a
vaudeville show that the Watch and Ward Society at home would have
closed up the first night. But the music was fine, so we picked out a
table and ordered a light lunch of pickled pigs feet and sauerkraut,
and were attending strictly to business when the manager, followed by
two German army officers, walked up, and informed us we'd have to give
up our seats. Seems they had some fool rule about civilians having to
clear out if army officers wanted their table.
Now Al has always had dyspepsia, and the pickled pigs feet and
sauerkraut had not done his stomach any good, and I had been
"verbotened" almost to death ever since I had been in Berlin so we told
them to run away and play, and turned our backs.
The next instant someone grabbed Al by the coat collar and gave him a
shake.
"Do you not understand pig dog it is verboten?" a voice said.
Al wrenched free, and saw it was the younger of the two officers who
had given him the shaking. He was a pasty faced, pimperly, fair-haired
young man, with a monocle in one eye, and a waist that looked like it
was made that way by corsets, and he had a 45 calibre sword dangling by
his side that was bigger than any the Crusaders ever carried.
If he hadn't said "verboten," Al might have given him a good bawling
out and let it go at that, but "verboten" to us by that time was like
waving a red flag in front of a he cow, so Al gave him a good shove.
The officer tripped over his sword and sat down ker-splash in a plate
of hot soup an old lady was eating at the next table.
Waiters came running from all directions, but Al and I grabbed up a
couple of chairs and they danced around in a circle not daring to
close, while the soup spiller and his friend sputtered with rage.
"I am disgraced," yelled the one Al capsized.
"I want to fight. I would kill you, but you are not titled. I'm
disgraced."
"You're a disgrace, all right," Al interrupted, "but if you want
a fight, I guess we can help you out. I'm the Earl of Dover," he
continued kicking a waiter in the shin who had come too near for
safety, "and my friend here is the Duke of Lynn, so if you know some
nice quiet place where we can settle this without gloves, lead on,
we're with you."
At the mention of our titles the officers quieted down, and whispered
together, then the older one bowed stiffly to me and said, "My friend
accepts your friend's challenge. Follow us if you please."
They stalked out. Al and I followed. We turned into a side street, and
finally came into a quiet square with a watering trough in the centre.
"We will not be interrupted here," said the older officer.
"Fine," Al replied, peeling off his coat, while the soup spiller did
the same.
"Here is a sword," said the older officer handing Al his.
"What's that for?" Al asked.
"To fight with," the officer replied.
"I fight with my fists," Al shouted.
"Fighting with the fists is verboten," the officer replied.
"Get out of my way" Al yelled, and, shoving him aside, he grabbed the
younger, sat down on the edge of the watering trough, spread him across
his lap, and gave him with his own sword a good spanking, while the
older one danced around yelling like a wild man.
Ted, you never heard such a yowling and hollering as those two set up.
It would have raised the dead, and it did raise about twenty police,
who grabbed us just as Al was ducking the younger one in the watering
trough for the second time.
Well sir, they carted Al and me off to jail, and dumped us into a cell,
where there was a straw mattress on the floor. Al had hay fever, and,
believe me, we spent a pretty miserable night.
In the morning, we learned the young officer Al spanked was Prince
Pigestecher, a fourteenth cousin of an aunt of the Kaiser's. We were
in bad. It took the American Embassy three weeks working night shifts
to get us out of jail, and then we greased our way with a five hundred
dollar fine each, and that's why I made nurses' shoes at cost for the
British Government when the war started.
I only mentioned this experience of Al's, to show the danger of too
many "Don'ts," and it's one reason why I am not going to say, "Don't
smoke cigarettes." I want you to think it over carefully, and see if in
your own mind you think a boy not yet eighteen is doing a fine, manly
thing to go around with a scent on his breath like Moon Island at low
tide. Is he setting a good example to the younger boys, who look up to
him because he's a 'varsity end, and one of the big men of the school?
Ask your trainer if cigarettes will improve your wind. I have read a
lot of truck written by men with a string of letters after their names,
who try to prove that cigarettes do not hurt a man, but I never yet
have read anything that proved to my satisfaction that they did anyone
any real good.
Remember Ted that no matter how seriously you take yourself, you are
not a man. I want you to grow up a clean, manly, two-fisted shoemaker,
not a chicken-breasted, weasel-eyed manufacturer of cigarette ashes.
Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and a few others who were not bush
leaguers managed to do pretty well without smoking cigarettes, and they
are good examples for a young American to imitate. Think it over, my
boy.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_March 12, 19--_
DEAR TED:
The most welcome letter I found waiting for me on my return from
St. Louis was the report of your mid-years. Ted, you did real well
considering all the handicaps you were working under, and I'm more than
pleased to see that the old Soule fighting spirit has been passed along
to you.
We Soules have always prided ourselves on being able to do our best
work when things looked blackest. That back to the wall, "Don't give
up the ship," determination has pulled us through some mighty rough
places, whether hauling trawls on the Grand Banks, or fighting our way
up from the ranks in business.
You are just beginning to realize you have the same amount of grit
engrained in your hide, and it's a mighty comforting thought to wear
under your shirt, for the man who won't be licked seldom is, and the
quality of never knowing when you are beaten has made more impossible
things possible, than any other one thing in the world.
I remember how when my father died and left me my mother, two young
sisters, and a big mortgage to support. I was mad clear through. Not at
the idea of having to support my folks, I was glad enough to do that,
for no boy ever had better; but because I couldn't finish my schooling.
I determined I'd work like blazes to cheat Fate for the nasty wallop
it had handed me, and work like blazes I did. After all I think it was
good for me. A boy who has to make his own way usually does, if he has
the right stuff in him, and that's why I don't intend you shall step
from school into a private office here in the factory.
It's so much more gratifying when the time comes to look back, to know
that what you have, you alone have made possible, and not to have
to give the credit to some one else. And that's why, when you go to
work, I'm going to see to it that you learn shoemaking from tanning
to selling, so that when your time comes to look back you can say to
yourself, "My father left me a ten thousand pair factory, but I've
boosted it to twenty-five."
There was one thing though in your recent letter I don't quite get,
and that's the necessity for your spending so much of your time in
Portsmouth. Now I know Portsmouth is a nice New England town, filled
with quaint old colonial houses, and enough historical incidents
to make a three volume series, but I never knew you to be wildly
interested in such things, and since I got that bill of $24.25 from
the Rockingham for dinners, I'm suspecting you don't go there to study
history.
One evening last fall, on the way home from Ogunquit, the car broke
down in Portsmouth, and while it was being repaired, I took in one of
the movies. The show was quite good and I enjoyed it, until I came out
when it was over, and found a crowd of Exeter boys hanging around the
entrance speaking to any good looking young girl who was alone.
Then there was a general pairing off, and strolling up and down the
main streets, looking in the shop windows, and much loud talking,
giggling, and laughter, while the young townies stood on the corners
making cheap remarks. Some of your schoolmates took their lady friends
into the little lunch rooms with which Portsmouth is so plentifully
supplied, and bought them suppers of ham and eggs, and ice cream, while
a few with more money went to the Rockingham.
I moseyed around the town quite a bit watching these schoolmates of
yours, and was thoroughly disgusted. Not that I saw anything really
wrong. I didn't. Every one of the boys had taken the cars for Exeter by
eleven, but there was such a general kissing and dumbfoolishness I'd
like to have spanked the lot.
Perhaps it's heaps of satisfaction to a young fellow, one of the big
men of the school, to hike for Portsmouth with a few dollars of his
dad's burning holes in his pocket, cut the prettiest shop or factory
girl out of a crowd, and carry her off for supper, spending his week's
allowance in one evening, but I can't see it.
Now don't think I'm down on factory girls. I'm not. I've employed
heaps of them, and with mighty few exceptions they've been respectable
hard-working girls, who could hold their head up anywhere, and although
as a rule they would scratch a fellow's eyes out who tried to get fresh
with them, they don't mind paying for what they consider a good time
with a few kisses.
Now I'm not a snob, and if I ever see any signs of your becoming one,
I'll whale it out of you in jig time, for I hate a too-proud-to-speak
individual, as much as I hate a crooked leather salesman. But I'd
rather you spent your evenings in Exeter, on the piazza of those
Eaton girls to whom you introduced me, than parading the streets of
Portsmouth with a factory girl hanging on your arm.
I remember my first lesson in chivalry, and before the super. comes
in to tell me there's an embargo on freight out of Lynn, I'll pass it
along.
I was in the grammar school, and about ten years old. One day at
recess, a little girl named Sally Perkins had a bag of peppermint candy
and was treating the other girls, when Butcher Burch, a great hulking
boy of twelve, snatched the bag out of Sal's hand and began to gobble
it as fast as he could.
I was furious, for little Sally was a nice pleasant girl who never
stuck her tongue out at me, and I should like to have whaled the
Butcher, but he had soundly thrashed me on several occasions, and I
knew he would repeat if I made any protest.
[Illustration]
I stood hesitating. Sally was crying her head off, and the Butcher was
cramming the candy into his ugly mouth as fast as he could, when along
came my father.
"What's the trouble?" he asked.
I told him, suggesting he make the Butcher return the candy.
"That's your job," he replied.
"But he can lick me," I stammered, remembering former disastrous
battles I had fought with the bully.
"That makes no difference," replied my father. "It's just as well for
you to learn now, that whenever you see a girl or a woman insulted,
it's the business of every decent man or boy to come to her rescue. I
give you your choice of fighting that boy now, or taking a licking from
me when you come home."
I took a good look at my father and saw he meant every word he said,
and then because I hated the Butcher for what he had done to Sally, I
lowered my head and sailed in, fists flying like a windmill.
Luckily, one of my first blows hit the Butcher full on the mouth and he
let out a howl--and candy. He must have had half a pound in his mouth
when I hit him. Knowing that my only chance was to bewilder him with
my attack, I let fly everything I knew, and for a couple of minutes I
had the best of it. Then his weight and strength began to tell, and he
hammered me about as he pleased, finally landing a swing on my jaw that
knocked me off my feet.
When I came to, I found my head resting on my father's knee, while
Sally was mopping away at my bloody nose with her little, and not too
clean, handkerchief, clutching in her other hand the remnants of her
bag of candy. Young as I was I'll never forget the look of pride on my
father's face, when later he handed me over to my mother for repairs,
saying, "Patch him up, Mother, he's been fighting to protect a girl."
Ted, my boy, I want you to grow up with a reverent respect for all
women, for the worst woman who ever lived, you may be sure, had some
good qualities, and the best of them are far too good for any man.
Besides you owe it to your Ma, for no sweeter, better woman than she
ever breathed, and although there may be no real harm in the girls
you meet in Portsmouth, the sort who let a fellow pick them up on the
street and kiss them good night, are not the kind who are going to
increase your respect for women, so my advice to you is, cut it out.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_March 20, 19--_
DEAR TED:
You didn't have to write me that those boys you brought home with you
on last Sunday were wonders. They told me so themselves.
Seriously Ted, they didn't make much of a hit with me. I don't mind a
young fellow holding up his head. It's a sign of spirit the same as it
is in a horse. No man who wears his chin on his vest gets far in life,
and no one but a tin horn who's trying to throw a bluff he can ride,
wants a horse that hangs its head between its knees; but neither have I
much use for the young chap who's nose is forever pointing skyward as
though he were marching along the edge of a tanning vat on a hot summer
day.
Spirit's all right now that we have prohibition, but superiority of
manner isn't. If you really are a man's superior he knows it, and if
you aren't and try to act as if you are, he's liable to laugh at you;
and by superior I mean superior in brains or ability to accomplish
worth while things.
Now one of your friends thought he'd impress me by saying that he
was descended from the Earl of Hampton, and he didn't like it a bit
when I told him I wouldn't hold that up against him, and that for all
I knew the Earl might have been perfectly respectable. He also said
his ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and wanted to know if any
of my family had crossed on the same ship, and I'll bet he thought I
was impossible when I told him it was more likely to have been the
Cauliflower, for the Soules were always fond of New England boiled
dinners.
The other was money superior. From what he said, I learned that his dad
had made a mint out of raincoat contracts during the war, and has ever
since been setting up autos for the family like the lumber jacks used
to set up drinks for the crowd in Pat Healey's saloon on pay night.
Money's a mighty useful article to have around these days, and it's
nothing against a man if he has plenty of it, nor is it to his
discredit if he hasn't--and ancestors don't do a fellow any harm if he
keeps remembering they're dead and can't help him earn a living.
Money will buy many things worth having, but not the things most worth
while. For a poor man with a reputation for keeping his word is a
better citizen any day than a millionaire who's a liar, and I'd much
rather have a young man on my pay roll, whose family came over in the
steerage and hasn't a grudge against work, than a fellow who can trace
his ancestry back to the peerage and is trying to get by on dead men's
reputations.
Now don't think I'm down on millionaires. I'm not; some of the biggest
men in this country are also the richest. But when you and I took that
trip to Washington, the men whose statues we saw in the Hall of Fame,
were not honored by their states for the money they had made, but for
what they had done, and I didn't notice any inscription reading, "John
Jenkins Stuart, Great-grandson of the Second Assistant Royal Bartender."
It's usually a poor plan to criticise a person's friends, but I'm going
to do that very thing in regard to yours, for I've had considerable
more experience than you, and I know how dangerous the wrong kind of
friends are. The right kind of friends never did anyone any harm, and
the wrong kind never did anyone any good, and take it from me, son, the
two boys you brought home over the week end are not the right kind.
Unless I'm much mistaken, one will try to get by on his ancestors'
reputation, and the other on his father's money, and neither will be
classed among the three hundred hitters when the great Umpire calls
them out.
You don't have to be ashamed of your ancestors, or my money, and it did
me a world of good to overhear you say to young Raincoats that I might
not have made a million out of the war, but there wasn't a leather
company in the country which wouldn't sell me any amount of stock I
cared to order. That's the sort of a reputation I've always tried to
deserve. It's the aim of every decent American business man, but just
the same it's fine to feel my only kid's as proud of it as I am.
Now I've met several of your schoolmates I'd sooner tie up to than the
boys you exhibited. That roommate of yours for instance. He's pretty
green yet, and his taste in neckties is awful, although it's improving,
but I'll bet that ten years from now you'll be more proud of what he's
accomplished, than he will of what you've done, unless you scratch
considerable dirt in the meantime. That other boy, the dark-haired one
from Virginia, he'll get on too; he's worth while, cultivate him.
When I was a little older than you, I once made a mistake in a friend
that had mighty serious results, and I don't want you running the same
risks.
It was when I was working in the Epping National Bank, that a pretty
slick fellow by the name of J. Peters Wellford blew into town, hired
two rooms at the Mansion House, and the best rig Sol Higgins had in
his livery stable, and settled down to live the life of a gentleman of
leisure.
Now every man in Epping worked, except George Banes the town half wit,
and Jim Spencer the town drunk, and a person who labored neither with
his hands nor brains was considered not quite respectable.
J. Peters, however, didn't get drunk, and he had a wit that was sharper
than a new-honed razor, and, as he wasn't curious, paid his bills, and
seemed to mind his business and no one else's, besides having faultless
manners and a pocket full of ready money, the younger folks after a
short period of probation welcomed him with open arms.
He never made much of a hit with the old people, and as I look back I
can see it was their intuition gained by hard experience that warned
them that J. Peters was not all he seemed, although at the time I put
it down to pure envy.
From the first, J. Peters who was at least fifteen years older, took a
great fancy to me.
He was forever hanging round the bank, inviting me to dinner at the
Mansion House, driving me about the country and going fishing with me
on Saturday afternoons.
J. Peters was extremely well read, seemed to have traveled everywhere,
and knew men intimately whose names in the financial world were all
majestic. I thought J. Peters a whale of a chap and tried in every
possible way to imitate him, even to copying so far as I was able his
slow drawling way of speaking.
My father couldn't see J. Peters with a spy glass, but neither could
he prove anything to his discredit, and as I was then at the beautiful
age of eighteen when one knows so much more than he ever does again, my
father's warnings flowed out of my ears like water from a sieve.
One day, six months after J. Peters had arrived in Epping, he proposed
that I accompany him on a week end trip to Boston which I was crazy to
do, but had to refuse on account of my finances being at low tide.
J. Peters wouldn't take no for an answer, however, and finally
persuaded me to go as his guest.
We were to take the noon train on a Friday; but when Thursday night
came he called to me from the piazza of the Mansion House as I was on
my way home from work, and told me that something had come up which
would prevent his going until Saturday.
He pushed a roll of bills into my hands telling me to go as we had
planned, engage rooms at the American House, buy theatre tickets for
Saturday evening, and wait for him as he would follow on the Saturday
noon train.
His story sounded plausible enough so I followed his directions, and
had a gorgeous time until six o'clock Saturday evening came and with
it no J. Peters. I waited for him in the lobby of the hotel until
midnight, and then went to bed feeling he must have missed his train
but would show up the next day.
He didn't though, and I spent Sunday roaming around the city seeing the
sights, returning to the hotel for supper. Just as I was pushing my way
through the front door someone grabbed me, then I felt something cold
and steely clasped around my wrists, and looking up saw Hen Winters,
the sheriff of Epping County, scowling down at me.
When I recovered enough from my fright to understand what it all meant,
I learned that I was wanted for stealing $20,000 in Cash from the
Epping National Bank, and that explanations were out of order.
The bank had been robbed. J. Peters and I were missing, and the mere
fact that all the money Hen found in my pockets after a painstaking
search amounted to $9.75 didn't get me anywhere, for my intimacy with
J. Peters was known to everyone in town.
Back I went to Epping handcuffed to Hen, and the fact that we reached
home late when no one was at the station to see us, was all that kept
my folks from dying of shame.
My father stood my bail, and in a few days the detectives put matters
straight by discovering that on the night I left for Boston, J. Peters
alone had robbed the bank and made good his escape to Canada, but,
believe me, Ted, until that mess was cleaned up I felt about as joyful
as a leather merchant who's carrying a big stock in a falling market.
Now I don't believe for a minute, that either of those boys you brought
home with you over Sunday, will turn out to be a J. Peters. It takes
brains to be a successful bank robber, and in my estimation neither
has enough of that commodity to head the lowest class in a school for
feeble minded. But I do think they have enough nonsense in their heads
to get you into a peck of trouble if you continue to run with them, so
if I were you I'd cut them out.
At the best those boys may be harmless. There are a lot of things that
don't do a man any particular harm, but life is only a short stretch,
so why clutter it up with a lot of harmless things, when every young
American has the opportunity to enrich it with what is really worth
while.
The friends you make during the next few years will be your friends
through life, and if I were you I'd select them as carefully as you do
your neckties for they will wear much longer.
Your affectionate father,
WILLIAM SOULE.
LYNN, MASS.,
_March 28, 19--_
DEAR TED:
Don't think that the old man has set up as a sort of a composite
wiseacre, who believes he knows more than Solomon, Socrates & Company.
A man can't knock around the shoe trade for thirty odd years without
picking up a pretty general line of useful knowledge, and if he has a
son, it's kind of up to him to see that the boy gets the benefit of
what his dad learned in the School of Hard Knocks. That's why I have
tried to give you some hints in my letters in regard to certain things
I would not do. Betting is one of them.
When I read your last letter in which you said you cleaned up twenty
bucks on the Indoor Games, I realized that although you were not yet
slithering down the greased toboggan slide to perdition, it wouldn't
do any harm to hand out a little advice you can use as a sort of sand
paper seat to your pants, to keep you from exceeding the speed limit.