Our dinner over, Mr. Potter put a new log on the fire. Then we set the
table aside and lighted our cigars.
“There is another sector in the line of the Williamites that is pretty
thoroughly dug in,” said the Honorable Socrates, as he put his feet upon
the fender and leaned back comfortably in his chair. “Let me tell you
the story of
THE SMOTHERED SON.
“She was a Williamistic widow--the relict of the late Samuel Butters.
“She was also a Shrimpstone, of Kalamazoo. My friend, why do you sit
there in cold indifference when I mention a fact so inspiring?”
“Who were the Shrimpstones?” I inquired.
“The Shrimpstones! Jiminy crickets! Is it possible that you are not
familiar with the fame of Joshua Shrimpstone?”
“I have to plead guilty,” was my answer.
“To tell you the truth, so do I,” he went on, “but my own ignorance
never surprises me. There is so much of it that a little more or less
does not matter. It is the ignorance of so many of my fellow
countrymen regarding this important subject that fills me with pity and
astonishment. I have never met a man who could give me the slightest
information regarding the Shrimpstones.
“It would seem that Mrs. Butters enjoys an arrogant and heartless
monopoly of all knowledge about them. One does not feel like asking her
to dispel his ignorance when she speaks the word 'Shrimpstone' as if it
opened vistas of incomparable splendor and inspiration. No, there are
things which even a lawyer can not do. There is a special look
in her eye and a lyrical note in her voice when she says 'my
grandfather, the late Joshua Shrimpstone.' I imagine that Bill
Hohenzollern looks like that when he says: 'My grandfather, Frederick
the Great' But I imagine, too, that Bill's manner is a bit more casual.
“I had done some business for Mrs. Butters now and then, and one day she
came to get my advice on a strictly personal matter. Her son, John
Shrimpstone Butters, was just out of college. She had expected Butters &
Bronson, of the great corset factory, in which she had a considerable
interest, to take him into the firm and give him a commanding position
in the office. As they had not come forward with an invitation, she had
asked them for that favor. They had refused--actually and firmly
refused--and what do you think they had offered John--a great grandson
of Joshua Shrimpstone? Why, they had offered him a place as errand boy
at five dollars a week. They actually expected him to begin at the
bottom of the ladder and work his way up as if he were nothing more than
the ambitious son of a ditch digger. Mrs. Butters lost her self-control
and sobbed as she confided the distressing fact to me.
“I told her that I would have a talk with Bill Bronson, the head of the
firm, and see what could be done about it, and she left me.
“In my talk with him, Bill said:
“'We should like to do anything we can for Mrs. Butters's boy but all
we can do is to give him a chance--the same chance that my own boy will
have. He can begin at the bottom and we will push him along from one
department to another as rapidly as he can master its details. He must
learn every process from the making to the delivery of the goods. Above
all, he must learn to be a good salesman. After a few years he might
become the Butters of Butters & Bronson if he were willing to work
hard.'
“I wired Mrs. Butters to call again at my office. She called. I told her
what Bill Bronson had said to me.
“'What!' she exclaimed. 'He expects my son to become a common drummer
and travel around selling goods to little shopkeepers! Impossible!'
“'Why?' I asked.
“'Because he does not have to. My grandfather, the late Joshua
Shrimp-stone, left us enough so that we do not have to do that kind of
thing. Besides. I do not think it is necessary. My son has intelligence
enough to learn those menial pursuits without having to do them.'
“'You are wrong,' I said. 'The American way is to begin at the bottom.
It's a very good way--the only way by which one may be thoroughly
prepared for management. In that way he gets hold of the sense that is
common in the rank and file of his army, and knowing that, he will know
what to do in every emergency.'
“'If that is true, John might as well have been born poor. Does his
position and the fact that I have five thousand shares of stock count
for nothing?'
“'Well, you get dividends on the stock. If you expect to get dividends
also on the position that you got from your grandfather you are wrong.
In this country we have no crown princes who begin at the top. Inherited
superiority is an amusing thing to look at but a poor foundation for
credit. In this country we bank on demonstrated superiority.'
“Mrs. Butters rose and haughtily withdrew from my office with the pride
of the Shrimpstones glittering in her eye.
“Now, John Butters was a good fellow. He was over-mothered. Indeed, the
word for it is smothered. He was like a man cast into the sea with a
Shrimpstone tied around his neck. He would have done well with half a
chance. I never saw a man so badly in need of poverty, so damned with
affectionate, gilded, comfortable female despotism. She bought one
business after another for him and put him in at the top. He has failed
in all these undertakings. His way is littered with broken crowns and
the wreckage of little kingdoms.
“Now his youth is gone and he is the same useless, ineffective good
fellow that he was in the beginning. For years he and his mother have
been sitting on that high horse of hers and galloping around to the
amusement of all beholders. He has got tired of it and jumped off and
settled down as the clerk of a wife who takes him lightly.
“He is the victim of assumed superiority which is nothing more or less
than Williamism.”