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      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Take It from Dad, by George G. Livermore.
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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48596 ***</div>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
<img src="images/cover-image.jpg" id="coverpage" width="425"  height="604" alt="Cover for Take It From Dad" />
<div class="transnote covernote">
<p class="center" style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
</div></div>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<h1>TAKE IT FROM DAD</h1>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p style="margin-top: 10em;"></p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;">
<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="175" height="60" alt="Company logo" />
</div>

<p class="center" style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>

<p class="center">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br />
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</p>

<p class="center" style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">MACMILLAN &amp; CO., Limited</span></p>

<p class="center">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br />
MELBOURNE</p>

<p class="center" style="margin-top: 1em;"><span class="smcap">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.</span><br />
TORONTO</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
<img src="images/image2.jpg" width="475" height="566" alt="" />
</div>

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<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
<img class="border" src="images/image24.jpg" width="500" height="444" alt="Title page for 'Take It From Dad'" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p class="center" style="margin-top: 10em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1920,<br />
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span></p>

<p class="center" style="margin-top: 1em;">Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1920.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>




<h2>TAKE IT FROM DAD</h2>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>September 25, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>Your letter asking me if I think you are a failure
at school, and wanting to know whether I can give
you a job in the factory, came this morning.</p>

<p>"Yes," to the first, and, "I can but I won't" to the
second. I didn't send you to Exeter to have you
leave in a week; and as for the factory, I guess it
can stagger along a couple of years more without
you, although I sure do appreciate your wanting to
work. It's so different from anything else you have
ever wanted, and as Lew Dockstader once said,
"Variety is the spice of vaudeville."</p>

<p>Sure, Exeter is a rotten place in the fall, when it
rains eight days a week, and there's nothing except
soggy leaves and mud everywhere, and a continuously
weeping sky that's about as cheerful as the
Germans at the peace table. You don't know any
one well enough yet to say three words to, and your
teachers seem to be playing a continual run of luck,
by always calling on you for the part of the lesson
you haven't learned.</p>

<p>Sure it's rotten; not Exeter, but what's the matter
with you. It begins with an "h" and ends with a
"k," but like other diseases, lockjaw excepted, and
you'll never have that anyway, it's just as well to
catch it young and get it over with.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>

<p>Then, too, I guess you're beginning to realize that
the leader of the Lynn High School Glee Club and
left end of the football team isn't so big a frog, after
all, when he gets into a puddle with five hundred
other boys, most of whom never heard of Lynn.</p>

<p>Your learning this young is a blessing which you
don't appreciate now. I had to wait until I took that
trip to Binghamton with the Masons. I'd thought
till then I was some pumpkins of a shoemaker
grinding out eight thousand pairs a day, eleven with
two shifts, but when I moseyed through Welt &amp; Toplift's
and saw them make fifty thousand pairs
without batting an eye, I realized I had been looking
at myself through the wrong end of the telescope.</p>

<p>Say, Ted, did I ever tell you about the time your
grandfather and grandmother went to the Philadelphia
Exposition and left me at Uncle Nate's?</p>

<p>You never saw Uncle Nate; but I don't know as
you need feel peeved about it. Anyway, Uncle Nate
had whiskers like a Bolshevik, and catarrh. He was
a powerful conscientious man, except in a horse
dicker, when he shed his religion like a snake does
his skin.</p>

<p>Uncle Nate lived over at Epping Four Corners,
six miles from our farm, and owing to his
judgment of horse flesh he was about as popular
there as General Pershing would be at a Red
meeting.</p>

<p>I landed at Uncle Nate's at noon, and by six
o'clock he had asked me four times if I was a good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
boy, and I could tell by the look in his eye that he'd
ask me that a dozen times more before I went to
bed.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
<img src="images/image3.jpg" width="450" height="433" alt="" />
</div>

<p>Along about seven it began to grow dark and I
began to miss my mother. Uncle Nate sat in a
rocking chair in the dining room with his feet on
the stove, chewing fine cut and reading a farm
journal, and I sat in a small chair with my feet on
the floor, reading the "Pruno Almanac" and chewing
my fingers.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>

<p>He said nothing, and I said the same. After a
while I got so blame lonesome I stole out on the
back steps and stood there wishing I was dead or
in jail, or something equally pleasant.</p>

<p>Gosh all hemlock! I was homesick. Then I
remembered Sandy, our hired man, was still at the
farm. I pointed my nose toward home and skedaddled
and, believe me, I went some until I hit the
woods just below the intervale, where the wind was
soughing through those tall pines like invisible
fingers plucking on Old Nick's harp. It sure was
the lonesomest place I had ever been in; but the
thought of Uncle Nate drove me on until I came to
where the old Shaker graveyard runs down close
to the road.</p>

<p>I'd forgotten the graveyard until just as I got
up to it a white, shapeless figure jumped into the
road and ran toward me, waving its arms.</p>

<p>Old Von Kluck did a turning movement before
Paris; but he had nothing on me. I turned and,
believe me, son, I went back to Uncle Nate's so
fast I almost met myself coming away. I slid into
the house like a dog that's just come from killing
sheep and found the old gentleman asleep in his chair.</p>

<p>When he awoke he said I'd been a good boy not
to disturb his nap, and he gave me a nickel, which
surprised me so I almost refused it.</p>

<p>After that we were great pals, and I actually
hated to leave him when the folks got home.</p>

<p>Cheer up, Ted, you'll like the school better before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
long, and try learning all your lessons instead of
only part; you can fool a lot of teachers that way.</p>

<p>One thing more, don't write any doleful letters to
your Ma just now. I'm planning a surprise trip
with her to the White Mountains for our twenty-first
wedding anniversary, and if you go butting in
on her good time I'll tan you good. No, I won't,
I'll stop your allowance for a month. That'll hurt
worse.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<p>P. S.&mdash;I forgot to tell you the ghost I met by the
graveyard was a half-wit who had escaped from
Danvers in his nightshirt. They caught him the
next morning, in a tree on the common, where he
sat singing songs, thinking he was a canary.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
<img src="images/image4.jpg" width="475" height="328" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>


<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>September 30, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>So your roommate is a ham, is he? Well, if he
is, you're in luck. Ham is selling for fifty cents a
pound in Lynn and is going up.</p>

<p>Time was when ham was looked down upon as the
poor man's meat, but now, when there are no poor
except professional men and shoe manufacturers, his
pigship has come into his own.</p>

<p>Seriously, Ted, I didn't care much for your last
letter, it left a taste in my mouth like castor oil.
I've got a pretty good idea of the appearance and
general make-up of that "ham" of yours, and I'm
laying myself a little bit of a lunch at the Touraine
next time I'm in Boston, against reading one of your
Ma's new books on the Ethical Beliefs of the
Brahmins I'm right.</p>

<p>Comes from a small town in Kansas. Never been
fifty miles away from home before, and would have
taken the next train back after the frigid reception
you gave him if he had had the price, and the old
folks out there weren't betting on him to make good.
Wears half-mast pants, draped with fringe at the
bottom, and the sleeves of his coat seem to be racing
each other to his elbows, and for general awkwardness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
he'd make a St. Bernard puppy look as graceful
as Irene Castle.</p>

<p>You're at an age now, Ted, when you know so
much more than you ever will again, it would be
presumptuous for me to offer any advice.</p>

<p>Advice is the most beautiful exponent known of
the law of supply and demand. No one wants it,
that's why so much of it is always being passed
around free. A man will give you a dollar's worth
of advice when he'd let you starve for a nickel.
But while I think of it, I want to tell you of something
that happened at the Academy the year your
Uncle Ted was there. That fall there blew into
school a rawboned youth from the depths of Aroostook,
Maine. He tucked his jean trousers in high
cowhide boots, wore red flannel underwear, and spent
most of his time stumbling over some one else's feet
when he couldn't trip over his own. The school was
full, and the only vacant place was the other half of
Ted's room, so the faculty planted him there. Ted
made him about as welcome as a wood pussy at a
lawn party, for at the time he was badly bitten by
the society bug and thought a backwoodsman roommate
would queer him with the club he wanted to
make. For a week Ted was as nasty to his new
roomie as possible, hoping he'd get sick of his company
and seek other quarters. Apparently Aroostook
never noticed a thing. Just went on in his awkward
way, and the nastier Ted got, the more quiet he
became.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>

<p>On the night of the president's reception Ted
hurried back to his room to dress, filled with pride
and prunes. Pride because of a brand-new dress
suit he had bought with an unexpected check dad
had absent-mindedly sent him, and prunes because
supper at the place he boarded consisted mostly of
that rare fruit. When Ted opened the door his
roommate was greasing his cowhide boots, and
wearing an air of general expectancy.</p>

<p>Ted brushed by him into the bedroom, and
changed into his dress suit, his mind delightfully
full of his lovely raiment and the queen of the town
belles he had persuaded to accompany him.</p>

<p>At last, hair slicked and clothes immaculate, he
rushed out into the study where his roomie stood,
evidently waiting for him.</p>

<p>"Guess I'll walk along with you, Ted, if you don't
mind?" Aroostook said. "I cal'late this reception
thing is a right smart way to get to know folks."</p>

<p>"In those clothes?" Ted asked with biting sarcasm,
delightfully oblivious of the fact that he was
wearing evening clothes for the first time. Ted says
he hates to remember the look that came into his
roommate's eyes at his remark. The sort of a look
a friendly pup has when he wags himself to your
feet only to receive a kick instead of the expected
pat.</p>

<p>His roommate did not reply, and furious at himself
for having spoken as he did, and also afraid of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
the guying he might have to stand for his roommate's
appearance, Ted walked silently down the
stairs beside him. At the door he shot another
venomous arrow by hurrying off in an opposite
direction, exclaiming, "Well, you can't go with me
anyhow! I'd stay home if I were you. I don't
think you'll enjoy yourself."</p>

<p>Basking under the smiles of his fair lady, Ted
walked by her side to the reception, pouring into her
ears the story of his ridiculous roommate, and she,
as heartless a young miss as ever lived, made Ted
promise to introduce her so she and her friends might
enjoy him at close quarters.</p>

<p>After a few dances Ted spied his victim leaning
awkwardly against a pillar in the gym, and looking
about as much at ease as a boy who's been eating
green apples.</p>

<p>Ted introduced his partner, and in five minutes
his roommate was surrounded by a bevy of town
beauties. Boys are cruel as young savages, but for
sheer, downright, wanton cruelty give me the
thoughtless girl of seventeen. That precious crew
let him try to dance with them, mocked and guyed
him when he stumbled over their feet or stepped
on their dresses, and poked so much fun at him
that at last he left the hall, his face flaming, and his
eyes wet with tears of mortification.</p>

<p>Little beast that Ted was, he took upon himself
great credit for his humiliation and acted like a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
perfect cad for the rest of the evening, starting
delighted giggles whenever possible by brilliant
remarks about his backwoodsman.</p>

<p>Later, as Ted and his fair companion were walking
down Main Street on the way to her home, they met
a little rat-eyed "townie" by the name of Dick
Cooke whom Ted had thrashed a week before, for
trying to steal his coat from a locker in the gym.
He made an insulting remark to the girl and started
to run. Seeing, as Ted believed, a cheap chance to
play the hero, he piled after him. He only went a
few feet, then turned and from out of the shadows
of one of those old houses, four of his cronies lit
into Ted.</p>

<p>Ted went down with a crash, his head hitting the
sidewalk so hard he saw stars. Then he heard a
shout, "Stick it out, Ted, I'm coming!" There was
a rush of heavy feet and spat, spat, spat, came the
sound of bare fists landing where they were aimed.</p>

<p>When Ted struggled to his feet his gawky roommate
was standing beside him, and the "townies"
were tearing down the street as though Old Nick
himself were after them.</p>

<p>Ted didn't make a long speech of apology for his
meanness to his roommate. It's only in stories a
boy does that, but, believe me, he treated him
differently.</p>

<p>And, would you believe it, in less than two months
Aroostook was wading through the Andover line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
as if it were so much knitting yarn, and at mid-year
Ted was taken into the Plata Dates on the sole
recommendation of being his roommate.</p>

<p>A fellow by the name of Burns once said, "Rank
is but the guinea's stamp"; now, I don't know much
about guineas, but what I do know is that the grain
on a side of sole leather don't tell the whole story.
It's the sound, clean, close-knit fibers underneath
that make it figure right.</p>

<p>Son, there's going to be a place at our Sunday
dinner table for that "ham" of yours. Bring him
home. I've a notion it's sweet pickle he needs to
be cured in, not sour.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>October, 2, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>You could; but I wouldn't. If you go to the
principal and tell him a senior sold you the wall
paper in your room, he'd get your money back for
you; and you'd get interest with it, not the six
per cent kind either; but a guying from the whole
school, and probably the nickname of "Wally", that
would stick to you closer for the rest of your life
than that paper stuck to your wall.</p>

<p>You seemed surprised that any one who talked so
nicely and seemed such a likeable, jovial sort of good
fellow, would flim-flam you like that. Let me tell
you right here, that the easy talkers and jolly good
fellows, are the ones you want to watch in business
sharper than an old maid watches her neighbors.</p>

<p>The short worded man I'll listen to, for he condenses
all he has to say, and is usually worth hearing.
But when one of your slick word wrestlers gets by
the outer guard, and begins filling my office with
clouds of rosy talk of how I'll soon have John D.
shining my shoes if I'll only buy goods of him, I
slip my wallet into my hip pocket and lean back
on it, while I make signs to Mike to clear a path to
the door.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>

<p>Honestly, Ted, I'm glad you bought that wall
paper. The male human is so constituted that he
has got to make at least one fool investment during
his life and it's just as well to get it out of your system
early. If I were you, I'd write that six dollars down
in my expense book as spent in a worthy cause, for
it may save you from some day buying stock in the
Panama Canal, or a controlling interest in the
Brooklyn Bridge.</p>

<p>Speaking of fool buys, naturally reminds me of the
time your Ma and I were boarding with your Aunt
Maria over in Saugus. We'd just been married, and I
was spending my days bossing the sole leather room
in Clough &amp; Spinney's, and my nights in trying to
figure how the fellow who said two can live as cheaply
as one got his answer.</p>

<p>Your Aunt Maria was a good woman, but so
tight she squeaked, and when she let go of a dollar
the eagle usually left his tail feathers behind.</p>

<p>Aunt Maria, in my estimation, was the most unlikely
prospect in the whole of Massachusetts, for a
book agent, but one day a slick specimen representing,
"The Heroines of English Literature," blew into
her parlor, and when he left he had fifty dollars, in
cash mind you, of her money, and an order for a set
of twenty volumes.</p>

<p>The next day, when she had somewhat recovered
from the effects of her severe gassing; and had begun
to think of that fifty, lost forever, her mouth looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
as though she had been eating green persimmons,
and she was about as amicable as a former heavy
weight champion just after he has lost his title.</p>

<p>For a month we had so many baked bean suppers,
your Ma and I began to wonder if she had bought the
world's supply, and took to accepting invitations
from people we didn't like.</p>

<p>Now Aunt Maria in spite of her closeness, was
some punkins in Saugus society. She was president
of the Sewing Circle, and a strenuous leader in the
Eastern Star, and one Saturday afternoon about six
weeks after she had invested in, "The Heroines of
English Literature," the Sewing Circle was holding
a meeting in her parlor, while I was in the dining
room trying to figure out a trip to the Isle of Shoals
for your Ma and me.</p>

<p>After they had got through shooting to pieces
the reputation of the absent members, and had
guzzled their tea, one of the bunch spied "The
Heroines" on a little side table where Aunt Maria
had installed them upon their arrival. Out of sheer
curiosity, the crowd fell upon them with cackles of
delight, and to make themselves solid with their
president, praised the books to the sky.</p>

<p>Aunt Maria saw a great light; and before her
guests left she had sold them enough sets so that the
commissions from the publishers more than made up
her fifty dollars, and as a special favor to her dearest
friend she delivered her own set to her then and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
there. For a time, after that, "The Heroines" were
the most popular reading matter that ever hit
Saugus. Popular with the women, I mean, for the
men figured Aunt Maria's epidemic of literature cost
them a good many new suits of clothes, and the
village watch dogs almost went on a strike, because
there were so many collectors coming around after
partial payments it was hard for a dog to tell whether
they were tramps or new members of his family.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
<img src="images/image5.jpg" width="500" height="585" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>

<p>Which all goes to prove that even a poor buy
may sometimes be turned into a good account.
Now you can draw some, Ted, or at least your teacher
said you could, when he pried a hundred dollars out
of me for pictures to decorate the high school.</p>

<p>I told him you could overdraw your allowance
all right, but he insisted you had true technique,
whatever that is, so I loosened up.</p>

<p>Why not try a little freehand stuff on your newly
acquired wall paper! You might start a fad like
Aunt Maria did, that would stamp you as one of
the school weisenheimers, and by the way if the boy
who sold you the wall paper isn't going to college
tell him I'd like to see him some day. I'll need a cub
salesman in the Middle West, next summer, and I
don't like to see so much natural ability going to
waste.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>October 15, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>There have been farmers and doctors and lawyers
and preachers in the Soule family, and, in the old
days, I believe we boasted of a pirate and a highwayman
or two, but no artists, and I'd rather you
didn't break the record.</p>

<p>Am glad though the faculty didn't fire you, for
carrying out that fool suggestion of mine of decorating
the other boy's wall paper. Fifteen rooms is
going some Ted, and the $30.00 you received will
come in real handy to pay for new school books,
won't it?</p>

<p>After you've been tried here in the factory, to
prove whether you can ever be made into a shoe
manufacturer, and we decide you can't; I have no
objection to your joining the grave diggers union,
or driving a garbage cart, but as for your being an
artist, you haven't a chance. Your Ma says I am
prejudiced against artists because they are temperamental,
but so far as I can see the accent must all be
on the first part of the word for I never knew one
who had brains enough to make a living.</p>

<p>You remember Percy Benson, son of old man
Benson who lived on Ocean Street, don't you? Well,
Percy was a promising youngster until he began to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
draw the cover designs of the high school Clarion,
although I told his father when he was born that the
name Percy was too much of a handicap for any kid
to carry successfully. The old man allowed he'd
never heard of a shoe manufacturer with that name
but said, "The boy's Ma got it out of a book she'd
been reading and that settled it." and knowing Mrs.
Benson I guess he was right.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
<img src="images/image6.jpg" width="450" height="581" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>As I was saying, Percy did real well until he started
drawing covers for the high school paper. After
these had been accepted he swelled up like a pouter
pigeon and nothing would do but he must go abroad
to study. His father kicked like a steer; but in the end
Percy and his mother prevailed, and Lynn lost sight
of him for a few years.</p>

<p>For a time, I used to ask the old man how Percy
was getting along with his painting, but as he always
changed the subject to the leather market, I soon
quit. One day after Percy had been gone about
three years, I came home early and found your Ma
holding a tea fight in the parlor.</p>

<p>After balancing a cup on my knees without spilling
more than half of its contents, and getting myself
so smeared with the frosting of the cake I was supposed
to eat that I'd have given ten dollars for a
shower bath, the conversation lulled, and remembering
your Ma had told me I never talked enough in
society, I asked Mrs. Benson how Percy was doing.</p>

<p>Ted it tickled her most to pieces, and she opened
up a barrage of technique, color, fore-shortening, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
high lights, winding up with the astonishing fact that
one of Percy's pictures had been hung in a saloon.</p>

<p>I was gasping for breath like a marathon runner
at the end of the twenty-third mile, but your Ma was
all smiles so I thought I must be making a hit.</p>

<p>That's where I went wrong, and while you're
about it Ted just paste this in your hat for future
reference. When you begin to be pleased with yourself
you're in as much danger as a fat boy running
tiddelies on early November ice.</p>

<p>As saloon was the only word in the Benson cannonade
that I understood, I replied when the bombardment
was over.</p>

<p>"Glad to hear it, I'm sure. If the French brewers
are paying him for pictures to hang in their saloons,
he should be able to paint some snappy clothing ads
for American manufacturers before long."</p>

<p>Mrs. Benson choked, gasped, strangled, and grew
so red in the face I thought she was going to have
apoplexy. Then she bounded out of her chair with
one word, "insulting," and made for the door with
your Ma one jump behind, imploring her to stay.</p>

<p>When your Ma returned, I learned saloon was the
French word for picture gallery, and that my society
stock had gone down like an aviator in a nose dive.</p>

<p>About a year later Old Man Benson busted trying
to flood the retailers with bronze kid boots, and it was
a real honest-to-goodness failure. The old man was
wiped out and Percy came home from Paris.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>

<p>One morning I was over at the Benson's factory
along with a bunch of other creditors. The meeting
had hardly got under way, when Percy entered in a
cloud of cigarette smoke, and with a breath that made
me think the French knew what they were about
when they called the place at which he had been
studying Booze Arts.</p>

<p>No one there had much love for Percy, but we all
realized his father was too old to start again and that
it was up to Percy to go to work, for from his general
appearance it did not look as though the artist business
was paying any dividends. So as gently as I
could, I suggested he paint the inside of my factory
at $25 per. I was pretty sure it was more than he was
worth, but I felt sorry for the old man. Did he take
it? He did not. He gave me one scornful glance and
strode out of the room with the air of an insulted
king. Did he go to work? Not much! He married a
waitress at the Dairy Lunch who ought to have known
better, and to-day she is working in the stitching
room at Fair Bros. while Percy spends his days
coloring photographs for about ten a week, and his
nights preaching revolution at radical meetings.</p>

<p>Forget the artist stuff Ted, and take a second
helping of the education they pass around so liberally
at Exeter. It can't hurt you any, and who knows but
it may do you some good. And by the way if you
can spare the time from your studies (and I guess you
can if you try real hard) why not play a little football?</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>

<p>Your Ma says she's afraid you'll have your brains
knocked out, but I tell her not to worry over the
impossible.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>October 21, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>As I was walking down Market Street to the factory
the other afternoon, I overheard two of your
old schoolmates refer to me as the father of the Exeter
end.</p>

<p>I'm glad you're on the team, and for the next year
or two I don't mind being the father of a star end,
provided you keep it firmly fixed in your head that
it's just as important to keep old Julius Cæsar from
slipping around you for twenty-five yards, as it is to
keep the Andover quarter from running back kicks.</p>

<p>After you go to work, if anyone refers to me as the
father of an end, I'll feel like turning the factory
over to the labor unions, because if there is anything
that disgusts a live business man it's to see a young
fellow in business trying to live on a former athletic
reputation. Just you remember, son, that the
letter on your sweater fades quickly; but the letters
on a degree last through life.</p>

<p>I didn't care much for that part of your last letter
where you said you were afraid you were not good
enough to hold down a regular job on the team, and
I want to go on record right now that if that's the
way you feel about it you're dead right. No man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
ever succeeded without confidence in himself, and it
don't hurt any to let others know you have it.</p>

<p>I don't mean boasting. I despise above all else
a person who is in love. That is, with himself, but
as yet I have never heard of a scientific organization
of bushel raisers, so it won't do you a bit of harm to
let a little of your light shine forth now and then.</p>

<p>And, Ted, go out on the field every day with the
idea that you're better than the average as a football
player, and when you get a kick in the ribs or
have your wind knocked out, come up with a grin
and go back at 'em harder than before.</p>

<p>Play to win, Ted, but play clean. Your coach
doesn't tolerate dirty football, and I don't tolerate
dirty business. Play nothing except football on the
football field, do nothing except study in your class
rooms, and when you go to work, work in business
hours. If you stick to that prescription you'll come
out with a pretty fair batting average at the end of
your life.</p>

<p>You say that if you play in the Andover game
you'll be up against an opponent who will out-weigh
you fifteen pounds. Don't let that worry you. No
less a person than the great Lanky Bob said, "The
bigger they are the 'arder they fall." All through
your life you will be running up against men who are
bigger than you physically, mentally, and in a business
way, so it's just as well to get used to the fact
while you're young.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>

<p>Your dreading your bigger opponent reminds me
of something that happened to me when I was about
your age.</p>

<p>In those days the Annual Cattle and Poultry Show
held at Epping was quite the event of our social
season, and the one thing all the people looked forward
to, for months.</p>

<p>This particular year I had been saving my money
a nickle here and a dime there, for your grandfather
was determined none of his children should grow up
to be spendthrifts, and would turn over in his grave
if he knew the allowance I give you.</p>

<p>You needn't tell your Ma this, but in those days
I was sweet on Alice Hopkins who was the belle of
the town, and after much careful planning and skillful
maneuvering had wrung an ironclad promise
from her to let me escort her to the show, and I was
pretty sure she would keep it, for somehow she got
wind of the fact that I had all of $10 to spend which
was considerably more than any of her other swains
had managed to accumulate. My father loaned me
his best buggy for the occasion, and I spent the entire
afternoon before the great day washing and polishing
it, and grooming our bay mare until she shone;
and believe me, I was some punkins in my own estimation
when I drove up to Alice's house the next
morning and she rustled in beside me in a new pink
dress.</p>

<p>As we rolled along the river road, the mist rising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
white from the marshes, the brilliant splashes of color
on the sumac and maples, the autumn tang of the
crisp September air, and Alice looking prettier each
minute at my side, all made my thoughts turn toward
a rosy future in which she and I would ride on
and on. I was oblivious of the fact that my entire
capital consisted of a spavined colt and the ten dollars
in my pocket, and that I had about as much
chance of gaining my parents' consent to marry, as
a German has of being unanimously elected the first
president of the League of Nations.</p>

<p>Alice, I found after I had hitched the horse to the
rail in the maple grove inside the fair grounds, had
no such vague ideas. She had the curiosity of a
savage, the digestion of an ostrich, and the greed of
a miser. At her prompting we drank pink lemonade,
ate frankfurters at every booth, and saw all the side
shows, from the bearded lady and the blue monkey
to the wild man from Borneo and the marvel who
could write with his toes. At times I protested feebly,
as my supply of dollars dwindled, but Alice would
pout prettily and guide me gently by the elbow to
the ticket seller, and then almost before I knew it
another quarter had been squandered.</p>

<p>At noon, I remembered the nice box of luncheon
my mother had put up for us and which I left under
the buggy seat, but Alice tossed her head and
marched smack into the dining tent where a sloppy
greasy meal was served at a dollar a plate.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>

<p>I followed meekly, groaning inwardly, for all I had
left was three dollars, but trying to console myself
with the reflection that after all the candy and
popcorn, and frankfurters, and pink lemonade, and
with a regular country dinner besides, Alice couldn't
eat much in the afternoon and my wallet would get
a rest while we watched the races.</p>

<p>On our way over to the track, after dinner, I
noticed a group of men and boys clustered about a
placard which read, "Wrestling Tournament For
Boys Under Eighteen." Now I was the champion
wrestler of the village for I was big and strong for
my age and quick as a cat, and when we drew near
and I saw a prize of $10 was offered to the winner, I
felt that there was a chance to retrieve my fallen
fortunes and get the necessary wherewithal to feed
Alice throughout the afternoon if her inclinations
still ran in that direction.</p>

<p>The judges entered me in the second group, the
winner of which was to wrestle the winner of the
first group for the championship. The second group
was composed of boys all of whom I had defeated,
and all of whom promptly withdrew when I entered.
Two contestants remained in the first group, a great
hulking farm boy, Caleb Henry, whom I had beaten
the only time we had ever met, but only after a
severe struggle on my part, and a little undersized
shrimp of a fellow who looked half scared to death
and whom I was sure I could lick with one arm.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
<img src="images/image7.jpg" width="500" height="352" alt="" />
</div>

<p>Hoping that by some miracle the little chap might
win, for I had no hankering for a severe struggle with
Caleb, I escorted Alice over to a seat beside the track
and was overjoyed on my return to find my hopes
had been fulfilled.</p>

<p>As I threw off my coat and advanced with overflowing
confidence toward the little unknown, he
looked smaller and more insignificant than ever,
and my head was so filled with the thoughts of the
heaps of ice cream I could buy for Alice with the $10
prize money that I grappled my antagonist carelessly,
and the next minute was giving a very creditable
imitation of a pinwheel as I flew through the
air lighting on the back of my neck, the little fellow
sitting on my chest and pinning my shoulders to the
grass.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>

<p>I spat out a mouthful of dirt and struggled to my
feet. One of the legs of my Sunday pants was
ripped clear to the knee, and one shirt sleeve was
torn off. Again we grappled, and again I was thrown
as quickly as before.</p>

<p>Sore with defeat, I pulled on my coat and limped
away with the jeers of the crowd echoing in my ears.
Alice was not where I had left her, and after a half
an hour's search I found her in a booth eating ice
cream with Jim Davis, a hated rival who promptly
informed me she had promised to ride home with
him.</p>

<p>Rats, you know, Ted, leave a ship under certain
conditions. Yes, I got a licking from my father
when I reached home for spoiling my Sunday suit.
A corker it was, too, with a hickory branch.</p>

<p>Oh! I forgot to say the little fellow who threw me
so hard was the Champion Lightweight of New
England.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>October 26, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>If you imagine I've been wringing tears out of my
handkerchief, and wearing crepe on my hat since I
got your last letter, you're as mistaken as the Kaiser
was when he started out to lick the world.</p>

<p>To tell the truth, Ted, I had to wipe a number
eleven smile off my face when I reached the part
about the seniors making you moan like new mown
hay.</p>

<p>From the way you have been strutting around
Lynn the past few months, I rather expected there
was something coming to you, so I wasn't surprised
to learn you'd collected it, for things are so arranged
in this world that people usually get what is due
them, whether it's a million dollars or Charlestown.</p>

<p>Some persons claim hazing is brutal. Maybe some
kinds are; but your handwriting seems pretty firm
in your last letter, especially in the part where you
ask for an extra $10, so I guess you have not suffered
any great damage. Personally, I have always maintained
that hazing, if not carried too far, is the
greatest little head reducer on the market, and it
doesn't cost a dollar a bottle, war tax extra, either.</p>

<p>Perhaps it is not in keeping with the lordly dignity
of your advanced years, to furnish entertainment for
your schoolmates by fighting five rounds with your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
shadow, or asking your girl to go to a dance over an
imaginary telephone. You should remember, however,
that your turn will come with the new boys
next fall, and you've got a long time ahead in which
to think up original stunts.</p>

<p>Every time hazing is mentioned it reminds me of
Sammy Smead and the Brothers of Mystery. I can't
remember ever having told you about the Brothers,
or Sammy either, for that matter, and as I have a
few minutes before starting for the 10:30 to Boston,
here goes!</p>

<p>Sammy was the son of old Isaac Smead, sole owner
of the Eureka Wooden Ware factory in Epping. As
old Isaac could smell a dollar farther than a buzzard
can a dead cow, and as he had in early life developed
a habit of collecting farm mortgages, which in those
days were about as easy to pay off as the national
debt of Germany, he waxed sleek and prospered
mightily, until at the time about which I write, he
was not only Epping's wealthiest resident, but also a
selectman, pillar in the Second Church, president of
the bank, and general grand high mogul of everything.</p>

<p>Sammy was the old man's only child, and knew it.
He wore velvet pants: and patent leather shoes in the
summer when all the other boys were barefooted;
but his most heinous crime as I remembered it, was
the round white starched collar he used to wear over
the collar of his jacket.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>

<p>Sammy's mother did what she could to spoil him.
At that she didn't have to put in any overtime, for
he was about as willing a subject, as could possibly
have been found.</p>

<p>Those were the days, when any quantity of fraternal
societies were coming into existence, and as
Epping was a town where not more than five persons
ever agreed on any one subject, it was a mighty good
territory for new lodges.</p>

<p>Naturally, with all the men joining the Amalgamated
Brotherhood of Clodhoppers, and the order
of Husbandmen, and the women scrambling over
each other in a bargain counter rush to be charter
members of the Sisters of Ceres, we boys thought we
had something coming to us in the way of a secret
society, so we gathered in Fatty Ferguson's barn one
afternoon, and banded ourselves into the Brothers of
Mystery. Fatty Ferguson being the proud possessor
of a discarded uniform once worn by a member of the
Epping Cornet Band, was elected Grand Exalted
Ruler, and I was made Keeper of the Sacred Seal,
although my chance of doing business, depended on
our improbable capture of such an animal, which we
planned to keep in Fred Allen's duck pond.</p>

<p>The editor of the Epping Bugle printed some red
silk badges for us to pin on our coats, and the Brothers
were ready. At first, we attracted considerable
attention at school by our badges, elaborate handclasps,
and whispered passwords whenever two of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
Brothers chanced to meet. As all the boys in our
neighbourhood were members, with the exception of
Sammy Smead, the novelty soon passed.</p>

<p>Now Sammy had everything we boys had, and a
good many things we hadn't, but like everyone else
in the world, he wanted what he hadn't which at
that particular time, was a full-fledged membership
in the Brothers.</p>

<p>Sammy, needless to say, had not been excluded
from our select circle by chance, and it is doubtful if
he would ever have become a member, if his mother,
who was High Priestess of the Sisters of Ceres, had
not found out that her darling had been left out in
the cold.</p>

<p>She straightway called upon my mother, who having
designs on an office on the Executive Board of
the Sisters, passed the word along to me that if I
wanted a new sled for Christmas, it would be well to
see that Sammy was made a Brother.</p>

<p>Sammy being about as popular with the Brothers
as sulphur and molasses, I was howled down when I
proposed his name at a meeting, until I had a happy
thought, that as all the Brothers were charter members,
we had had no initiations.</p>

<p>The idea of initiating Sammy, instantly became
tremendously popular, and he was duly informed
that he had been elected a member, and was told to
report at our barn at three o'clock the next afternoon.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
<img src="images/image8.jpg" width="475" height="350" alt="" />
</div>

<p>Did Sammy show up? He did, velvet pants,
patent leather shoes, white collar and all. Only a
circus could have kept him away.</p>

<p>We blindfolded him, and put him through a course
of sprouts in the barn, including making him ride a
pig bareback around the floor, and walk the plank
which was a beam above the hay mow, and to which
he hung like a cat, squalling and whimpering, until
Skinny Mason stepped on his fingers and made him
let go.</p>

<p>Having exhausted the resources of the barn, we
marched him out into the yard planning to hang him
by the heels from a tree, when to our delight we discovered
a two-wheeled iron barrel of tar, which the
workman who had been mending our driveway, had
left uncovered when he knocked off for the day.</p>

<p>Instinctively, we marched Sammy up to the tar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
barrel, and I liberally daubed his hateful and, wonderful
to relate, still clean collar with its contents,
taking more pains to get it on his collar, than to keep
it off his clothes. It was hard work, for the tar was
lukewarm and naturally heavy; but I was making a
pretty good job of it, when I heard Fred Allen yell,
"Look Out!"</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
<img src="images/image9.jpg" width="475" height="346" alt="" />
</div>

<p>I turned just in time, and saw charging full tilt
across the yard my old billy goat. The Brothers
scattered in all directions, but Sammy who was
blindfolded and did not sense his danger, stood
patiently waiting his fate. Billy struck him squarely
amidships, and Sammy leaving his feet, described a
beautiful curve in the air, and landed head first in
the tar barrel, just as his mother, who had been
visiting my mother, stepped out on the porch to see
how her darling was enjoying himself with his little
playmates.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>

<p>I only mentioned Sammy, to show you that you
got off easy. The next time you are called upon to
perform, do whatever is asked willingly. There's no
fun in making a person do what he wants to do, and
if you show no great indignation at doing a few tricks,
you'll soon be let alone. Don't try to be funny, if
you succeed you will have to give encores, and I take
it that is not what you are after.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<p>P. S. I did not get a sled; but I did saw three
cords of wood, stove length.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>





<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>October 30, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>Somehow the price of cut soles is worrying me
more, just now, than the fact that you have not been
elected to one of the school clubs.</p>

<p>I realize that your not making one of the school
clubs yet, is a terrible tragedy in your young life;
but I feel as though you are going to survive, and
perhaps you will be elected to one after all. I've
found it a pretty good rule, not to figure a shipment
of shoes a total loss even when the jobber writes
that he's returning them, and if I were you I wouldn't
borrow trouble until it's necessary. Trouble is the
easiest thing in the world to borrow, and about the
hardest to discount at the bank.</p>

<p>Maybe it's just as well you are having your touch
of society chills and fever young, for it may save you
from making a bigger fool of yourself later on. No
one minds a young fool much, but an old one is about
as sad an object as a Louisville distiller attending a
Supreme Court decision on the prohibition law.</p>

<p>Society is all right, some of it; but just because
you eat dessert at the end of your dinner, is no reason
why you should make a meal of it. A little society,
like the colic, goes a long way, and you want to
remember that a man, like a piece of sole leather,
usually figures out to what he is.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>

<p>Burns, not Frankie the lightweight, but Bobbie
who used to edit the Edinborough Daily Blade, back
in the days when freshmen wore whiskers and plug
hats, hit the nail on the head when he said, "A man's
a man, for a' that."</p>

<p>I'll never forget when Aunt Carrie caught the
society fever, nor will she. It was a couple of years
before I was married, and it didn't make me want to
postpone having a home of my own, although it did
influence me to choose a girl who was society proof.</p>

<p>After your Grandmother Soule died, Carrie ran
our old house and was doing a pretty good job of it,
until Algernon Smiley came to Epping as principal of
the grammar school. Algernon wore spectacles, a
lisp, and long hair, and he could spout more poetry
than a gusher well can oil. At that, he was a harmless
sort of insect, if the girls of the town hadn't
taken him seriously.</p>

<p>Algernon was a graduate of Harvard, and the only
thing I ever had against that university. It didn't
take him long to discover there was no real society
in Epping, and not being at all backward about coming
forward when he had anything to say, Carrie
and her girl friends soon had the same idea. Now
Epping had staggered along over two hundred years
without the help of society, and was doing quite well
thank you, with its church sociables, bean suppers,
and candy pulls, until Algy butted in.</p>

<p>Everything we did was all wrong. "There was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
no culture," and having the hearty backing of all the
girls he set out to culturate us. His first offense was
a series of lectures, but after the young men had
listened to him rave about the art of Early Egyptian
Dancing, and the history of Nothing before Something,
they unanimously had previous engagements
when Algy sprang a lecture.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="425" height="584" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>Next Algernon started a Browning Club, which
consisted, so near as I could judge, in his reading a
poem, and then everyone in the club expressing a
different opinion as to what the poem meant. It may
be good business for a poet to write a poem no one
can understand, but believe me when I buy a rhyme
for a street car ad it's got to be one every woman will
recognize as advertising "The Princess Shoe."</p>

<p>To get back to Algy, after a while the attendance
at the Browning clubs began to get mighty poor, and
he had to think up a new scheme to keep the town
from getting decultured. Somehow, the little cuss
had scraped an acquaintance with some pretty solid
men on the Harvard faculty, and he managed to
drag several of them up to Epping to deliver lectures,
with the result that the culture business began to
show a healthy growth. Epping was not stupid, it
had been bored.</p>

<p>Now while Algy had been trying to culturate
Epping, he'd worn considerable horsehair off the
sofa in Farmer Boggs' parlor, sitting up nights with
his daughter Ruby. Ruby was a nice cow-like girl,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
who hadn't much to say and proved it when she
talked, and as Algy was never so happy as when he
was doing all the talking, he got along with her fine.
Then, too, Pa Boggs owned free and clear the best
farm in the township, and had $15,000 salted away
in Boston and Maine stock, and Algy, for all his
culture, wasn't overlooking any bets like those.</p>

<p>Where Algy went wrong, was in patronizing people
he thought didn't know as much as he. Whenever
old man Boggs juggled beans with his knife, Algy
would smile upon him so condescendingly the old
man would almost bust with rage; and when Mrs.
Boggs said "hain't" he would raise his eyes as though
calling upon heaven to forgive her; but what blew the
lid off came at a Browning Club meeting that Carrie
had insisted upon having at our house.</p>

<p>Algy imported a noted Professor to give a talk on
Prehistoric Fish, and when the great man had
finished, we all stood around, the girls telling him
how much they enjoyed it, and the men wishing he
would go, so they could retire to the kitchen and
shirt sleeves. Poor Ruby, during a lull in the general
conversation, started the old chestnut about
Ben Perkins the light keeper at Kittery falling down
the light house stairs, ending with, "and you know
he had a basket of eggs in one hand, a pitcher of milk
in the other, and when he reached the bottom they
had turned into an omelette. Ain't spinal stairs
awful?"</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>

<p>At the word "spinal" the Professor snickered, and
Algy who was always nasty when Ruby made a
break, said, "I'm surprised at your ignorance Ruby:
you mean spiral."</p>

<p>Ruby began to cry, and everyone looked uncomfortable.
I was hopping mad. I guess maybe it was
the tight patent leather shoes I had on. Anyway I'd
seen about enough of Algy.</p>

<p>"Shut up, you Goat," I snapped at him. "Haven't
you brains enough to know she meant the back
stairs!"</p>

<p>Algy claimed he was insulted.</p>

<p>I allowed it wasn't possible.</p>

<p>Then he said he was a fool to have tried to culturize
Epping.</p>

<p>I said I reckoned his allowing he was a fool, made
it unanimous, and invited him out in the yard to
settle things, although I never could have hit him, if
he had accepted my invitation.</p>

<p>In two weeks Algy left town, and the next fall
Ruby married Will Hayes over at George's Mills,
and has been happy ever since.</p>

<p>Ted, I wouldn't think too much about those clubs.
There's no use worrying about what people think
of you; probably they don't. You've only been at
Exeter a few weeks, so if I were you I wouldn't
jump into the river yet. Now I'll admit it will please
me if you are elected to a club, but if you aren't,
I'm not going to go around with my head bowed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
shame, and neither are you, for ten years from now,
no one will be greatly interested whether you belonged
to the Belta Pelts or the Plata Dates, and
above all things don't toady. Eating dirt never got
anyone anything. Look at Russia.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>November 6, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>I'm glad you've been elected to the Plata Dates,
if for no other reason than because now that you
have stopped worrying whether you would be, you
will have time to worry about your studies. Don't
you fool yourself that because E stood for excellent
at the high school, I don't know that it stands for
Execrable at Exeter. Now you are on the football
team, it's better to have an E on your sweater, than
on your report.</p>

<p>I thought when you were elected to the Plata
Dates, you would be bubbling over with joy, but
your letters are about as cheerful as a hearse. The
teachers are picking on you, the football coach
doesn't recognize your ability, and even the seniors
so far ignore your presence, by failing to remove their
hats and step into the gutter when you come along.</p>

<p>Whatever you do, don't get sorry for yourself.
There's nothing in the world more silly than a person
who is sorry for himself, and the ones who are, are
always the ones who have no cause to be. Now I
don't believe for a minute that the teachers at
Exeter have picked you alone, out of five hundred
boys, to jump on; they're too busy, and I guess your
coach's main idea is to get a team together that can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
lick Andover, so it might be well, if you are finding
people hard to please, to ask yourself if it's their fault.</p>

<p>If you go into your classrooms with only part of
your lessons learned, you aren't going to fool your
teachers very long, and if you go on to the football
field with an air that the coach can't show you anything
he's not likely to try. Half knowledge, is the
most dangerous thing in the world. I never saw a
successful shoe manufacturer who only had half
knowledge of making shoes, and I guess Walter Camp
isn't putting anyone on his All American, who only
knows how to play his position half way.</p>

<p>You might as well make up your mind, Ted, to
learn Virgil, from the "Arma virumque cano" thing
to Finis. And it's just as well to let the coach think
he can show you something about football: he only
played three years on the Harvard 'Varsity, and even
if you do know more than he, it will make him feel
good.</p>

<p>Being sorry for yourself is a bad habit. I had it
once for a whole year, and believe me it was the
worst year I ever put in, and I'm counting the panic
of 1907 too.</p>

<p>I'd been super. over at Clough &amp; Spinney's in
Georgetown for three years, and had the little shop
running like a high-grade watch, when Henry Larney
of Larney Bros. in Salem died and left the whole
show to his son Claude. "But in trust" nevertheless,
as the wills say, and it's a mighty good thing he did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
for Claude spent most of his time and all his money
at Sheepshead Bay and Saratoga Springs, and
couldn't tell a last from a foxing.</p>

<p>Old Josiah Lane was trustee, and having about as
much respect for Claude's ability as a shoemaker
as I have for the Bolsheviki as business men, he
looked around for someone to run the factory and
lighted on me.</p>

<p>When I got over being dizzy at the thought of
running a five thousand 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>I was the worst shoemaker in the world, couldn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 &amp;
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Want to git through do ye?" he drawled at last.</p>

<p>"I don't want to, I am," I snapped back.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>November 20, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Well anyhow, at that time my one ambition in
life was to own a real tailor-made suit, vivid color
and design preferred.</p>

<p>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 &amp; Shoes, Fancy Goods &amp; 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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Finally my suit came.</p>

<p>To tell the truth, I was somewhat startled, when
I opened the box, for although the sample was pretty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>I entered the dining room that evening just as
my father was raising his saucer of tea to his lips.</p>

<p>"Good heavens!" he cried, spilling the tea in
seven different directions.</p>

<p>"Why William, what have you got on?" my
mother asked.</p>

<p>My brother Ted answered for her, "A rug."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
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.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="425" height="571" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>December 1, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
who spent enough time working hard to avoid work,
to succeed with half their energy if spent in the right
direction.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The last straw came one afternoon when old
Cyrus White of Black &amp; 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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
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.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image12.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>December 10, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 &amp; Co.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>I don't remember ever having told you about
Freddy Bean, but speaking of doing things the easiest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
way reminds me of him, so while I have the time I'll
tell you.</p>

<p>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 &amp; 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Freddy was a good diplomat, and he tried all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>We didn't wait long. There was a roar and we
found ourselves on the grass in the midst of what
resembled a volcano on the war path. Dirt, stones,
grass, sticks, and heaven knows what else were
milling around us in clouds, and out of the corner of
one eye I saw Ma Bean's geranium bed sail gaily
across the street and drape itself over Mrs. Harry
Brown's front gate. Glass was falling around us like
shrapnel, for every window in the Bean's house
shivered itself out onto the lawn. The tree&mdash;well,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
Sir, it fell on the house, knocked off a chimney and
broke down the piazza roof, and the next day Half
Baked had to hire Jed Snow's team of oxen to pull
it clear before they could even start cutting it up.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image13.jpg" width="600" height="311" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>I've a very vivid recollection of what my father
gave me, and I rather think Freddy's was the same
only more so, in fact none of the crowd slid bases for
some time, and Half Baked made Freddy cut six
cords of wood during the next month.</p>

<p>I don't know what has become of Freddy, but I
have never seen his name in the headlines, so I guess
he's still hunting for easy ways to do things, but you
can bet he's left gunpowder out of his schemes for the
last forty years.</p>

<p>Now Ted you just mail me those "trots." I'll
enjoy them, and you give those old timers a fair
show from now on. It's not sporting Ted to pull a
"pony" on them, for they can't win any way if you
don't want them to. Play the game.</p>


<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>January 27, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>That notice from Professor Todd stating that you
had been taken off probation was the most welcome
bit of news I've had in a long time, and the enclosed
check is my way of saying thank you.</p>

<p>I knew if you once stopped fooling and got right
down to cases, that none of those old best sellers
like J. C. or Virgil could hold you for downs, and as
for Quadratic Equations, your instructor writes me
that if you'll take 'em seriously you can make 'em
eat out of your hand.</p>

<p>Now you're again on speaking terms with your
lessons, you can keep their friendship by visiting
with them a couple of hours a day, and when they
once learn you mean business they'll follow you
around like a hungry cat follows the milk man.</p>

<p>There's nothing succeeds like success, whether it's
getting respectable marks in your studies, or selling
shoes, and if you don't believe it ask Charlie Dean.</p>

<p>Probably you've always thought of Charlie as my
star salesman and you're right, but it wasn't many
years ago Charlie couldn't have sold five dollar gold
pieces for a quarter, even if he gave a patent corn
cutter away with each as a premium.</p>

<p>Charlie came to work for me right out of the high<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
school, and as he was always willing to do a little
more than his share around the office, I decided to
give him a try on the road, where he'd have a chance
to make real money. So when a younger salesman
left me one New Year's, I put Charlie through a
course of sprouts in the factory to be sure he knew
how the "Heart of the Hide" line was made, gave
him a couple of trunks full of new samples, and
shipped him out to the middle west.</p>

<p>Charlie was gone three months and he didn't
sell enough goods to pay the express on his samples,
but realizing a cub salesman's first trip is always his
hardest, I swallowed my tongue and sent him out
again.</p>

<p>I couldn't understand it. Charlie was no loafer,
and I felt sure he was working hard each day, but he
had no more success in persuading buyers to stock
"The Heart of the Hide" line than old King Canute
had in bossing the sea around. If he had done fairly
well, I'd thought he was just green and would develop,
but when he had been out six months and his
sales record sheet was as white as a field of new fallen
snow, I decided too much was enough, and wired him
to return to the factory, for Fair Bros. were getting
more solid in that territory every day, and I simply
had to have distribution there.</p>

<p>When Charlie arrived in Lynn, I was going to fire
him, for I never believed in putting a man back in
the office who has been on the road. He's too liable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
to be down on the house, and afflict all the other
clerks with the same poison; but Charlie pleaded so
hard to stay, I finally gave him back his old job, and,
as he showed no signs of being a trouble maker, I paid
him no further attention.</p>

<p>The next winter, I had a hunch that women's fall
styles would run heavy on calfskin, so I loaded up
with a hundred thousand pairs of heavyweight cut
soles and patted myself on the back that I had put
one over on the trade. A few weeks later, the
buyers made so loud a noise about Vici Kid a deaf
mute could have heard 'em.</p>

<p>There I was, caught flatfooted with a hundred
thousand pairs of soles stored in the basement, and
the market on them dropping every day so fast I
got dizzy when I tried to figure out how much I
stood to lose.</p>

<p>I tried to take a loss and turn them back to the
manufacturer. Nothing doing, nor would any other
cut sole house take them except at a price that
would have come near to busting me. Next I tried
the manufacturers of women's shoes, not a chance.
Then as the soles ran pretty heavy I tried boys'
makers, again nothing doing.</p>

<p>I was getting desperate, for I had a lot of money
tied up in those soles, and so far as I could see I was
liable to own 'em for some time unless the sheriff
took 'em.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>

<p>One morning, I happened to think of Al Lippincott.
You know his factory in Dover, the red one
you can see from the station? Al makes a line of
boys' and youths', but he is the hardest buyer in the
whole trade, a regular rip tearing snorter who begins
to yell the minute a salesman steps into his office,
and keeps it up until the salesman either wants to
lick him or to beat it.</p>

<p>I got Al on the long distance, and finally, after his
usual outburst that nearly melted the wire, he
allowed he was going to be in Lynn that afternoon
and would drop in.</p>

<p>I went home feeling somewhat better, but while I
was eating lunch the telephone rang, and I learned
your Ma had been badly smashed up in an automobile
accident, and had been taken to the Salem
Hospital.</p>

<p>I never thought of Al again until I was going
to bed that night, and then I was so worried about
your Ma I didn't care much whether he'd called or
not.</p>

<p>The next morning, when I rolled back the top of
my desk, I found an order for the whole hundred
thousand pairs of cut soles made out in Charlie
Dean's handwriting and billed to Al Lippincott at
two cents a pair more than I had paid for 'em.</p>

<p>I never asked Charlie how he made the sale, and
he never told me, but when he asked for another<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
chance on the road he got it, and knowing he'd
sold the toughest man in the United States he made
good from the kick-off.</p>

<p>I only mention Charlie because when you were on
probation you were in the same kind of fix he was
before he sold Al Lippincott. Now you know you
can lick those studies of yours. I want you to
crowd 'em so hard the teachers will mark down at
least a B for you when you get up to recite.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>February 10, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>This trouble you seem to be having with your
eyes, is causing your Ma a great deal of worry. She
has visions of a blind son tapping his way through
life with a cane and I expect in a few days, she'll
have reached the dog on a leash stage. I'd be more
worried, if I hadn't happened to remember that the
mid-years are only two weeks off, and that eye
trouble is one of the best known alibis.</p>

<p>Your suggestion of coming home early Sunday, so
you can give your eyes a rest, I agree to most
heartily. We'll go into Boston and have an oculist
examine you. Then if you need glasses, I'll see that
you get them, and if you don't, you're out of luck if
you're trying to establish an alibi for flunking your
exams.</p>

<p>Eyesight is a mighty curious thing. Some folks
get so nearsighted they'll step over a ten dollar bill
to pick up a nickel, and others can see a dollar a pair
profit in a shipment of shoes the ordinary manufacturer
would be glad to sell at cost. It takes
pretty good eyesight to be a successful shoe manufacturer
nowadays, for it's the ability to see profits
where they don't exist, and then handle your output
so that you make two little profits grow where only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
one grew before, that buys new tires for the car, and
sends sons to "prep" schools.</p>

<p>Somehow, your reports don't make me feel you've
strained your eyes studying. If you had, you
wouldn't have made the break you did in your oral
English exam. when according to Professor Todd
you stated that Ben Johnson was president of the
American League. Then, too, I haven't had an
excess electric light bill from the school, so it's hard
for me to believe your eyesight has been ruined by
your burning the midnight electricity.</p>

<p>I remember a clerk I once had in the office, who
had a terrible time with his eyes, especially, when he
was about due for a bawling out for some fool mistake.
He once made out a lot of shoe tags with the
specifications calling for eight iron soles on comfort
slippers, and when I was about to claw his hide for
such a blunder, he claimed his desk was so far from
a window he couldn't half see. I remembered that a
lot of folks can read real well by electric light, and
there was a hundred candle power bulb right over
him; but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and
moved him over beside a window.</p>

<p>Two weeks later, he made a mistake in a bill that
cost me several hundred dollars, and then it was the
bright light that dazzled him. I was suspicious, but
he pleaded so hard for a day off, to rest his poor
eyes in a darkened room, I told him to go ahead, and
the next noon as I was driving home along the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
boulevard I spotted him fishing from some rocks, in
a glare that would have made an Arab see green.</p>

<p>I meant to fire him, but I was so busy I forgot it,
and for a month he went along without making a
noticeable mistake. Then he came to me one day for
a raise. I told him that his eyesight was so poor,
that if the cashier put any extra money in his
envelope he'd never even see it, and that he'd better
strain his eyes a little looking for another job, as I
couldn't have the responsibility on my shoulders of
his going blind while working for me.</p>

<p>The old man wasn't born yesterday, Ted, and
having had considerable experience with eyesight
alibis he's a bit gun shy.</p>

<p>Perhaps one reason I'm a little suspicious of this
eye trouble of yours, is that I have a very vivid
recollection of your Uncle Ted the first year he was at
boarding school. Ted started out like a whirlwind
that fall, all A's and B's in his studies, until along in
November he began to get more interested in wrestling
with a flute he was trying to learn to play, than
with his lessons, so that in December his marks had a
striking resemblance to those of the present-day
Germany.</p>

<p>In January, he developed serious eye trouble. He
wrote home that his eyes were so bad he couldn't
study, and was sure to fail at mid-year. Whether my
father believed the first part of his wail I never knew,
but I'm sure he did the second. Anyway he collared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
Ted one Saturday afternoon, and drove him over to
the oculist at Bristol Centre taking me along as
ballast.</p>

<p>Ted put up some pretty good arguments against
going, claiming a terrible headache and a violent
pain in his stomach. My father made him though,
and when we finally reached the oculist, Ted really
did look sick enough to have had not only eye trouble,
but about all the other known diseases, as well.</p>

<p>Doctor Boggs, who was a queer little scrap of a
man, as quick tempered as gunpowder, plumped
Ted down in a chair, and began to peer at his eyes
through a magnifying glass. The more he looked,
the more nervous Ted became. Finally, the doctor
asked him if his eyes felt any better, and Ted allowed
they did.</p>

<p>Then the doctor put a lot of charts up about
twenty feet away, and asked Ted to read the letters
on them, which he did so quickly the doctor couldn't
change the charts fast enough. I grinned, for by then
I was sure Ted was faking. Ted also realized that for
a boy whose eyes had been causing him so much
trouble, he'd been giving a remarkable exhibition
so when Doctor Boggs began trying different glasses
on him, Ted protested that he couldn't see a thing
with any of them.</p>

<p>The doctor was very patient, trying on pair after
pair, Ted groaning louder with each new one. At
last, the old fellow stopped for a few minutes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
and rummaged around in a desk drawer where he
kept a lot of his eyeglasses. Suddenly, he turned to
Ted clapped a new pair on his nose, and stood back
smiling sweetly at him.</p>

<p>"There my boy," he said, as sweet as honey.
"Those are much better, aren't they!"</p>

<p>I took a look at Ted and almost choked. Then I
realized what was coming to him, so I tried to pass
him the high sign. It was too late.</p>

<p>"Those are the only ones I've been able to see
through, doctor," Ted chirped innocently.</p>

<p>The next instant, the doctor with one word
"Fraud!" grabbed Ted by an ear and marched him
to the door, while father followed looking about as
pleasant as a thunder storm.</p>

<p>You've probably guessed the reason why already.
There was no glass in the last frames. After we got
home, father and Ted retired to the woodshed and I
heard the most heartrending sounds. When Ted
returned to school his marks began to improve at
once, and they kept on getting better and better
until the end of the year, and since that day Ted
has never had on a pair of glasses. It was one of
the quickest and most complete cures of eye trouble
ever recorded, and it also proved that old Doctor
Boggs knew his job.</p>

<p>Faking is mighty poor business Ted, whether it's
trying to establish an alibi for flunking your school
exams, or making army shoes with paper soles for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
government. The first is apt to get you into the
habit of shirking your work, and the second is mighty
likely to land you in jail. Some business men, not
many, by faking the quality of their goods shoot up
like a sky rocket, but when the time for repeat orders
comes along, they come down like the stick, and if
there's anything any more useless than the spent
stick of a sky rocket, it's a man who tries to ease his
way through life on alibis.</p>

<p>Do your best and stand by it. If it is your best,
you have no cause to be ashamed no matter how it
turns out, and remember that a man who never made
a mistake never made anything.</p>

<p>My boy, if there really is something the matter
with your eyes, we can't have them attended to any
too quickly, and if there isn't I somehow feel a little
frankness now, on my part, may effect almost as
rapid a cure as your Uncle Ted's and without any
painful ending.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>February 20, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>My boy, I owe you an apology for doubting you
had eye trouble. It was hard for me to believe you
were faking; but the circumstantial evidence against
you was pretty strong. I should have known better,
though, for you have always played fair with me so
I ask your pardon.</p>

<p>That letter from the oculist, in Portsmouth, saying
you needed glasses was a relief and a disappointment.
A relief, to know you weren't trying
to slip one over, and a disappointment to learn
you must wear glasses. Don't let wearing glasses
disturb you. You won't need them when you are
playing football, and if you only wear them when
you read your nose won't be disfigured by the strain.</p>

<p>It's funny how a young fellow like you, who has
the time and the education to appreciate them,
don't seem to care about reading good books, while
an old rough and ready like your dad, can't have
enough of them. When I was your age, I was too
busy trying to help support the family, to find time
to read much besides the Epping Bugle, whereas,
you seem to be too busy figuring out how to have a
good time, to care what the biggest men of the world
thought about things.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>

<p>You've wanted to know why I am always buying
so many books, and although I never realized it
before, I guess it's because I couldn't have them when
I was young.</p>

<p>Yes, on that house party at Manchester, Ted, go
ahead and have a good time and while I remember it
here's a check that may come in handy for a few
extras. If I were you, I'd take all the extras in the
way of clothes you can cram into a suit case.</p>

<p>Forewarned is forearmed you know, and it's just
as well when going to a house party, or to a fight, to
carry all the heavy artillery you muster, for you
never can be sure you won't need it.</p>

<p>I've been to only one house party, and I don't
expect I shall ever go to another; but if I do even if
it's only for a week end, I'm going to take every rag
of clothing I own from oilskins to dress suit, not
forgetting rubber boots and pumps, especially the
pumps.</p>

<p>I believe a person is supposed to have a good time
at a house party, but my only offense was about as
enjoyable as the time I had typhoid.</p>

<p>Perhaps you remember the summer your Ma and I
went to Pittsfield for two weeks, and left you with
your Aunt Sarah over at Marblehead.</p>

<p>Well anyway we did, and I haven't thought much
of Pittsfield since. We got there on a Friday, and
the next morning I went down town for something
and ran slap into Jack Hamilton.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>

<p>Jack and I were boys together in Epping, and used
to do considerable business trading rabbits and whatever
live stock we happened to own.</p>

<p>Jack left Epping when he was seventeen, went to
work for a stock broker in Boston, and made barrels
of money, incidently marrying a Philadelphia girl
who had callouses on her thumbs from cutting
coupons.</p>

<p>Jack has always been my broker and handled all
my finances, but for a good many years we hadn't
seen much of each other socially, so when he suggested
your Ma and I go out that afternoon to his
cottage in Lenox, and stay over Sunday, I was glad
to accept, thinking we'd have a chance to talk over
old times. I went back to the hotel and told your
Ma, and then promptly forgot all about it, for there
was an old fellow living in Pittsfield who'd just
invented an extension last that looked good to me.</p>

<p>I spent most of the afternoon in the old inventor's
shop and when I returned to the hotel along about
five, I found a high-wheeled cart outside which Jack
had sent over to get us, and your Ma having duck
fits for fear I wouldn't show up.</p>

<p>She said she'd put everything in my suit case I'd
need, so I only slicked up a bit and we were off.</p>

<p>It was a mighty pretty ride over to Lenox, but
when we turned in at the gate to Jack's cottage, I
thought our driver had made a mistake, for the
place looked bigger than the Boston Public Library,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
and about as homelike as a New York apartment
house.</p>

<p>A frozen-faced individual in brass-buttoned red
vest and a waiter's uniform met us at the front door,
and when I told him I was William Soule of Lynn he
led the way into the hall and disappeared.</p>

<p>We hung around for some time. Then a maid
came along and showed us to our rooms. It was a
mighty nice room I had, with pink silk wall coverings
and gray wicker furniture, and with a tiled bath off
it, that gleamed like a Pullman porter's smile. I
looked the bed over carefully, decided it was comfortable,
and then thought I'd go out in the yard and
walk around. As I stepped on to the piazza, a
haughty-faced woman disentangled herself from a
group of ladies who were playing cards, and came
towards me murmuring, Mr. Soule?</p>

<p>I pleaded guilty, and she extended two cold fingers,
that had about as much cordiality in them as a dead
smelt, and said she was pleased to meet me. From
her tone, I judged she wasn't going to lead any
cheers over the fact, so I bowed politely and marched
on out to the stables in front of which I saw a boy
exercising a mighty likely-looking colt. Jack had
some fine horses, and a wonderful herd of Jerseys.
His head groom was a real human sort of chap, who
knew more about cattle than any man I ever met,
and we were having a real good visit together when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
a gong like a fire alarm started somewhere in the
house.</p>

<p>I made the piazza in three jumps, tore through the
hall and up the stairs determined to get your Ma
out before the house burned down, for what I'd seen
of the Lenox Fire Department, sitting in his shirt
sleeves before the door of the hose house as we drove
over from Pittsfield, hadn't inspired me with any
great amount of confidence in his ability to put out
anything bigger than a bonfire.</p>

<p>As I rushed into the upper hall, I thought it funny
I didn't smell smoke, so when I ran smack into a
maid I grabbed her and asked her where the fire
was.</p>

<p>"Fire!" she squealed.</p>

<p>"Yes," I answered, "wasn't that a fire gong?"</p>

<p>Ted, you should have seen her face. I thought
she'd choke. She did her best to keep it straight,
and not laugh, but it was some struggle.</p>

<p>At last she managed to stammer, that the gong
wasn't for fire at all, but to let the guests know it was
time to dress for dinner.</p>

<p>I felt as big as a man on Broadway looks from the
tower of the Woolworth building, so I slipped her a
dollar and ducked for my room.</p>

<p>There I sat down to get my breath, hoping that
girl wouldn't tell on me, and wishing I was back in
Lynn, for I saw rough weather ahead unless I kept
my eyes open and my mouth shut.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>

<p>I shaved, and started to climb into my regimentals.
Your Ma had put in shirts, studs, collars,
tie, vest, coat, silk socks, pants, and every last article
of necessary trappings except pumps, and pumps
were about as necessary to me then as a little leather
is to a pair of shoes.</p>

<p>I had a horrible sort of feeling as though my
stomach was slowly revolving around inside of me,
and my legs felt as if they were trying to go two ways
at once, for I had worn a pair of tan shoes over
from Pittsfield, and I knew from the glimpse I'd
caught of Mrs. Hamilton's friends, that if I didn't
wear my dress suit I'd rank lower than the deuce
in that game.</p>

<p>Just how to wear that dress suit I couldn't quite
figure out. It had to be done, that was certain, but
as raw as I was on society stuff, I knew tan shoes and
full dress would not get by. Then I remembered the
bell in the wall beside the bed. In two jumps I had
a thumb on it squeezing for dear life, for I thought
if one of the servants answered, I could get word out
to my friend the head groom to lend me a pair of
black shoes. What size didn't matter, I'd have made
any size fit.</p>

<p>Then I heard someone running along the hall
outside, and yanked open the door in the face of the
same maid I'd asked about the gong.</p>

<p>I slammed the door shut and looked at my watch.
It was seven o'clock, and I figured half an hour at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
the most, was all the time I had to get a pair of
black shoes, and from the way I was located, a
pair of black shoes seemed as easy to get as money
from the government on a war contract.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
<img src="images/image14.jpg" width="375" height="586" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>Jack wasn't home, and anyway he wore shoes
about three sizes smaller than mine, and as for his
wife she was out of the question.</p>

<p>I'd about decided to go to bed and play sick,
when I happened to glance out of the window and
saw a girl about fifteen riding a horse around the
circular drive in front of the house.</p>

<p>She was a real friendly-looking kid, and grinned
up at me as she passed, so the next time she came
around I leaned out and beckoned to her. She
rode up under my window, and I told her the fix I
was in.</p>

<p>"What size?" she asked without any hesitation.</p>

<p>"Anything from nine up," I replied.</p>

<p>"Gimme some money," she said.</p>

<p>I dropped her a ten spot. She caught it and was
off, tearing down the drive like a jockey, and twenty
minutes later she shoved a pair of pumps through
my door she'd bought in Pittsfield, and I sailed down
to dinner a trifle late, but as dignified as a London
alderman.</p>

<p>Now Ted you've had considerable more experience
with society than I've had, and probably you won't
make any break at that house party, but if I were you
after you get your suit case packed, I'd go through it a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
second time to see if anything's missing. Carefulness
is a mighty handy habit to have around the house,
whether it's a man's ability to look far enough ahead
not to borrow on his insurance policy, or his wife's
skill in keeping down the bills.</p>

<p>I've had clerks in the office who'd do a job in jig
time and leave behind enough mistakes to make the
Bolsheviki envious, and when it comes time to
sweeten salaries they are always surprised and hurt,
because they are passed by for the fellows who
haven't such fancy windups, but do have better
control.</p>

<p>Speed is a tremendous asset to-day, and when it's
combined with control it's almost unbeatable. For
example, Walter Johnson. Still, I've seen old Cicotte
mow down the Red Sox with only two hits when he
hadn't enough speed to break a window, and you'll
find that a young fellow who can do a job in half a
day, and get it right, is a better man to have on your
pay roll than a chap who can do the same work in
half an hour, and then spend a day correcting his
mistakes.</p>

<p>Have a good time, and perhaps when you get back
to school your eyes will feel better so you can make a
creditable showing at your mid-years.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<p>P. S. The girl who bought me the pumps is Jack
Hamilton's daughter. She's married and has three
children so don't get excited.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>February 28, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>I did considerable wondering while you were home
last week, why it was your clothes carried a reek that
seemed a cross between a tannery vat and a grease
extractor.</p>

<p>Your Ma says "stink" is vulgar. Maybe it is, but
it's good plain English, and it describes that poison
gas you seemed to be carrying around with you,
better than any such ladylike word as smell.</p>

<p>I wasn't wise until you stopped at the corner on
the way to the station 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>When I was in Berlin in '99 attending the International
Shoe Manufacturers' Congress, there were
"Verboten" signs on pretty nearly everything.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
"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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The next instant someone grabbed Al by the coat
collar and gave him a shake.</p>

<p>"Do you not understand pig dog it is verboten?"
a voice said.</p>

<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"I am disgraced," yelled the one Al capsized.</p>

<p>"I want to fight. I would kill you, but you are
not titled. I'm disgraced."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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."</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"We will not be interrupted here," said the older
officer.</p>

<p>"Fine," Al replied, peeling off his coat, while the
soup spiller did the same.</p>

<p>"Here is a sword," said the older officer handing Al
his.</p>

<p>"What's that for?" Al asked.</p>

<p>"To fight with," the officer replied.</p>

<p>"I fight with my fists," Al shouted.</p>

<p>"Fighting with the fists is verboten," the officer
replied.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>In the morning, we learned the young officer Al<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
to do pretty well without smoking cigarettes, and
they are good examples for a young American to
imitate. Think it over, my boy.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>March 12, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>One evening last fall, on the way home from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
<img src="images/image15.jpg" width="425" height="573" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>


<p>"What's the trouble?" he asked.</p>

<p>I told him, suggesting he make the Butcher return
the candy.</p>

<p>"That's your job," he replied.</p>

<p>"But he can lick me," I stammered, remembering
former disastrous battles I had fought with the
bully.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Luckily, one of my first blows hit the Butcher
full on the mouth and he let out a howl&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
hammered me about as he pleased, finally landing a
swing on my jaw that knocked me off my feet.</p>

<p>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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>March 20, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;and
ancestors don't do a fellow any harm if he keeps
remembering they're dead and can't help him earn a
living.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Now don't think I'm down on millionaires. I'm
not; some of the biggest men in this country are also<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
but just the same it's fine to feel my only kid's as
proud of it as I am.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>From the first, J. Peters who was at least fifteen
years older, took a great fancy to me.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>One day, six months after J. Peters had arrived
in Epping, he proposed that I accompany him on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
week end trip to Boston which I was crazy to do,
but had to refuse on account of my finances being at
low tide.</p>

<p>J. Peters wouldn't take no for an answer, however,
and finally persuaded me to go as his guest.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
wrists, and looking up saw Hen Winters, the sheriff
of Epping County, scowling down at me.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>March 28, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>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 &amp; 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Speaking of sand paper, reminds me of something
that happened one year on the train coming home
from the Shoe and Leather Fair at St. Louis, and as I
have a few minutes before Miss Sweeney brings in the
figures on that last shipment of the Company's
leather, I'll pass it on to you for what it's worth.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>

<p>I was in the observation car, trying to write
a few letters amid the chatter of a group of red hot
sports, who I judged from their remarks, were on the
way home from playing the races at New Orleans.
One young fellow, in a sunset suit, was particularly
noisy. Every few minutes, he would draw a huge
wad of bills out of his pocket and waving them under
his friends' noses would boast of what he was going
to do to Wall Street when he hit little old New York.</p>

<p>Now I have considerable respect for Wall Street's
ability to take care of itself, and somehow I couldn't
picture all the old bulls and bears putting up the
shutters and hiking for the tall grass, when that
particular youth who had a chin like a fish's, landed
in their midst.</p>

<p>The train stopped at a small town, and an old
man who looked like the greenest rube in captivity
came into the car. He sat down opposite the bunch
of sports and pulling a country newspaper out of his
pocket buried himself in its pages.</p>

<p>From where I sat, I could see the sporting fraternity
sizing him up and presently the young loudmouth
crossed over and sat down beside him.</p>

<p>"Nice country around here Uncle," young freshy
began.</p>

<p>"Shore is," the old farmer answered. "So durned
fine I hate tew leave it. I bean here nigh on forty
years, and I hain't left Bington more'n twict. I sold
the old farm a short spell back, and I'm going to
Chicago now to live with a granddarter."</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/image16.jpg" width="400" height="565" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>

<p>"Have a cigar?" asked the young sport.</p>

<p>"Don't keer if I do," replied the farmer biting off
the end, and taking one of the safety matches from
a holder on the wall of the car he tried to strike it on
the sole of his boot.</p>

<p>Now at that time safety matches had not been used
to any great extent, still I didn't suppose it was
possible there was anyone who did not know what
they were, although I knew that in some of those
small mountain towns away from the railroad, the
people were said to be a hundred years behind the
times. When the old man tried to scratch another,
and then a third, I was convinced he'd never heard of
or seen a safety match, and I wondered what he'd do
next.</p>

<p>"Powerful pore matches, these be," he said with a
grunt, as he reached for a fourth and attempted to
light it on the leg of his trousers.</p>

<p>A crafty, cunning look, spread over the young
sport's weak face. "You can't light those matches
that way," he said.</p>

<p>"I'll bet I kin," the old man replied doggedly,
making his fifth unsuccessful attempt.</p>

<p>"What will you bet?" the young fellow asked,
quickly, an evil light gleaming in his fishy eyes.</p>

<p>"Wal I never yet seen a match I couldn't light on
my pants. I'll bet you a quarter."</p>

<p>The young man fished out his wad of bills. "I'm
no tin horn," he replied, with a sneer. "But if you
want to lose your money, I'll bet you $100 you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
can't light one of those matches on your trousers."</p>

<p>"Land sakes!" cried the old farmer. "A hundred
dollars?"</p>

<p>"That's what I said," replied the young fellow,
grinning at his pals. "This gentleman will hold the
money," he continued, peeling off a hundred dollar
bill from his roll and thrusting it into my hands.</p>

<p>I had just about decided to spoil the game with a
little history on safety matches, when the old farmer
who had been fishing around in his wallet, darted a
shrewd glance at me, then deliberately winked.</p>

<p>Finally, he counted out $100 in small bills, which
he handed over to me, grabbed a safety match from
the container, rubbed it on the leg of his trousers,
and when to my astonishment, it burst into flame,
calmly lighted his cigar and held out his hand for the
$200 which I passed over to him.</p>

<p>Later, in the pullman, as the old fellow was mooching
by my chair, he raised his coat enough to show
me the side of a safety match box sewed to the leg of
his trousers.</p>

<p>Now the only trouble with betting, Ted, is that
it's wrong. It's wrong for several reasons. First,
because it's trying to get something for nothing;
second, because a man always loses when he can't
afford it; third, because gambling of any kind will
sooner or later get a young fellow into the kind of
company he don't want to introduce to his folks;
fourth, because if a fellow sticks to gambling all his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
life he's pretty sure to die in the neighborhood of the
poorhouse; and fifth, no matter how slick a gambler
you become, you will always meet a slicker one, who
will trim you to a fare-thee-well.</p>

<p>It's fine to back your teams to the limit, and I'd
think you a pretty poor sort of a stick if you didn't
yell your head off at a game, but do you think it
helps to steady a players nerve in a pinch, to know
that if he doesn't deliver, his schoolmates will have
to live on snow balls or some other light refreshment
for a couple of months.</p>

<p>No Ted, old scout, betting is not only wrong, it's
foolish.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>April 6, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>I agree with you, you do need a new hat. One
about two sizes larger than you have been wearing,
I should judge from the line of talk you turned loose
when you were home last Sunday.</p>

<p>Now it's all right for a fellow to think well of himself.
He'll never get far if he doesn't, but it's just
as well to be careful how you sing your own praises,
for some day your audience may consist of persons
who know the folks who live next door to you.</p>

<p>You've done pretty well so far in making a decent
showing in your mid-years under a big handicap,
playing on the football team, and making the glee
club, besides being elected to the Plata Dates and
the student council, but you want to remember that
even a vegetarian can't live long on his laurels and
keep up the good work, for you haven't completed
your school course by a good bit.</p>

<p>Sunday, you gave a pretty fair exhibition of enlargement
of the cranium commonly known as
swelled head. That's one of the most dangerous of
all known diseases, and one you can't cure any too
quickly. It's all right to be pleased with yourself
for accomplishing something worth while, but it's
all wrong to keep on being pleased with yourself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
unless you keep on accomplishing things worth while.</p>

<p>Whenever you can look at yourself in the mirror
and be satisfied, you should consult a conscience
oculist, for as sure as shooting there's something
wrong with your inner sight.</p>

<p>But worst of all, is to let people know you're
satisfied with yourself, and it's just as well to remember
that the word I is the most superfluous in the
English language.</p>

<p>Hot air may be a necessity in the Balloon corps,
but the private offices in the factory are steam
heated, and the men who sit in them are not there
because they talk about themselves, but because they
think for the firm.</p>

<p>The reason I'm handing you a pretty stiff dose in
this letter, is principally because you need it. I've
seen a lot of promising young fellows start out with a
rush, and then after they have made a moderate
success, become so satisfied with themselves that
they stick in a small job, when they have the ability
to go much higher if they could stand prosperity.</p>

<p>There is always an over production of beginners
but the supply of completers is never equal to the
demand, and I want you to remember that the 31st of
December is just as good a day on which to do business
as January first.</p>

<p>It's all very nice to be considered the biggest man
in your class, but you aren't going to be long if you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
go around telling people how big you are. Keep
from making liars of the friends who praise you, and
remember that persons who try to show off their
greatness usually end by showing it up.</p>

<p>A horse who rushes the field for the first quarter
doesn't always finish in the lead. No one deserves
much credit for starting out with a big splash. It's
the fellow who's doing business at the finish who
really counts.</p>

<p>You've been a little too successful so far this year
in everything except your studies, and your success
has settled in your head.</p>

<p>Now don't think I'm not glad you are popular
with your schoolmates: I am, but I'd much rather
you weren't quite so popular with yourself. I don't
want to rub it in Ted, but I do want you to realize
that it's a blamed sight easier to reduce a swelled
head when it's young than after it begins to get bald.</p>

<p>I had my little experience when I was super. at
Clough &amp; Spinney's in Georgetown so I'll pass it
along to you for what it's worth.</p>

<p>I'd started in as a boy in the shipping room, been
promoted to shipping clerk, then I'd worked as a
laster, going from that to the sole leather room.
I'd married and been promoted to foreman, and
having saved some money I'd bought a little house
which was nearly paid for when I was made super.</p>

<p>I was about as happy a young fellow as you could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
find in all the New England shoe trade, for I'd been
progressing steadily ever since I'd started work and it
looked like a rosy future ahead.</p>

<p>As I look back now, I see that it was my help that
made my success possible quite as much as my own
efforts. Americans to the backbone, everyone of
them! Steady going respectable men and women
some of whom had been working in the shop when I
was born, and who would have told any agitator to
mind his own business, who might have undertaken
to tell them they were working too hard.</p>

<p>Well, anyway, at the end of two years I had that
little factory running as slick as a greased pig, and I
was wearing a self-satisfied smile in consequence that
I didn't even try to conceal, for old Hiram Spinney
had taken to calling me William, and Ezra Clough
used to invite your Ma and me to supper most every
Sunday evening.</p>

<p>Then one day old Hiram landed a whopping big
government contract, and it was up to me to make
the shoes according to specifications and on time.</p>

<p>Well sir, there was a great bustle and hurrying
around the little shop, extra hands were hired, new
machinery installed, and then I started for Boston to
buy the leather.</p>

<p>For the first time I was doing business in a really
big way, and I was so full of the size of the order
I was to place, I felt sure there was only one leather
company that could handle my business, so I pooh-poohed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
several salesmen whom I met on South
Street, and who having heard of our government
contract assured me they had blocks of leather I
could use to good advantage.</p>

<p>I bought my leather at what I considered a very
good figure, had a good lunch at the old United
States, and sat around the lobby for a while talking
with the shoe and leather men I knew, letting it be
pretty generally understood that as a superintendent
I was some punkins.</p>

<p>Then on the strength of my wonderful ability as
a buyer, I went up town and blew in about $100 on
a new outfit for myself and some presents for your
Ma.</p>

<p>When I took the train for Georgetown that
evening, I ran bang into old Hiram Spinney and as
we settled down in the same seat, he began to quiz
me about the orders I had placed.</p>

<p>Full of pride because I considered I had bought
to the best advantage, I started in to tell the old
man what a great superintendent he had, poking a
good deal of scorn at the foolish salesmen who had
tried to interest me in their small blocks of leather,
when I was out to buy a large quantity.</p>

<p>Old Hiram didn't say anything until I got through
praising myself, which took some time as I was
thoroughly sold on the idea.</p>

<p>When I'd finished, he looked at me out of the corner
of his eye.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>

<p>"Didn't even bother to look at those small lots
of leather?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Nope, couldn't waste my time on 'em," I replied.</p>

<p>"I did," he answered, "looked pretty good to me
too."</p>

<p>He went on telling me the prices quoted on each
lot, describing the leather so accurately I knew I
had passed by some mighty good things.</p>

<p>Gee! Ted, I could feel myself all shrivel up like a
red toy balloon after a kid sticks a pin in it. I'd
eaten a mighty good supper, but I felt hollow inside,
and I guess my face looked as though I was seasick,
for as near as I could figure I'd paid $12,000 more
for my leather than I needed to have done.</p>

<p>Old Hiram let me squirm until the train reached
Georgetown and we had stumbled off on to the platform.</p>

<p>"Thought maybe you'd like to know I bought
those odd blocks," he said as I started for home.</p>

<p>"You did!" I replied, for I couldn't see how we
possibly could use them along with what I'd purchased.</p>

<p>"Yep."</p>

<p>"What about the lot I bought?" I asked.</p>

<p>"I just stepped in and cancelled your order ten
minutes after you'd left."</p>

<p>I was so happy I could have yelled for joy and at
the same time I felt like two bits and a nickel.</p>

<p>"William," said old Hiram walking up and laying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
a hand on my shoulder, "you're a good boy, and
you've done real well, but lately you've given signs
of being too self-satisfied. Forget your own importance
for the next ten years and then you will
have reason to be proud."</p>

<p>He gave me a friendly little pat, and trudged off
into the dark.</p>

<p>Old Hiram cured me. To this day I've remembered
his advice, and tried to follow it. It's
still bully good dope. I'd play it for all it's worth if
I were you.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>April 30, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>Frankly Ted, I don't see how you ever did it. I
have had some experience with expense accounts
having twenty salesmen on the road; but no travelling
man I have employed, ever had the nerve to
present such a collection of outrageous bills as was
contained in your last letter.</p>

<p>I'll admit, I was prepared for a few modest accounts,
mostly for extra food, for a boy your age is
nearly always hungry, and of course they starve you
at the Commons, although I managed to get quite
a substantial meal there the night I had dinner with
you. But as near as I can judge the Exeter townspeople
must be on the verge of starvation, for surely
you have consumed all the food supplies in all the
stores in the township.</p>

<p>I put you on an allowance this year, so you could
learn how to handle money, and so far the net result
has been that you have given a most perfect example
of how not to do it.</p>

<p>A boy who can't keep pretty close to his allowance,
is going to grow into a man who can't live within his
income, and neither are going to score many touchdowns
in the game of life, although they may do a
whole lot of flashy playing between the twenty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
yard lines. Besides, it's just as well to remember
that no one yet ever succeeded in eating his way into
Who's Who.</p>

<p>Perhaps some of it is hereditary, though, for I
remember when your Uncle Ted first went away to
school, your grandmother gave him an allowance
and made him promise to keep account of every
cent he spent.</p>

<p>When he came home on his first vacation, she sat
down with him and went over his accounts, on the
whole much pleased, because he had kept within
what she had given him.</p>

<p>Every third or fourth entry was S. P. G. and being
a devoutedly religious woman she was delighted to
find her boy had given so much of his money to the
Society for Propagation of the Gospel, until Ted,
being honest, had to own up that S. P. G. stood for
Something, Probably Grub.</p>

<p>Your bills for extra feed, would make those of a
stable full of trotting horses look like the meal tickets
of a flock of dyspeptic canaries. But I don't mind
those so much for I don't want to see you starve.</p>

<p>What I do mind is six silk shirts at twelve per, and
a dozen silk sox at three dollars a pair. Now when
you are making $15,000 a year which you won't be
for some time, if you want to pay twelve dollars for
a shirt that's your funeral, although I rather suspect
that by then you will have found out that real good
shirts can be bought much cheaper.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 480px;">
<img src="images/image17.jpg" width="480" height="550" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>

<p>Of course when you had bought a few shirts at
twelve dollars a throw, a dressing gown at forty, and
silk pajamas at $15 came real natural.</p>

<p>Did I ever tell you how a necktie cost me $150?
Well I will, before the super. comes in and tells me
there's a new strike in the stitching room.</p>

<p>I was nineteen, and had been clerking for three
years in Jed Barrow's store. Jed was so busy putting
sand in the sugar, and mixing his Java with a high
grade of chicory, he didn't have much time to think
of advancing my wages, but I was careful, I had to be,
and at the end of three years I had saved $178.
I never have forgotten the exact figures, because it
came so blamed hard.</p>

<p>There, one day, Jed suggested I take a week's
vacation. I think he was afraid I was going to ask
for a raise, and did it to get me out of the way,
but as my Uncle Ezra had invited me to visit him in
Boston I took my week, without pay, and hiked to
the big town.</p>

<p>Uncle Ezra was the aristocrat of the family. He
lived in one of those old yellow brick houses on
Beacon Hill just across from the common, the kind
with the lavender glass in the downstairs windows,
and if the old man hadn't been so busy being an
aristocrat, he'd have made a first-rate radical, for he
was continually writing letters to the Transcript
complaining about everything as it was.</p>

<p>Uncle Ezra greeted me cordially enough, until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
he caught sight of my necktie which I'll admit was
somewhat bewhiskered and more green than black.</p>

<p>"My boy, what an awful tie!" he exclaimed.</p>

<p>"Really, you must let me buy you another," and
he pulled some money out of his pocket.</p>

<p>Being proud, I refused, making some excuses
about not having time to buy a new one. The first
chance I got, I scooted across to a fancy haberdasher
on Tremont Street, and picking out a handsome dark-blue
tie told the clerk to wrap it up. I had never
paid more than a quarter for a tie, and when he
calmly told me it was two dollars I almost fainted,
but I felt I couldn't very well refuse to take it so I
went to the back of the store and put it on. Do you
know Ted, when that rich silk tie was contrasted
with my blue serge that had seen considerable
service as Sunday best, I felt about as comfortable
as a man in overalls wearing a plug hat.</p>

<p>He who hesitates is sold. I hesitated, and the
next thing I knew a smart young salesman was
selling me a new suit, then I noticed the shoes I was
wearing were patched. Well, sir, before I finished I
had a complete new outfit, and that store had $150
of my money. It didn't worry me any until I was
passing the Savings Bank at home. Then it struck
me all of a sudden that in a week I had spent what it
had taken three years of back-twisting work to save,
and that the net result of my labor I could show in
money was exactly nothing.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>

<p>Ever since I have spent a little less than I earned,
and that is a bully principle for you to imitate. I
hate a tightwad, Ted, as much as you do; but I hate
what is commonly known as a good spender a blame
sight more. I don't want you to grow into a man who
groans every time he spends a cent, and neither do I
want you to feel that money is like the smallpox to
be gotten rid of as quickly as possible.</p>

<p>A good spender is usually a man who believes in
giving himself a good time, and who leaves his wife
to take in boarders and his children to shift for themselves.</p>

<p>Now I'm going to pay your food bills, this time
for I don't believe the Exeter townspeople will get
much to eat until the storekeepers collect the money
owing them, and can lay in a new stock; but you are
going to pay for those silk shirts, pajamas, and other
dodads, at the rate of three dollars a week until
you've paid me back what I advance. Then after
you have paid in full, if you want to buy more on the
same terms all right.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>May 10, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>If I'd had time before I left Exeter last week,
you and I would have had a heart to heart talk
about some of those freak books and magazines I
found strewn all over your room.</p>

<p>"Equalization of the Masses," "The Worker's
Share," and "The Exploitation of the People,"
are heavy-sounding titles, and the contents, I should
judge from my hurried examination, would be about
as easy to digest as a bake-shop plum pudding.</p>

<p>Your study table also seemed to be carrying more
than its share of long-haired magazines, and although
I read some of their foolishness just to see how foolish
they really were, I was afraid all the time I was
looking at them, some one would come in and catch
me.</p>

<p>Now I've read a considerable number of fool
articles in my life, but that one on "Soviet Government
for the United States," wins in a walk. How
anybody outside of Danvers could believe in such
nonsense is beyond me, especially after what has
happened in Russia, but as old Jed Bigelow used to
say, "There ain't nothin' so foolish but some critter
will believe it," and Jed was right.</p>

<p>When you told me a few weeks ago you had joined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
the Radical Club, I thought it was just a kid fad
you'd taken up to have a little something extra to do,
but I didn't imagine you'd started in to support all
the crack-brained, long-haired, wild-eyed writers
who are making a living out of the good nature of
this country.</p>

<p>Radicalism is mighty dangerous business Ted,
about as safe as smoking cigarettes in a patent
leather factory, and if I really thought you believed
you were in sympathy with all that nonsense I'd
whale you good.</p>

<p>The trouble with you is you're just beginning to
think a little for yourself. Now thinking for yourself
is fine, but until you begin to direct your thoughts
in the right direction you're a good deal like the
cannon Uncle Abijah invented during the Spanish
War. It was a first-rate gun when he could control
it, but it was as likely to kill the people behind it as
those at whom it was aimed, so Uncle Abijah gave it
up as a bad job after it had blown off most of his
whiskers and a couple of fingers.</p>

<p>These radical galoots who want to tip everything
in the country upside down from the constitution
to the movies get under my hide, and if I had my
way I'd make everyone of them work at least eight
hours a day and bathe oftener than every thirty-first
of February.</p>

<p>It makes me mad clear through, to see these
snakes who leave their own countries because the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
sheriff wants 'em, busy before the immigration
authorities can disinfect 'em, plotting to overthrow
the government who gives 'em the only chance they
ever had.</p>

<p>In a republic all men are born equal, but that's all.
It's nonsense to suppose that a good for nothing
loafer who makes his living by stirring up hatred
against law and order, is the equal of a decent, God-fearing,
hard-working citizen, who minds his own
business, pays taxes, and tries to raise a family of
straight Americans, and if anyone tries to tell me two
such men are equal, I'll let him know mighty quick
I think he's either a liar or a blame fool.</p>

<p>A lot of children cut open their dolls to see what's
inside, and a lot of folks who ought to know better
are monkeying around with this radicalism business
to see what's in it. I can tell you what's in it:
"Nothing!" and working to promote nothing is a
fool's job.</p>

<p>Now you may think I'm too conservative, but I
believe that when Thomas Jefferson &amp; Co. wrote the
constitution of the United States they did a pretty
fair job, and until some one can improve on it, which
hasn't been done yet, I'm backing up the old constitution
with every bit of my strength.</p>

<p>Whenever I hear of anyone becoming interested
in radicalism, it always reminds me of an old fellow
by the name of Charlie Gabb who lived in Epping.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
Now Gabb was rightly named, for he used to hang
around Sol. Whittaker's store filling the place with
hot air, until Sol. nailed chicken wire over the top
of his cracker barrels.</p>

<p>Gabb was against everything as it was. Nothing
was right, work included, I guess, for he was never
known to do any, and was supported by a long-suffering
wife who used to earn their living by going
out working by the day. He was agin the government,
and agin all law, and claimed all wealth should
be divided equally among the people. There
wasn't anything he couldn't improve on, but as he
was harmless in spite of all his talk, no one paid any
serious attention to him.</p>

<p>Gabb went on talking for a number of years, without
exciting any of the Epping folks over much, and
then the woolen mill was built, and a lot of Poles
came to town to work in it.</p>

<p>They were hard working, saving sort of people,
but as they had only just come over from Poland
where I imagine they had a pretty rough time with
the Germans on one side and the Russians on the
other, both trying to rob them of everything they
had, they were down on all governments on general
principles, and it wasn't long before old Gabb had
made a big impression on them. I don't know as
they could be blamed for Gabb could talk louder,
and longer, and faster, than anyone else I ever heard,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
and I'll admit that some of the stuff he had to
offer sounded pretty well, until one sat down and
started to figure out what it really meant.</p>

<p>Those Poles couldn't have understood much Gabb
said, but it sort of flattered them to have an American
take any notice of them, so in a short time Gabb
became their leader, and used to gather them all
together twice a week, on the common, and give
them a harangue that would make your hair curl.</p>

<p>Then Epping got the surprise of its life, for one
day the Poles quit the woolen mill in a body, and
under old Gabb's leadership hiked over to a deserted
village five miles back in the hills, where they lived
a community life sharing everything alike.</p>

<p>This was a splendid arrangement for Gabb, for
never having had anything, when it came time to
divide up what there was, Gabb got a little something
from each family, and owning nothing himself he
didn't have anything to give away. Then, too, as
chief of the tribe, he was allotted the best house, and
was altogether much better off than he had ever
been in his life.</p>

<p>For a time, the village prospered, for the Poles
were workers, and weren't afraid to put in a little
overtime when their farms needed it, and old Gabb
whenever he drove over to Epping used to crow over
the success of his socialistic experiment.</p>

<p>Now Gabb had a brother who lived at Bristol
Centre, who was a regular fellow, and couldn't see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
the Epping member of his family with a telescope.
The Bristol Centre Gabb had worked hard all his
life, and owned one of the largest hog ranches in New
England. One day, this brother who was a bachelor
died, and Charlie suddenly found himself the
owner of a farm and about two thousand hogs.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/image18.jpg" width="400" height="583" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>Now if Charlie Gabb really believed what he'd
been preaching for years, he'd have divided up his
farm and two thousand hogs among the Poles, who'd
been more or less supporting him, but he did nothing
of the kind. He left his socialistic friends and moved
over to Bristol Centre, taking possession of his
brother's farm, hogs, and all.</p>

<p>The Poles heard of their leader's good fortune and
waited patiently for him to divide. Nothing doing.
Finally, a committee went over and asked old
Gabb when the grand division of pigs was to take
place, and he chased them off his farm with a pitchfork.</p>

<p>A week later, in the middle of the night, Epping
was awakened by the greatest yelling, and squeaking,
and grunting, that was ever heard in one place in the
history of the world.</p>

<p>The Poles had raided old Gabb's hog farm, and
were driving through Epping what they considered
their share of his property.</p>

<p>Old Gabb was trailing along behind, cursing and
howling for the sheriff, who when he heard what had
happened couldn't be found, although I remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
seeing him hanging out his window in his night
shirt, laughing so hard I thought he'd bust.</p>

<p>Old Gabb started about a hundred lawsuits, but
everyone sympathized with the Poles, and as one
pig looks about as much like another as two peas do,
Gabb couldn't swear to his property, so he lost every
case. From the time of the great pig raid until he
died, Gabb was the staunchest conservative in the
country, and if anyone mentioned socialism to him he
nearly had a fit.</p>

<p>Now, Ted, you are going to cut out this radical
business pronto, toot sweet, and at once, and if I
don't hear from you within a week that you have
resigned from that Radical Club and severed diplomatic
relations with that sort of nonsense, you'll
leave Exeter so quick you won't know what hit you,
for as long as I'm head of the Soule tribe, no member
of my family is going to do anything that can in any
manner be regarded as harmful to the country that
our grandfathers fought for from Bunker Hill to
Gettysburg.</p>

<p>I know that it is curiosity that has interested you
in radicalism. Well, try to realize that in these
trying days when the whole future of the world is at
stake, every American no matter how young, has as
stern a duty to perform in upholding law and order
as ever our continentals had at Valley Forge.</p>

<p>Organize an American Club. Get together the
biggest boys you can and start a club to teach the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
young foreigners who work in the mills and factories
that America gives a square deal to all.</p>

<p>Show these young fellows through teaching them
our American sports, that clean playing and good
sportsmanship are two of the biggest things in life.
Help teach them to build up, not tear down. You
Exeter boys are only boys, and yet as Americans
there is nothing you cannot accomplish; and God
knows that to help in every possible way, the newcomers
among us, to understand our American ideals
is as great a privilege as was given to the boys who
went "over there," that liberty might not perish
from the earth.</p>

<p>Make me proud of you my boy, not ashamed.
Make me feel that when I take down the old family
Bible and turn to its fly leaf, where the history of our
family has been written for generations, that in
time your name will be worthy of a place beside
those of our men who did their part in making the
United States the greatest nation the world has ever
known.</p>

<p>Play up Ted! You're one of the country's pinch
hitters, and I know you can be depended upon to
deliver.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>May 26, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>You can't imagine how proud I am of this new
American Club of yours, and the school is too, if
the letters I received from the principal, and most
of the professors are good indications of what they
feel. The Boston papers have taken it up, and as
you have probably seen, Andover is forming an
American Club for the young foreigners in the
Lawrence mills, and yesterday when I met the
Governor, he asked to be introduced to you when he
speaks in Lynn next week.</p>

<p>This sort of work is so much more worth while than
the radical business, I know you can't help feeling
you're a better American for having undertaken
it, and you may be sure that when you are older,
you'll get a heap of satisfaction out of the thought,
that there are a lot of good Americans who might
have grown up to be trouble makers, if you and
your friends hadn't helped to steer them into good
citizenship.</p>

<p>If I were you, I'd accept the principal's offer for
the use of the vacant room in the Administration
Building. Fit it up as a reading room with a lot of
the best magazines, histories of the United States,
and lives of famous Americans for the young foreigners<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
who can read English, and get some of the
instructors to help teach the ones who can't. Thursday
I'll send you a check for $200 which I've raised
among a few friends. This will help buy the books,
so in the fall when school reopens, you'll be ready
to start things with a rush.</p>

<p>As to where you are going to college when you
finish school, I wouldn't worry about that now if I
were you. Finish school first, by then you'll probably
know where you want to go.</p>

<p>I've always found it a pretty good rule to follow,
never to worry about another job, until I've finished
the one I'm working on. There are lots of people
who make themselves sick worrying about things
that never happen, when they might as well save
their doctor's bills and enjoy life.</p>

<p>Personally, I think it doesn't make much difference
where you go, as long as you go to college to do
a fair amount of work, and not just to play football
and have a good time.</p>

<p>There are a lot of advantages in going to one of
the big universities, where you can study anything
from Egyptian Hair Dressing in the fourth century
B. C., to the vibrations caused by an airplane flying
at one hundred miles an hour, and where you have
the advantage of wonderful libraries, museums, and
laboratories, to help you in your work.</p>

<p>Then again, the small college with its solid
academic course, based principally on honest to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
goodness horse sense, is a pretty good place, for not
having fifty-seven varieties of courses, it's apt to
rub thoroughly into a boy's hide what it does have
to offer.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image19.jpg" width="600" height="149" alt="" />
</div>

<p>When the time comes for you to go to college
I'm not going to interfere, I am going to let you make
your own choice; but as that time is nearly two
years away, I'd do a little more thinking about how
you are going to pass your final exams, this year,
than worrying about what college you are going to
enter a year from next fall.</p>

<p>You remind me of a clerk, by the name of Charlie
Harris, I once had in the factory. Charlie was a
good, hard working boy, came to me right from high
school, and as he didn't seem to have a grudge
against the hands of the clock because they moved
slowly, and was always willing to do a little more
than his share of the work, I became interested in
him.</p>

<p>Charlie had one queer trick, though, he was never
satisfied with finishing the job he had on hand, but
was forever worrying about the next bit of work he
might have to do, not worrying mind you, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
he had the next job coming to him. As I said before
Charlie wasn't afraid of work, but he was always
afraid something was going to queer the future job,
before he could get to it, and get it finished.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image20.jpg" width="600" height="152" alt="" />
</div>

<p>One winter, when you were a little chap, my
shipper got the grippe and was out for three months.
I wished his job on Charlie, and Charlie made good
although you never would have thought so from the
length of his face. Our shipments were sent out on
time, well packed, and properly routed, but Charlie
was as doleful as a rejected suitor at a pretty girl's
wedding.</p>

<p>There wasn't a day, he didn't come in and spill
gloom all over my office, prophesying that soon every
thing would go wrong. Nothing happened though, so
I used to laugh at him, and tell him to forget it.</p>

<p>Early in February, I was due to make a big shipment
of shoes to a jobbers' warehouse on or before
March first.</p>

<p>Everything had gone smoothly. I'd had no labor
troubles, had bought my stock right, and stood to
make a nice juicy profit, for on the first day of
February all the shoes were in cases in the shipping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
room, ready to start on their journey to Chicago.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image21.jpg" width="600" height="160" alt="" />
</div>

<p>On the night of the second, it started to snow, for
three days it came down in perfect clouds burying
Lynn four feet deep.</p>

<p>For three days traffic was completely stalled, for
although the snow was wet and sticky when the
storm started, along in the afternoon of the second
day, it turned cold, with the result that the whole
mass turned into ice, and made it impossible to clear
the streets.</p>

<p>Still I wasn't worrying any, for Jim Devlin my old
truckman, I knew, would be among the first to do
business as soon as it was possible to get through the
streets, and I still had several days leeway before my
shoes must start for Chicago.</p>

<p>On the morning of the fifth day when pungs
were beginning to get around, Charlie gloomed into
my office, and informed me that Devlin hadn't a
single team on runners, having the previous fall
traded off all his pungs for drays. Devlin had been
so sure he could hire enough pungs to take care of
our big shipment, he hadn't even told us the fix he
was in, until having tried every teamster and livery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
stable within miles of Lynn, he found he couldn't
get a single one. Everybody wanted pungs, and the
truckmen who owned any were rushing theirs night
and day to take care of their regular customers.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
<img src="images/image22.jpg" width="600" height="128" alt="" />
</div>

<p>I tried to borrow from everyone I knew, with no
luck, for all the shoe manufacturers had use for every
pung they could get their hands on to get their own
shoes to the freight yards. Finally, I gave up in
disgust, and sat down to figure out my loss, when I
happened to glance out the window of my office,
that looks out on the alley that leads to our shipping
room door.</p>

<p>There were about three hundred kids lined up
there, each one with a sled, and I wondered what in
the world they were up to, when one staggered
around the corner of our building, dragging a sled
after him, on which was perched a shoe case with
"The Princess Shoe," stencilled in red letters across
the top.</p>

<p>I let out a whoop, and dove for the shipping room,
where I found Charlie and his crew as busy as ants,
tying cases of shoes onto the kids sleds as fast as the
boys backed them up to the shipping-room door.</p>

<p>Before night, every case of shoes had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
delivered to the freight yards, and Charlie's pay had
been increased $10 a week, but the next morning
when I reached the factory, I found him almost
weeping because he was afraid that when the snow
melted it would flood our shipping room which in
those days was level with the street.</p>

<p>For five years after that, I used Charlie as a sort
of pinch hitter around the factory giving him all
sorts of work, but never letting him know what his
next job was to be, and as he couldn't worry about
what was coming, he more than made good.</p>

<p>Ted, any real college is a good college. It's all
up to you, for so far as I know, there's nothing to
prevent you learning a lot in any one of them. The
thing for you to do for the next two years, is to
study hard at Exeter, then when it comes time to
take your exams, you needn't be afraid about being
able to get into any college you choose.</p>

<p>I'll be in Exeter Saturday to have a look at your
American Club, and at his special request I'm bringing
the Governor's private secretary with me. So
long old boy.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>June 8, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>If the super. had come in, and told me the hands
were going to strike, unless I lowered the piecework
rates, I wouldn't have been more surprised,
than I was at your last letter. It was some shock;
and at first I couldn't believe you were serious; after
re-reading it I see you are, and I guess a few hints
from the old man may help relieve the pain a bit,
for it's as plain as your Aunt Sarah you're going to
suffer, no matter how your love affair turns out.</p>

<p>To me, the idea of your really being in love, seems
as impossible as Trotsky being elected Alderman by
the Beacon Hill Ward of Boston, but it doesn't take
a specialist to diagnose the symptoms, and from the
stuff you have spilled all over the pages of your last
letter, I should say you had an acute case with a
fever going on 105 degrees.</p>

<p>Now, I say no matter how things turn out it is
going to be painful, and at your age and vast
experience of life, it can only turn out one way, and
that's a broken heart for you for about a week, and
then a gradual interest in life, until two weeks
from now the outcome of the baseball game with
Andover, will be even more important to you than
how to get enough to eat between meals.</p>

<p>There's one thing you have done though Ted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
you've played fair with the old man, and that's
entered on the credit side of your ledger, although you
may not think so when you've finished this letter.
I am glad you introduced me to the girl at the game
last Saturday, and I assure you I enjoyed every
minute of her society, and would again, for she and
I had a lot in common, both of us being practical
business men. But when it comes to having her for
a daughter-in-law, I can think up more reasons for
not wanting her, than a jobber can for refusing to
stock a line of shoes he feels may be out of style,
before he can unload them on the retailer.</p>

<p>In the first place, Ted, I should judge she is
slightly older than you, about eight years is my
guess, and although eight years is all right when it's
on the man's side, it's apt to be pretty awkward
when your wife is constantly referred to by strangers
as your mother; likely to make you feel foolish, and
the lady peevish; and about the time you'll be thinking
of changing from tennis to golf, she'll be changing
from one piece dresses to wrappers, and wrappers
never yet kept a man's eyes from straying in other
directions.</p>

<p>Miss Shepard is good looking, I'll admit; real
attractiveness though in spite of the soap advertisements
and beauty doctors, is more than skin deep,
and you must remember that no matter how perfect
a surface a thing has, it's the quality underneath
that counts.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>

<p>After all there's not much difference between girls
and sole leather. A run of leather on the warehouse
floor, may look like nice profits, and when it's
cut you find it didn't figure out at all as you expected;
and a girl may look like a June morning before marriage,
and turn out an equinoctial storm afterwards.</p>

<p>A smart shoe man, doesn't buy a block of leather
without sizing up what's under the grain, and a
young man when looking around for steady company
can well do likewise. I don't want you to
think I have anything against good looks, I haven't
and if you can get them with other qualities, all
right. It must be tough, to have to sit opposite a
face at breakfast, that curdles the milk in your
coffee, but better that and sizzling ham and eggs,
than a rose bud for looks, and cold oatmeal.</p>

<p>Your lady-love didn't strike me as a young woman
of means, and as for your capital, it consists principally
of some loud clothes and a fair knowledge of
football, neither being what you might call liquid
assets, when it comes to setting up housekeeping.
And speaking of housekeeping, do you think she is
the kind of girl, who would enjoy getting three
squares a day, running the vacuum cleaner in between,
with dish washing and mending as side lines?</p>

<p>Now Hortense may be only six or eight years older
than you. In wisdom she's nearly twenty, and you
had better believe she's got no fool ideas about
trying to live on three dollars a day, with sugar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
twenty cents a pound. No girl who's lived all her
life in an academy town is so foolish as that, and if
you think I'm going to finance you a couple of years
from now, in a home of your own, you're taking off
with the wrong foot.</p>

<p>I know I married when I was only twenty and was
getting $18.00 a week, but your Ma is one woman
in a million, a country town girl who was taught
housekeeping from childhood, and who could make a
dollar go further than even the immortal George,
when he made his famous throw from deep center in
the Potomac League. She could take my week's
pay on a Saturday night, after having set aside the
rent and insurance money, buy enough food for the
next week, the clothes we needed, and still have some
left to tuck away in the savings bank. And right
here, let me tell you if you ever make another crack
like you did two weeks ago, about your Ma wearing
too many rings, I'll give you the worst licking you
ever had. Perhaps she does, but she likes 'em, and
when I think of the work those fingers have done for
us, she's welcome to cover 'em with rings, if she
likes, and her thumbs also for that matter.</p>

<p>Your Ma made me, and the right girl is the best
inspirer of success a young fellow can have, while
the wrong kind, is about as much help to a man
trying to shin up the greased pole of success, as a
nice thick coating of lard on his fingers.</p>

<p>Probably you don't remember John White. John
and I were great pals when we were boys. Used to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
swim, play ball, and hunt together, fought at least
one pitched battle a week, but when any one touched
either of us, the other was on the intruder like a
wildcat. We both got married about the same time,
and John who was sensible as he could be in most
things, picked out a girl who hadn't the brains of an
intelligent guinea pig.</p>

<p>We were both working in Clough &amp; Spinney's at
the time, and three months after John was married,
he had indigestion, and was wearing safety pins on
his clothes instead of buttons.</p>

<p>Noon hours, he used to tell me what a lucky fellow
he was to have married Priscilla, but as the weeks
went by his praises seemed to lack the right ring,
although I must say he did his best.</p>

<p>I often wondered how he was getting along, for in
my estimation Priscilla Brown was pretty much of a
lightweight, and although a nice enough girl, about
as useful around a house, as one of those iron dogs
some folks have on their front lawns. One day,
John invited us over to Topsfield, where he lived, to
supper. When we got there, I thought your Ma
would have a fit. She's as orderly as a West Point
Cadet, and there were clothes strewn all over John's
parlor, and more dust on the furniture, than there is
in some of the seashore lots the fly-by-night real
estate companies sell.</p>

<p>We waited, and waited, and then waited some more
for our supper. Finally, we had it, everything out
of a can and cold, but the prize performance came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
when Priscilla started to serve jam and bread for
dessert. She put down beside me, a loaf of bread
she said she had just baked, and asked me to cut it.
I tried. All I had was a knife. What I needed was a
chisel. In my efforts to hack through the crust, the
loaf slipped off the table and landed like a thousand
bricks on my pet corn. I hollered right out, and
made an enemy of Priscilla for life.</p>

<p>After supper, while Priscilla and your Ma were doing
the dishes, John and I held a funeral in his back
yard, and buried that loaf of bread beside a stone
wall at the rear of the garden. A month later, old
Josh Whipple who was near sighted, struck it while he
was mending John's wall, and before he realized it
wasn't a stone, he had slapped it into a hole in the
wall with a lot of mortar. It stayed there until
the next winter, when the weather finally destroyed
it.</p>

<p>John had brains, and ambition, and was never an
enemy of work, but to-day he is foreman of the making
room in a measely little Maine factory, when he
might be running his own, and it was only Priscilla
who queered him. Whenever he'd manage to put
by a little money, she always needed a new set of
furs, or a vacation, or a thousand other things which
she got. John never got his factory.</p>

<p>After all, I think I'm indebted to Hortense
Shepard, for letting you spend most of your allowance
on her, and clutter up her front porch on spring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
evenings. You might be spending your time and
my money, in worse places. I'm not going to forbid
you seeing her. What I am going to do is to ask you
as man to man, if you don't think it would be fairer
to the lady in question, not to propose until you have
some visible means of support? Just think of the
awful hole you'd be in, if you did, and she called
your bluff and said, "Yes."</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 423px;">
<img src="images/image23.jpg" width="423" height="550" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>A school widow like Hortense, isn't a bad institution
after all, for she gives a young man like you a
chance to be in a love with a nice girl, even if she is
old enough to be, let's say, his aunt. I'd ease off
gradually, there, if I were you. I'm sure it won't
keep her awake nights, if you call only once a week
instead of five times. For no matter how much you
may think she cares, she doesn't, any more than for
any nice young fellow, who'll give her candy and
flowers, and beau her around to the games.</p>

<p>After you've gone through school and college,
and have been in the factory long enough to have
faint glimmers of shoemaking, it'll be time enough
to think of getting married. Now, I'd spend more
time with the queens of history and less time with
those of Exeter.</p>

<p>Don't take it too hard my boy, and remember
that when the right time and right girl come along,
the old man will be rooting tooth and nail for you to
win.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>




<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 85%;"><span class="smcap">Lynn, Mass.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: right;"><i>June 16, 19&mdash;</i></p>

<p style="margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Ted</span>:</p>

<p>Well son the school year is about over now and
taking it all in all you haven't done so badly. Of
course that probation mess last winter was not at
all to my liking, and I could have survived the
shock of a higher average of marks for the year, still
I think you have given promises of better things to
come.</p>

<p>When I asked you last Sunday what you intended
doing this summer vacation, thinking you had
planned hanging around home most of the time, I
must say I was startled to learn the itinerary you had
laid out for yourself. It looks as though you were
going to be about as busy as the Prince of Wales
was when he was visiting in New York, and he was
busier than a one-armed paper hanger with St.
Vitus dance.</p>

<p>Now I never believed in bringing you up on the
all work and no play theory, but from the jobs you've
set yourself I should judge you will be working harder
at playing this summer than you ever did at anything
else.</p>

<p>Newport, Narragansett, Magnolia, Kenneybunkport,
and Bar Harbor are not exactly the places I
should choose to get rested in for a coming year of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
work, but you are young and maybe you can stand
it. Still I don't want you to make the mistake I
did the year of the panic.</p>

<p>Nineteen seven was some year for me. Business
was so jumpy I never knew when I came home at
night whether the next day would bring the sheriff
into the factory, or whether I might get a big order
that would float me safely over the rocks. By June,
I had lost thirty pounds and couldn't sleep nights,
but the sheriff wore a disappointed look when I
met him, and I didn't have to walk on the opposite
sidewalk when I passed the Company's store in
Boston.</p>

<p>Your Ma had been doing considerable worrying
about my being overworked, and when I had
pulled things around so that I could breathe again,
she suggested a vacation. I agreed having in my
mind a nice, quiet, little village on the Maine coast,
where I could lie around in the sun and dose, or go
fishing when I felt real rambunctious. Now your
Ma, had just been reading a book called, "The
Invigoration of the Human Mind and Body," by
some fellow with a string of letters after his name.</p>

<p>Professor Wiseacre claimed that to get a thorough
rest a person should spend his vacations in doing
exactly the opposite from what he did the rest of the
year, and as much as I should like to I can't quarrel
with him about that, but what I am ready to go to
the mat with him for, was his elaboration of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
theory into the fact that if a person kept away from
society most of the year, his vacation should be
spent in the midst of its giddy whirl.</p>

<p>Your Ma was thoroughly sold on this idea,
although I calculate she didn't have to be persuaded
much harder than a shoe jobber does to take a
thousand cases at present prices, when he thinks the
market is going up.</p>

<p>I fell for it. Your Ma ordered a lot of sixty horse
power clothes, and we rented a big cottage at
Magnolia. Now I knew Magnolia was fashionable;
but it's on the coast so I thought that once in a while
I could slip away in a dory for a few hours' fishing off
Norman's Woe, or get over to Gloucester for a chin
with some of the captains of the fleet; but I soon
found out that I had about as much chance of doing
either as a rabbit has of dying of old age in the snake
cage at the zoo.</p>

<p>The first morning, I came down in an old suit and
flannel shirt, with a cod line in my pocket, carrying
a can full of clams for bait. When your Ma saw me
she waved me back like a traffic cop, and asked in a
hurt tone if I had forgotten we were going to take
our meals at the hotel. I had. I never did again.
I changed into white flannels and stood around on the
hotel piazza after breakfast saying, "Fine morning,
Glad to meet you," while your Ma renewed her
acquaintance with a number of ladies. About
eleven, I tried to make a break, but learned I was to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
escort to the beach a crowd of females aged fifteen
to seventy-five.</p>

<p>I sat on the beach for an hour getting my shoes
full of sand, and then it was time to convey the
crowd back to the hotel for lunch. Next, we went
for an auto ride, stopping at the Grill for tea, after
which it was time to dress for dinner, and then I had
to stick around at a dance until after midnight.</p>

<p>I kept this up for two weeks, and the only time
I escaped was one rainy day when I managed to
dodge the hotel debating society, and get in a morning's
fishing before it cleared up.</p>

<p>In two weeks, I was so fed up with changing my
clothes, and going to the beach, and having tea,
and hanging around dances, I just longed for the
peaceful clatter of the making room, and would
have done something desperate, if I hadn't met a
young doctor who was making a great reputation
advising people to do just what they wanted.</p>

<p>He told me I needed a complete change. I didn't
put up any argument against that, and I sort of
hinted the factory would be the most complete
change I could think of; so he ordered me back to
work and charged me a tremendous fee, but it was
worth it, for in two weeks after I had returned, I
felt rested.</p>

<p>Now I had rather hoped you and I would get a
chance to pal around together this summer, for you
will be away from home quite a lot during the next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
few years, and I want to be a real chum to you, Ted.
I never had any use for the father and son business
where the old man says, "Why, good morning
Reginald," in a sort of a surprised tone as though he
suddenly remembers he has a son after all. I want
to be a real friend of yours, in on your good times,
and ready to lend a hand whenever it's needed. In
a few years I want to change the firm name from
William Soule &amp; Company to William Soule &amp; Son,
and I want it to be more than a change in the
firm's name. I want it to be a real partnership.</p>

<p>We'll be glad to have you home again Ted, even
if it's only between trips, for you've been missed this
year, my boy. Your Ma and I aren't as young as we
were, and there's been many an evening when I've
been reading the paper, and she's been sewing, and
neither of our minds on what we were doing, for we
were thinking of a hulking kid of ours. Some years
from now when you have a boy of your own you'll
understand.</p>

<p>That's why, I guess, I hoped you'd be at home a
lot this summer, and that later you and I could take
a fishing trip together, but I promised you you could
do anything within reason this vacation and my word
has never been broken. We'll expect you Thursday.</p>

<p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 73%;">Your affectionate father,</p>

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 80%;"><span class="smcap">William Soule</span>.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>

<p>P. S. Bully for you, Ted. Your letter saying you
are going to chuck all the fancy stuff and stay home
this summer just came. You couldn't have pleased
us more, and I've cabled old Indian Joe to save us
two weeks in August. You and I are going to Newfoundland
after salmon. Will we have a good
time? I'll say so!</p>

<hr class="chap" style="page-break-after: always;" />

<div class="transnote">

<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</p>

<p>Numerous errors have been corrected and inconsistencies in
spelling have been resolved; otherwise the author's original
spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.</p>
</div>

<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48596 ***</div>
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