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The American Magazine
What I Have Made Myself Learn About You
Being An Account of How One Business Man Made the
Little Things Count. Do You?
My business (rubber goods) was in a bad way. Somehow I couldn’t seem to make it return enough to pay my income tax with. My wife and I were frankly upset.
At last one morning she came to me and said: “Fred, the baby will soon be seven months old and will have to have some sort of vocational training. What are we to do?”
That night was the bluest night I have ever spent. I thought that the end had come. Then, suddenly, the thought struck me: “Why not try character-selling?”
This may sound foolish to you. That is because it is foolish. But it did the trick.
I began to sell my personality. Every man that came into my store I took aside and showed him different moods. First, I would tell him a funny story, to prove to him that I was more than a mere business automaton. Then I would relate a pathetic incident I had seen on the street a week or two ago. This disclosed my heart. Then I did a fragment of a bare-foot dance and sketched a caricature of Lloyd George, to let him see that I was a man of the world. After this, I was ready to sell him what he came in for, and he would go away carrying a very definite impression of my personal characteristics—and some of my goods, in a bundle.
A week of selling rubber-goods in this manner, and I was on the vaudeville stage, earning $250 a week. How much do you earn?
Interesting People
A Man Who Made Good With Newts
Some day, if you ever happen to be in Little Falls, turn to your right and you will see a prosperous-looking establishment run by Ira S. Whip, known throughout Little Falls as the newt king. Starting in with practically nothing but two congenial newts, Mr. Whip has, in the past ten years, raised no less than 4,000 of these little lizard-like animals, all of which had to be thrown away, as there is practically no market for pet newts except for incidental rôles in gold-fish tanks. But Mr. Whip did what he set out to do, and that counts for a lot in this life. Can you say as much?
The Man Who Made Good
The story of a man who made good
Lorrie Wetmore sat disconsolately in the fountain in Madison Square Park. He was lonely. He was a failure.... Yes, he was. Don’t contradict me. He was a terrible failure. And, as I said before, early in this story, he was lonely.
“I have fallen down on the job,” he murmured to Admiral Farragut’s statue. “I have not made good.”
Suddenly a kind hand rested on his shoulder. He turned to face the pansy-trainer, who keeps the flower-beds in the Park in touch with the seasons.
“Don’t give in, my boy,” said the old man. “Remember the words of Henley, who instituted the famous Henley Regatta and so made a name for himself: ‘I am the master of my Fate. I am the Captain of my Soul.’”
“By George,” murmured Lorrie to the statue of Salmon P. Chase, “I can make good, and I will make good!”
And, with these words, he climbed out of the fountain and made his way resolutely across the square to the great store of Marshall Field and Co. (Advt.)
In seven weeks he was a member of the firm.
Are You Between the Ages of 7 and 94?
If so, what this eminent growth specialist says here applies
directly to you and to your family
Every man, woman and child between the ages of 7 and 94 is going through a process of growth or metamorphosis, whether they know it or not. Are you making the most of this opportunity which is coming to you (if your age falls within the magic circle given above) every day of your life? Do you realize that, during this crucial period, you have it in your power to make what you will of yourself, provided only that you know how to go about it and make no false steps?
As you grow from day to day, either mentally, morally, or physically, you can say to yourself, on awakening in the morning:
“To-day I will develop. I will grow bigger, either mentally, morally or physically. Maybe, if it is a nice, warm day, I will grow in all three ways at once.”
And, sure enough, when evening finds you returning home from the work of the day, it will also find you in some way changed from the person you were in the morning, either through the shedding of the dry epidermis from the backs of your hands (which, according to one of Nature’s most wonderful processes, is replaced by new epidermis as soon as the old is gone), or through the addition of a fraction of an inch to your height or girth, or through some other of the inscrutable alchemies of Nature.
Think this over as you go to work, to-day, and see if it doesn’t tell you something about your problem.
How I Put Myself on the Map
It was seven o’clock at night when I first struck New York. I had come from a Middle Western town to make my fortune as a writer, and I was already discouraged. I knew no one in the Big City, and had been counting on my membership in the National Geographic Society to find me friends among my fellow-members in town. But I soon discovered that the fraternity spirit in the East was much less cordial than in my home district, and I realized, too late, that I was all alone.
With a few coins that my father had slipped into my hand as I left home, I engaged a tiny suite at the St. Regis and there set about my writing.
The first 10,000 manuscripts which I sent out, I now have. (I am at present working them over into a serial for the Saturday Evening Post weekly, from which I expect to make $25,000). But that is beside the point. For the purposes of the present narrative, I was a failure. The manager of the hotel was pressing me for my rent, which was already several hours overdue. I had not tipped the chamber-maid since breakfast. I sat looking out at my window, staring at the squalid wall of the Hotel Ritz. I had met New York face to face—and I had lost.
No, not lost! There was still one chance left I sat down and, with feverish haste, wrote out a glowing account of my failure. I spared no detail of my degradation, even to taking fruit from the hotel table to my room.
Then I began to fabricate. I told how I had overcome all these handicaps and had made a success of myself. I lied. I said that I was now drawing down $200,000 a year, but that I had never forgotten my old friends. It was a good yarn, but it took me a long while to make it up. And when, at last, it was ready, I sent it to the American Magazine.
This is it!
How Insane Are You?
Following is a test used in all State Hospitals to determine the fitness of the inmates for occasional shore leave. Try it on yourself and see where you get off.
TEST NO. 1
If you really are the reincarnation of Learning, write something here... but if you are being hounded by a lot of relatives whom you dislike, ring and walk in. Then, granting all this, how does it come about that you, a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, wear no collar?... Ha, ha, we caught you there! But otherwise, write any letter beginning with w in this space. Yes, there is the space,—what’s the matter with you? Go back and look again.... You win. Now, in spite of what the neighbors say, give three reasons for not giving three reasons why this proves that you are sane, or, as the case may be.