TITE SUXDAT OREGOXIAX. PORTLAND, .TtTLT 23, 1916.
A. thin skin is as great a
handicap as a thick
head.
You can never find pure
metal or mettle until you
eliminate baseness.
13
r3
Wh.
Herbert Kaufman !
What Has Become of You?
- BY HERBERT KAUFMAN.
-
What ever did become of you? We've searched through the Bankers' Year Book, Moody's
Manual, the Congressional Directory, Dun and Bradstreet, the Medical Guide, and "Who's
Who," but your name isn't listed.
Perhaps, after all, you changed your mind and went in for a partnership. What's your
concern?
Maybe you're a distinguished "efficiency expert or a great engineer. Some of the powers
back of the throne aren't generally known, but you should at least inform your friends what
you've accomplished. Don't be so modest. -
Oh! no, we're NOT mistaken. You're the chap who could do anything if you really set your
mind to it. You didn't bother about the future. When you were ready you'd look about and
seize one of the opportunities which the average man is always overlooking.
Things came so easy for you, that we're certain of your success. The rest of us had to plug
and pole to make good but you were different.
Remember how you bluffed through the lectures and crammed up for examinations at the
last minute?
It's wonderful to have a ready brain. Rapid thinkers command their own terms these days.
YOU FAILED? nonsense! It doesn't seem possible. I low did it happen? You say that
the world doesn't appreciate true talent; that there's no chance for a man without a pull?
That's enough; the puzzle is solved; you've given the answer. It's clear now. You didn't
try. You never delivered. You placed too much reliance on your natural strength and
wouldn't train for the fight.
You cheated yourself of the chance to organize your abilities and the world won't let you
disorganize its systems.
Conceit flattered you and exaggerated the value of mere intelligence. You got into the
'habit of learning just enough to brass by and it stuck; now they've called you and you're not
there.
If you were a painstaking and persevering worker, you'd still have a chance.
But you're an unruly thoroughbred about the most useless animal on earth all speed and
no control; undependable in emergencies that demand a consistent brilliant performance,, and
too erratic for steady hauling jobs.
Your portrait is a moving picture you don't stand. " ' '
Patience isn't in your make-up. You found the opportunities you talked about you could
have done all that you predicted, if you had put will into a few wishes.
You sought the best in life without offering the best in yourself. Only the spectacular
phases of affairs appealed to you. You bit at this and that and digested nothing.
Look back! Your record is strewn with half-developed ideas, intrinsically sound proposi
tions, but all of them abandoned in mid-course when the novelty of the enterprise wore off.
You're undisciplined. You can't handle others because you won't handle yourself.
Go up to West Point and watch the cadets prepare for their future responsibilities. See them
undergo all the duties which they will later on direct.
Obedience is preparation for command. You wouldn't obey in your youth and so you must
be ordered about now. '
You'll spend the rest of your days filling odd jobs a drifter; too headstrong and opinion
ated to acknowledge your faults deluded with self-esteem criticising society for the recogni
tion of delinquencies to which you blind yourself watching commonplace persons gradually
mount in influence because they do appreciate the importance of thoroughness.
Life is hard for all who are too easy on themselves.
Shi
' Verses fJSrYn
The clever lie which just got
by
Will later turn and face you.
However fast you run, the
past
Will find your trail and trace
you.
The shrewdest cheat cannot
defeat
The forces of correction;
If you have not played fair,
beware
Of ultimate detection.
Whoever steals and double
deals
In time leams to his sorrow
That Justice, though she may
be slow
Today, makes good tomorrow.
"I
A Real True Fairy Tale
'LL show 'em," mumbled Fate.
"It's time to take another fall out of
H'mph! They'll, sit up and take
these scoffers. So I don't exist
notice when 1 pull off this stunt.
Whereupon, she put on her best bib and tucker, strolled into Broadway,
searched through the crowd, caught sight of a little knockabout
comedian a mere line on the program of a slap-stick farce and (con
trary to report, having a decided sense of humor) walked up to Charlie
Chaplin, tapped him on the shoulder and said, "You're IT."
Since when, we've all reconfessed belief in fairy tales.
From $35 a week to $680,000 a year! Talk about the "Once-upon-a-timers"
of Hans Christian Anderson and Horatio Alger!
But the real fun of it would be lost if there weren't a nice old lady in
a hew black silk, sitting on a new gold chair, in a big hew house somewhere
in London, at this very moment still shaking her head over the incredul
ity of life. WTio could tell her that fairy godmothers don't happen any
more or you?
You're a very important person, Charlie Chaplin seriously important
to the scheme ,of things that are. You're fresh oil in the lamp of Faith. You
did find the pot of diamonds under the rainbow. The streets of America
turned to gold as you walked on them.
You're another "Impossibility" that does exist.
Said the tick to the clock,
the whole works stop?"
'Did you ever notice that when I quit
The Laborer's Hire
THE man whose first thought is to make his dollar
mark in life seldom has any others. Money is a
secondary consideration in big careers. But be
cause deep thinkers can find no interest in projects of
limited scope and utility, the benefits they bring to
pass frequently result in enormous personal advantage.
No far-reaching idea ever sprang from a mere
desire for riches. The ambitions of avarice are too low
for fortune and distinction.
Pioneers, experimenters and inventors are more or
less idealists. A scheme without a dream behind it
hasn't much before it.
Imagination is not a cash register but it con
ceives them.
Huntington and Hearst visualized farms in the
wilderness, groves on the desert and cities upon the
prairies. They gave before they got.
Rockefeller's pipe lines reduced the cost of oil for
countless millions and so produced a flock for himself.
Edison saw a great light afar and followed it into
the very jungle to solve its secret.
Old Astor hurled his confidence four thousand
miles and set it to building trading posts along the
Oregon.
Anybody who has added to the world's efficiency is
welcome to a share of his findings and foundings.
Men who never take the pounds and pence out of
their eyes can't see the great profit in service.
Our Bigoted Palates
TOMORROW will eat what today rejects. As man
goes hungry he grows tolerant. Necessity is the
mother of curiosity, too. Every famine has put a
few dishes on the world's menu. The palate is a con
firmed bigot. It's hard to teach the appetite new tricks;
but if we mean to reduce the market bill we'd better
broaden its education.
There are just as good fish in the sea as in the
seines. The recent introduction of the tilefish to the
table is one case in point. Shark steaks are steadily
gaining favor. When the cost of .living takes a few
more jumps we'll quit grinding shiploads of menhaden
into fertilizer. We seldom experiment with new edibles
until we run out of staples. Tomatoes were once called
"love apples" and were considered rank poison. There
are millions who would as soon eat a copperhead as a
frog-leg, but it is quite within the range of probability
that our descendants will consider certain varieties of
snakes excedingly delicious. Don't shudder at the
thought. Some of our own pet foods are creatures
of very doubtful habits. Crabs are chronic scavengers
the preferences of chickens and swine require no elu
cidation here.
Let's be sensible, and look about a bit.
For instance, there isn't a cleaner, more exquisite
tidbit than a fat young muskrat. If you have ever
watched one washing the grass roots on which they ex
clusively subsist the suggestion wouldn't wrinkle your
nose. The meadows are lavish with unsuspected salads.
There are probably lots of other roots equal to carrots
and parsnips if we will but search them out.
Nature's larder is inexhaustible. We've still to
explore most of it. .
The Man-Eaters
SAGES used to wrangle over the number of angels
that could stand on the point of a needle. Now
they definitely prove how many devils can crowd
on the head of a pin.
Fifteen hundred microbes stretched in a line won't
reach across a razor edge, and there are yet smaller;
ones than these, only the eyes of existing microscopes
are too weak to see them.
Some especially fecund varieties propagate at the
rate of sixteen millions per day. Maybe there are
mathematicians who can compute the descendants of
this little brood at the end of a year.
Roughly speaking, sesquipentequadratrillions of
'em (and then some) are in the midst and middle of
everybody. It is impossible to estimate on which par
ticular section of your anatomy they're lunching at
this very instant.
So long as you retain vitality and renew tissue as
fast as they consume it, don't worry, but the moment
resistance lessens and the police forces of the blood fail
to arrest them fast enough, anything is liable to happen.
Most diseases that run us down actually eat us up.
Tuberculosis is literally consumption so are malarial
fever, typhoid and pernicious anaemia.
Anthropophagous germs have battled with man
for the control of the earth since the first dawn. All
the clumsy, floundering gawks that waded the primeval
oozes didn't kill as many humans as the pneumococcus
slays in a decade.
The mylodon, the megatherium and like beasts
were such huge tai-gets that a whole tribe could turn
loose on one of them and make every blow count where
itrwould do the most good.
St George didn't put any important dragons out
of business. It's far more likely that one of them
killed him.
The real demons are in pathology not mythology.
Copyright, 1816, by Herbert Kmtau. Great Britain at All Other Rights HeaerreC