“Here and there in this worryful World of Business you will occasionally find some old moss-chest who still holds that Salesmanship means SELLING GOODS, and not Charts, Maps, Conferences and After Dinner Oratory. I now see, after a brief but total eclipse of Horse Sense due to too much reading and too little thinking, that I am one of those Old Timers myself.
“I don’t blame _you_,” he went on, unmindful of a pair of quaking pants before him, “for getting the Bilged Bean right at the crank-up, for you have never shinned the rough spots of Salesmanship yourself, and you haven’t got the imagination of a moving van.
“The fault is all mine,” he concluded, “but that’s a matter that doesn’t cut any cantaloupe now. So get back to the High Stool and ply your penmanship! I’ve decided to hire a Regular. Voetsak!”
CLARENCE and Bud lived in the same dotty dorp and went to the same little red-necked school.
Clarence was a studious piece of Rocquefort and scored 100 in everything.
Bud’s monthly report looked like the stock quotations in a demoralized market.
Whenever anything was pulled in the shape of Rough House, Bud was usually the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Clarence, on yon other hand, always conducted himself in an Exemplary Manner and wore leggins.
There was a big manufacturing plant in the town and when the boys finished school they naturally went to work there. Everybody did. The whole force was born and raised within sound of the whistle.
The Export Manager had never been clear across the County Line. That’s why he was the Export Manager.
Clarence was given an important clerkship in the office.
Bud likewise received Four Dollars a week.
Bud pinched enough postage stamps to make it Four Twenty Five.
Clarence built up a record for piety, punctuality, faithful fidoism and fussy attention to details that made every aspiring clerk in the place eat the carrot of envy every time they thought of him and his little kuppenheimer.
Bud was the only one who couldn’t see even a dim outline of Clarence’s sterling virtues.
His psychology was as different from Clarence’s “as day is from night,” to put it originally yet cleverly.
Bud was a wrecker of rules and a punisher of precedent.
He couldn’t see where certain non-essential things cut any large and influential ice in the great game of Business.