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Page 74
"D--n the vagabonds!" said he, in so clear a tone that I
positively started at the change, "D--n the vagabonds! they not
only knocked in the roof of my mouth, but took the trouble to cut off
at least seven-eighths of my tongue. There isn't Bonfanti's equal,
however, in America, for really good articles of this description. I
can recommend you to him with confidence," [here the General bowed,]
"and assure you that I have the greatest pleasure in so doing."
I acknowledged his kindness in my best manner, and took leave of
him at once, with a perfect understanding of the true state of
affairs - with a full comprehension of the mystery which had troubled
me so long. It was evident. It was a clear case. Brevet Brigadier
General John A. B. C. Smith was the man --- was _the man that was
used up_.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
THE BUSINESS MAN
Method is the soul of business. -- OLD SAYING.
I AM a business man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing,
after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise than your
eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it;
attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These
fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they
call an orderly manner. Now here, I conceive, is a positive paradox.
True method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and
cannot be applied to the outre. What definite idea can a body attach
to such expressions as "methodical Jack o' Dandy," or "a systematical
Will o' the Wisp"?
My notions upon this head might not have been so clear as they are,
but for a fortunate accident which happened to me when I was a very
little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget
in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more
noise than was necessary, and swinging me round two or knocked my
head into a cocked hat against the bedpost. This, I say, decided my
fate, and made my fortune. A bump arose at once on my sinciput, and
turned out to be as pretty an organ of order as one shall see on a
summer's day. Hence that positive appetite for system and regularity
which has made me the distinguished man of business that I am.
If there is any thing on earth I hate, it is a genius. Your geniuses
are all arrant asses -- the greater the genius the greater the ass --
and to this rule there is no exception whatever. Especially, you
cannot make a man of business out of a genius, any more than money
out of a Jew, or the best nutmegs out of pine-knots. The creatures
are always going off at a tangent into some fantastic employment, or
ridiculous speculation, entirely at variance with the "fitness of
things," and having no business whatever to be considered as a
business at all. Thus you may tell these characters immediately by
the nature of their occupations. If you ever perceive a man setting
up as a merchant or a manufacturer, or going into the cotton or
tobacco trade, or any of those eccentric pursuits; or getting to be a
drygoods dealer, or soap-boiler, or something of that kind; or
pretending to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith, or a physician -- any
thing out of the usual way -- you may set him down at once as a
genius, and then, according to the rule-of-three, he's an ass.
Now I am not in any respect a genius, but a regular business man. My
Day-book and Ledger will evince this in a minute. They are well kept,
though I say it myself; and, in my general habits of accuracy and
punctuality, I am not to be beat by a clock. Moreover, my occupations
have been always made to chime in with the ordinary habitudes of my
fellowmen. Not that I feel the least indebted, upon this score, to my
exceedingly weak-minded parents, who, beyond doubt, would have made
an arrant genius of me at last, if my guardian angel had not come, in
good time, to the rescue. In biography the truth is every thing, and
in autobiography it is especially so -- yet I scarcely hope to be
believed when I state, however solemnly, that my poor father put me,
when I was about fifteen years of age, into the counting-house of
what be termed "a respectable hardware and commission merchant doing
a capital bit of business!" A capital bit of fiddlestick! However,
the consequence of this folly was, that in two or three days, I had
to be sent home to my button-headed family in a high state of fever,
and with a most violent and dangerous pain in the sinciput, all
around about my organ of order. It was nearly a gone case with me
then -- just touch-and-go for six weeks -- the physicians giving me
up and all that sort of thing. But, although I suffered much, I was a
thankful boy in the main. I was saved from being a "respectable
hardware and commission merchant, doing a capital bit of business,"
and I felt grateful to the protuberance which had been the means of
my salvation, as well as to the kindhearted female who had originally
put these means within my reach.
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