Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 194
The remedy once found, the next problem was to give it an appropriate name. Such a name ought to be at once scientific and scholarly, and yet short enough to be cheap to print, and calculated to convey a certain hint, but not too much, of its possible connection with the balsam tree. With characteristic ingenuity the Wizard himself, after deep thought, invented the name Balso, under which the great remedy has since become famous all the world over. Readers, by the way, are warned that anything that is called something else is a different thing, and should be avoided like the pest. Unscrupulous dealers — and we know what they are — may try to sell us preparations purporting to be equal in curative property. But the reader has only to understand what Balso does to realize that there can be only one thing like it.
A word as to the properties of Balso. Let it first be distinctly understood that Balso has no connection whatever with the remedies and the treatments of the medical colleges. It stands on a much higher authority. The original secret of Balso comes from the Dog Rib Indians. It was perhaps known also to the Flat Heads and the Snub-Nosed Piutes and other great aborigines. Possibly the Hottentots used it. At any rate Balso is a “simple,” and when we say that we reach our readers where they live.
The extraordinary advantage of Balso lies in the wide range of its use. In the first place, it undoubtedly heals all forms of bone disease when rubbed on the bones. For all internal complaints — especially those indicated by a sinking or depressed feeling, or a forlorn sensation, or by an inability to earn money — Balso effects an immediate cure. In these cases it is taken internally, by the pint. For diseases of the hair, such as complete baldness or lethargy of the scalp, a smart rubbing of Balso will work wonders; while for infantile complaints, such as croup, whoop, paresis, and so forth, the child should be rubbed with Balso and laid upon a shelf.
It is curious to think that if the Dog Rib Indians had all died, and if there had been no conservation of the great forests — but after all why think it? The essential thing is that some day the jealousy and envy of the colleges will give way and this great remedy will come into its own.
The Secrets of Longevity and Perpetual
Youth
Our readers — those of them who have arrived at this point of our discussion, and we are really not concerned with the others — will naturally interpose and say, “You have told us how the body may be sustained, renovated, and upholstered by means of systematic diet and exercise, and how it can be restored from vital or wasting disease, such as baldness, mange, and sinking of the stomach. What we wish to know is how long can life be thus sustained and prolonged.” If they do ask this our readers will receive a shock of surprise — in fact, we have been keeping this shock for them — when we say that there is no reason why they should not live as long as they care to. (This offer is restricted, of course, to readers of these pages; others must die as usual.) In other words, we must now know so much about longevity that we have practically arrived at the secret of living forever — or at any rate until death.
It may be of interest to show the way in which modern science has arrived at this conclusion. In the first place a great many actual cases of longevity have been examined and useful conclusions drawn from each. I will quote a few cases here — merely a few among thousands — such as help toward deductions in regard to the possibilities of old age. They are taken, as appears from the form in which they are written, from the columns of the daily papers, but each case has also been certified to either by a local minister of the Gospel or a notary public, or by a duly qualified hotelkeeper.
Case No. 1. (as reported in the Daily Annalist, Cedar Corners, Iowa.) “William Waterson celebrated his hundred and first birthday at his residence here at Cedar Corners. The old gentleman is still hale and hearty and celebrated the day by splitting two cords of wood. Mr. Waterson has been a water drinker all his life, having never tasted alcoholic spirits or tobacco.” The inference here is obvious. Mr. Waterson’s life has been preserved for the plain and evident reason that he drinks only water and never smokes. If he touches whiskey or cigarettes it will be all over with him.
We put beside this, however, a rather puzzling item which appears in the Weekly News and Intelligencer, Georgina Township, Ontario.
“Mr. Edward Easiest celebrated his one hundred and first birthday here at the home of his son surrounded by his grandchildren in the presence of a representative of the Weekly Intelligencer devoutly giving thanks to the Lord for his continued health and strength. Mr. Easiest has been a heavy smoker all his days and still relishes his glass of hot toddy compounded of rum, spices, and sugar.”
Good old man! Can we blame him? And in any case it is clear that he owes his life to rum and tobacco. Indeed, what looks simple at first begins to appear more complicated. Compare this:
“Jarrets’ Corners, N. Y. Cornelia Cleopatra Washington (colored) celebrated here her one hundred and tenth birthday yesterday. She remembers George Washington as a child.” Plain enough she lived so long because she was colored. There seems no other reason.
Llanfydd, Wales (From the Llanfydd Fyddist.)
“Mrs. Llewellyn Owen, a resident of this town, celebrated her one hundred and fifth birthday yesterday. Mrs. Owen, who has lived in Wales since her childhood, a hundred and ten years ago, still retains all her faculties and maintains a keen interest in English politics, especially in the doings of Lloyd George whom she remembers a hundred years ago as a pupil in her father’s school. Mrs. Owen talks interestingly of the great fire of London (which she remembers as a girl) and of the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers, many of whom she knew. She doubts whether the Cabinet of the Labor Party in England contains men of the same caliber as the greatest men in history.”
In this case without a doubt Mrs. Owen owes her life to her interest in English politics. Indeed one observes many cases of this sort.
From examples such as these we see at once that there are certain things which conduce to perpetual youth, such as drinking nothing else throughout life but water, or nothing but rum as the case may be. Total abstinence from tobacco undoubtedly prolongs life and so does excessive smoking. But modern science has recently recognized that in the main what we call old age is a condition brought on by an insufficiency of sour milk in the system. The discoveries of Dr. Menschnikoff have shown that sour milk is full of minute polyglots which, when let loose in the human body, effect a general restoration by removing all waste. It is now proven beyond doubt that anybody who takes a gallon of sour milk night and morning can live forever. The only question is — Is it worth it?
The Perfect Salesman
A Complete Guide to Business
I ADMIT AT the outset that I know nothing direct, personal or immediate about business. I have never been in it. If I were told tomorrow to go out and make $100,000 I should scarcely know how to do it. If anybody showed me a man on the street and told me to sell him a municipal six per cent bond I shouldn’t know how to begin: I wouldn’t know how to “approach” him, or how to hold his interest, or how to make him forget his troubles, or how to clinch him, or strike him to the earth at the final moment.
As to borrowing money, — which is one of the great essentials of business, — I simply couldn’t do it. As soon as I got across the steps of the bank I should get afraid, — scared that they would throw me out. I know, of course, from reading about it that this is mere silliness, that the bankers are there simply waiting to lend money, — just crazy to lend it. All you have to do is to invite the general manager out to lunch and tell him that you want half a million dollars to float a big proposition (you don’t tell him what it is, — you just say that you’ll let him know later) and the manager, so I gather, will be simply wild to lend you the money. All this I pick up from the conversations which I overhear at my club from men who float things. But I couldn’t do it myself: there’s an art in it: to borrow money, big money, you have to wear your clothes in a certain way, walk in a certain way, and have about you an air of solemnity and majesty, — something like the atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral. Small men like me and you, my dear reader, especially you, can’t do it. We feel mean about it: and when we get the money, even if it is only ten dollars, we give ourselves away at once by wanting to hustle away with it too fast. The really big man in this kind of thing can borrow half a million, button it up in his chest, and then draw on his gloves and talk easily about the League of Nations and the prospect of rain. I admit I couldn’t do it. If I ever got that half a million dollars, I’d beat it out of the bank as fast as a cat going over a fence.
So, as I say, I make no pretensions to being a business man or to knowing anything about business. But I have a huge admiration for it, especially for big business, for the men at the top. They say that the whole railway business of this continent centres really in four men; and they say, too, that the whole money power of New York is really held by about six men; the entire forests of this country are practically owned by three men; the whole of South America, though it doesn’t know it, is controlled by less than five men; and the Atlantic Ocean is now to all intents and purposes in the hands of a little international group of not more than seven and less than eight.
Think what it would mean to be one of those eight, or one of that four, or even, one or two of that three! There must be a tremendous fascination about it, to be in this kind of really Big Business: to sit at a desk and feel one’s great brain slowly revolving on its axis; to know that one’s capacious mind was majestically turning round and round, and to observe one’s ponderous intellect moving irresistibly up and down.
We cannot wonder, when we reflect on this, that all the world nowadays is drawn by the fascination of business. It is not the money that people want: I will acquit humanity of that: few people care for money for its own sake: it is the thought of what can be done with the money. “Oh, if I only had a million dollars!” I heard a woman say the other day on the platform of a social service meeting. And I could guess just what she meant, — that she would quit work and go to the South Sea Islands and play mah jong and smoke opium. I’ve had the same idea again and again.
Salesmanship and the Perfect Salesman
The most essential feature of modern business is, I imagine, salesmanship. My readers may not appreciate this at once, — they seldom seem to get anything readily, — and so I will explain some of the reasons which lead me to think so. Without salesmanship we could not sell anything. If we could not sell anything we might as well not make anything, because if we made things and couldn’t sell them it would be as bad as if we sold things and couldn’t make them.
Hence the most terrible danger that the world can face is that everybody will be buying things and nobody able to sell them. This danger of not selling anything, which used to threaten the world with disaster only a short time ago, is now being removed. Salesmanship, my readers will be glad to learn, — at least, if the miserable creatures ever get thrilled at anything, — is being reduced to a science. A great number of Manuals of Salesmanship are now being placed within reach of everybody and from these we can gather the essentials of the subject.
In the small space which it is here feasible to devote to the subject it is not possible to treat in an adequate way such a vast and important subject as modern salesmanship. For complete information recourse should be had to any one of the many manuals to which I refer and which can be had at a trifling sum, such as ten dollars, or even more. But we may indicate here a few of the principal points of salesmanship.
Personality of the Salesman
It is essential that the salesman should have charm. If he wishes to sell anything, — let us say lead pipe for use in sewers and house drains, — he will find that what he needs most in selling is personal charm, a sort of indefinable manner, with just that little touch of noblesse which suggests the easy camaraderie of the menagerie. In other words, he must diffuse wherever he goes, in selling sewer pipes, a sense of sunshine which makes the world seem a little brighter when he is gone.
In person the perfect salesman should be rather tall with a figure which suggests, to his customers, the outline of the Venus de Milo. According to the manuals of salesmanship he can get this figure by taking exercises every morning on the floor of his hotel bedroom. But the discussion of that point has been undertaken already. Let us suppose him then with the characteristic figure of a Venus de Milo, or if one will of a Paduan Mercury, or of a Bologna sausage. We come, in any case, to the all important points of dress.
How Shall the Perfect Salesman Dress?
Every manual on the subject emphasizes the large importance of dress for the salesman. Indeed there is probably nothing which has a greater bearing on success and failure in the salesman than his dress. The well dressed man, — in selling, let us say, municipal bonds, has an initial advantage over the man who comes into his customer’s store in tattered rags, with his toes protruding from his boots, unshaved and with a general air of want and misery stamped all over him. Customers are quick to notice these little things. But let the salesman turn up in an appropriate costume, bright and neat from head to foot and bringing with him something of the gladness of the early spring and the singing bird and the customer is immediately impressed in his favour.
One asks, what then should be the costume of the perfect salesman? It is not an easy question to answer. Obviously his costume must vary with the season and with the weather and with the time of day. One might suggest, however, that on rising in the morning the salesman should throw round him a light peignoir of yellow silk or a figured kimono slashed from the hips with pink insertions and brought round in a bold sweep to the small of the back. This should be worn during the morning toilet while putting the hair up in its combs, while adjusting the dickie and easing the suspenders. If breakfast is taken in the bedroom the liver and bacon may be eaten in this costume.
Breakfast over, the great moment approaches for the perfect salesman to get out upon the street. Here the daintiest care must be selected in choosing his dress. And here we may interpose at once a piece of plain and vigorous advice: — the simplest is the best. The salesman makes a great mistake who comes into his customer’s premises covered with jewellery, with earrings in his ears and expensive bracelets on his feet and ankles. Nor should there be in the salesman’s dress anything the least suggestive of immodesty. No salesman should ever appear with bare arms, or with his waistcoat cut so low as to suggest impropriety. Some salesmen, especially in the hardware business, are tempted to appear with bare arms, but they ought not to do it. For evening wear and for social recreation the case is different. When work is over the salesman in returning to his hotel may very properly throw on a georgette camisole open at the throat or a lace fichu with ear-flaps of perforated celluloid. But the salesman should remember that for the hours of business anything in the way of a luxurious or suggestive costume should be avoided. Unfortunately this is not always done. I have myself again and again noticed salesmen, especially in the hardware business where they take their coats off, to be wearing a suit calculated to reveal their figure round the hips and the lower part of the back in an immodest way.
All this kind of thing should be avoided. The salesman should select from his wardrobe (or from his straw valise) a suit of plain severe design, attractive and yet simple, good and yet bad, long and at the same time short, in other words, something that is expensive but cheap.
He should button this up in some simple way with just a plain clasp at the throat, agate perhaps or onyx, and then, having buttoned up all his buttons, but, mark me, not until then, he should go out upon the street prepared to do business.
Let any of my readers who doubts the importance of dress, — and some of them are nuts enough to doubt anything, — consider the following little anecdote of salesmanship. It is one that I selected from among the many little anecdotes of the sort which are always inserted in the manuals.
Anecdote of the Ill-Dressed Salesman
“A salesman in the middle west, whom we will call Mr. Blank, called upon a merchant, whom we will call Mr. Nut, and finding no difficulty in approaching him started in to show him his line with every hope of selling him. It should be explained that the line which Mr. Blank carried consisted of haberdashery, gents furnishings and cut-to-fit suits. Mr. Nut was evidently delighted with the samples and already a big pile of neckties, gents collarings, gents shirtings and gents sockings was stacked up on the counter and an order form for $375.50 all ready to sign, when Mr. Nut noticed the salesman’s own costume. Mr. Blank, who was a careless man in regard to dress though otherwise a man of intelligence, was wearing a low crowned Derby hat with a scooping brim over his ears, a celluloid collar and a dickie that was too small for him. His coat sleeves came only a little way below his elbows and plainly showed his cuffs, fastened with long steel clips to his undershirt. In other words, the man somehow lacked class. Mr. Nut put down his pen. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Blank,’ he said, ‘I can’t buy from you. Your line is all right but you lack something, I can’t just say what, but if I had to give it a name I should call it tone.’ Blank, however, who was a man of resource, at once realized his error. ‘One moment, Mr. Nut,’ he said, ‘don’t refuse this order too soon.’ With that he gathered up his valise and his samples and retreated to the back of the store behind a screen. In a few minutes he reappeared dressed in his own samples. The merchant, delighted in the change in Mr. Blank’s appearance, kissed him and signed the order.”
Approaching the Prospect
So much for the salesman’s dress, a matter of great importance but still only a preliminary to our discussion. Let us suppose then our salesman, fully dressed, his buttons all adjusted and drawing well, his suspenders regulated and his dickie set well in place. His next task is to “approach” his customer.
