Part 5

There I sat down to get my breath, hoping that girl wouldn't tell on me, and wishing I was back in Lynn, for I saw rough weather ahead unless I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.

I shaved, and started to climb into my regimentals. Your Ma had put in shirts, studs, collars, tie, vest, coat, silk socks, pants, and every last article of necessary trappings except pumps, and pumps were about as necessary to me then as a little leather is to a pair of shoes.

I had a horrible sort of feeling as though my stomach was slowly revolving around inside of me, and my legs felt as if they were trying to go two ways at once, for I had worn a pair of tan shoes over from Pittsfield, and I knew from the glimpse I'd caught of Mrs. Hamilton's friends, that if I didn't wear my dress suit I'd rank lower than the deuce in that game.

Just how to wear that dress suit I couldn't quite figure out. It had to be done, that was certain, but as raw as I was on society stuff, I knew tan shoes and full dress would not get by. Then I remembered the bell in the wall beside the bed. In two jumps I had a thumb on it squeezing for dear life, for I thought if one of the servants answered, I could get word out to my friend the head groom to lend me a pair of black shoes. What size didn't matter, I'd have made any size fit.

Then I heard someone running along the hall outside, and yanked open the door in the face of the same maid I'd asked about the gong.

I slammed the door shut and looked at my watch. It was seven o'clock, and I figured half an hour at the most, was all the time I had to get a pair of black shoes, and from the way I was located, a pair of black shoes seemed as easy to get as money from the government on a war contract.

Jack wasn't home, and anyway he wore shoes about three sizes smaller than mine, and as for his wife she was out of the question.

I'd about decided to go to bed and play sick, when I happened to glance out of the window and saw a girl about fifteen riding a horse around the circular drive in front of the house.

She was a real friendly-looking kid, and grinned up at me as she passed, so the next time she came around I leaned out and beckoned to her. She rode up under my window, and I told her the fix I was in.

"What size?" she asked without any hesitation.

"Anything from nine up," I replied.

"Gimme some money," she said.

I dropped her a ten spot. She caught it and was off, tearing down the drive like a jockey, and twenty minutes later she shoved a pair of pumps through my door she'd bought in Pittsfield, and I sailed down to dinner a trifle late, but as dignified as a London alderman.

Now Ted you've had considerable more experience with society than I've had, and probably you won't make any break at that house party, but if I were you after you get your suit case packed, I'd go through it a second time to see if anything's missing. Carefulness is a mighty handy habit to have around the house, whether it's a man's ability to look far enough ahead not to borrow on his insurance policy, or his wife's skill in keeping down the bills.

I've had clerks in the office who'd do a job in jig time and leave behind enough mistakes to make the Bolsheviki envious, and when it comes time to sweeten salaries they are always surprised and hurt, because they are passed by for the fellows who haven't such fancy windups, but do have better control.

Speed is a tremendous asset to-day, and when it's combined with control it's almost unbeatable. For example, Walter Johnson. Still, I've seen old Cicotte mow down the Red Sox with only two hits when he hadn't enough speed to break a window, and you'll find that a young fellow who can do a job in half a day, and get it right, is a better man to have on your pay roll than a chap who can do the same work in half an hour, and then spend a day correcting his mistakes.

Have a good time, and perhaps when you get back to school your eyes will feel better so you can make a creditable showing at your mid-years.

Your affectionate father,

WILLIAM SOULE.

P. S. The girl who bought me the pumps is Jack Hamilton's daughter. She's married and has three children so don't get excited.

LYNN, MASS., _February 28, 19--_

DEAR TED:

I did considerable wondering while you were home last week, why it was your clothes carried a reek that seemed a cross between a tannery vat and a grease extractor.

Your Ma says "stink" is vulgar. Maybe it is, but it's good plain English, and it describes that poison gas you seemed to be carrying around with you, better than any such ladylike word as smell.

I wasn't wise until you stopped at the corner on the way to the station and lighted one. I was looking out the window at the time, and it made me plumb disgusted to see you swagger off polluting the air with a cigarette.

Now I never believed in raising a boy on "Don't." When you say "Don't" do a thing, the average person at once wants to do the very thing you tell him not to do, although before you had forbidden it, you probably could not have hired him to do it. "Don'ts" were what got the Germans in bad.

When I was in Berlin in '99 attending the International Shoe Manufacturers' Congress, there were "Verboten" signs on pretty nearly everything. "Verboten" is German for "Keep off the Grass," or something like that, anyway it means "Don't," and every time I saw one of those blamed signs, I immediately wanted to do what was forbidden.

One evening Al Lippincott and I strayed away from the bunch, and wandered into a sort of open air garden. There was a theatre, with a vaudeville show that the Watch and Ward Society at home would have closed up the first night. But the music was fine, so we picked out a table and ordered a light lunch of pickled pigs feet and sauerkraut, and were attending strictly to business when the manager, followed by two German army officers, walked up, and informed us we'd have to give up our seats. Seems they had some fool rule about civilians having to clear out if army officers wanted their table.

Now Al has always had dyspepsia, and the pickled pigs feet and sauerkraut had not done his stomach any good, and I had been "verbotened" almost to death ever since I had been in Berlin so we told them to run away and play, and turned our backs.

The next instant someone grabbed Al by the coat collar and gave him a shake.

"Do you not understand pig dog it is verboten?" a voice said.

Al wrenched free, and saw it was the younger of the two officers who had given him the shaking. He was a pasty faced, pimperly, fair-haired young man, with a monocle in one eye, and a waist that looked like it was made that way by corsets, and he had a 45 calibre sword dangling by his side that was bigger than any the Crusaders ever carried.

If he hadn't said "verboten," Al might have given him a good bawling out and let it go at that, but "verboten" to us by that time was like waving a red flag in front of a he cow, so Al gave him a good shove. The officer tripped over his sword and sat down ker-splash in a plate of hot soup an old lady was eating at the next table.

Waiters came running from all directions, but Al and I grabbed up a couple of chairs and they danced around in a circle not daring to close, while the soup spiller and his friend sputtered with rage.

"I am disgraced," yelled the one Al capsized.

"I want to fight. I would kill you, but you are not titled. I'm disgraced."

"You're a disgrace, all right," Al interrupted, "but if you want a fight, I guess we can help you out. I'm the Earl of Dover," he continued kicking a waiter in the shin who had come too near for safety, "and my friend here is the Duke of Lynn, so if you know some nice quiet place where we can settle this without gloves, lead on, we're with you."

At the mention of our titles the officers quieted down, and whispered together, then the older one bowed stiffly to me and said, "My friend accepts your friend's challenge. Follow us if you please."

They stalked out. Al and I followed. We turned into a side street, and finally came into a quiet square with a watering trough in the centre.

"We will not be interrupted here," said the older officer.

"Fine," Al replied, peeling off his coat, while the soup spiller did the same.

"Here is a sword," said the older officer handing Al his.

"What's that for?" Al asked.

"To fight with," the officer replied.

"I fight with my fists," Al shouted.

"Fighting with the fists is verboten," the officer replied.

"Get out of my way" Al yelled, and, shoving him aside, he grabbed the younger, sat down on the edge of the watering trough, spread him across his lap, and gave him with his own sword a good spanking, while the older one danced around yelling like a wild man.

Ted, you never heard such a yowling and hollering as those two set up. It would have raised the dead, and it did raise about twenty police, who grabbed us just as Al was ducking the younger one in the watering trough for the second time.

Well sir, they carted Al and me off to jail, and dumped us into a cell, where there was a straw mattress on the floor. Al had hay fever, and, believe me, we spent a pretty miserable night.

In the morning, we learned the young officer Al spanked was Prince Pigestecher, a fourteenth cousin of an aunt of the Kaiser's. We were in bad. It took the American Embassy three weeks working night shifts to get us out of jail, and then we greased our way with a five hundred dollar fine each, and that's why I made nurses' shoes at cost for the British Government when the war started.

I only mentioned this experience of Al's, to show the danger of too many "Don'ts," and it's one reason why I am not going to say, "Don't smoke cigarettes." I want you to think it over carefully, and see if in your own mind you think a boy not yet eighteen is doing a fine, manly thing to go around with a scent on his breath like Moon Island at low tide. Is he setting a good example to the younger boys, who look up to him because he's a 'varsity end, and one of the big men of the school?

Ask your trainer if cigarettes will improve your wind. I have read a lot of truck written by men with a string of letters after their names, who try to prove that cigarettes do not hurt a man, but I never yet have read anything that proved to my satisfaction that they did anyone any real good.

Remember Ted that no matter how seriously you take yourself, you are not a man. I want you to grow up a clean, manly, two-fisted shoemaker, not a chicken-breasted, weasel-eyed manufacturer of cigarette ashes. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and a few others who were not bush leaguers managed to do pretty well without smoking cigarettes, and they are good examples for a young American to imitate. Think it over, my boy.

Your affectionate father,

WILLIAM SOULE.

LYNN, MASS., _March 12, 19--_

DEAR TED:

The most welcome letter I found waiting for me on my return from St. Louis was the report of your mid-years. Ted, you did real well considering all the handicaps you were working under, and I'm more than pleased to see that the old Soule fighting spirit has been passed along to you.

We Soules have always prided ourselves on being able to do our best work when things looked blackest. That back to the wall, "Don't give up the ship," determination has pulled us through some mighty rough places, whether hauling trawls on the Grand Banks, or fighting our way up from the ranks in business.

You are just beginning to realize you have the same amount of grit engrained in your hide, and it's a mighty comforting thought to wear under your shirt, for the man who won't be licked seldom is, and the quality of never knowing when you are beaten has made more impossible things possible, than any other one thing in the world.

I remember how when my father died and left me my mother, two young sisters, and a big mortgage to support. I was mad clear through. Not at the idea of having to support my folks, I was glad enough to do that, for no boy ever had better; but because I couldn't finish my schooling. I determined I'd work like blazes to cheat Fate for the nasty wallop it had handed me, and work like blazes I did. After all I think it was good for me. A boy who has to make his own way usually does, if he has the right stuff in him, and that's why I don't intend you shall step from school into a private office here in the factory.

It's so much more gratifying when the time comes to look back, to know that what you have, you alone have made possible, and not to have to give the credit to some one else. And that's why, when you go to work, I'm going to see to it that you learn shoemaking from tanning to selling, so that when your time comes to look back you can say to yourself, "My father left me a ten thousand pair factory, but I've boosted it to twenty-five."

There was one thing though in your recent letter I don't quite get, and that's the necessity for your spending so much of your time in Portsmouth. Now I know Portsmouth is a nice New England town, filled with quaint old colonial houses, and enough historical incidents to make a three volume series, but I never knew you to be wildly interested in such things, and since I got that bill of $24.25 from the Rockingham for dinners, I'm suspecting you don't go there to study history.

One evening last fall, on the way home from Ogunquit, the car broke down in Portsmouth, and while it was being repaired, I took in one of the movies. The show was quite good and I enjoyed it, until I came out when it was over, and found a crowd of Exeter boys hanging around the entrance speaking to any good looking young girl who was alone.

Then there was a general pairing off, and strolling up and down the main streets, looking in the shop windows, and much loud talking, giggling, and laughter, while the young townies stood on the corners making cheap remarks. Some of your schoolmates took their lady friends into the little lunch rooms with which Portsmouth is so plentifully supplied, and bought them suppers of ham and eggs, and ice cream, while a few with more money went to the Rockingham.

I moseyed around the town quite a bit watching these schoolmates of yours, and was thoroughly disgusted. Not that I saw anything really wrong. I didn't. Every one of the boys had taken the cars for Exeter by eleven, but there was such a general kissing and dumbfoolishness I'd like to have spanked the lot.

Perhaps it's heaps of satisfaction to a young fellow, one of the big men of the school, to hike for Portsmouth with a few dollars of his dad's burning holes in his pocket, cut the prettiest shop or factory girl out of a crowd, and carry her off for supper, spending his week's allowance in one evening, but I can't see it.

Now don't think I'm down on factory girls. I'm not. I've employed heaps of them, and with mighty few exceptions they've been respectable hard-working girls, who could hold their head up anywhere, and although as a rule they would scratch a fellow's eyes out who tried to get fresh with them, they don't mind paying for what they consider a good time with a few kisses.

Now I'm not a snob, and if I ever see any signs of your becoming one, I'll whale it out of you in jig time, for I hate a too-proud-to-speak individual, as much as I hate a crooked leather salesman. But I'd rather you spent your evenings in Exeter, on the piazza of those Eaton girls to whom you introduced me, than parading the streets of Portsmouth with a factory girl hanging on your arm.

I remember my first lesson in chivalry, and before the super. comes in to tell me there's an embargo on freight out of Lynn, I'll pass it along.

I was in the grammar school, and about ten years old. One day at recess, a little girl named Sally Perkins had a bag of peppermint candy and was treating the other girls, when Butcher Burch, a great hulking boy of twelve, snatched the bag out of Sal's hand and began to gobble it as fast as he could.

I was furious, for little Sally was a nice pleasant girl who never stuck her tongue out at me, and I should like to have whaled the Butcher, but he had soundly thrashed me on several occasions, and I knew he would repeat if I made any protest.

I stood hesitating. Sally was crying her head off, and the Butcher was cramming the candy into his ugly mouth as fast as he could, when along came my father.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

I told him, suggesting he make the Butcher return the candy.

"That's your job," he replied.

"But he can lick me," I stammered, remembering former disastrous battles I had fought with the bully.

"That makes no difference," replied my father. "It's just as well for you to learn now, that whenever you see a girl or a woman insulted, it's the business of every decent man or boy to come to her rescue. I give you your choice of fighting that boy now, or taking a licking from me when you come home."

I took a good look at my father and saw he meant every word he said, and then because I hated the Butcher for what he had done to Sally, I lowered my head and sailed in, fists flying like a windmill.

Luckily, one of my first blows hit the Butcher full on the mouth and he let out a howl--and candy. He must have had half a pound in his mouth when I hit him. Knowing that my only chance was to bewilder him with my attack, I let fly everything I knew, and for a couple of minutes I had the best of it. Then his weight and strength began to tell, and he hammered me about as he pleased, finally landing a swing on my jaw that knocked me off my feet.

When I came to, I found my head resting on my father's knee, while Sally was mopping away at my bloody nose with her little, and not too clean, handkerchief, clutching in her other hand the remnants of her bag of candy. Young as I was I'll never forget the look of pride on my father's face, when later he handed me over to my mother for repairs, saying, "Patch him up, Mother, he's been fighting to protect a girl."

Ted, my boy, I want you to grow up with a reverent respect for all women, for the worst woman who ever lived, you may be sure, had some good qualities, and the best of them are far too good for any man. Besides you owe it to your Ma, for no sweeter, better woman than she ever breathed, and although there may be no real harm in the girls you meet in Portsmouth, the sort who let a fellow pick them up on the street and kiss them good night, are not the kind who are going to increase your respect for women, so my advice to you is, cut it out.

Your affectionate father,

WILLIAM SOULE.

LYNN, MASS., _March 20, 19--_

DEAR TED:

You didn't have to write me that those boys you brought home with you on last Sunday were wonders. They told me so themselves.

Seriously Ted, they didn't make much of a hit with me. I don't mind a young fellow holding up his head. It's a sign of spirit the same as it is in a horse. No man who wears his chin on his vest gets far in life, and no one but a tin horn who's trying to throw a bluff he can ride, wants a horse that hangs its head between its knees; but neither have I much use for the young chap who's nose is forever pointing skyward as though he were marching along the edge of a tanning vat on a hot summer day.

Spirit's all right now that we have prohibition, but superiority of manner isn't. If you really are a man's superior he knows it, and if you aren't and try to act as if you are, he's liable to laugh at you; and by superior I mean superior in brains or ability to accomplish worth while things.

Now one of your friends thought he'd impress me by saying that he was descended from the Earl of Hampton, and he didn't like it a bit when I told him I wouldn't hold that up against him, and that for all I knew the Earl might have been perfectly respectable. He also said his ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and wanted to know if any of my family had crossed on the same ship, and I'll bet he thought I was impossible when I told him it was more likely to have been the Cauliflower, for the Soules were always fond of New England boiled dinners.

The other was money superior. From what he said, I learned that his dad had made a mint out of raincoat contracts during the war, and has ever since been setting up autos for the family like the lumber jacks used to set up drinks for the crowd in Pat Healey's saloon on pay night.

Money's a mighty useful article to have around these days, and it's nothing against a man if he has plenty of it, nor is it to his discredit if he hasn't--and ancestors don't do a fellow any harm if he keeps remembering they're dead and can't help him earn a living.

Money will buy many things worth having, but not the things most worth while. For a poor man with a reputation for keeping his word is a better citizen any day than a millionaire who's a liar, and I'd much rather have a young man on my pay roll, whose family came over in the steerage and hasn't a grudge against work, than a fellow who can trace his ancestry back to the peerage and is trying to get by on dead men's reputations.

Now don't think I'm down on millionaires. I'm not; some of the biggest men in this country are also the richest. But when you and I took that trip to Washington, the men whose statues we saw in the Hall of Fame, were not honored by their states for the money they had made, but for what they had done, and I didn't notice any inscription reading, "John Jenkins Stuart, Great-grandson of the Second Assistant Royal Bartender."

It's usually a poor plan to criticise a person's friends, but I'm going to do that very thing in regard to yours, for I've had considerable more experience than you, and I know how dangerous the wrong kind of friends are. The right kind of friends never did anyone any harm, and the wrong kind never did anyone any good, and take it from me, son, the two boys you brought home over the week end are not the right kind.

Unless I'm much mistaken, one will try to get by on his ancestors' reputation, and the other on his father's money, and neither will be classed among the three hundred hitters when the great Umpire calls them out.

You don't have to be ashamed of your ancestors, or my money, and it did me a world of good to overhear you say to young Raincoats that I might not have made a million out of the war, but there wasn't a leather company in the country which wouldn't sell me any amount of stock I cared to order. That's the sort of a reputation I've always tried to deserve. It's the aim of every decent American business man, but just the same it's fine to feel my only kid's as proud of it as I am.

Now I've met several of your schoolmates I'd sooner tie up to than the boys you exhibited. That roommate of yours for instance. He's pretty green yet, and his taste in neckties is awful, although it's improving, but I'll bet that ten years from now you'll be more proud of what he's accomplished, than he will of what you've done, unless you scratch considerable dirt in the meantime. That other boy, the dark-haired one from Virginia, he'll get on too; he's worth while, cultivate him.

When I was a little older than you, I once made a mistake in a friend that had mighty serious results, and I don't want you running the same risks.

It was when I was working in the Epping National Bank, that a pretty slick fellow by the name of J. Peters Wellford blew into town, hired two rooms at the Mansion House, and the best rig Sol Higgins had in his livery stable, and settled down to live the life of a gentleman of leisure.

Now every man in Epping worked, except George Banes the town half wit, and Jim Spencer the town drunk, and a person who labored neither with his hands nor brains was considered not quite respectable.