Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley
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Robert C. Benchley >> Love Conquers All
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There seems to be only one thing left for the customer to do in order
to meet this concerted attack upon his personality. That is, to hire
some expert like Mr. Ivey to study the different types of sales men and
women and formulate methods of meeting their offensive. Thus, if I am of
the type designated as the Vacillating or Indecisive Customer, I ought
to know what to do when confronted by a salesman of the Aristocratic,
Scornful type, so that I may not be bulldozed into buying something I do
not want.
If I could only find such a book of instructions I would go tomorrow and
order a black cotton engineer's shirt from that sandy-mustached salesman
and bawl him out if he raised his eyebrows. But not having the book, I
shall go in and, without a murmur, buy a $3 silk shirt for $18 and slink
out feeling that if I had been any kind of sport at all I would also
have bought that cork helmet in the showcase.
LIV
"YOU!"
In the window of the grocery store to which I used to be sent after a
pound of Mocha and Java mixed and a dozen of your best oranges, there
was a cardboard figure of a clerk in a white coat pointing his finger at
the passers-by. As I remember, he was accusing you of not taking home a
bottle of Moxie, and pretty guilty it made you feel too.
This man was, I believe, the pioneer in what has since become a great
literary movement. He founded the "You, Mr. Business-Man!" school of
direct appeal. It is strictly an advertising property and has long been
used to sell merchandise to people who never can resist the flattery of
being addressed personally. When used as an advertisement it is usually
accompanied by an illustration built along the lines of the pioneer
grocery-clerk, pointing a virile finger at you from the page of the
magazine, and putting the whole thing on a personal basis by
addressing you as "You, Mr. Rider-in-the-Open-Cars!" or "You, Mr.
Wearer-of-141/2-Shirts!" The appeal is instantaneous.
In straight reading-matter, bound in book form and sold as literature,
this Moxie talk becomes a volume of inspirational sermonizing, and
instead of selling cooling drinks or warming applications, it throws
dynamic paragraph after dynamic paragraph into the fight for efficiency,
concentration, self-confidence and personality on the part of our body
politic. A homely virtue such as was taught us at our mother's knee (or
across our mother's knees) at the age of four, in a dozen or so simple
words, is taken and blown up into a book in which it is stated very
impressively in a series of short, snappy sentences, all saying the same
thing.
Such a book is called, for instance "You," written by Irving R. Allen.
* * * * *
"You" takes 275 pages to divulge a secret of success. It would not be
fair to Mr. Allen to give it away here after he has spent so much time
concealing it. But it might be possible to give some idea of the
importance of Mr. Allen's discovery by stating one of my own, somewhat
in the manner in which he has stated his. I will give my little
contribution to the world's inspiration the title of
HEY, YOU!
You and I are alone.
No, don't try to get away. That door is locked. I won't hurt you--much.
What I want to do is make you see yourself. I want you, when you put
down this book, to say, "I know myself!" I want you to be able to look
at yourself in the mirror and say: "Why, certainly I remember you, Mr.
Addington Simms of Seattle, you old Rotary Club dog! How's your merger?"
And the only way that you can ever be able to do this is to read this
book through.
Then read it through again.
Then read it through again.
Then ring Dougherty's bell and ask for "Chester."
Now let's get down to business.
I knew a man once who had made a million dollars. If he hadn't been
arrested he would have made another million.
Do you see what I mean?
If not, go back and read that over a second time. It's worth it. I wrote
it for you to read. You, do you hear me? You!
If you want to know the secret of this man's success, of the success of
hundreds of other men just like him, if you want to make his success
your success, you must first learn the rule.
What is this rule? you may ask.
Go ahead and ask it.
Very well, since you ask.
It is a rule which has kept J.P. Morgan what he is. It is a rule which
gives John D. Rockefeller the right to be known as the Baptist man
alive. It is a rule which is responsible for the continued existence of
every successful man of today.
And now I am going to tell it to you.
You, the you that you know, the real you, are going to learn the secret.
Can you bear it?
Here it is:
You can't win if you breathe under water.
Read that again.
Read it backward.
It may sound simple to you now. You may say to yourself, "What do you
take me for, a baby boy?"
Well, you paid good money for this book, didn't you?
LV
THE CATALOGUE SCHOOL
Without wishing in the least to detract from the praise due to Sinclair
Lewis for the remarkable accuracy with which he reports details in his
"Main Street," it is interesting to speculate on how other books might
have read had their authors had Mr. Lewis's flair for minutiae and their
publishers enough paper to print the result.
For instance, Carol Kennicott, the heroine, whenever she is overtaken by
an emotional scene, is given to looking out at the nearest window to
hide her feelings, whereupon the author goes to great lengths to
describe just exactly what came within her range of vision. Nothing
escapes him, even to shreds of excelsior lying on the ground in back of
Howland & Gould's grocery store.
* * * * *
Let us suppose that Harriet Beecher Stowe had been endowed with Mr.
Lewis's gift for reporting and had indulged herself in it to the extent
of the following in "Uncle Tom's Cabin:"
"Slowly Simon Legree raised his whip-arm to strike the prostrate body
of the old negro. As he did so his eye wandered across the plantation to
the slaves' quarters which crouched blistering in the sun. Cowed as they
were, as only ramshackle buildings can be cowed, they presented their
gray boards, each eaten with four or five knot-holes, to the elements in
abject submission. The door of one hung loose by a rust-encased hinge,
of which only one screw remained on duty, and that by sheer willpower of
two or three threads. Legree could not quite make out how many threads
there were on the screw, but he guessed, and Simon Legree's guess was
nearly always right. On the ground at the threshold lay a banjo G
string, curled like a blond snake ready to strike at the reddish, brown
inner husk of a nut of some sort which was blowing about within reach.
There were also several crumbs of corn-pone, well-done, a shred of
tobacco which had fallen from the pipe of some negro slave before the
fire had consumed more than its very tip, an old shoe which had, Legree
noticed by the maker's name, been bought in Boston in its palmier days,
doubtless by a Yankee cousin of one of Uncle Tom's former owners, and an
indiscriminate pile of old second editions of a Richmond newspaper,
sweet-potato peelings and seeds of unripe watermelons.
"Swish! The blow descended on the crouching form of Uncle Tom."
* * * * *
Or Sir Walter Scott:
"Sadly Rowena turned from her lover's side and looked out over the
courtyard of the castle. Beneath her she saw the cobble-stones all
scratched and marred with gray bruises from the horses' hoofs, a faded
purple ribbon dropped from the mandolin of a minstrel, three slightly
imperfect wassails and a trencher with a nick on the rim, all that had
not been used of the wild boar at last night's feast, a peach-stone like
a wrinkled almond nestling in a sardine tin. Slowly she faced her
knight:
"'Prithee,' she said."
* * * * *
And I am not at all sure that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Ivanhoe" wouldn't
have made better reading if they had lapsed into the photographic at
times. Mr. Lewis may overdo it, but I expect to re-read "Main Street"
some day, and that is more encouragement than I can hold out to Mrs.
Stowe or Sir Walter Scott.
LVI
"EFFECTIVE HOUSE ORGANS"
To the hurrying commuter as he waits for his two cents change at the
news stand it looks as if all the periodicals in the United States were
on display there, none of which he ever has quite time enough to buy. It
seems incredible that there should be presses enough in the country to
print all the matter that he sees hanging from wires, piled on the
counter and dangling from clips over the edge, to say nothing of his
conceiving of there being other periodicals in circulation which he
never even hears about. But any one knowing the commuter well enough to
call him "dearie" might tell him in slightly worn vernacular that he
doesn't know the half of it.
One cannot get a true idea of the amount of sideline printing that is
done in this country without reading "Effective House Organs," written
by Robert E. Ramsay. The mass effect of this book is appalling. Page
after page of clear-cut illustrations show reproductions of hundreds and
hundreds of house-organ covers and give the reader a hopeless sensation
of going down for the third time. Such names as "Gas Logic,"
"Crane-ing," "Hidden's Hints," "The Y. and E. Idea," "Vim," "Tick Talk"
and "The Smileage" show that Yankee ingenuity has invaded the publishing
field, which means that the literature of business is on its way to
becoming the literature of the land.
For those who are so illiterate as not to be familiar with the
literature of business, I quote a definition of the word "house organ":
"A house magazine or bulletin to dealers, customers or employees,
designed to promote goodwill, increase sales, induce better salesmanship
or develop better profits."
* * * * *
In spite of Mr. Ramsay's exceedingly thorough treatment of his subject,
there is one type of house organ to which he devotes much too little
space. This is the so-called "employee or internal house organ" and is
designed to keep the help happy and contented with their lot and to spur
them on to extra effort in making it a banner year for the stockholders.
The possibilities of this sort of house organ in the solution of the
problem of industrial unrest are limitless.
Publications for light reading among employees are usually called by
such titles as "Diblee Doings," "Tinkham Topics," "The Mooney and
Carmiechal Machine Lather" or "Better Belting News."
First of all, they carry news notes of happenings among the employees,
so that a real spirit of cooperation and team-play may be fostered.
These news notes include such as the following:
"Eddie Lingard of the Screen Room force, was observed last Saturday
evening between the mystic hours of six-thirty with a certain party from
the Shipping Room, said party in a tan knit sweater, on their way to
Ollie's. Come, 'fess up, Eddie!"
"Everyone is wondering who the person is who put chocolate peppermints
in some of the girls' pockets while they were hanging in the Girls' Rest
Room Thursday afternoon, it being so hot that they melted and
practically ruined some of their clothing. Some folks have a funny sense
of humor."
* * * * *
Then there are excerpts from speeches made by the Rev. Charles Aubrey
Eaton and young Mr. Rockefeller or by the President and Treasurer of the
Diamond Motor Sales Corporation, saying, in part:
"The man who makes good in any line of work is the man who gives the
best there is in him. He doesn't watch the clock. He doesn't kick when
he fails to get that raise that he may have expected. He just digs into
the job harder and makes the dust fly. And when some one comes along
waving a red flag and tries to make him stop work and strike for more
money, he turns on the agitator and says: 'You get the h---- out of
here. I know my job better than you do. I know my boss better than you
do, and I know that he is going to give me the square deal just as soon
as he can see his way clear to do it. And in the mean time I am going to
WORK!'
"That is the kind of man who makes good."
* * * * *
And then there are efficiency contests, with the force divided into
teams trying to see which one can wrap the most containers or stamp the
largest number of covers in the week. The winning team gets a felt
banner and their names are printed in full in that week's issue of "Pep"
or "Nosey News."
And biographies of employees who have been with the company for more
than fifty years, with photographs, and a little notice written by the
Superintendent saying that this will show the company's appreciation of
Mr. Gomble's loyal and unswerving allegiance to his duty, implying that
any one else who does his duty for fifty years will also get his
picture in the paper and a notice by the Superintendent.
It will easily be seen how this sort of house organ can be made to
promote good feeling and esprit de corps among the help. If only more
concerns could be prevailed upon to bring this message of weekly or
monthly good cheer to their employees, who knows but what the whole
caldron of industrial unrest might not suddenly simmer down to mere
nothingness? It has been said that all that is necessary is for capital
and labor to understand each other. Certainly such a house organ helps
the employees to understand their employers.
Perhaps some one will start a house organ edited by the employees for
circulation among the bosses, containing newsy notes about the owners'
families, quotations from Karl Marx and the results of the
profit-sharing contest between the various mills of the district.
This would complete the circle of understanding.
LVII
ADVICE TO WRITERS
Two books have emerged from the hundreds that are being published on the
art of writing. One of them is "The Lure of the Pen," by Flora
Klickmann, and the other is "Learning to Write," a collection of
Stevenson's meditations on the subject, issued by Scribners. At first
glance one might say that the betting would be at least eight to one on
Stevenson. But for real, solid, sensible advice in the matter of writing
and selling stories in the modern market, Miss Klickmann romps in an
easy winner.
It must be admitted that John William Rogers Jr., who collected the
Stevenson material, warns the reader in his introduction that the book
is not intended to serve as "a macadamized, mile-posted road to the
secret of writing," but simply as a help to those who want to write and
who are interested to know how Stevenson did it. So we mustn't compare
it too closely with Miss Klickmann's book, which is quite frankly a
mile-posted road, with little sub-headings along the side of the page
such as we used to have in Fiske's Elementary American History. But
Miss Klickmann will save the editors of the country a great deal more
trouble than Stevenson's advice ever will. She is the editor of an
English magazine herself, and has suffered.
* * * * *
Where Miss Klickmann enumerates the pitfalls which the candidate must
avoid and points out qualities which every good piece of writing should
have, Stevenson writes a delightful essay on "The Profession of Letters"
or "A Gossip on Romance." These essays are very inspiring. They are too
inspiring. They make the reader feel that he can go out and write like
Stevenson. And then a lot of two-cent stamps are wasted and a lot more
editors are cross when they get home at night.
On the other hand, the result of Miss Klickmann's book is to make the
reader who feels a writing spell coming on stop and give pause. He finds
enumerated among the horrors of manuscript-reading several items which
he was on the point of injecting into his own manuscript with
considerable pride. He may decide that the old job in the shipping-room
isn't so bad after all, with its little envelope coming in regularly
every week. As a former member of the local manuscript-readers' union, I
will give one of three rousing cheers for any good work that Miss
Klickmann may do in this field. One writer kept very busy at work in the
shipping-room every day is a victory for literature. I used to have a
job in a shipping-room myself, so I know.
If, for instance, the subject under discussion were that of learning to
skate, Miss Klickmann might advise as follows:
1. Don't try to skate if your ankles are weak.
2. Get skates that fit you. A skate which can't be put on when you get
to the pond, or one which drags behind your foot by the strap, is worse
than no skate at all.
3. If you are sure that you are ready, get on your feet and skate.
On the same subject, Scribners might bring to light something that
Stevenson had written to a young friend about to take his first lesson
in skating, reading as follows:
"To know the secret of skating is, indeed, I have always thought, the
beginning of winter-long pleasance. It comes as sweet deliverance from
the tedium of indoor isolation and brings exhilaration, now with a swift
glide to the right, now with a deft swerve to the left, now with a deep
breath of healthy air, now with a long exhalation of ozone, which the
lungs, like greedy misers, have cast aside after draining it of its
treasure. But it is not health that we love nor exhilaration that we
seek, though we may think so; our design and our sufficient reward is to
verify our own existence, say what you will.
"And so, my dear young friend, I would say to you: Open up your heart;
sing as you skate; sing inharmoniously if you will, but sing! A man may
skate with all the skill in the world; he may glide forward with
incredible deftness and curve backward with divine grace, and yet if he
be not master of his emotions as well as of his feet, I would say--and
here Fate steps in--that he has failed."
* * * * *
There is, of course, plenty of good advice in the Stevenson book. But it
is much better as pure reading matter than as advice to the young idea
or even the middle-aged idea. It may have been all right for Stevenson
to "play the sedulous ape" and consciously imitate the style of Hazlitt,
Lamb, Montaigne and the rest, but if the rest of us were to try it there
would result a terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected
authors, all playing the sedulous ape and all looking the part.
On the whole, the Stevenson book makes good reading and Miss Klickmann
gives good advice.
LVIII
"THE EFFECTIVE SPEAKING VOICE"
Joseph A. Mosher begins his book on "The Effective Speaking Voice" by
saying:
"Among the many developments of the great war was a widespread activity
in public speaking."
Mr. Mosher, to adopt a technical term of elocution, has said a mouthful.
Whatever else the war did for us, it raised overnight an army of public
speakers among the civilian population, many of whom seem not yet to
have received their discharge. It is the aim of Mr. Mosher's book to
keep this Landwehr in fighting trim and aid in recruiting its ranks,
possibly against the next war. Until every nation on earth has subjected
its public speakers to a devastating operation on the larynx no true
disarmament can be said to have taken place.
* * * * *
In the first place there are exercises which must be performed by the
man who would have an effective speaking voice, exercises similar to
Walter Camp's Daily Dozen. You stand erect, with the chest held
moderately high. (Moderation in all things is the best rule to follow,
no matter what you are doing.) Place the thumbs just above the hips,
with the fingers forward over the waist to note the muscular action.
Then you inhale and exhale and make the sound of "ah" and the sound of
"ah-oo-oh," and, if you aren't self-conscious, you say "wah-we-wi-wa,"
slowly, ten or a dozen times.
"The student should stop at once if signs of dizziness appear," says the
book, but it does not say whether the symptoms are to be looked for in
the student himself or in the rest of the family.
* * * * *
The author does the public a rather bad turn when he suggests to student
speakers that, under stress, they might use what is known as the
"orotund." The orotund quality in public speaking is saved for passages
containing grandeur of thought, when the orator feels the need of a
larger, fuller, more resonant and sounding voice to be in keeping with
the sentiment. Its effect is somewhat that of a chant, and here is how
you do it:
The chest is raised and tensed, the cavities of the mouth and pharynx
are enlarged, more breath is directed into the nasal chambers and the
lips are opened more widely to give free passage to the increased volume
of voice.
The effectiveness of the orotund might be somewhat reduced if the
audience knew the conscious mechanical processes which went to make it
up. Or if, in the Congressional Record, instead of (laughter and
applause) the vocal technique of the orator could be indicated, how few
would be the wars into which impassioned Senators could plunge us! For
example, Mr. Thurston's plea for intervention in Cuba:
"The time for action has come. (Tensing the chest.) No greater reason
for it can exist tomorrow than exists today. (Enlarging the cavities of
the mouth.) Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful
story of misery and death. (Enlarging the cavities of the pharynx.) Only
one power can intervene--the United States of America. (Directing more
breath into the nasal chambers.) Ours is the one great nation of the New
World--the mother of republics. (Elevating the diaphragm.) We cannot
refuse to accept this responsibility which the God of the Universe has
placed upon us as the one great power of the New World. We must act!
(Raising the tongue and thrusting it forward so that the edges of the
blade are pressed against the upper grinders.) What shall our action be?
(Lifting the voice-box very high and the edges of the tongue blade
against the soft palate, leaving only a small central groove for the
passage of air.)"
* * * * *
The aspirate quality, or whisper, is very effective when well handled,
and the book gives a few exercises for practice's sake. Try whispering a
few of them, if you are sure that you are alone in the room. You will
sound very silly if you are overheard.
a. "I can't tell just how it happened; I think the beam fell on me."
b. "Keep back; wait till I see if the coast is clear."
c. "Ask the man next to you if he'll let me see his programme."
d. "Hark! What was that?"
e. "It's too steep--he'll never make it--oh, this is terrible!"
* * * * *
For the cheery evening's reading, if you happen to be feeling low in
your mind, let me recommend that section of "The Effective Speaking
Voice" which deals with "the Subdued Range." The selections for the
practice-reading include the following well-known nuggets in lighter
vein:
"The Wounded Soldier," "The Death of Molly Cass," "The Little Cripple's
Garden," "The Burial of Little Nell," "The Light of Other Days," "The
Baby is Dead," "King David Mourns for Absalom," and "The Days That Are
No More."
After all, a good laugh never does anyone any harm.
LIX
THOSE DANGEROUSLY DYNAMIC BRITISH GIRLS
It is difficult to get into Rose Macaulay's "Dangerous Ages" once you
discover that it is going to be about another one of those offensively
healthy English families. Ever since "Mr. Britling" we have been deluged
with accounts from overseas of whole droves of British brothers and
sisters, mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who all get
out at six in the morning and play hockey all over the place. Each has
some strange, intimate name like "Bim," or "Pleda," or "Goots," and you
can never tell which are the brothers and which the sisters until they
begin to have children along in the tenth or eleventh chapter.
In "Dangerous Ages" they swim. Dozens of them, all in the same family,
go splashing in at once and persist in calling out health slogans to one
another across the waves. There are _Neville_ and _Rodney_ and _Gerda_
and _Kay_, and one or two very old ladies whose relationship to the rest
of the clan is never very definitely established. Grandma, for some
reason or other, doesn't go in swimming that day, doubtless because she
had already been in before breakfast and her suit wasn't dry.
These dynamic British girls are always full of ruddy health and current
information. They go about kidding each other on the second reading of
the Home Rule bill or fooling in their girlish way about the chances of
the Labor candidate in the coming Duncastershire elections. It is
getting so that no novel of British life will be complete without
somewhere in its pages a scene like the following:
"A chance visitor at The Beetles some autumn morning along about five
o'clock might have been surprised to see a trail of dog-trotting figures
winding their way heatedly across the meadow. No one but a chance
visitor would be surprised, however, for it was well known to invited
guests that the entire Willetts family ran cross-country down to the
outskirts of London and back every morning before breakfast, a matter of
fourteen miles. In the lead was, of course, Dungeon in running costume,
followed closely by the flaxen-haired Mid and snub-nosed Boola, then
Arlix and Linny, striving valiantly for fourth place but not reckoning
on the fleet-footed Meeda, who was no longer content to hobble in the
vanguard with Grandpa Willetts and Grandpa's old mother, who still
insisted on cross-country running, although she had long since been put
on the retired list at the Club.
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