Literary Lapses | Page 7

them.
May I say in conclusion that I do not consider a five-cent pen-wiper
from the top branch of a Xmas tree any adequate compensation for the
kind of evening you propose.
I have the honour To subscribe myself, Your obedient servant.

How to Make a Million Dollars
I mix a good deal with the Millionaires. I like them. I like their faces. I
like the way they live. I like the things they eat. The more we mix
together the better I like the things we mix.
Especially I like the way they dress, their grey check trousers, their
white check waist-coats, their heavy gold chains, and the signet-rings
that they sign their cheques with. My! they look nice. Get six or seven
of them sitting together in the club and it's a treat to see them. And if
they get the least dust on them, men come and brush it off. Yes, and are
glad to. I'd like to take some of the dust off them myself.
Even more than what they eat I like their intellectual grasp. It is
wonderful. Just watch them read. They simply read all the time. Go
into the club at any hour and you'll see three or four of them at it. And
the things they can read! You'd think that a man who'd been driving
hard in the office from eleven o'clock until three, with only an hour and
a half for lunch, would be too fagged. Not a bit. These men can sit
down after office hours and read the Sketch and the Police Gazette and
the Pink Un, and understand the jokes just as well as I can.
What I love to do is to walk up and down among them and catch the
little scraps of conversation. The other day I heard one lean forward
and say, "Well, I offered him a million and a half and said I wouldn't
give a cent more, he could either take it or leave it--" I just longed to
break in and say, "What! what! a million and a half! Oh! say that again!
Offer it to me, to either take it or leave it. Do try me once: I know I can:

or here, make it a plain million and let's call it done."
Not that these men are careless over money. No, sir. Don't think it. Of
course they don't take much account of big money, a hundred thousand
dollars at a shot or anything of that sort. But little money. You've no
idea till you know them how anxious they get about a cent, or half a
cent, or less.
Why, two of them came into the club the other night just frantic with
delight: they said wheat had risen and they'd cleaned up four cents each
in less than half an hour. They bought a dinner for sixteen on the
strength of it. I don't understand it. I've often made twice as much as
that writing for the papers and never felt like boasting about it.
One night I heard one man say, "Well, let's call up New York and offer
them a quarter of a cent." Great heavens! Imagine paying the cost of
calling up New York, nearly five million people, late at night and
offering them a quarter of a cent! And yet--did New York get mad? No,
they took it. Of course it's high finance. I don't pretend to understand it.
I tried after that to call up Chicago and offer it a cent and a half, and to
call up Hamilton, Ontario, and offer it half a dollar, and the operator
only thought I was crazy.
All this shows, of course, that I've been studying how the millionaires
do it. I have. For years. I thought it might be helpful to young men just
beginning to work and anxious to stop.
You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy
he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he
might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they
knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they
wouldn't be? These are awful thoughts.
At any rate, I've been gathering hints on how it is they do it.
One thing I'm sure about. If a young man wants to make a million
dollars he's got to be mighty careful about his diet and his living. This
may seem hard. But success is only achieved with pains.

There is no use in a young man who hopes to make a million dollars
thinking he's entitled to get up at 7.30, eat force and poached eggs,
drink cold water at lunch, and go to bed