The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

things, and by conforming to their customs he had brought his mind into harmony with theirs, so that it could receive suggestions, and—who knows?—return suggestions. And he was made to think, think, think.

As he walked home with Mr. Duncan under the stars he spoke of the subtle sense of well-being and ability which came with good clothes. "I don't mind confessing I have always had something like contempt for stylish dressing," he said. "Now I almost feel that there's something to it."

"There is some good quality in everything that survives," said Mr. Duncan. "Otherwise it would not survive. That doesn't mean, of course, that the good qualities outweigh the bad, but the good must be there. Take the use of liquor, for instance; perhaps the greatest source of misery we have. Yet it touches a quality in man's life: sociability, conviviality, if you like; but a quality that has virtue in it none the less. And the errors of sex are so often linked with love that one can scarcely say where virtue ceases and where vice begins. I know convention placards them plainly enough, but convention does not make virtue vice, nor vice virtue. There are deeper laws down beneath, and sometimes they may set at defiance all accepted codes.

"Yet I would not quarrel with the accepted codes—until I knew I had something better. Accepted codes represent man's net progress through experience to truth. The code, for instance, 'Thou shalt not kill;' we accept it in general, but not completely. The State does not hesitate to kill in self-defence, or even to carry out purposes which have no relation to defence. And shall we not allow similar exceptions to the other codes? And yet, although we may find our codes are not infallible, are they not still the best guides we have?

"To return to clothes. Clothes won't make you, but they will help you to make yourself. Only, don't become a clothes-tippler. You can run to intoxication on fine raiment as well as on fine wines. It has virtue in it, but just beyond the virtue lies the vice."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The summer was not far gone when Dave, through an introduction furnished by Mr. Duncan, got a new job. It was in the warehouse of a wholesale grocery, trundling cases and sacks of merchandise. It was cleaner than handling coal, and the surroundings were more congenial, and the wages were better—fifty dollars a month, to begin.

"The first thing is to get out of the dead-line," said Mr. Duncan. "I am not hoping that you will have found destiny in a wholesale warehouse, but you must get out of the dead-line. As long as you shovel coal, you will shovel coal. And you are not capable of anything better until you think you are."

"But I've liked it pretty well," said Dave. "As long as I was just working for my wages it was dull going, but it was different after I got to see that even shovelling coal was worth while. I suppose it is the same with groceries, or whatever one does. As soon as you begin to study what you handle the work loses its drudgery. It isn't a man's job that makes him sick of his job; it's what he thinks of his job."

A light of satisfaction was in his teacher's eyes as Dave made this answer. Mr. Duncan had realized that he was starting late with this pupil, and if there were any short-cuts to education he must find them. So he had set out deliberately to instil the idea that education is not a matter of schools and colleges, or courses of reading, or formulae of any kind, but a matter of the five senses applied to every experience of life. And he knew that nothing was coarse or common that passed through Dave's hands. Coal had ceased to be a smutty mineral, and had taken on talismanic qualities unguessed by the mere animal workman; and sugar, and coffee, and beans, and rice, and spices, each would open its own wonderful world before this young and fertile mind. As an heritage from his boyhood on the ranges Dave had astonishingly alert senses; his sight, his hearing, his sense of smell and of touch were vastly more acute than those of the average university graduate… And if that were true might it not fairly be said that Dave was already the better educated of the two, even if he, as yet, knew nothing of the classics?

As Dave parted from the Metford gang he felt that he knew what Mr. Duncan had meant by the dead-line. These were men who would always shovel coal, because they aspired to nothing better. There was no atom of snobbery in Dave's nature; he knew perfectly well that shovelling coal was quite as honourable and respectable a means of livelihood as managing a bank, but the man who was content to shovel coal was on the dead-line… And, by the same logic, the man who was content to manage a bank was on the dead-line. That was a new and somewhat startling aspect of life. He must discuss it with Mr. Duncan.

Dave's energy and enthusiasm in the warehouse soon brought him promotion from truck hand to shipping clerk, with an advance in wages to sixty-five dollars a month. He was prepared to remain in this position for some time, as he knew that promotion depends on many things besides ability. Mr. Duncan had warned him against the delusion that man is entirely master of his destiny. "Life, my boy," he had said, "is fifty per cent. environment and forty per cent. heredity. The other ten per cent. is yours. But that ten per cent. is like the steering gear in an automobile; it's only a small part of the mechanism, but it directs the course of the whole machine. Get a good grip on the part of your life you can control, and don't worry over the rest."

To economize both time and money Dave took his lunch with him and ate it in the warehouse. He had also become possessed of a pocket encyclopaedia and it was his habit to employ the minutes saved by eating lunch in the warehouse in reading from his encyclopaedia. It chanced one day that as he was reading in the noon hour Mr. Trapper, the head of the firm, came through the warehouse. Dave knew him but little; he thought of him as a stern, unapproachable man, and avoided him as much as possible. But this time Mr. Trapper was upon him before he was seen.

"What are you reading?" he demanded. "Yellow backed nonsense?"

"No, sir," said Dave, rising and extending his arm with the book.

"Why, what's this?" queried Mr. Trapper, in some surprise. "Tea—tea—oh, I see, it's an encyclopaedia. What is the idea, young man?"

"I always like to read up about the stuff we are handling," said Dave. "It's interesting to know all about it; where it comes from, how it is grown, what it is used for; the different qualities, and so forth."

"H'm," said Mr. Trapper, returning the book. "No doubt." And he walked on without further comment. But that afternoon he had something to say to his manager.

"That young fellow on the shipping desk—Elden, I think his name is. How do you find him?"

"Very satisfactory, sir. Punctual, dependable, and accurate."

"Watch him," said Mr. Trapper.

The manager swung around in his chair. "Why, what do you mean? You haven't occasion to suspect—?"

Mr. Trapper's customary sternness slowly relaxed, until there was the suggestion of a smile about the corners of his mouth, and rather more than a suggestion in the twinkle in his eye.

"Do you know what I caught that young fellow doing during noon hour?" he asked. "Reading up the encyclopaedia on tea. Tea, mind you. Said he made a practice of reading up on the stuff we are handling. We, mind you. Found it very interesting to know where it came from, and all about it. I've been in the grocery business for pretty close to forty years, and I've seen many an employee spend his noon hour in the pool rooms, or in some other little back room, or just smoking, but this is the first one I ever caught reading up the business in an encyclopaedia. Never read it that way myself. Well—you watch him. I'd risk a ten-spot that he knows more about tea this minute than half of our travellers."

But Dave was not to continue in the grocery trade, despite his reading of the encyclopaedia, A few evenings later he was engaged in reading in the public library; not an encyclopaedia, but Shakespeare. The encyclopaedia was for such time as he could save from business hours, but for his evening reading Mr. Duncan had directed him into the realm of fiction and poetry, and he was now feeling his way through Hamlet. From the loneliness of his boyhood he had developed the habit of talking aloud to himself, and in abstracted moments he read in an audible whisper which impressed the substance more deeply on his mind, but made him unpopular in the public reading rooms. It was well known among the patrons of the rooms that he read Hamlet. This fact, however, may not have been altogether to Dave's disadvantage. On the evening in question an elderly man engaged him in conversation.

"You are a Shakespearean student, I see?"

"Not exactly. I read a little in the evenings. But I haven't gone far enough to call myself a student."

"I have seen you here different times. Are you well acquainted with the town?"

"Pretty well," said Dave, scenting that there might be a purpose in the questioning.

"Working now?"

Dave told him where he was employed.

"I am the editor of The Call," said the elderly man. "We need another man on the street; a reporter, you know. We pay twenty-five dollars a week for such a position. If you are interested you might call at the office tomorrow."

Dave hurried with his problem to Mr. Duncan. "I think I'd like the work," he said, "but I am not sure whether I can do it. My writing is rather—wonderful."

Mr. Duncan turned the matter over in his mind. "Yes," he said at length, "but I notice you are beginning to use the typewriter. When you learn that God gave you ten fingers, not two, you may make a typist. And there is nothing more worth while than being able to express yourself in English. They'll teach you that on a newspaper. I think I'd take it.

"Not on account of the money," he continued, after a little. "You would probably soon be earning more in the wholesale business. Newspaper men are about the worst paid of all professions. But it's the best training in the world, not for itself, but as a step to something else. I have often wondered why editors, who are forever setting every other phase of the world's work to rights, are content to train up so many thousands of bright young men—and then pass them along into other businesses where they are better paid. But the training is worth while, and it's the training you want. Take it."

Dave explained his disadvantages to the editor of The Call. "I didn't want you to think," he said with great frankness, "that because I was reading Shakespeare I was a master of English. And I guess if I were to write up stuff in Hamlet's language I'd get canned for it."

"We'd probably have a deputation from the Moral Reform League," said the editor, with a dry smile. "Just the same, if you know Shakespeare you know English, and we'll soon break you into the newspaper style."

So, almost before he knew it, Dave was on the staff of The Call. His beat comprised the police court, fire department, hotels, and general pick-ups. And the very first day, as though to afford fuel for his genius, a small fire occurred in a clothing store.

"'S good for two