Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-02-20

same newspaper over and over again
and all the advertisements through and
through, then sit for two or three
hours calculating the profits they ex
pect to make, then spending two or
three hours looking istlessly out of the
window, then spending thn4e or four
hours in the smoking car, the nastiest
place in Christendom, talking with
men who do not know as much as you
do Instead of that call William Shakes
peare, the dramatist and John Ruskin,
the essayist, and Tennyson, the poet,
and Bancroft and Macaulay, the his
torians, and Ezekiel and Paul, the in
spired men of God, and ask them to sit
with you and talk with you, as they
will if you ask them. I hear you say:
ST do wish I could get out Of this bust
ness of commercial travelling don't
like it My brother, why don't you
read yourself out? Give me young
man of ordinary intellect and good eye
sight and let him devote to valuable
reading the time not actually occupied
in commercial GRAND, and in six years
he will be qualified for any position for
which he is ambitious.
"Oh," you say, 81 have no taste for
readingr' Now, that is the trouble,
but it is no excuse. There was a time,
my brother, when you had no taste for
cigars; they made you very sick, but
you persevered until cigars have become
to you luxury. Now, if you can afford
to struggle on to get bad habit, is it
not worth while to struggle on to get
good habit like that of reading? am
amazed to find how many merchants
and commercial travellers preserve their
ignorance from year to year notwith
standing all their opportunities. 1t was
well illustrated by one who had been
largely successful and who wanted the
show of library at home, and he wrote
to a book merchant in London, saying,
''Send me six feet of theology and about
as much metaphysics and near yard
of civil law in old foliol' There is no
excuse for man lacking information
if he have the rare opportunities of a
commercial traveller. Improve your
mind. Remember the ''Learned Black
smith, who while blowing the bel
lows, set his book up against the brick
work and became acquainted with so
languages. Remember the scholarly
Clifford, who, while an apprentice,
wrought out the arithmetical problem
with his anvil on piece of leather. Re
member Abercrombie, who snatched
here and there fragmentary five min
utes from an exhausting profession and
wrote immortal treatises on ethics
Study Laws of Commerce.
Be ashamed to sell foreign fabrics or
fruits unless you know something about
the looms that wove them or the vine
yards that grew them. Understand all
about the laws that control commercial
life, about banking, about tariffs, about
markets, about navigation, about for
eign people-their characteristics and
their political revolutions as they affect
ours; about the harvests of Russia, the
vineyards of Italy, the teatields of
China. Learn about the great CONNER
cial centers of Carthage and Assyria
and Phpnicia. Read all about the Medici
of Florence, mighty in trade mightier
in philanthropies. You belong to the
royal family of merchants. Be worthy
of that royal family. Oh, take my adj
vice and turn the years OF WEAKNESS
into years of luxury. Take those hours
you spend at the depot waiting for the
delayed train and make them Pisgah
heights from which you can view the
promised land. When you are waiting
for the train hour after hour in the
depot do not spend your time reading
the sewing machine advertisements and
looking up the time tables of routes you
will never take, going the twentieth
time to the door to see whether the
train is coming, bothering the ticket
agent and telegraph operator with ques-
tions which you ask merely because you
want to pass away the time But rather
summon up the great essayists and
philosophers and story tellers and think
ers of the ages and have them entertain
you.
But you have come now near the end
of your railroad travel. I can tell by
the motion of the car that they are
pulling the patent brakes down. The
engineer rings the bell at the crossing.
The train stops. ''Al outl" cries the
conductor. You dismcunt from the
train. You reach the hotel. The land
lord is glad to see you-very glad. He
stretches out his hand across the regis
try book with all the disinterested
warmth of brother. You are assigned
an apartment. In that uninviting apart
ment you stay only long enough to
make yourself presentable You descend
then into the reading room, and there
you find the commercial travellers sit
ting around long table, with great
elevation in the center covered with adj
vertisements, while there are inkstands
sunken in the bed of the table and
scattered all around rusty steel pens
and patches of blotting paper. OF
course you will not stay there. You
saunter out among the merchants. You
present your letters of introduction and