Chapter III: Preface (3)

during this six months, and thus acquired a style of simple expression which would be of value to him in his reports when he should travel. He read Plutarch's Lives. He studied French, and read "The Man Who Laughs" and "Paul and Virginia," two remarkably different works. You see he was a man of persistence. But such a mind finds the humiliation of a dollar and a quarter a week all the more bitter. A man conversing with Plutarch about the relative merits of Pompey and Lucullus, or of Marius and Sylla, dislikes to be

DOCKED THREE HOURS

for being ten minutes late, and dislikes to return to his landlady at the end of the week and give her five-sevenths of the whole spoil of Bythnia and the Propontis! One day the second assistant manager spoke to him, and this ray of hope lit his way to a seat on a high stool to write out "tickets" for merchants who send in to see about Blow & Co., of Bugleville. This gave him eight dollars a week, and enabled him to go to a theatre once in a while and hear

SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.

One night he approached his friend and announced that the die was cast, and that he should become an actor. Nothing could be worse than he was doing. Absolutely no business paid less than eight dollars per week, unless it were his own itself which had paid him seven dollars. It was a summer month. A theatre was empty. A dramatic agent had agreed to get up a company and run the place a week. It would require only twenty-five dollars from the young man. He would then be a sharer in the profits, would be given a minor part in the cast of characters, and would thereafter be secured

AN ENGAGEMENT WITH JOHN M'CULLOUGH

or John Raymond at about fifteen dollars a week. The dramatic agent was to have ten dollars from the first week's salary of the regular engagement. As he was working at absolutely bottom figures (board usually costing at least six dollars a week) and as he was skillful at his business, and could command work at all times if he were willing to work for his board, the young man thought he was not very rash in making an attempt, and yet it seemed to the friend of the young man like the memorable jump of the fish out of the frying-pan. The difficulty of going back to work after a failure was entirely overlooked. The young man paid his twenty-five dollars, absolutely the frugal hoard of six months of toil, got a leave of absence for three weeks, and studied all one week, meanwhile eating five dollars' worth of very poor board.

HE "ACTED" THROUGH THE WEEK

up to Thursday, when the company failed to pay in advance for the gas, and it was shut off. He spent the next two or three days preparing himself for a part in "The Gilded Age." On the second night the "heavy man," Raymond, became enraged at the manner in which this part was borne, and demanded that the character be given into the hands of another person. This was the finishing stroke. The young man stayed at "home" for three days, and on Friday night went to see his more fortunate associate. To his friend, who perhaps saw things in a prejudiced light, it seemed like a conspiracy to make good the dramatic agent's word of promise--to keep it to the ear and break it to the hope.

THE YOUNG MAN'S MONEY WAS GONE,

he was in debt for three weeks' board, and he had been ruthlessly and ignominiously branded with failure. He reverted to Brutus at Philippi, to Cato, and he was nearly on the verge of suicide. It may be that the cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat a poor landlady!

JEREMY COLLIER

has said that "true courage is the result of reasoning. Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism." The young man had the courage to go back. His friend was gratified. As the months passed the bitterness departed. Christmas Day the young man was sent to the Stock Yards to do a week's-reporting. That Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate. The young man's unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten. But notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of his expedition. His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch had not been sown on stony places, and that good English could be used in reporting the standing and prospects of a retail firm as well as in a memorial to Congress. When he got back

THE MANAGER OF THE HOUSE HIMSELF

spoke to him, and the second assistant assured him that one of the "outside men" would soon be put aside to give him a chance on the road. When a young man goes on the road his board is paid, so that it is that much of an advance of salary. Six long months, however, ran along at eight dollars a week, and the unsatisfactory man on the road proved more influential than the second assistant. When our young man saw this, he went to the manager, demanded nine dollars a week, and got it after a loud protest from that broad-hearted functionary. The next week--this was in the summer--he went on the road in place of a sick man, traveled through nearly all the towns in Illinois and Iowa, and made a fine record, both as to the character of his work, his speed, and his expenses. Upon his return a rival firm, hearing of his work, made him a proposition at a thousand dollars a year and expenses, with two months' holiday each year, and he signed a contract. His first year's tramp took him through nearly all the towns of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. He returned in August, with nine hundred dollars in cash credited to his account in the bank and demanded and received fifteen hundred dollars and expenses for going over the same route the next year, and to-day he stands with his head as high among his fellows as any young man in America. Now a retrospect of the young man's short career shows that

HE HAD GENUINE COURAGE.

He never failed when he had any chance to succeed. He never will. For such a man the world is not a world of chance. It is almost a certainty. The opportunities are more frequent than the men with courage.

DURING THE HARDEST WINTER

since 1842 the young man passed through experiences on the road, brought about by deep snows and blundering Postmasters that would sicken anybody's heart, experiences that without excellent brain-work would simply have stalled anybody, but his coolness, his use of the telegraph with unerring judgment in following the movements of his superior (who was traveling in like difficulties--it was like Kepler making a path for Mars while himself riding on the earth),--extricated him, and made his journeys little more costly, all told, than those of the preceding year. In the city all depends on courage. This young man espied a few weak places in the enemy's lines. He attacked with vigor. In the charge on the theatre he met the enemy in force and was thrown back with heavy loss, but in all the other onsets the enemy had no force to withstand him. One quality which the young man had in a large measure was the fear of failure. "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues, and bravely dares the danger Nature shrinks from." There is a quality much akin to moral courage, which, however, is not present very noticeably in the strongest natures, but which is

THE ANCHOR TO MANY LIVES.

I will present it in the following pages. But let me assure you that if you have the truest courage--the kind that this young man had--you will not need the quality which I will next take up. Hope rides in a palace-car, along the railroad, and over the tremendous bridges which Courage has constructed.

HOPE.

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers the way:
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.--Goldsmith.

Hope is the best part of our riches. For it alone reaches further than any other--off into the world which is to come. But I am speaking to you of the practical advantages of hope. Bacon says: "Hope is leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold." It has been most beautifully said by Hillard that the shadow of human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope. Shakspeare says the miserable have no other medicine. "Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored, since there is often a heavy balance against him." Now to make his account good in the First National Bank of Experience, what should Hope do? He plainly should begin the deposit of probabilities to draw against. Walter Scott says: "Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears," and I should think his drafts would be honored just so far as they were drawn with circumspection. "Folly ends" writes Cowper "where genuine hope begins." But where there is no hope there can be no endeavor, so whether it exist in superabundance or not let us cultivate it as one of the loveliest of the flowers of life, as absolutely the sweetest perfume that ever burns in the Golden Censer. Let me tell you how

HOPE ALONE SAVED THE LIFE

of one of the finest young men in the land. He was the son of a wealthy wine merchant who had failed in business near Bath-Easton, England. Like many other lads, he felt the sting of circumstances which promised to alter, and without good advice got ready to come to America. He was well trained in the wine trade, and supposed that employment would at once open to him. He brought over two guns, two revolvers, a field glass, a sword, much valuable jewelry, about twelve suits of clothes and not a very large amount of money--possibly three hundred dollars. After seeing Boston and New York, he "left for the plains," and

ARRIVED IN CHICAGO ON CHRISTMAS,

the year before the great conflagration. Here he was met by other English friends, and the New Year's calls customary in the city were made "in fine style," for he was an engaging young man. In just a casual way he inquired for work, but found his trade did not exist in the New World. He was thus in the worst business position conceivable. He had had no drill in anything that would do him any good. Upon spending the last of his money one night--I think it was for a game of billiards--he made up his mind that he would go out after work the next day. This he did. He tramped the snowy streets early in the morning. He waded in the slush at noon. He clambered over the frozen mud at night. But everywhere it was dull. The employers were keeping their men simply to have them when the busy season began. All would say:

"CALL IN NEXT MAY!"

His campaign in Chicago was methodic. He took a certain street each day. He canvassed one side in the forenoon. He returned in the afternoon, often carrying his lunch. He never lost hope. But oh! it was discouraging to those who saw it. Another young man came from St. Louis to the boarding-house and got a situation in a great dry-goods house, as entry clerk, for he was a skilled man. This was unfortunate for our friend, for the companionship of the St. Louis accession was a positive injury. He resembled the pictures of Byron and was of a viciously despondent turn of mind. He hated life and life's duties. Our friend fell into the toils. Together they bemoaned the hardness of the world, and presently,

LIKE THE COMMUNISTS IN AMERICA,

they overturned kingdoms and systems of society as they blew the foam from their beer. This folly led to a fight at the boarding-house which lowered our friend from an English gentleman to a fellow who was destitute and drunken, but it opened his eyes. St. Louis left for warmer climes, but our friend redoubled his energy, and finished the actual canvass of every decent-looking place of business and factory in Chicago! This is, as I believe, from actual evidences I had at the time, an actual fact.

A FINE-LOOKING HEALTHY YOUNG MAN

asked every probable employer in Chicago whose attention he could secure if there were any work, and the answer was "No, sir!" This took him till about the first of May. He had no influence. He had no friend who had influence, nor any chance to get one. His watch, rings, and scarf-pin gradually went to the landlady. His shot-gun, field-glass and clothes were carried to the pawnbrokers. For his musket he got a dollar, and

FOR HIS SWORD

half as much--upon a solemn promise to redeem it, as even the pawnbroker doubted the wisdom of such an investment at his own figures. That week the young man encountered a gentleman who, in England, had known him well. The disparity in their positions was great, as the gentleman was now able to give and recently had given his church ten thousand dollars, but that disparity had been greater in England, where it had been in favor of the young man. However, this did not prevent the gentleman offering the young man a job of gardening at a dollar a day, as that was a good bargain, and that did not prevent the young man eagerly accepting the offer. That week he earned his board. The next week he was adrift again, quite well used up from heavy work, but very active. His hope was the one striking point in his character.

HIS CHEERY VOICE

could always be heard. People liked to have him around, but they never seemed to pay him anything in return. Early in June he got a job sandpapering window-frames in a city cellar. This tried his mettle for it broke his hands to pieces, but he worked through the job at eight dollars a week. It ruined about twenty-five dollars' worth of clothes unavoidably. Coming out of the cellar the last day of the job, he looked into a store which was just opening. Did they want clerks? Oh, yes. "Lots" of them. How much did they pay? Five per cent. What were they to sell? "Milton gold jewelry." All right.

"MILTON GOLD JEWELRY"

was made a sensation. It was all in the name. Had they called it brass the people would have stood off. Make a chain that looks like gold, call it Milton or Shakspeare or Byron gold, and the people want it--or, at least they did, the year of the fire. The sales of our friend footed up more than those of any of thirty clerks, and netted him about a dollar and a quarter a day. But this charming industry could not last. The people had bought a chain which they supposed to be worth sixty dollars for a dollar and a half. In two weeks the chain would fade. It was a necessity of the business to keep moving. Our friend could have gone to some other city with the lover of Milton, if he had paid his own fare, but he was heartily disgusted with the business, the scheme being essentially American. He next was taken to Morris, Ill., by some kind of a gang-worker. The English system of working from farm to farm with a large force was to be tried. There he was treated a good deal worse than hogs should be used. Finding his way back to Chicago, he again began

HIS TRAMP FOR WORK.

He called on an advertiser who wanted him to travel at a figure so low that the question arose as to how he would pay his board, when the advertiser told him he supposed his applicant understood that he "would have to beat the hotels!" In September came the news of the death of his sister and mother. And still he tramped. He was now in what his casual acquaintances considered "a hard hole." His landlady was "carrying" him--that is, she was wanting his room worse than his company, but, being a kind-hearted Irish woman, she could not believe another week would pass without better success. No one with a trade--no one with the slightest influence--knows what difficulties are before a stranger in a strange land.

AS GOD WOULD HAVE IT,

on Saturday the seventh of October, 1871, he started out, again full of hope. About a mile and a half to the west of the city he entered a hotel at which he had often applied before. The proprietor had broken his leg the day before. He wanted "a likely young man," Here was one. The proprietor was himself an Englishman. Here was a youth whose rosy cheeks proclaimed the shores of Albion. On Sunday he made ready. That night and the following two days there came a calamity that horrified the civilized world--perhaps the barbarians as well. The employers who had refused him shelter and food ran like droves of wolves before a prairie-fire, and filled their famished bodies off a charity that has been likened to that of the Savior of the world, so freely was it given. His hotel was not burned. In the arduous labors of housing three where one had before been quartered he showed an ability which attracted the attention of a dealer in real estate who soon took him into his office. Here he learned a trade. His employer soon found that he had a man who could make a map worth fifty dollars as well as the map-makers, and this gave the young man practice. Hope, kindled into such a flame, led the young man in a march of improvement that even continued in his dreams, for he often dreamed out some combination of colors, some freak of lettering, that elicited everybody's admiration. All this improvement

DID NOT COME IN A WEEK OR A YEAR,

but it led to his permanent engagement in a substantial enterprise of the kind, where work, elegant and original, will always await him, and where his usefulness is ever apparent to the most unwilling investigator. From being the victim of the most cruel circumstances which a man in health ever encountered under my observation, he has become the valued companion of the leaders of thought, of art, and of music, and I feel confident that the whole of his ultimate success at one time in his career depended on the fact that he had more hope than any other man I ever saw.

HOPE IS LIKE THE CORK TO THE NET,

which keeps the soul from sinking in despair. Hope is the sun, which as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. Dr. Johnson has well and truly said that the flights of the human mind are not from enjoyment to enjoyment, but from hope to hope. It is a strange frailty of human nature that we part more willingly with what we really possess than with our expectations of what we wish for. The man who curbs this tendency is known as a man of wisdom. What a beautiful poem is

CAMPBELL'S "PLEASURES OF HOPE!"

How the changes ring upon the beauties of "Hope, the charmer," until, at last, we see her smiling at the general conflagration, we see her lighting her torch at nature's funeral pile! And yet what an ingenious device was that of the ancient, who, knowing the powerful allurements of Hope, put on the front of the magic shield "Be bold! Be bold!" and on the other side "Be not too bold!" There is a development of hope known as audacity. A touch of audacity is generally considered necessary to get along in the world. Be careful that your audacity is never called "cheek." When you have rights to retrieve, you cannot be too audacious; when you expect something for nothing, and demand instead of appealing, you are "cheeky." It does not pay in the long run. It is the sign and seal of a greedy nature.

WHEN POOR FRANCE

trembled in the nightmare of the Revolution, and the Kings of Europe had agreed to conquer and dismember her, there arose a dark-faced man in the tribune of the French Congress. He was a man of terrible personal power and magnetism. Hope must have cradled him in his babyhood. He hurled a defiance at Europe that fairly shook France to a delirium of patriotism, and as he was drawing to a close he thundered; "What needs France to vanquish her enemies, to terrify them? Naught but audacity!--still more audacity!--always! audacity!" Fourteen republican armies sprang forth full armed, as though Danton's words had been the fabulous dragon's teeth sown ages before in the bright fields of mythology.

FRANCE WAS RIGHT,

therefore God inspired her. Be sure, when your flights are bold, that you have the right. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just." Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures. Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the hags who prophesied to Macbeth.

BE CORRECT.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.--Pope.

I have here quoted one of the grandest flights of the human fancy, and with a purpose. If God, who is perfection, and in whose image we are faintly formed, watches the weakliest of his lambs, supports the weariest of his poor sparrows, should not we, in trying to be true men, endeavor to pay equal care to all things intrusted to our attention, be they great or be they small! And more than that. The little errors beget myriads of their kind. "Many mickles make a muckle." The habit sooner or later, leads some of us into an awful abyss, where it had been better we had not lived. Errors creep into character just as ideas get into our brain. Says Moore:

And how like forts, to which beleaguers win
Unhoped-for entrance through some friend within,
One clear idea, wakened in the breast
By memory's magic, lets in all the rest.

Says Franklin: "A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the driver was lost; being overtaken and slain by an enemy, all for the want of care about a horse-shoe nail." "In persons grafted with a serious trust," says Shakspeare "negligence is a serious crime." And so it is.

STORY OF SAG BRIDGE.

In September, 1873, a conductor on the Chicago and Alton Railroad started south with a freight train. He was to stop at a station a few miles from Joliet and wait for the incoming passenger train from St. Louis. He consulted his watch. That unhappy piece of mechanism told him that he had time to reach the next station. He spoke to the operator of the telegraph. That person could give him no information as to where the passenger train was, and he, determining not to wait, pulled out. As his train was still within hearing, the operator rushed to the platform with the news that the passenger train had left the nearest station! The operator knew that

TWO TRAINS WERE ABOUT TO COME IN COLLISION,

a knowledge that has sometimes deprived railroad men of their minds forever. Soon the awful shock reverberated afar, and from nine to fifteen persons were killed in a horrible manner. One of the most prominent men of Chicago was scalded so that the flesh left his skeleton. An unkind fate preserved the conductor to confront his ignominy. It was found that

HE HAD FORGOTTEN TO WIND UP HIS WATCH!

How could such a butchery have been brought about, save by a course of small errors which had eaten into his moral nature, leaving him a great ghoulish fiend of Carelessness, running his pitiless Juggernaut up and down the highway between two great cities! The hideous errors made by men are always indicative of those particular men. Some people never make errors at all! Why? Because they are careful. Simple, is it not--like Napoleon's tactics? Yet that constant care is so wonderful in its effects that human science cannot peer into the mystery of its action. Men laboring under total aberration of the mind have been known to carefully wind a clock at a given hour, and evince no other power to do a reasonable thing. Begin early in life to do all these little things with the greatest care.

IMITATE THE CELEBRATED DETECTIVES,

who actually pay little attention to things gross and palpable, but follow the more closely those minute clews which, interlacing and concentering, often as a whole, lead them, with the greatest certainty, to the dark hand that did the foul deed. Here is

A RIDICULOUS ERROR:

On Tuesday, the third of May, 1881, Scranton, Willard & Co., brokers, of New York City, sold to Decker & Co. stocks to the enormous sum of $127,000. For this property Decker & Co. wrote a check on a bank for $127,000, and a messenger was sent by the cashier of Scranton, Willard & Co., to have the check certified--that is, to have the bank officials write across the face of the check in red ink "Certified," meaning that the money was there and would thenceforth be dedicated to the redemption of that particular piece of paper. The boy returned with the check, the cashier put upon his own file a "tag" representing the amount of money, along with many other similar records, and the boy was sent with the check to the Bank of North America. The boy handed to the banker, with the check, a similar "tag" from the cashier, which was also filed. When you deposit money, at many banks, you fill out a "tag" or deposit-check, and offer it with the money, which "tag" is used by the banker as a safeguard against errors and lapses of all kinds. When Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier reckoned up his "tags" he found no record of a check for $127,000. He immediately accused the boy of purloining the check, and inquiry at the bank (met by the reply that no such check had been deposited, as shown by the depositor's own "tags") strengthened his suspicions.

ALL THE BANKS OF NEW YORK

were at once notified of the loss of the great check, and costly engagements were made to advertise the matter all over the country. The boy was not arrested, but his case was not neglected, you may be assured. Repeated cross-questioning failed to shake his simple statement, that he had done as he had been told to do.

THE ACCOUNTS OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA

were behind that afternoon, and the cashier stayed until late in the day to get them balanced. After he had finally secured the totals of the day's transactions, he found that he had received, according to the depositors' "tags," $114,300 less than he had paid out. In some perturbation he recalled the notice of Scranton, Willard & Co., and at once sent to them, to see if that affair had anything to do with his immense discrepancy. Following this line of inquiry, Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier found that, in attempting to put the figures "127,000" on the "tag" of deposit he had neglected to write the last cipher, and the "tag" for $12,700 which had been made in its place, added to $114,300 which the banker lacked in "tags," exactly made up the $127,000 which the bank had in reality credited to Scranton, Willard & Co.'s account. How could a man leave off

A CIPHER WHICH MEANT $114,300?

Simply by a course of instruction and development in error, until, probably nothing save the most colossal sums would command his unqualified attention. Let us suppose your mother or sister gives you a letter to mail. Do not put that letter in your pocket. Carry it in your hand until you reach the place to post it. Do this for years. After that drill, when you get a letter to mail, you will not need to keep it in your hand, for you will feel it in your hand just as long as it is in your pocket, as the one-armed man has sensations in both hands!

"WE NEVER MAKE MISTAKES!"

I spoke in the preceding chapter of the ancient shield with its "Be Bold! Be Bold!" Now, on our modern shield we would put "Be Correct! Be Correct!" and it would not be necessary to put on the reverse side "Be not too Correct!" You cannot afford to make errors! Last year a gentleman drew a sum of money from the First National Bank of New York City. As he was about to leave the building, he discovered an error. He returned to the paying teller. He said: "I think you have made a mistake in paying me." The cashier stood there, by chance. "No, sir," said he, "we never make mistakes!" "But," said the gentleman, "you gave me twenty dollars too much money!" "_No, sir!_" thundered the cashier, "we _never_ make mistakes!" Not for twenty dollars in cash would that banker admit that the establishment with which he was connected ever made a mistake. And you can be assured that

SUCH A SPARTAN SPIRIT WEEDS OUT

most of the ordinary blunders of business. Now if this great rich banker could not afford to indulge in mistakes, how much less can you, who have your whole fortune to make, be anything less than strictly accurate in all your operations? Study the spirit of that banker's answer. Imitate his horror of an error. He must have had good reasons for that feeling.

A HOMELY EXAMPLE.

A customer comes in from the country. He says: "I have brought a load of wheat to town to-day--about fifty bushel I should guess. I'll be in after noon and settle my account with you." Very good; you, the clerk, hurry to your books, to make out his account. When he comes in, he glances over it, and says: "Good gracious! you haven't given me credit for four dollars and seventy-five cents I paid you last May. I recollect it because I was in town to get a corn-planter when I paid it. And I've got your receipt, too." Sure enough, there is the receipt, which you have filled out yourself. And yet you failed to make an entry of the fact in his account. Shame covers you.

THE FARMER BEGINS TO HAVE SUSPICIONS.

Your employer begins to talk of the fall plowing as soon as he can, but the farmer goes over to your unscrupulous competitors in business, relates to them the fact that his scrupulous attention to details has saved him four dollars and seventy-five cents, and asks their opinion as to whether or not an attempt were not made to cheat him. His listeners talk about you in a mild-mannered way--

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.

Off goes your customer in his lumber-wagon, carrying that gross libel upon your place of business, to fill the prairies and the openings with its brood of gossiped offspring, until, some day, it comes back that your employer is a horsethief and has served a term in the penitentiary!

The errors which are often made in handling figures are just as annoying. It is a trifling error to call eight and four thirteen, but it often may disconcert an immense calculation. Like the pebble in the shoe, small in itself, it may do great injury. Some years ago there traveled through the country a genuine "lightning calculator." You could put down any number, big or little, while his back was turned, and he would turn again and mark the total with far greater rapidity than he could speak, and he thought out the total far quicker than he could mark it. Of course, he had a magic book to sell, but when you came to read his magic book and see how he did it, you found it was the same old way, only he was more expert than you. He could add four thousand two hundred and twenty eight and three thousand six hundred and fifty four as easily as you could forty two and thirty six, or perhaps four and three, so you see that the scheme of running up a single column of figures is at best a clumsy one.

YOU EXPOSE YOURSELF

to additional errors by enlarging the possible additions in a body of numbers. We are taught the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve. We never stumble up to that point. But it ought to continue up to one hundred times one hundred. We could then always add two figures to two figures easier then to parcel the operation out into two jobs. The "lightning calculator" had probably carried it up to five thousand times five thousand. Take an interest in "sums." Learn

THE FREAKS OF FIGURES.

For instance, to multiply any set of figures by 11--say 54--add the 5 and 4 together and put the 9 between the 5 and the 4. To multiply 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 by 11, do the same way, only carry your 10's. Thus 6 and 5 are 11, put down 1 before the 6; 5 and 4 are 9 and 1 to carry is 10; put down the before the 16, etc. Again to multiply, say 18 9's by 9, bring down a 1, then make 170's and a 9 out to the left. Again to square numbers, call even 10's the body; call the rest the surplus,--104--add surplus to body making it 108; now square the surplus (4) making 16 and put it after the 108, or 10,816. This is simply taking advantage of the 10s. Take 33 and you will see. Here 3 is the surplus; add the surplus, making 36; multiply 36 by 30, making 1,080; square the surplus, 3 times 3--9; add to 1,080--making 1,089. You see you get an even thirty to multiply by and load up the sum to be multiplied sufficiently to balance. Above 5 call it a deficit and go to your next 10 for your body.