“There really doesn’t seem to be any reason,” said Captain Winton, disappointed-like. “But I wish you would think it over.” Somehow it had got out that what Mr. Kinderhook was going to manufacture was a patent churn that got more butter out of cream than any other, and did it so easy that it wasn’t any work at all. It was a patent dingus that Mr. Kinderhook had the secret of, and folks was talking it about that he would make millions of dollars out of it. About a dozen times that week I heard one man or another sayin’ that he wished Kinderhook would let him stick in a little of his savings.
The rumor was around town that day that Kinderhook had bought a big piece of land along the railroad and was going to start in pretty soon to build a factory. Folks said there would be maybe three or four hundred people hired to work there, and everybody was getting excited. I heard one man say it would double the population of our town and make everybody’s property worth double what it had been, and that if every one there didn’t get rich out of it, why, it would be their own fault.
Catty told me that all sounded good to him. If lots of folks moved there, then there would be houses to build and paint and paper, and so Atkins & Phillips would make a lot more money. He was always thinking about Atkins & Phillips and making money and getting so respectable folks would be afraid to set down to the table with him. It seemed like he didn’t have anything else in his mind. Why, he even got to worrying about the way he talked and his father talked, and said it wasn’t the way respectable folks used words. He said they didn’t speak correct.
“Neither do I,” says I.
“But you’re goin’ to school to learn,” says he. “They teach you how to talk in school, don’t they?”
“Yes,” says I.
“Why?” says he.
“Because,” says I, “they have to have school from half past eight in the morning till half past three in the afternoon, and if they didn’t think up a lot of different things to teach, why, they wouldn’t know what to do with all their time.”
“Rats!” says he. “They teach you everything on purpose. They got a reason for it. You learn figgerin’ so’s to be able to count money and do business. That’s that. They teach you geography so’s you’ll know where to find places in the world if you want to git to ’em or sell things to ’em. They teach you writin’ and readin’ so’s you’ll be able to write letters about business and read letters and printed things about buyin’ and sellin’ goods. That’s why. All business. They run schools just so’s you can learn how to make a livin’—with the exception of teachin’ you how to talk. There hain’t but one reason for that. Bein’ able to talk right is a mark of bein’ respectable. There’s a certain way the best kind of folks talk, and if you kin talk that way, why, right off everybody believes you’re one of them.... And that’s good business, too. Bein’ respectable is useful in business, as Dad and me has found out. If we’d been respectable we wouldn’t ’a’ had all this trouble here.... So I’m goin’ to git after Dad to make him talk right.”
You see every word he said had something to do with business or being respectable. He had ’em on the brain. Table manners and clothes and talking right—nothing but the idea of being respectable, and so being able to do business the way it ought to be done, and the more business you done, why, the more respectable you was. That was Catty’s idea. Maybe he was right. I dunno.