A young lawyer will gain more useful knowledge of men and affairs by selling real estate or fire-insurance than by law-school.
I have just read a letter from an office man fifty-seven years old. He has lodged at $1,600 a year for twenty years, while two of the salesmen who entered the business about the time he did own the concern.
Get out and sell goods. Hustle. Fight. Don’t get fastened in one hole. Take chances. Come up smiling. So the best and biggest prizes in America are open to you.
Selling things, commercialism, business, is not a low affair; it is a great, big, bully game. It is a thoroughly American game, and the most sterling qualities of Americanism are developed by it, when it is carried on fairly and humanely.
There is incitement in it for all your best self, for your honesty, perseverance, optimism, courage, loyalty, and religion. Nowhere does a MAN mean so much.
I mean to cast no slurs upon faithful occupants of posts of routine. They have their reward.
But, son, don’t look for a “safe” place. Don’t depend upon an organization to hold your job for you. Don’t scheme and wire-pull for influence and help and privilege.
Get out and peddle maps. Make people buy your chickens or your essays. Get in the game. It beats football.
THE INWARD SONG
The poet speaks of those