Take It from Dad

by George Griswold Livermore

I always thought you were a pretty good sport Ted, and I have always tried to teach you the game, and to play it square. I still think you're a good sport, and the only reason you are using those "trots" is because you haven't stopped to consider how unfair it is to J. Cæsar & Co.

I have a sneaking sort of liking for those old birds. J. Cæsar was the world's first heavyweight champion, and in his palmy days could have made Jack Dempsey step around some, and as for Virgil he could make words do tricks even better than I. W. W. meaning I. Woodrow Wilson. So it was a sort of shock to me to see you giving them a raw deal.

When you get right down to cases, son, your lessons are one of the few things that can't beat you if you study 'em, so it's pretty small punkins to try to rig the game against 'em. A shoemaker can buy his leather right, and figure his costs correctly on an order, but the buyer may get cold feet and refuse them, or the unions may call a strike, or one of about a hundred other things may happen to knock the profits higher than one of Babe Ruth's home runs.

With lessons it's different. Study them and they can't beat you. You wouldn't expect much glory if the Andover team you beat had been made up of one legged men. What about the handicap you're making the All-Romans play under when you tackle them with a couple of "trots" in your fists.

There's another reason I don't want you using "trots", and it's because it's liable to get you into the habit of doing things the easiest way. Now anyone is a boob if he doesn't do a thing the easiest way provided it's the right way; but he's more of a boob if he does a thing the easiest way only because it's the easiest way. And using English translations on your Latin is like paying number one prices for a block of poor damaged leather: it may be easier to get the leather, but when it's made into shoes and you begin to hunt for the profit you find it's gone A. W. O. L.

I don't remember ever having told you about Freddy Bean, but speaking of doing things the easiest way reminds me of him, so while I have the time I'll tell you.

Freddy's Pa ran a little store in Epping just across from the railroad station, where according to its sign he sold Books, Magazines, Newspapers & Stationery, and as he owned his own house and had a thrifty wife he managed to make a living although Epping was not a literary community. Pa Bean was an inoffensive little fellow who always wore a white tie with his everyday clothes, and loved to work out the piano rebuses in the newspapers in the evenings. He had advanced ideas on politics, was a single taxer, and to-day would be classed as a radical. Then we used to call him Half-Baked.

Freddy was a good average boy and likeable enough except for his one bad habit of wanting to do everything the easiest way, and believe me he carried it to extremes.

He used to sleep in his clothes because it was easier than dressing in the morning, but his Ma walloped that out of him. Then he had the bright idea of putting a sign with the price marked on it on most of the articles in his Pa's shop and going to the ball game, when the old gentleman went over to Bristol Centre Saturday afternoons on business. This worked all right at first for the Epping folks were honest, but one Saturday some strangers carried off about $100 worth of goods and Freddy got his from his father and got it good.