Take It from Dad

by George Griswold Livermore

A horse who rushes the field for the first quarter doesn't always finish in the lead. No one deserves much credit for starting out with a big splash. It's the fellow who's doing business at the finish who really counts.

You've been a little too successful so far this year in everything except your studies, and your success has settled in your head.

Now don't think I'm not glad you are popular with your schoolmates: I am, but I'd much rather you weren't quite so popular with yourself. I don't want to rub it in Ted, but I do want you to realize that it's a blamed sight easier to reduce a swelled head when it's young than after it begins to get bald.

I had my little experience when I was super. at Clough & Spinney's in Georgetown so I'll pass it along to you for what it's worth.

I'd started in as a boy in the shipping room, been promoted to shipping clerk, then I'd worked as a laster, going from that to the sole leather room. I'd married and been promoted to foreman, and having saved some money I'd bought a little house which was nearly paid for when I was made super.

I was about as happy a young fellow as you could find in all the New England shoe trade, for I'd been progressing steadily ever since I'd started work and it looked like a rosy future ahead.

As I look back now, I see that it was my help that made my success possible quite as much as my own efforts. Americans to the backbone, everyone of them! Steady going respectable men and women some of whom had been working in the shop when I was born, and who would have told any agitator to mind his own business, who might have undertaken to tell them they were working too hard.

Well, anyway, at the end of two years I had that little factory running as slick as a greased pig, and I was wearing a self-satisfied smile in consequence that I didn't even try to conceal, for old Hiram Spinney had taken to calling me William, and Ezra Clough used to invite your Ma and me to supper most every Sunday evening.

Then one day old Hiram landed a whopping big government contract, and it was up to me to make the shoes according to specifications and on time.

Well sir, there was a great bustle and hurrying around the little shop, extra hands were hired, new machinery installed, and then I started for Boston to buy the leather.