“You’ve got a good memory for sta-stistics. I haven’t; and yet I always did like sta-stistics. I’m no sta-stitian, and yet if I had the time sta-stistics would be my favorite study; I s’pose it’s yours.”
The wearer of the pearl shook his head. “No. But I like it. I like the style of mind that likes it.” The two bowed with playful graciousness to each other. “Yes, I do. And I’ve studied it, some little. I can tell you the best time of every celebrated trotter in this country; the quickest trip a steamer ever made between Queenstown and New York, New York and Queenstown, New Orleans and New York; the greatest speed ever made on a railroad or by a yacht, pedestrian, carrier-pigeon, or defaulting cashier; the rate of postage to every foreign country; the excess of women over men in every State of the Union so afflicted—or blessed, according to how you look at it; the number of volumes in each of the world’s ten largest libraries; the salary of every officer of the United-States Government; the average duration of life in a man, elephant, lion, horse, anaconda, tortoise, camel, rabbit, ass, etcetera-etcetera; the age of every crowned head in Europe; each State’s legal and commercial rate of interest; and how long it takes a healthy boy to digest apples, baked beans, cabbage, dates, eggs, fish, green corn, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, quinces, rice, shrimps, tripe, veal, yams, and any thing you can cook commencing with z. It’s a fascinating study. But it’s not my favorite.
‘The proper study of mankind is man.
* * * * *
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!’
“I love to study human nature. That’s my favorite study! The art of reading the inner human nature by the outer aspect is of immeasurable interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practise it skilfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune, and why? Because to know it thoroughly is to know whom to trust and how far; to select wisely a friend, a confidant, a partner in any enterprise; to shun the untrustworthy, to anticipate and turn to our personal advantage the merits, faults, and deficiencies of all, and to evolve from their character such practical results as we may choose for our own ends; but a thorough knowledge is attained only by incessant observation and long practice; like music, it demands a special talent possessed by different individuals in variable quantity or not at all. You, gentlemen, all are, what I am not, commercial tourists. Before you I must be modest. You, each of you, have been chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for your superior ability, natural or acquired, to scan the human face and form and know whereof you see. I look you in the eye—you look me in the eye—for the eye, though it does not tell all, tells much—it is the key of character—it has been called the mirror of the soul—
‘And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.’
And so looking you read me. You say to yourself, ‘There’s a man with no concealments, yet who speaks not till he’s spoken to; knows when to stop, and stops.’ You note my pale eyebrows, my slightly prominent and pointed chin, somewhat over-sized mouth; small, well-spread ears, faintly aquiline nose; fine, thin, blonde hair, a depression in the skull where the bump of self-conceit ought to be, and you say, ‘A man that knows his talents without being vain of them; who not only minds his own business, but loves it, and who in that business, be it buggy-whips or be it washine, or be it something far nobler,’—which, let me say modestly, it is,—‘simply goes to the head of the class and stays there.’ Yes, sirs, if I say that reading the human countenance is one of my accomplishments, I am diffidently mindful that in this company, I, myself, am read, perused; no other probably so well read—I mean so exhaustively perused. For there is one thing about me, gentlemen, if you’ll allow me to say it, I’m short metre, large print, and open to the public seven days in the week. And yet you probably all make one mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some university. Not so. I’m a self-made man. I made myself; and considering that I’m the first man I ever made, I think—pardon the seeming egotism—I think I’ve done well. A few years ago there dwelt in humble obscurity among the granite hills of New England, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow upon his father’s farm, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. But one day a voice within him said, ‘Tarbox’—George W.,—namesake of the man who never told a lie,—‘do you want to succeed in life? Then leave the production of tobacco and cider to unambitious age, and find that business wherein you can always give a man ten times as much for his dollar as his dollar is worth.’ The meaning was plain, and from that time forth young Tarbox aspired to become a book-agent. ’Twas not long ere he, like
‘Young Harry Bluff, left his friends and his home,
And his dear native land, o’er the wide world to roam.’
Books became his line, and full soon he was the head of the line. And why? Was it because in the first short twelve months of his career he sold, delivered, and got the money for, 5107 copies of ‘Mend-me-at-Home’? No. Was it, then, because three years later he sold in one year, with no other assistance than a man to drive the horse and wagon, hold the blackboard, and hand out the books, 10,003 copies of ‘Rapid ’Rithmetic’? It was not. Was it, then, because in 1878, reading aright the public mind, he said to his publishers, whose confidence in him was unbounded, ‘It ain’t “Mend-me-at-Home” the people want most, nor “Rapid ’Rithmetic,” nor “Heal Thyself,” nor “I meet the Emergency,” nor the “Bouquet of Poetry and Song.” What they want is all these in one.’—‘Abridged?’ said the publishers. ‘Enlarged!’ said young Tarbox,—‘enlarged and copiously illustrated, complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars, sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value to the subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, “The Album of Universal Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; editor, G. W. T.; agent for the United States, the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox,” that is to say, myself.’ That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand at the head of my line; not merely because on every copy sold I make an author’s as well as a solicitor’s margin; but because, being the author, I know whereof I sell. A man that’s got my book has got a college education; and when a man taps me,—for, gentlemen, I never spout until I’m tapped,—and information bursts from me like water from a street hydrant, and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is in that wonderful book, and that every thing that is in that wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own a copy; and when I tell him I can’t spare my sample copy, but I’ll take his subscription, he smiles gratefully”—
A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the hall, betrayed the opening of the front door. The door was shut again, and a well-formed, muscular young man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway lifting his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, and looking at it with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox turned about once more with his back to the fire, gave the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a second and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. The big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, and said:
“He smiles gratefully, you say?”