“That is where you are wrong. ‘A fellow’ can do a great deal more. And when you went there I, for one, expected you were going to do a deuced sight more. You have been there now—let’s see—thirteen months. You are doing what you did when you went there—sawing up miscellany, boiling down news notes, grinding out a lot of departments which the office boy might do, if his own work weren’t more important. In a word you’ve just gone on to the threshold, and you’ve screwed yourself down to the floor there—and from all I hear you are likely to stay there all your life, while other fellows climb over your head to get into the real places.”
“From all you hear? What do you mean by that—who’s been telling you about me?”
“That you shan’t know, my boy. It is enough that I have heard. You haven’t fulfilled your promise. I thought you had the makings of a big man in you; I believed that all you needed was the chance, and you would rise. You were given the chance—put right in on the ground floor, and there you are, just where you were put. You haven’t risen worth a cent.”
“What do you expect a fellow to do? Get to be editor-in-chief in thirteen months? What could I do that I haven’t done? There have been no vacancies, so no one has climbed over my head. I’ve done the work I was set to do—and done it well, too. What more can you ask?”
Seth spoke in an aggrieved tone, for this attack seemed as unjust as it had been unexpected.
John replied, “Now keep cool, youngster! Nobody expected you to get to be editor-in-chief in thirteen months, so don’t talk nonsense. And I am not blaming you for not getting promotion, when there have been no vacancies. What I do mean, if you want to know, is that you have failed to make a good impression. You are not in the line of promotion. Workman doesn’t say to himself when he thinks of you ‘There’s a smart, steady, capable young man on whom we can count, who’s able to go as high as we are able to put him.’ No! instead of that he says—but no, never mind. I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, you are mighty considerate, all at once,” retorted Seth, angrily. “Go on! Say what you were going to say! What is it that Workman says, since you’ve been spying on me behind my back?”
“Now you are talking like a fool,” said the elder brother, keeping his temper. “I haven’t been spying on you. I have only been commenting on facts which have come to my knowledge without seeking and which were brought to me by one who has your interests at heart. I have only been talking to you as I ought to talk, with the sole idea of benefiting you, helping you. If you don’t want to hear me, why I can shut up.”
Seth did not reply for a minute or so; then he growled moodily: “Go ahead! Let’s hear it all.”
“The ‘all’ can be said in a few words. You have been wasting your time. I grant that you have done your work well enough to escape blame—but what credit is there in that? a million mechanics do that every day. Instead of improving yourself, elevating and polishing yourself, by good reading, by studying the art of writing, above all by choosing your associates among men who are your superiors, and from whom you can learn, you have settled down in a Dutch beer saloon, making associates out of the commonest people in town, and having for your particular chum that rattle-headed loafer Tom Watts. Do you suppose Mr. Workman doesn’t know this? Do you suppose he likes it, or that it encourages him to hope for your future?”