Ladies and Gentlemen

by Irvin S. Cobb

This writer has always contended that the ability to make a great individual fortune is not necessarily an ability based on superior intelligence—that in the case of the average multi-millionaire it merely is a sort of sublimated instinct, in a way like the instinct of a rat-terrier for smelling out hidden rats. The ordinary dull-nosed dog goes past a wainscoting and never suspects a thing; then your terrier comes along and he takes one whiff at the bottom of that baseboard and immediately starts pawing for his prey. He knows. It’s his nature to know. Yet in other regards he may be rather an uninteresting creature, one without special gifts.

And so it is with many of our outstanding dollar-wizards, or at least so it would appear to those on the outside looking in. They differ from the commonplace run of mortals only in their ken for detecting opportunities to derive dividends from quarters which we cannot discern. Peel off their financial ratings from them and they’d be as the rest of us are—or even more so.

Now Mr. E. Randall Golightly, the pressed-brick magnate, would impress you as being like that. When it came to amassing wealth—ah, but there was where he could show you something! Otherwise he offered for the inspection of an envying planet the simple-minded easy-going unimportant personality of a middle-aged gentleman who was credulous, who was diffident in smart company, who was vastly ignorant of most matters excepting such matters as pertained to his particular specialty which, as just stated, was getting rich and richer. Out in the world away from his office and his plants, he had but little to say, thus partly concealing the fact that on the grammar side at least his original education wofully had been neglected. He was quiet and self-effacing, also he was decent and he was kindly.

But when a smart young man representing Achievements came by appointment, asking for an interview on the general subject of his early struggles, Mr. Golightly became properly flattered and suddenly vocal. Achievements was a monthly magazine devoted to purveying to the masses recipes for attaining success in business, the arts, the crafts, the sciences and the professions, the theory of its editors being that the youth of the land, reading therein how such-and-such leaders attained their present prominence, would be inspired to step forth and do likewise. Deservedly it had a large national circulation. Rotarians all over the country bought it regularly and efficiency experts prescribed it for their clients as doctors prescribe medicine for ailing patients.

Mr. Golightly was no bookworm, but he knew about Achievements, as what seasoned go-getter did not? The project outlined by the caller appealed to him. It resuscitated a drowned vanity in his inner being. So willingly enough he talked, giving dates and figures, and the young scribe took notes and still more notes and then went back to his desk and wrote and wrote and wrote. He wrote to the extent of several thousand words and his pen was tipped with flaming inspiration. He had such a congenial theme, such a typical Achievementalesque topic. Lord, how he ripped off the copy!

In due time a messenger brought to Mr. Golightly sundry long printed slips of an unfamiliar aspect called “galley proofs.” Mr. Golightly read these through, making a few minor corrections. He told nothing at home regarding what was afoot; he was saving it up as a pleasant surprise for Mrs. Golightly and the two Misses Golightly. Anyhow, he had got out of the habit of telling at home what happened at the office.

One day in advance of publication date he received a copy of the issue of the magazine containing the interview with him. It was more than a mere content. Practically it dominated the number; it led everything else. And it was more than an interview. It was a character study, a eulogy for honest endeavor, a tribute to outstanding performance, an example to oncoming generations—and fully illustrated with photographs and drawings by a staff artist. It was what they called in the Achievements shop a whiz and a wow.

A happy pride, almost a boyish pride, puffed up Mr. Golightly as he walked into his thirty-thousand-a-year apartment on upper Park Avenue that afternoon after business hours. A terrible and a devastating humility deflated him an hour later when, without waiting for dinner, he escaped thence to his club, there to sit through a grief-laden evening in a secluded corner of the reading-room. Regret filled him; elsewise he had a sort of punctured look as though all joy and all hope of future joy had seeped out of his body through many invisible leaks.