Your loving,
“DAD.”
The Boy Has Begun to Solicit Dad’s Counsel
Dear Hal:
Your last letter made me happier than I can begin to tell you. In it you related some of your problems and really asked advice. I was beginning to think you are getting “fed up” on my unsolicited counsel but feel complimented to know you now want more of it.
But, leaving the personal side out of it, you know, Red, the smart man is the one who collects ideas from every one he meets, separates the wheat from the chaff and then capitalizes them, and it’s a sincere pleasure for me to know that you’ve at last arrived at the age when you are big enough to admit that when brains were passed around you didn’t get all of ’em.
So you’re wondering what’s the matter with your salesmen, eh? They don’t seem to take things seriously and worry whether they get business or not—always looking forward to pay-day and that’s all—eh, what? All right—your description of their attitude is so good that I believe I know just where the trouble is.
I suppose you were too young at the time to get the lesson, but, Red, your case reminds me of something that used to happen regularly when you were a little boy. Do you remember years ago when you used to have that brindle pup? He wasn’t much to look at—had no pedigree, or anything, but was just plain dog—the kind whose only excuse for living was that he was a playmate of a freckle-faced, red-headed boy. Well, anyway, the little girl next door had a cat for a pet, if you’ll remember. Similarly to the dog, the cat hadn’t taken any blue ribbons and about the only thing she did worth mentioning now, at least, was to notify the family that claimed her, ever so often, that she was the proud mother of a mess, and I say it advisedly, Red, a mess of kittens.
But the Boss of the house didn’t appreciate her being so prolific—not being as interested in cat farms as our old friend Charlie Emery. So ever so often, while you and the neighbor girl were out to a toddle party, her father and myself would sneak down in their basement, ostensibly to look over the last sad remnants of his private stock (which is speaking in an unknown tongue to you now), but primarily to increase the mortality list of the cat specie by holding each kitten in the bottom of a pail of water until eight of their proverbial nine lives had taken flight for cat heaven.