3. Spend one-fourth of your capital in furnishing the room with matters of personal comfort. Provide an elegant desk, a luxurious lounge, and a pivot-chair: why shouldn’t the master of a printing office “take it easy”? Have a closet in your desk, it is so handy for your whisky-bottle and cigar-boxes.
4. Get all you can from the type-founder, press-maker, and paper-manufacturers. If they will give you credit for one-half of what you buy, well and good: if they trust you for the whole amount, all the better for you, and the more money you will have on hand for jollifications.
5. Put up your sign—a handsome one—
B. Sipwell Lovepunch,
Printer.
and signalize its erection by keeping “open house” for all comers between 11 A.M. and midnight. The mothers and wives of all who become tight and go home loose will long remember your public spirit.
6. Be at your office by nine in summer and ten in winter; and, following Charles Lamb’s witticism, that he who goes to work late should quit early, you need not return after dinner. Let your foreman attend to the business: isn’t he paid for it?
7. When you do go into your office, curse and grumble promiscuously, and be sure to swear at the apprentices, to show your spirit, and to let them know that you are master. Be careful never to praise them or any of the hands, or they may think they are worth higher wages.
8. Take work at any price that will keep it from a competitor, no matter whether it pays or not. Perhaps you can save something by giving short numbers, counting in imperfect copies, using very common ink, &c. The style is of no consequence: you want to make money if you can, let others improve the typographical art if they choose.
9. Cultivate the acquaintance of fancy folk, politicians, and wit-livers. A fast horse or two wouldn’t be a bad thing to bind their friendship; and, besides, you will never be at a loss for a companion in your rides.
10. If you want new type, and the founder who made your outfit won’t sell to you unless you pay off the old score, transfer your patronage to another foundry. How can you expect to get along if you pay your debts? Such a course would compel you to sell your horse and to taboo rum-shops and gay saloons, and to live economically; and this, you know, wouldn’t do at all.