He doesn't eat much, so the family exchequer will not be lowered materially. He never has any appetite for breakfast. Mother has cottoned to him as if he were an orphan. She likes me to be with him for his good example, for she knows that he doesn't drink, he's always so thirsty in the morning. The other night at dinner Billy was very loquacious. He had been playing billiards all the afternoon, and there is something[Pg 92] connected with the game that always loosens his tongue. Somebody mentioned success, and that started William, for he always spells it with a big "S." [Pg 92] "Success is much easier to talk about than to discover," he said. "The man of affairs who undertakes to point out the path to it to a young man anxious to tread it, is like the average man of whom you ask directions in a large city, and who says, 'Well, but it's hard to tell a stranger. You'd better go up this street till you come to the City Hall, then take the first street to the right and the second to the left and—and then ask some one else.'" "I've noticed," said Billy, without a pause in his eloquence, "that the prominent men who write magazine and newspaper articles on 'How to Succeed,' always tell their yearning readers to save part of each dollar they receive, but never tell them how to get the dollar. Fact is, if they knew where the dollar was they'd go get it themselves. And they never tell how they themselves succeeded. That would be betraying a business secret. 'Work, work hard,' they say, 'do more than you're paid for doing, and you will soon be appreciated by your[Pg 93] employer. Do two dollars' worth of work for one dollar and you'll soon be getting three dollars.'" [Pg 93] Here Billy leaned over the table and spoke more impressively than I thought he was able to. "Search the career of one of these self-advisory boards for the community," he said, "and you'll find that these men succeeded by hiring men to do two dollars' worth of work for one dollar and then getting themselves incorporated and selling the work for $5." When Billy got through, Ma smiled across to me and said, "How much Mr. Poindexter talks like your father!" Your hopeful son,P. P.S.—We are going to a masquerade ball to-night at the De Porques. Old De P. offers a prize of $100 for the most hideous make-up. I'm going as Milligan. [Pg 95]
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