Babbitt
that’s trying to show off to the principal, and you can study any
subject you want to. Just listen to these! I clipped out the ads of some
swell courses.”
He snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred advertisements
of those home-study courses which the energy and foresight of American
commerce have contributed to the science of education. The first
displayed the portrait of a young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw,
silk socks, and hair like patent leather. Standing with one hand in his
trousers-pocket and the other extended with chiding forefinger, he was
bewitching an audience of men with gray beards, paunches, bald heads,
and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity. Above the picture was an
inspiring educational symbol--no antiquated lamp or torch or owl of
Minerva, but a row of dollar signs. The text ran:
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING
A Yarn Told at the Club
Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant?
Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead-or-alive shipping clerk
in my old place-- Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear
fellow. One time he was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and
never got credit for the dandy work he did. Him at the De Luxe! And if
he wasn’t ordering a tony feed with all the “fixings” from celery to
nuts! And instead of being embarrassed by the waiters, like he used to
be at the little dump where we lunched in Old Lang Syne, he was bossing
them around like he was a millionaire!
WHAT WE TEACH YOU!
How to address your lodge.
How to give toasts.
How to tell dialect stories.
How to propose to a lady.
How to entertain banquets.
How to make convincing selling-talks.
How to build big vocabulary.
How to create a strong personality.
How to become a rational, powerful and original thinker.
How to be a MASTER MAN!
I cautiously asked him what he was doing. Freddy laughed and said, “Say,
old chum, I guess you’re wondering what’s come over me. You’ll be glad
to know I’m now Assistant Super at the old shop, and right on the High
Road to Prosperity and Domination, and I look forward with confidence to
a twelve-cylinder car, and the wife is making things hum in the best
society and the kiddies getting a first-class education.
“Here’s how it happened. I ran across an ad of a course that claimed to
teach people how to talk easily and on their feet, how to answer
complaints, how to lay a proposition before the Boss, how to hit a bank
for a loan, how to hold a big audience spellbound with wit, humor,
anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was compiled by the Master Orator, Prof.
Waldo F. Peet. I was skeptical, too, but I wrote (just _on a postcard_,
with name and address) to the publisher for the lessons--sent On Trial,
money back if you are not absolutely satisfied. There were eight simple
lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them
just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife. Soon
found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the
good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and
say, old doggo, what do you think they’re paying me now? $6,500 per
year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on
any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no
obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to:--
SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO.
Desk WA Sandpit, Iowa.
ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?
PROF. W. F. PEET
author of the Shortcut Course in Public-Speaking, is easily the
foremost figure in practical literature, psychology & oratory. A
graduate of some of our leading universities, lecturer, extensive
traveler, author of books, poetry, etc., a man with the unique
PERSONALITY OF THE MASTER MINDS, he is ready to give _YOU_ all the
secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few easy lessons
that will not interfere with other occupations.
Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable him to speak with
authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate had indicated what a Solid
Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think about culture by mail. He
began with hesitation:
“Well--sounds as if it covered the ground. It certainly is a fine thing
to be able to orate. I’ve sometimes thought I had a little talent that
way myself, and I know darn well that one reason why a fourflushing old
back-number like Chan Mott can get away with it in real estate is just
because he can make a good talk, even when he hasn’t got a doggone thing
to say! And it certainly is pretty cute the way they get out all these
courses on various topics and subjects nowadays. I’ll tell you, though:
No need to blow in a lot of good money on this stuff when you can get a
first-rate course in eloquence and English and all that right in your
own school--and one of the biggest school buildings in the entire
country!”
“That’s so,” said Mrs. Babbitt comfortably, while Ted complained:
“Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk that isn’t any
practical use--except the manual training and typewriting and basketball
and dancing--and in these correspondence-courses, gee, you can get all
kinds of stuff that would come in handy. Say, listen to this one:”
CAN YOU PLAY A MAN’S PART?
If you are walking with your mother, sister or best
girl and some one passes a slighting remark or uses
improper language, won’t you be ashamed if you can’t
take her part? Well, can you?
We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many
pupils have written saying that after a few lessons
they’ve outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The
lessons start with simple movements practised before
your mirror--holding out your hand for a coin, the
breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize it
you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and
feinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.
“Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn’t like that!” Ted chanted. “I’ll tell the
world! Gosh, I’d like to take one fellow I know in school that’s always
shooting off his mouth, and catch him alone--”
“Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard of!” Babbitt
fulminated.
“Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone, and somebody passed
a slighting remark or used improper language. What would I do?”
“Why, you’d probably bust the record for the hundred-yard dash!”
“I _would_ not! I’d stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting
remark on _my_ sister and I’d show him--”
“Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you fighting I’ll whale the
everlasting daylights out of you--and I’ll do it without practising
holding out my hand for a coin before the mirror, too!”
“Why, Ted dear,” Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, “it’s not at all nice, your
talking of fighting this way!”
“Well, gosh almighty, that’s a fine way to appreciate-- And then suppose
I was walking with _you_, Ma, and somebody passed a slighting remark--”
“Nobody’s going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody,” Babbitt
observed, “not if they stay home and study their geometry and mind their
own affairs instead of hanging around a lot of poolrooms and
soda-fountains and places where nobody’s got any business to be!”
“But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!”
Mrs. Babbitt chirped, “Well, if they did, I wouldn’t do them the honor
of paying any attention to them! Besides, they never do. You always hear
about these women that get followed and insulted and all, but I don’t
believe a word of it, or it’s their own fault, the way some women look
at a person. I certainly never’ve been insulted by--”
“Aw shoot, Mother, just suppose you _were_ sometime! Just _suppose_!
Can’t you suppose something? Can’t you imagine things?”
“Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!”
“Certainly your mother can imagine things--and suppose things! Think
you’re the only member of this household that’s got an imagination?”
Babbitt demanded. “But what’s the use of a lot of supposing? Supposing
never gets you anywhere. No sense supposing when there’s a lot of real
facts to take into considera--”
“Look here, Dad. Suppose-- I mean, just--just suppose you were in your
office and some rival real-estate man--”
“Realtor!”
“--some realtor that you hated came in--”
“I don’t hate any realtor.”
“But suppose you _did_!”
“I don’t intend to suppose anything of the kind! There’s plenty of
fellows in my profession that stoop and hate their competitors, but if
you were a little older and understood business, instead of always going
to the movies and running around with a lot of fool girls with their
dresses up to their knees and powdered and painted and rouged and God
knows what all as if they were chorus-girls, then you’d know--and you’d
suppose--that if there’s any one thing that I stand for in the
real-estate circles of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak of
each other only in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit of
brotherhood and coöperation, and so I certainly can’t suppose and I
can’t imagine my hating any realtor, not even that dirty, fourflushing
society sneak, Cecil Rountree!”
“But--”
“And there’s no If, And or But about it! But if I _were_ going to
lambaste somebody, I wouldn’t require any fancy ducks or
swimming-strokes before a mirror, or any of these doodads and flipflops!
Suppose you were out some place and a fellow called you vile names.
Think you’d want to box and jump around like a dancing-master? You’d
just lay him out cold (at least I certainly hope any son of mine would!)
and then you’d dust off your hands and go on about your business, and
that’s all there is to it, and you aren’t going to have any
boxing-lessons by mail, either!”
“Well but-- Yes-- I just wanted to show how many different kinds of
correspondence-courses there are, instead of all the camembert they
teach us in the High.”
“But I thought they taught boxing in the school gymnasium.”
“That’s different. They stick you up there and some big stiff amuses
himself pounding the stuffin’s out of you before you have a chance to
learn. Hunka! Not any! But anyway-- Listen to some of these others.”
The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them bore the
rousing headline: “Money! Money!! Money!!!” The second announced that
“Mr. P. R., formerly making only eighteen a week in a barber shop,
writes to us that since taking our course he is now pulling down $5,000
as an Osteo-vitalic Physician;” and the third that “Miss J. L., recently
a wrapper in a store, is now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our
Hindu System of Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control.”
Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual
reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines, and
journals of discussion. One benefactor implored, “Don’t be a
Wallflower-- Be More Popular and Make More Money-- You Can Ukulele or Sing
Yourself into Society! By the secret principles of a Newly Discovered
System of Music Teaching, any one--man, lady or child--can, without
tiresome exercises, special training or long drawn out study, and
without waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note, piano,
banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn
sight-singing.”
The next, under the wistful appeal “Finger Print Detectives Wanted-- Big
Incomes!” confided: “YOU red-blooded men and women--this is the
PROFESSION you have been looking for. There’s MONEY in it, BIG money,
and that rapid change of scene, that entrancing and compelling interest
and fascination, which your active mind and adventurous spirit crave.