Letters of a self-made failure . r Featherwaite diedand our company bought the businessfrom the executors for about a quarterof its book value. Some of the good101 LETTERS OF men were retained, but as Larry failedto measure up to our standard he wasamong those let out. About three months ago I ran acrosshim in a Western town. He was wear-ing a blue uniform trimmed with goldbraid and he was holding down the jobof main ticket chopper for a motion pic-ture house. After many years of ease hehad lost his cunning as a salesman andI suppose his nerve had gone with was the old story of improvide
Letters of a self-made failure . r Featherwaite diedand our company bought the businessfrom the executors for about a quarterof its book value. Some of the good101 LETTERS OF men were retained, but as Larry failedto measure up to our standard he wasamong those let out. About three months ago I ran acrosshim in a Western town. He was wear-ing a blue uniform trimmed with goldbraid and he was holding down the jobof main ticket chopper for a motion pic-ture house. After many years of ease hehad lost his cunning as a salesman andI suppose his nerve had gone with was the old story of improvidence,over-confidence and conceit. Take your work seriously, my boy,but not yourself; we are all of us jokes,more or less. But responsibility is the great charac-ter-developer, and very few of us reallyknow what we can do until we are putto the test. The market is long on menwho can take orders but short on thosewho can intelligently issue them. Re-sponsibility requires a certain amount ofinitiative: the willingness to act when102. A SELF-MADE FAILURE occasion demands and the courage tofail under honest effort and take theconsequences. Of course you may fail; but you canttell whether you will succeed unless youtry; and having tried to the utmost ofyour ability and failed is better thannever to have tried at all. Better be-cause in every loss there is the compen-sation of experience, while mere inac-tion means mental and physical stagna-tion, the dam and sire of annihilation. As to flatterers, you will find, ,myboy, that in most big organizations thereare two classes of men: those who workfor the boss and those who work the , success and power seem to en-gender a love for adulation. Ive knownsome pretty big men who swallowedflattery like a hungry bass grabs a min-now. Its one of natures little jokes toput a soft spot in the big fellows; itkeeps them human; even Achilles hada vulnerable heel. The fellow, though,105 LETTERS OF who is willing to act as valet to anothermans
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