George Griswold Livermore

“ It's so much more gratifying when the time comes to look back, to know that what you have, you alone have made possible, and not to have to give the credit to some one else. And that's why, when you go to work, I'm going to see to it that you learn shoemaking from tanning to selling, so that when your time comes to look back you can say to yourself, "My father left me a ten thousand pair factory, but I've boosted it to twenty-five." ”

“ I spat out a mouthful of dirt and struggled to my feet. One of the legs of my Sunday pants was ripped clear to the knee, and one shirt sleeve was torn off. Again we grappled, and again I was thrown as quickly as before.
Sore with defeat, I pulled on my coat and limped away with the jeers of the crowd echoing in my ears. Alice was not where I had left her, and after a half an hour's search I found her in a booth eating ice cream with Jim Davis, a hated rival who promptly informed me she had promised to ride home with him.
Rats, you know, Ted, leave a ship under certain conditions. ”

“ Ted, my boy, I want you to grow up with a reverent respect for all women, for the worst woman who ever lived, you may be sure, had some good qualities, and the best of them are far too good for any man. Besides you owe it to your Ma, for no sweeter, better woman than she ever breathed, and although there may be no real harm in the girls you meet in Portsmouth, the sort who let a fellow pick them up on the street and kiss them good night, are not the kind who are going to increase your respect for women, so my advice to you is, cut it out. ”

“ Sammy was the son of old Isaac Smead, sole owner of the Eureka Wooden Ware factory in Epping. As old Isaac could smell a dollar farther than a buzzard can a dead cow, and as he had in early life developed a habit of collecting farm mortgages, which in those days were about as easy to pay off as the national debt of Germany, he waxed sleek and prospered mightily, until at the time about which I write, he was not only Epping's wealthiest resident, but also a selectman, pillar in the Second Church, president of the bank, and general grand high mogul of everything. ”

“ After you go to work, if anyone refers to me as the father of an end, I'll feel like turning the factory over to the labor unions, because if there is anything that disgusts a live business man it's to see a young fellow in business trying to live on a former athletic reputation. ”

“ Your Ma had put in shirts, studs, collars, tie, vest, coat, silk socks, pants, and every last article of necessary trappings except pumps, and pumps were about as necessary to me then as a little leather is to a pair of shoes.
I had a horrible sort of feeling as though my stomach was slowly revolving around inside of me, and my legs felt as if they were trying to go two ways at once, for I had worn a pair of tan shoes over from Pittsfield, and I knew from the glimpse I'd caught of Mrs. Hamilton's friends, that if I didn't wear my dress suit I'd rank lower than the deuce in that game. ”

“ When I got over being dizzy at the thought of running a five thousand pair factory, I grabbed the job, because I was afraid I'd refuse it if I stopped to consider the responsibility. That's a pretty good plan for you to follow, Ted. Don't let a big job scare you, just lay right into it, and if you keep both feet on the floor and don't rely too much on the bridge to make fancy shots, pretty soon the job begins to shrink, and you begin to grow, and before long you fit. ”

“ A smart shoe man, doesn't buy a block of leather without sizing up what's under the grain, and a young man when looking around for steady company can well do likewise. I don't want you to think I have anything against good looks, I haven't and if you can get them with other qualities, all right. It must be tough, to have to sit opposite a face at breakfast, that curdles the milk in your coffee, but better that and sizzling ham and eggs, than a rose bud for looks, and cold oatmeal. ”

“ Do you know Ted, when that rich silk tie was contrasted with my blue serge that had seen considerable service as Sunday best, I felt about as comfortable as a man in overalls wearing a plug hat.
He who hesitates is sold. I hesitated, and the next thing I knew a smart young salesman was selling me a new suit, then I noticed the shoes I was wearing were patched. ”

“ Probation is a good deal like the "flu": easy to get, and liable to be pretty serious if you don't treat it with the respect it deserves.
It isn't as if you were a fool. No son of your Ma's let alone mine could be, and your Grandfather Soule could have made a living selling snowballs to the Eskimos. It's pure kid laziness, and shiftlessness, mixed in with a little too much football, and not enough curiosity to see what's printed on the pages of your school books. ”

“ That letter from the oculist, in Portsmouth, saying you needed glasses was a relief and a disappointment. A relief, to know you weren't trying to slip one over, and a disappointment to learn you must wear glasses. Don't let wearing glasses disturb you. You won't need them when you are playing football, and if you only wear them when you read your nose won't be disfigured by the strain.
It's funny how a young fellow like you, who has the time and the education to appreciate them, don't seem to care about reading good books, while an old rough and ready like your dad, can't have enough of them. ”

“ For five years after that, I used Charlie as a sort of pinch hitter around the factory giving him all sorts of work, but never letting him know what his next job was to be, and as he couldn't worry about what was coming, he more than made good.
Ted, any real college is a good college. It's all up to you, for so far as I know, there's nothing to prevent you learning a lot in any one of them. The thing for you to do for the next two years, is to study hard at Exeter, then when it comes time to take your exams, you needn't be afraid about being able to get into any college you choose. ”

“ When I hit the earth again, I looked at the old man sitting there wagging his jaws and grinning, but somehow his smile had lost its sarcasm, and he seemed less like one of these gargoyle things that the foreigners hang on the outside of their churches, and more like a shrewd kindly old Yankee shoemaker.
Ted, I learned something that year besides how to run a big shoe factory. I learned that a rip snorting bawling out doesn't necessarily mean your superior thinks you a lightweight: if he couldn't see ability, he wouldn't take the trouble to cuss you. ”

“ Americans to the backbone, everyone of them! Steady going respectable men and women some of whom had been working in the shop when I was born, and who would have told any agitator to mind his own business, who might have undertaken to tell them they were working too hard.
Well, anyway, at the end of two years I had that little factory running as slick as a greased pig, and I was wearing a self-satisfied smile in consequence that I didn't even try to conceal, for old Hiram Spinney had taken to calling me William, and Ezra Clough used to invite your Ma and me to supper most every Sunday evening. ”

“ He was forever hanging round the bank, inviting me to dinner at the Mansion House, driving me about the country and going fishing with me on Saturday afternoons.
J. Peters was extremely well read, seemed to have traveled everywhere, and knew men intimately whose names in the financial world were all majestic. I thought J. Peters a whale of a chap and tried in every possible way to imitate him, even to copying so far as I was able his slow drawling way of speaking. ”

“ It's fine to back your teams to the limit, and I'd think you a pretty poor sort of a stick if you didn't yell your head off at a game, but do you think it helps to steady a players nerve in a pinch, to know that if he doesn't deliver, his schoolmates will have to live on snow balls or some other light refreshment for a couple of months.
No Ted, old scout, betting is not only wrong, it's foolish. ”

“ For a poor man with a reputation for keeping his word is a better citizen any day than a millionaire who's a liar, and I'd much rather have a young man on my pay roll, whose family came over in the steerage and hasn't a grudge against work, than a fellow who can trace his ancestry back to the peerage and is trying to get by on dead men's reputations. ”

“ If you go into your classrooms with only part of your lessons learned, you aren't going to fool your teachers very long, and if you go on to the football field with an air that the coach can't show you anything he's not likely to try. Half knowledge, is the most dangerous thing in the world. I never saw a successful shoe manufacturer who only had half knowledge of making shoes, and I guess Walter Camp isn't putting anyone on his All American, who only knows how to play his position half way. ”

“ Maybe it's just as well you are having your touch of society chills and fever young, for it may save you from making a bigger fool of yourself later on. No one minds a young fool much, but an old one is about as sad an object as a Louisville distiller attending a Supreme Court decision on the prohibition law. ”

“ When I was your age, I was too busy trying to help support the family, to find time to read much besides the Epping Bugle, whereas, you seem to be too busy figuring out how to have a good time, to care what the biggest men of the world thought about things. ”

“ Now, I say no matter how things turn out it is going to be painful, and at your age and vast experience of life, it can only turn out one way, and that's a broken heart for you for about a week, and then a gradual interest in life, until two weeks from now the outcome of the baseball game with Andover, will be even more important to you than how to get enough to eat between meals. ”

“ The trouble with you is you're just beginning to think a little for yourself. Now thinking for yourself is fine, but until you begin to direct your thoughts in the right direction you're a good deal like the cannon Uncle Abijah invented during the Spanish War. ”

“ A shoemaker can buy his leather right, and figure his costs correctly on an order, but the buyer may get cold feet and refuse them, or the unions may call a strike, or one of about a hundred other things may happen to knock the profits higher than one of Babe Ruth's home runs.
With lessons it's different. Study them and they can't beat you. You wouldn't expect much glory if the Andover team you beat had been made up of one legged men. What about the handicap you're making the All-Romans play under when you tackle them with a couple of "trots" in your fists. ”

“ Honestly, Ted, I'm glad you bought that wall paper. The male human is so constituted that he has got to make at least one fool investment during his life and it's just as well to get it out of your system early. ”

“ Perhaps it's heaps of satisfaction to a young fellow, one of the big men of the school, to hike for Portsmouth with a few dollars of his dad's burning holes in his pocket, cut the prettiest shop or factory girl out of a crowd, and carry her off for supper, spending his week's allowance in one evening, but I can't see it. ”

“ You don't have to be ashamed of your ancestors, or my money, and it did me a world of good to overhear you say to young Raincoats that I might not have made a million out of the war, but there wasn't a leather company in the country which wouldn't sell me any amount of stock I cared to order. That's the sort of a reputation I've always tried to deserve. It's the aim of every decent American business man, [116] but just the same it's fine to feel my only kid's as proud of it as I am. ”

“ John had brains, and ambition, and was never an enemy of work, but to-day he is foreman of the making room in a measely little Maine factory, when he might be running his own, and it was only Priscilla who queered him. Whenever he'd manage to put by a little money, she always needed a new set of furs, or a vacation, or a thousand other things which she got. John never got his factory. ”

“ William Soule.
[142]
Lynn, Mass.
May 10, 19—
Dear Ted:
If I'd had time before I left Exeter last week, you and I would have had a heart to heart talk about some of those freak books and magazines I found strewn all over your room.
"Equalization of the Masses," "The Worker's Share," and "The Exploitation of the People," are heavy-sounding titles, and the contents, I should judge from my hurried examination, would be about as easy to digest as a bake-shop plum pudding. ”

“ Whatever you do, don't get sorry for yourself. There's nothing in the world more silly than a person who is sorry for himself, and the ones who are, are always the ones who have no cause to be. Now I don't believe for a minute that the teachers at Exeter have picked you alone, out of five hundred boys, to jump on; they're too busy, and I guess your coach's main idea is to get a team together that can [50] lick Andover, so it might be well, if you are finding people hard to please, to ask yourself if it's their fault. ”

“ Dear Ted:
So your roommate is a ham, is he? Well, if he is, you're in luck. Ham is selling for fifty cents a pound in Lynn and is going up.
Time was when ham was looked down upon as the poor man's meat, but now, when there are no poor except professional men and shoe manufacturers, his pigship has come into his own. ”

“ I've always found it a pretty good rule to follow, never to worry about another job, until I've finished the one I'm working on. There are lots of people who make themselves sick worrying about things that never happen, when they might as well save their doctor's bills and enjoy life.
Personally, I think it doesn't make much difference where you go, as long as you go to college to do a fair amount of work, and not just to play football and have a good time. ”