Hustle

“ New York is Babylon; Brooklyn is the true Holy City. New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle; Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness. It is extraordinary: poor, harassed New Yorkers presume to look down on low-lying, home-loving Brooklyn, when as a matter of fact it is the precious jewel their souls are thirsting for and they never know it. ”

“ The man who is worth his salt will get up and ‘hustle’—as the Americans tersely express it—and not rest until he has secured what he wants. Now, you, my boy, are very heavily handicapped. You have neither money nor influence to help you to what you want, therefore you will have to depend upon ‘hustle’ and grit alone; also you have no time to waste in looking about in this country for the kind of thing you want, which, even with all the ‘hustle’ and grit imaginable, may take you months, or even years, to find. ”

“ In noise it was a muffled silence compared with the fine racket that enlivens the air outside the Paris Bourse. I saw also an ordinary day in the Stock Exchange. Faint excitations were afloat in certain corners, but I honestly deemed the affair tame. A vast litter of paper on the floor, a vast assemblage of hats pitched on the tops of telephone-boxes—these phenomena do not amount to a hustle. Earnest students of hustle should visit Paris or Milan. The fact probably is that the perfecting of mechanical contrivances in the United States has killed hustle as a diversion for the eyes and ears. ”

“ You’re a hustler all right and a good man, which you admit yourself, but, Boy, you just cannot spread yourself out over the whole territory and run the branch too, and again, if your company had wanted you to do all the selling they’d have told you so.
No, your job is to teach and lead others to do most of the selling, reserving only the hard-boiled and nursing-bottle customers that the other boys cannot land, or for some reason seem to avoid. ”

“ They cannot comprehend a society which does not wait for anything."
"Shouldn't you like to see Manny Green, for instance, during the six o'clock rush hour in New York? Do you suppose he would understand the word hustle then?" said Gwen. "However, Aunt Cam, I am sure that there are great many who are not loafers. Look at Thad Eaton, and Miss Phosie, too. They work steadily from morning till night. Miss Phosie is such a dear. She certainly is a contrast to Miss Phenie." ”

“ No matter how honest your motives, if others criticized your actions your feelings would be hurt. And you think more about your own wretched feelings than you do about mine. And then, being a coward—all men are at heart cowards—you disguise your cowardice by calling it chivalry. I thank heaven that I was not born a man. Good-night. Do think it over. And don’t be foolish. What Berande needs is good American hustle. You don’t know what that is. You are a muddler. Besides, you are enervated. I’m fresh to the climate. Let me be your partner, and you’ll see me rattle the dry bones of the Solomons. ”

“ The clown crabs had now formed a row in front of them. "Mr. Johnsing," asked one, "why is a mermaid like an automobile?"
"I don't know, Tommy Blimken," answered a big crab in the middle of the row. "WHY do you think a mermaid is like an automobile?"
"Because they both get tired," said Tommy Blimken. Then all the crabs laughed, and Tommy seemed to laugh louder than the rest.
"How do the crabs in the sea know anything 'bout automobiles?" asked Trot.
"Why, Tommy Blimken and Harry Hustle were both captured once by humans and put in an aquarium," answered the mermaid. ”

“ They have greate store of all hustlementes and implementes of householde, they are plentifully furnished with al instruments of husbandry, and all other things that are requisite to the accomplishment of a quiet and wealthy lyfe, according to their estates and degrees. ”

“ The square dots are spots on which the clubs are stood prior to starting the runners.
The club each runner carries is made to stand over the crosses before another club can be picked up. The semicircular lines indicate the enclosures in which all the clubs must stand before the final dash to the scratch is made.
Club Hustle
Divide players equally. Form ranks in "front dress." Place an Indian club in the hand of each foremost man. At the word, "Go," he stoops and passes the club between his legs to player behind him, who continues it on down the line. ”

“ Indeed I do, sir, and worth more than all your store. I have been several years getting ready to make money, while you have been making it before you got ready. I have had too many ups and downs in my early life not to be able to profit by at least some of them sooner or later; and I can't afford now to go to work for you on a salary, and give you the benefit of all these years' experience. Not much, sir, and I'll just keep 'hus'ling.' If I can't win, I can die in the cause. ”

“ Could any gentleman look back twenty-one years and see me combating the prejudices of the farmers, and exerting the most intense labor of body and mind, and continuing to do so from year to year, at the very door of poverty, and also look back on those New York parties through the same period, accumulating wealth by the usual course of business, and perhaps watching my progress, and waiting for the proper moment to step in with their money power and grasp the lion's share of the prize which justly belongs to myself. ”

“ Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause to complain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller, or the proprietor of a newspaper, instead of what I am, I might have had more money or possessed a town and countryhouse, instead of lodging in a first or second floor, as it may happen. But what then? I see how the man of business and fortune passes his time. ”

“ Business had been a cruel grind—a fierce haggling with hard-headed men who treated him like dirt, a ceaseless rushing hither and thither with conciliatory grins and platitudes. Now an oasis offered itself in which he could relax, become human, the man that he, in fact, was. ”

“ Now what he really needed, of course, to make him realize what a good thing was life in that little world, was about one month of hustling in the big outside world with a taste of earning the price of his meals in a down-town-to-work-at-nine-one-hour-for-luncheon-up-town-at-six sort of life, among people who did not care enough for him to say sarcastic things. ”

“ Your trade must be an entertaining one; sit down on this stone, and let me know something of your profession; I have often thought of turning fortune teller for a week or two, myself."
"Master," replied the beggar, "I like your frankness much, for I had the humor of plain dealing in me from a child; but there is no doing with it in this world,—we must do as we can; and lying is, as you call it, my profession. ”

“ In a place where money is scarce, my income, slender as it is, may be useful. After a life of full employment, I could not be happy in idleness; and as these good people have a large family, I shall have among them constant employment, in the way that habit has rendered most delightful to me, that of training youth to usefulness and virtue. ”

“ Do not trust to any way of getting on by dodges or speculation, or favour, or anything but downright hard work. Don't shirk difficulties, don't try to put the weight of the work upon some colleague or other, that you may have an easier life of it. Set your backs to your tasks, and remember that 'in all labour there is profit'; and whether the profit comes to you in the shape of advancement, position, promotion in your offices, partnerships perhaps, wealth, and the like, or no, the profit lies in the work. Honest toil is the key to pleasure. ”

“ My main object, however, in coming here, was to establish myself in business, and to acquire, what every young man should be ambitious to acquire, not unearned and sudden wealth, but a hard earned competency, the just reward of labor and perseverance, and an unblemished reputation. ”

“ The honest servant, who understood little about money, put his fortune into his pocket, and thought, "Ah! now that I have my purse full, why need I trouble and plague myself any longer with hard work!" ”

“ I know personally and through my books and articles hundreds of employers who look upon themselves and are looked on by their employees as gentlemen and sports—men who are in business as masters of a craft, artists or professional men, who are only making money as a means of expressing themselves, making their business a self-expression and putting themselves and their temperaments and their desires toward others into their business as they like. ”

“ I found you drunk in my birch, and it is well known that these are your customary habits. You are also a pauper. All property, everything that goes to support life, in these parts, of any amount, comes by the hard work of somebody,—either bone labor or brain labor,—the labor of those who now possess it, or of those from whom they inherited it. ”

“ Can this other man do likewise? Can he hold up his hands before men and say, “I have an honest trade in my fingers”? Can he take his children and show them his work, and tell them with glad face the story of his apprenticeship? ”

“ Who would wonder at the diligence of the merchant, who, barely taking time enough for his meals, is hard at work every day in his shop, receiving money, and heaping it up in his coffers? Who would say: What an indefatigable man! he is certainly not tired of working? ”

“ You will see now, my dear son, why I have been so earnest to have you establish in early life a habit of industry, and to cultivate a taste for daily, honest labor. No matter what employment you have, if it is honorable employment. ”

“ I desire to fit myself for my position as owner and dispenser of a large income. I regard the money intrusted to me as a talent for which I shall be called to account, and I want to learn to manage my affairs properly, and with prudence and discretion. ”

“ Haven't you always been well treated and well fed, and well paid?—and now you want to turn on them that did it for you, just as if you were one of those larrikins and spielers, that come up partly for work, and more for gambling and stealing! ”

“ Making money, doing business, is fine and manly and virile. But is there anything fine and manly and virile about wasting your time on silly, obscene lines of rhymes—that start a whole town laughing at you and pointing the finger of scorn at your father? ”

“ There's all kinds of businesses in this world, and there's got to be people to work at every one of 'em; and when a fellow takes any particular line, his business is to do it well; that's my motto. When I break into a house I make it a point to clean it out first-class, and not to carry away no trash, nuther. ”

“ If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do,—as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life. ”

“ With education, with a knowledge of accounts, with splendid intelligence, with manly pride and noble ambition, he went from luxurious banking apartments to the cold wintry streets, down, down the cheerless and grim descent, till he reached the bottom, where he found himself in competition with the dregs of humanity—one of them, as far as his employment went. ”

“ And their ambition to become rich may tend to cultivate the common sense which characterises and narrows both their hearts and views, confirming the former to their families, taking the handmaids of it into the circle of pleasure, if not of interest, and the latter to the inspection of their workmen, including the noble science of bargain-making--that is, getting everything at the cheapest, and selling it at the dearest rate. ”

“ Of course—given the right temperament for such a career—it must be so much more comfortable to spend one's life in making money—buying and selling things and so on—rather than to risk it every day for the barren honour of serving one's king and country. ”

“ Every employe who studies how much he can do is a help to an employer. Every employe who sees how little he can do is a hold-back to the institution.
Employes should remember that prosperity goes in cycles, that it is but three generations from shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve. ”

“ The latter profession is exceedingly lucrative, and I have seen several persons who had made a small fortune in this manner, and very well understood the art of imposing on the people, and of persuading them to purchase a fresh charm, although experience must have convinced them of the futility of the last. ”

“ Happiness, and not wealth, being thus the main pursuit, of course many kinds of occupations, now called business, such as brokers, money-lenders, etc., will cease, and those now engaged in these so-called pursuits—of others, will look after the poor to minister unto them and not to take them in. ”

“ To-day I have five hundred men in my employ, who are poorly paid, but who pursue the work with an enthusiasm which possibly may be born of fear. These men enter every shade and grade of society; some even are pillars of the most exclusive social temples; others are the prop and pride of the financial world ”

“ You see, my girl, that the homely 'little job' is likely to be a large and pleasant one, and you have earned your part in it. Do the duty that comes first, and one never knows what beautiful experience it may blossom into. Use your earnings as you like, and God bless you, my dear. ”

“ It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a-year.
I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. ”

“ There's No Wealth like That which comes by the Blesling of God upon Honest Labour and Warrantable Industry. Here’s an Incitement to an Industrious Course of Life, by a Consideration of the Profit, the Innocence and the Virtue, of such an Application. ”