of his dyspepsia money. By the time he's gained his financial
independence, he's lost his personal independence altogether. For it's
just about then that he's reached the age where he can put a little
extra sense and experience into his pills; so he can't turn around
without some one's sticking out his tongue at him and asking him to
guess what he had for dinner that disagreed with him. It never occurs
to these people that he will let his experience and ability go to
waste, just because he has made money enough to buy a little dyspepsia
of his own, and it never occurs to him to quit for any such foolish
reason.

You'll meet a lot of first-class idiots in this world, who regard
business as low and common, because their low and common old grandpas
made money enough so they don't have to work. And you'll meet a lot of
second-class fools who carry a line of something they call culture,
which bears about the same relation to real education that canned
corned beef does to porterhouse steak with mushrooms; and these
fellows shudder a little at the mention of business, and moan over the
mad race for wealth, and deplore the coarse commercialism of the age.
But while they may have no special use for a business man, they always
have a particular use for his money. You want to be ready to spring
back while you're talking to them, because when a fellow doesn't think
it's refined to mention money, and calls it an honorarium, he's
getting ready to hit you for a little more than the market price. I've
had dealings with a good many of these shy, sensitive souls who shrink
from mentioning the dollar, but when it came down to the point of
settling the bill, they usually tried to charge a little extra for the
shock to their refinement.

The fact of the matter is, that we're all in trade when we've got
anything, from poetry to pork, to sell; and it's all foolishness to
talk about one fellow's goods being sweller than another's. The only
way in which he can be different is by making them better. But if we
haven't anything to sell, we ain't doing anything to shove the world
along; and we ought to make room on it for some coarse, commercial
cuss with a sample-case.

I've met a heap of men who were idling through life because they'd
made money or inherited it, and so far as I could see, about all that
they could do was to read till they got the dry rot, or to booze till
they got the wet rot. All books and no business makes Jack a
jack-in-t