The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Message to Garcia, by Elbert Hubbard

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Title: A Message to Garcia
Being a Preachment

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Release Date: December 2, 2005 [eBook #17195]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MESSAGE TO GARCIA***

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A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

Being a Preachment

by

Elbert Hubbard.

[Illustration: Elbert Hubbard]

[Illustration]

Done into a Printed Book
by the Roycrofters at
Their Shop, Which Is in East
Aurora, Erie County, N.Y.
Copyright 1914 by Elbert Hubbard

APOLOGIA

HORSE SENSE

If you work for a man, in Heaven's name work for him. If he pays wages
that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of
him, think well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institution
he represents. I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him.
I would not work for him a part of his time, but all of his time. I
would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an
ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify,
condemn, and eternally disparage, why, resign your position, and when
you are outside, damn to your heart's content. But, I pray you, so
long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that
you will injure the institution--not that--but when you disparage the
concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself. And don't
forget--"I forgot" won't do in business.

[Sidenote: _A trying day_]

This literary trifle, "A Message to Garcia," was written one evening
after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of
February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington's Birthday, and we
were just going to press with the March "Philistine." The thing
leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been
endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the
comatose state and get radio-active.

[Sidenote: The real hero of the war]

The immediate sugg