be made of sterner
stuff. Nor do we care for the sort which made the polite Frenchman say,
"Excusez-moi" when he stabbed his adversary. We can scarcely hope just
yet to attain to the magnificent calm which enabled Marie Antoinette to
say, "I'm sorry. I did not do it on purpose," when she stepped on the
foot of her executioner as they stood together on the scaffold, or Lord
Chesterfield, gentleman to the very end, to say, "Give Dayrolles a
chair" when his physician came into the room in which he lay dying. But
we do want something that will enable us to live together in the world
with a minimum degree of friction.

The best of us get on one another's nerves, even under ordinary
conditions, and it takes infinite pains and self-control to get through
a trying day in a busy office without striking sparks somewhere. If
there is a secret of success, and some of the advertisements seem trying
to persuade us that it is all secret, it is the ability to work
efficiently and pleasantly with other people. The business man never
works alone. He is caught in the clutches of civilization and there is
no escape. He is like a man climbing a mountain tied to a lot of other
men climbing the same mountain. What each one does affects all the
others.

We do not want our people to devote themselves entirely to the art of
being agreeable. If we could conceive of a world where everybody was
perfectly polite and smiling all the time we should hardly like to live
in it. It is human nature not to like perfection, and most of us, if
brought face to face with that model of behavior, Mr. Turveydrop, who
spent his life serving as a pattern of deportment, would sympathize
with the delightful old lady who looked at him in the full flower of
his glory and cried viciously (but under her breath) "I could bite you!"

When Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to Giotto for a sample of his
work the great artist drew a perfect circle with one sweep of his arm
and gave it to the boy. Before his death Giotto executed many marvelous
works of art, not one of them perfect, not even the magnificent bell
tower at Florence, but all of them infinitely greater than the circle.
It is better, whether one is working with bricks or souls, to build
nobly than to build perfectly.

II

THE VALUE OF COURTESY

Every progressive business man will agree with the successful Western
manufacturer who says that "courtesy can pay larger dividends in
proportion to the effor