Analyzing Character Part 23

"For the want of the nail, the shoe was lost; For the want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For the want of the horse, the rider was lost; For the want of the rider, the battle was lost; For the want of the battle, the kingdom was lost-- And all for the want of a horseshoe nail!"

Perhaps the man who bore the t.i.tle of rider ought to have been charged with the duty of being there with that horseshoe nail, and the man who was only a blacksmith's helper should have ridden the horse and saved the battle and the kingdom.

INDICATIONS OF DETAIL AND NON-DETAIL APt.i.tUDES

It ought not to be difficult for any man or woman to know whether or not he or she is qualified for detail work. The man who enjoys detail and takes pleasure in order, system, accuracy, and exact.i.tude, down to the last dot and hairline, ought to know that he is qualified for detail work and has no business trying to carry on or manage affairs in which there is a considerable element of risk as well as many variables. Strangely enough, however, many of them do not know this, and over and over again we find the detail man wearing himself into nervous prostration in the wrong vocation.

On the other hand, the man who hates routine, grows restive under monotony, is impatient with painstaking accuracy and minute details, ought to know better than to make himself--or to allow himself to be made--responsible for them. And yet, nearly every day someone is coming to us with a complaint about the monotony of his job--how he hates its routine and how often he gets himself into trouble because he neglects or overlooks some little thing.

It ought to be easy enough to tell the difference between these two cla.s.ses of workers. If you are a brunette, with fairly prominent brows and somewhat sloping forehead, a chin prominent at the lower point and receding upward toward the mouth; if your head is high and square behind; if your fingers are long and square-tipped; if your flesh is elastic or hard in consistency, then you can trust yourself to take responsibility for things in which seeming trifles may be of the highest importance. If, on the other hand, you are blonde or red-haired; if your head is round and dome-shaped just above the temples and round behind; if your nose is prominent and your chin narrow and receding at the lower point; if your flesh is elastic, with a tendency toward softness; if your fingers are short and either square or tapering, then you had better prepare yourself for some vocation where you can deal with large affairs, where you can plan and organize and direct, and let other people work out the details.

COURAGE AND RECKLESSNESS

The story is told of two soldiers going into battle. Both pushed forward swiftly and eagerly. They were rapidly nearing the danger zone. Already men were falling around them. As they went on, one suddenly looked at the other. "Why," he cried, "your face is white, your eyes are glazed, your limbs are trembling. I believe you are afraid!"

"Great G.o.d, man! of course I am afraid," replied the other. "And if you were one-half as afraid as I am, you would turn and run."

Here we have the discrimination between real courage and mere foolhardiness or recklessness. There are some vocations which require courage. There are others which require an element of recklessness. It requires courage to drive the locomotive of a railroad train at a speed of eighty miles an hour, but it also requires caution, prudence, watchfulness, and even apprehension.

In a western factory men were wanted for an important job, one in which a moment's carelessness in the handling of levers might cost a dozen fellow workmen their lives. "Find me," said the superintendent, "the most careful men you can get. I do not want anyone dumping damage suits on the company." The employment department found the very careful men, but none of them were satisfactory; they were all so careful that they made no speed, and soon had to be relieved for this reason, and because the constant nervous strain was too much for them. Here was a kind of work requiring a certain cool, calm, deliberate recklessness. Men were found with steady nerves, keen eyesight, quick reaction time, and smooth co-ordination of muscular action, together with a moderate degree of cautiousness. These men liked the work for the very tingle of the danger in it. They swung their ponderous machines to their tasks with a sureness of touch and a swiftness of operation which not only delighted the superintendent, but inspired confidence in their fellow workers.

INDICATIONS OF COURAGE AND CAUTION

If you are brunette, with small, sway-back or snub nose, narrow, rounded chin, and a tendency to disturbances of the circulation; if your head is narrow at the sides and high and square behind, look for a vocation where caution is a prime requisite, but do not get yourself into situations where you will have to fight or where there is so much risk that your natural apprehensiveness will cause you to worry and lie awake nights.

Contrary wise, if your chin is broad and prominent, your head is wide above the ears, low and round behind, and rather short; especially if you are a blonde, with a large nose, high in the bridge, and a big rounded dome just above the temples, select for yourself a vocation where success depends upon a cheerful willingness to take a chance. You may blunder into a tight situation now and then, and you will occasionally make a bad guess and lose thereby, but you will not be inclined to worry and you will greatly enjoy the give and take of the fight by means of which you will extricate yourself from undesirable situations.

QUICKNESS OR SLOWNESS OF THOUGHT AND ACTION

If you are of the thoughtful, philosophical type, instead of the keen, alert, practical type, don't attempt to win success in any vocation requiring quick thought and quick decision. You like to reason things out; you want to know why before you go ahead. Your success lies in lines which require slow, thoughtful, careful reasoning, mature deliberation, and an ability to plod diligently through ma.s.ses of facts and arguments.

If, on the other hand, you are of the observant, practical, matter-of-fact, scientific type, your vocation should be one calling for quick thought, quick decision, ability to get the facts and to deal with them, keen observation, and one not requiring too great a nicety of mental calculation.

If you have a small, round, retreating chin, beware of any vocation which requires great deliberation in action, because you are very quick to act.

Your hands, once their task is learned, move very swiftly. You are inclined to be impulsive. If your forehead is of the type which indicates quick thinking and you have a large nose, high in the bridge, then you are of the keenest, most alert, most energetic and dynamic type. No sooner do you see a proposition than you decide. No sooner do you decide than you act, and when you have acted, you want to see the results of that action immediately. You are, therefore, unfitted for any vocation which requires prolonged meditation, great deliberation in action, and a patient, plodding willingness to wait for results.

If your chin is long, broad, and prominent at the point, your action will always wait upon your thought. If your thought is quick, as indicated by the sloping forehead, your action may follow very quickly, but never impulsively. If, on the other hand, your forehead is one which indicates reflection and slowness of thought, then you will be very deliberate, postponing action in every case until you have carefully and painstakingly thought the entire matter out. It is useless for anyone to try to rush you to either decision or action, for you may have it in you to be quite hopelessly stubborn.

THE SOCIAL QUALITIES

Some time ago a splendidly educated young man came to us for advice. "What I want to know more than anything else," he said, "is why Hugo Schultz always sells more goods than I do. I spent two years in high school, four years in a special preparatory school and four years in college. I have had eight years of fairly successful business experience. For two years I have been a traveling salesman. When I first started out my sales amounted to only about $5 a day, on an average. Within a year I had pushed them up to $1,000 a day, on an average, and now sometimes I sell $3,000 or $4,000 worth a day. With the exception of Hugo Schultz, I sell more goods than any other man representing our company. If I sell $52,000 worth in a month, Schultz sells $65,000 worth-yet Schultz has never been beyond the fourth grade in school. He is ten years younger than I am, has had practically no business experience, and has only been on the road one year."

Upon examination, we found that this young man was selling goods with a splendidly trained intellect. He a.n.a.lyzed all the factors in his problem carefully, even down to the peculiarities of every one of his customers.

He presented his goods with faultlessly worked out arguments and appeals to the common sense and good judgment of his customers. He was, therefore, more than usually successful. In answer to our inquiry, however, he said: "No, I hate selling goods. The only reason I keep it up is because there is good money in it--more money than I could make with the same amount of effort in any other department of business. I do not like to approach strangers. I have to lash myself into it every morning of my working life, and it is very hard for me to be friendly with customers about whom I care nothing personally."

"What about Peter Schultz?" we asked. "Is he a good mixer?"

"It is his whole stock in trade. Now that you have called my attention to it, I can see clearly enough that he takes delight in meeting strangers.

Why, even when he is off duty, he finds his recreation running around into crowds, meeting new people, getting acquainted with them, making friends with them. I see it all now. He sells goods on the basis of friendship. He appeals to people's feelings rather than their intellects, and most people are ruled by their feelings. I know that."

At our suggestion, this intellectual young man gave up his business career altogether and turned his attention to journalism, where he has been even more successful than he was as a salesman. Needless to say, Hugo Schultz is still breaking records on the road.

It is difficult for anyone who is not by nature friendly and social to succeed in a vocation in which the princ.i.p.al work is meeting, dealing with, handling, and persuading his fellow men. There is an old saying "that kissing goes by favor," and doubtless it is true that other valuable things go the same way. People naturally like to do business with their friends, with those who are personally agreeable to them. It takes a long time for the unsocial or the unfriendly man to make himself personally agreeable to strangers, or, in fact, to very many people, whether strangers or not.

If it is hard for the unsocial and unfriendly man to work among people, it is distressing, dull and stupid for the man who is a good mixer and loves his friends to work in solitude or where his entire attention is engrossed in things and ideas instead of people.

INDICATIONS OF SOCIAL QUALITIES

Notwithstanding these very clear distinctions and the seeming ease with which one ought to cla.s.sify himself in this respect, we are constantly besieged by those who have very deficient social natures and who are ambitious to succeed as salesmen, preachers, lawyers, politicians, and physicians.

There is plenty of work in the world which does not require one to be particularly friendly, although, it must be admitted, friendliness is a splendid a.s.set in any calling. Scholarship, literary work, art, music, engineering, mechanical work, agriculture in all its branches, contracting, building, architecture, and many other vocations offer opportunities for success to those who are only moderately equipped socially.

If the unsocial and unfriendly are deceived in regard to themselves, no less so are the social and the friendly. Again and again we find them in occupations which take them out of the haunts of living men, where they are so unhappy and dissatisfied that they sometimes become desperate. Why a man who likes people and likes to be with them, and is successful in dealing with them, should take himself off on a lonely ranch, twelve miles from the nearest neighbor and twenty miles from a railroad, pa.s.ses the comprehension of all but those who, through experience, have learned the picturesque contrariness of human nature.

It is easy to distinguish, at a glance, between the social fellow and the natural-born hermit. Go to any political convention, or any convention of successful salesmen, or to a ministers' meeting attended by successful city preachers, or to any other gathering attended by men who have succeeded in callings where the ability to mix successfully with their fellow men is of paramount importance. Get a seat on the side lines, if possible, and then study the backs of their heads.

THE HEADS OF POLITICIANS

We attended two great political conventions in 1912. There were more than one thousand delegates at each convention. So certain were we of the type of men successful enough politically to be chosen as delegates to a national convention of their party, that we offered a prize of ten dollars to the friends who accompanied us for every delegate they would point out to us who did not have a round, full back-head, making his head appear long directly backwards from the ears. Although our friends were skeptical and planned in some detail as to what they would do with the money they expected to win from us, we attended both conventions without a penny of outlay for prizes. If you know any unfriendly, unsocial men, look at the backs of their heads and see how short they are.

There are vocations for all who have the courage, the ambition, the willingness to work, the persistence to keep ever-lastingly at it. Finding one's true vocation in life means, not finding an easy way to success, but finding an opportunity to work and work hard at something interesting, something you can do well, and something in which your highest and best talents will find an opportunity for their fullest expression.

Just as finding an unusual talent for music means years and years of the most careful study and preparation, followed by incessant practice; just as finding of a talent for the law means years of work in schools, colleges and universities; so the finding of a talent for business, mechanics, science, construction, or any other vocation involves years of study, self-development, preparation, and practice, if you are to achieve a worth-while success.

A HARD-LUCK STORY

The following incident ill.u.s.trates plainly enough the mental att.i.tude of the average fellow--the reason why he has failed, and the remedy:

A man came into our office complaining of his luck.

He was on the gray and wrinkled side of the half-century mark, somewhat bent, and slow of step.

This was the tune of his dirge: