of five minutes, and all the time he was
pretending not to see me at all. I will say that he was a pretty game
boy, for he never weakened for a second. But at last, seeing he was
about to choke to death, I said, sharp and sudden--"Spit."

Well, sir, I thought it was a cloudburst. You can bet I was pretty hot,
and I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp. But before I
got out a word, something hit me all of a sudden, and I just went up to
the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Let's swear off, son."

Naturally, he swore off--he was so blamed scared that he would have quit
breathing if I had asked him to, I reckon. And I had to take my stock of
fine cut and send it to the heathen.

I simply mention this little incident in passing as an example of the
fact that a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the
higher he climbs the plainer people can see him. Naturally, as the old
man's son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you
are no good. If you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you
fail they will say it was a cinch.

There are two unpardonable sins in this world--success and failure.
Those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those
who fail can't forgive him for being a success. If you do succeed, though,
you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.

I dwell a little on this matter of appearances because so few men are
really thinking animals. Where one fellow reads a stranger's character
in his face, a hundred read it in his get-up. We have shown a dozen
breeds of dukes and droves of college presidents and doctors of divinity
through the packing-house, and the workmen never noticed them except to
throw livers at them when they got in their way. But when John L.
Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the
plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him.
You see, John looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men
that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. Of course, when a fellow
gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn't have
to care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young
fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he
looks like something special.

Just here I want to say that while it's all right for the other fellow
to be influenced by appearances, it's all wrong