The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
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- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Book online «The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ». Author F. Scott Fitzgerald
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YOU CAN SELL!!!
Why not earn while you learn?
Our salesmen make $50-$200 weekly.
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There followed an address on Madison Avenue, and instructions to appear at one oâclock that afternoon. Gloria, glancing over his shoulder after one of their usual late breakfasts, saw him regarding it idly.
âWhy donât you try it?â she suggested.
âOhâitâs one of these crazy schemes.â
âIt might not be. At least itâd be experience.â
At her urging he went at one oâclock to the appointed address, where he found himself one of a dense miscellany of men waiting in front of the door. They ranged from a messenger-boy evidently misusing his companyâs time to an immemorial individual with a gnarled body and a gnarled cane. Some of the men were seedy, with sunken cheeks and puffy pink eyesâothers were young; possibly still in high school. After a jostled fifteen minutes during which they all eyed one another with apathetic suspicion there appeared a smart young shepherd clad in a âwaist-lineâ suit and wearing the manner of an assistant rector who herded them up-stairs into a large room, which resembled a school-room and contained innumerable desks. Here the prospective salesmen sat downâand again waited. After an interval a platform at the end of the hall was clouded with half a dozen sober but sprightly men who, with one exception, took seats in a semicircle facing the audience.
The exception was the man who seemed the soberest, the most sprightly and the youngest of the lot, and who advanced to the front of the platform. The audience scrutinized him hopefully. He was rather small and rather pretty, with the commercial rather than the thespian sort of prettiness. He had straight blond bushy brows and eyes that were almost preposterously honest, and as he reached the edge of his rostrum he seemed to throw these eyes out into the audience, simultaneously extending his arm with two fingers outstretched. Then while he rocked himself to a state of balance an expectant silence settled over the hall. With perfect assurance the young man had taken his listeners in hand and his words when they came were steady and confident and of the school of âstraight from the shoulder.â
âMen!ââhe began, and paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling balls he launched himself into the sea of exposition.
âThis bright and sunny morning you picked up your favorite newspaper and you found an advertisement which made the plain, unadorned statement that you could sell. That was all it saidâit didnât say âwhat,â it didnât say âhow,â it didnât say âwhy.â It just made one single solitary assertion that you and you and youââbusiness of pointingââcould sell. Now my job isnât to make a success of you, because every man is born a success, he makes himself a failure; itâs not to teach you how to talk, because each man is a natural orator and only makes himself a clam; my business is to tell you one thing in a way that will make you know itâitâs to tell you that you and you and you have the heritage of money and prosperity waiting for you to come and claim it.â
At this point an Irishman of saturnine appearance rose from his desk near the rear of the hall and went out.
âThat man thinks heâll go look for it in the beer parlor around the corner. (Laughter.) He wonât find it there. Once upon a time I looked for it there myself (laughter), but that was before I did what every one of you men no matter how young or how old, how poor or how rich (a faint ripple of satirical laughter), can do. It was before I foundâ_myself_!
âNow I wonder if any of you men know what a âHeart Talkâ is. A âHeart Talkâ is a little book in which I started, about five years ago, to write down what I had discovered were the principal reasons for a manâs failure and the principal reasons for a manâs successâfrom John D. Rockerfeller back to John D. Napoleon (laughter), and before that, back in the days when Abel sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. There are now one hundred of these âHeart Talks.â Those of you who are sincere, who are interested in our proposition, above all who are dissatisfied with the way things are breaking for you at present will be handed one to take home with you as you go out yonder door this afternoon.
âNow in my own pocket I have four letters just received concerning âHeart Talks.â These letters have names signed to them that are familiar in every house-hold in the U.S.A. Listen to this one from Detroit:
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âDEAR MR. CARLETON:
âI want to order three thousand more copies of âHeart Talksâ for distribution among my salesmen. They have done more for getting work out of the men than any bonus proposition ever considered. I read them myself constantly, and I desire to heartily congratulate you on getting at the roots of the biggest problem that faces our generation to-dayâthe problem of salesmanship. The rock bottom on which the country is founded is the problem of salesmanship. With many felicitations I am
âYours very cordially,
âHENRY W. TERRAL.â
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He brought the name out in three long booming triumphanciesâpausing for it to produce its magical effect. Then he read two more letters, one from a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and one from the president of the Great Northern Doily Company.
âAnd now,â he continued, âIâm going to tell you in a few words what the proposition is thatâs going to make those of you who go into it in the right spirit. Simply put, itâs this: âHeart Talksâ have been incorporated as a company. Weâre going to put these little pamphlets into the hands of every big business organization, every salesman, and every man who knowsâI donât say âthinks,â I say âknowsââthat he can sell! We are offering some of the stock of the âHeart Talksâ concern upon the market, and in order that the distribution may be as wide as possible, and in order also that we can furnish a living, concrete, flesh-and-blood example of what salesmanship is, or rather what it may be, weâre going to give those of you who are the real thing a chance to sell that stock. Now, I donât care what youâve tried to sell before or how youâve tried to sell it. It donât matter how old you are or how young you are. I only want to know two thingsâfirst, do you want success, and, second, will you work for it?
âMy name is Sammy Carleton. Not âMr.â Carleton, but just plain Sammy. Iâm a regular no-nonsense man with no fancy frills about me. I want you to call me Sammy.
âNow this is all Iâm going to say to you to-day. To-morrow I want those of you who have thought it over and have read the copy of âHeart Talksâ which will be given to you at the door, to come back to this same room at this same time, then weâll, go into the proposition further and Iâll explain to you what Iâve found the principles of success to be. Iâm going to make you feel that you and you and you can sell!â
Mr. Carletonâs voice echoed for a moment through the hall and then died away. To the stamping of many feet Anthony was pushed and jostled with the crowd out of the room.
FURTHER ADVENTURES WITH âHEART TALKSâ
With an accompaniment of ironic laughter Anthony told Gloria the story of his commercial adventure. But she listened without amusement.
âYouâre going to give up again?â she demanded coldly.
âWhyâyou donât expect me toââ
âI never expected anything of you.â
He hesitated.
âWellâI canât see the slightest benefit in laughing myself sick over this sort of affair. If thereâs anything older than the old story, itâs the new twist.â
It required an astonishing amount of moral energy on Gloriaâs part to intimidate him into returning, and when he reported next day, somewhat depressed from his perusal of the senile bromides skittishly set forth in âHeart Talks on Ambition,â he found only fifty of the original three hundred awaiting the appearance of the vital and compelling Sammy Carleton. Mr. Carletonâs powers of vitality and compulsion were this time exercised in elucidating that magnificent piece of speculationâhow to sell. It seemed that the approved method was to state oneâs proposition and then to say not âAnd now, will you buy?ââthis was not the wayâoh, no!âthe way was to state oneâs proposition and then, having reduced oneâs adversary to a state of exhaustion, to deliver oneself of the categorical imperative: âNow see here! Youâve taken up my time explaining this matter to you. Youâve admitted my pointsâall I want to ask is how many do you want?â
As Mr. Carleton piled assertion upon assertion Anthony began to feel a sort of disgusted confidence in him. The man appeared to know what he was talking about. Obviously prosperous, he had risen to the position of instructing others. It did not occur to Anthony that the type of man who attains commercial success seldom knows how or why, and, as in his grandfatherâs case, when he ascribes reasons, the reasons are generally inaccurate and absurd.
Anthony noted that of the numerous old men who had answered the original advertisement, only two had returned, and that among the thirty odd who assembled on the third day to get actual selling instructions from Mr. Carleton, only one gray head was in evidence. These thirty were eager converts; with their mouths they followed the working of Mr. Carletonâs mouth; they swayed in their seats with enthusiasm, and in the intervals of his talk they spoke to each other in tense approving whispers. Yet of the chosen few who, in the words of Mr. Carleton, âwere determined to get those deserts that rightly and truly belonged to them,â less than half a dozen combined even a modicum of personal appearance with that great gift of being a âpusher.â But they were told that they were all natural pushersâit was merely necessary that they should believe with a sort of savage passion in what they were selling. He even urged each one to buy some stock himself, if possible, in order to increase his own sincerity.
On the fifth day then, Anthony sallied into the street with all the sensations of a man wanted by the police. Acting according to instructions he selected a tall office building in order that he might ride to the top story and work downward, stopping in every office that had a name on the door. But at the last minute he hesitated. Perhaps it would be more practicable to acclimate himself to the chilly atmosphere which he felt was awaiting him by trying a few offices on, say, Madison Avenue. He went into an arcade that seemed only semi-prosperous, and seeing a sign which read Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, he opened the door heroically and entered. A starchy young woman looked up questioningly.
âCan I see Mr. Weatherbee?â He wondered if his voice sounded
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