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Show AS WE VIEW IT. Give your friend a cigar and he will beam on you for an hour. Offer him a dime to buy one and you insult him. Invito him to your home for dinner and he will love you for life. Present him with a quarter to get one down town and he will be mad) enough to kick you out of your own house. Give your friend's wife a sack of candy for her little boy amd she will compliment your wife's new hat to all the neighbors1. Give her a nickel to buy him one and she will hate you forever. Give a bride and groom any gift you can think of from kitchen kettles to a grand piano and you will get a dainty scented notJc of thanks from the bride in due course of time. But as you value your life don't offer a five dollar bill. In matters of hospitality and friendship friend-ship a silver coin is as cold as the' nose of an Esquimo dkg. One clasp of the hand isi worth a thousand gifts of money, and a dry morsel garnislt'ed with a smile is more to be desired than the most sumptuous and lavish clua rity without it. I have a friend named just plain ordinary or-dinary Smith who makes his living playing the piano. He touches the key-board like a man drawing melody from the heart of a friend, and the har- I mony sleeps like an avalanche or lulls like a mother's slumber song at the master's will. I have seen men tad women sob listening to one of his melodies, and within fifteen minutes stand up in the aisles and cheer like rooters at a football game. I have seen his fingers sweep over the keys like the Twentieth Century Limited passing a flag station, and I have heard himi getting two hundred dollars worth of music out of Home Sweet Home land Old Black Joe in fifteen minutes. Now, when Smith came back from Europe after studying under Hcrr So-and-So and Madam Such-and-Such, he didn't change his name to Monsieur Smithcrinini or Hcrr Schmitzlich, nor wear corscs, but there were a lot of other artistic characteristics that stuck to him like barnacles to the bottom of a ship. One of these characteristics was that he didn't want to be patronized by the Ncwlyrichcs or the Gottrox. It happened one day that he was invited by a lady of fashion to be present at a soiree, and, if he only would, please, to play, even if he could only play opus, or something. Smith came, and played, and at the end of the performance was invited to partake of refreshments by Iiimsclf in the back hall behind a potted plant. He stood! jt for a while, in white anger, ang-er, but presently wedged his way into the parlor tQ find out what was the matter, only; to learn from the good lady that she, always expected her entertainers en-tertainers to sit back between the house-palm and the balus trade. Then Smith's characteristic showed itself. He told the woman -exactly what he thought of her, in language that anybody over six years old could catch the meaning of, repeated his remarks re-marks to her husband, took the twenty twen-ty dollar bill the man handed him andl threw it in his face, and then spit on the piano. After that he left the house feeling 'better. Smith didn't act like a saint, but he expressed the general sentiment of decent people toward vulgar money with much clearness and force. Any true man or woman is, at bottom, more anxious for loose heart-strings than for loose purse-strings. But the shame of shames in our businesf relations is that we are so mad for .noney that no decree of decency de-cency can hold us back from the most outrageous firreed. On the street cor- 1,1 ' I I I in t ner, In the department store, at the &ign of the three balls, and elsewhere n the market place, people want your mpney and they will do anything nqt punishable by lightning from Heaven to get it. A man will bury his face in a newspaper while the conductor con-ductor pGscs, to make him believe he lias already paid his street car fare. He will let a bill run past discount day, pay it a week later, and take off the discount anyhow, because he thinks the dealer will be afraid to kick. He will go to church Sunday morning and rent his building to a saloonkeeper or a gambler on Monday. Mon-day. He will put his property in his wife's name to avoid the payment of just debts. The same woman who would inquire into another woman's pedigree for six generations before accepting her in the social set, will warm a dollar in her bosom that may be fouled with the disgrace of a distillery, dis-tillery, a house of prostitution, or a plain theftnnd as for money wet with tears of widows who work at 90 cents a day, and girls who stand behind be-hind a counter for $1.50 a week, there arc more automobiles and summer homes bought with it than this world dreams of and it dreams more on these topics than many of us think. Business Monthly Magazine. |