University of Virginia Library

2. Part II

I have Eddie May in mind when I speak of a boob. He's the model from which I draw my description.

And yet, come to think of it, Eddie's not so bad. He's not ugly enough to attract attention, nor bow-legged enough to be called deformed. His feet are cross-eyed, but not to such an extent but what his toes point in the general direction of his immediate destination. He knows that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and he can count and read, and vote, and perform other little parlor tricks indicative of the possession of a certain something akin to human intelligence.

It's a bit hard to explain just what it is about Eddie that makes him such a perfect boob. I think, perhaps, it's the consistency of his low average. He can do almost anything not very well.

I remember him chiefly as a sort of concrete absence. He was flesh-and-blood substance, and yet you could sit in the room with him for hours and act as if you were alone without effort. If you wanted to talk, he was something that had the capacity to listen, and if you didn't you could just mentally erase him. If you didn't go out of your way to notice him, he wouldn't register on your consciousness at all.

The little shrimp roomed with me and Dick Scanlon at college. He was welcome, because we could remember him when the rent came due just long enough to collect his share of it, and then forget him for the rest of the time.

Of course, he did occupy a certain amount of space, but he didn't bother us any more than a bureau or desk that would have taken up the same room. Why, I'd ask Dick to run out and leave me alone for a time, and then, when he was gone, I'd compose love-letters under the inspiration of complete solitude, with Eddie sitting on the sofa watching me all the time.

There was only one thing that Dick and me had as little of as Eddie. That was money!

Our youth was the only license we had for being out of the poorhouse. Of course Dick and I had great futures. We've still got 'em. Poor Eddie didn't even have the promise of a brilliant career to cheer him while he worked the college for his way through.

Teaching was the only hope Eddie's very best friends had for him. Funny! Nobody ever advises a blind man to try for a position as a guide, but an educated boob who doesn't know enough to

get by at anything else is unanimously elected to teach.

Things financial got steadily worse with Eddie and Dick and me for three years. We started with nothing and went in debt. By the end of our junior year we all had plenty of debts, but no credit. It was up to us to coin our vacation or vacate permanently.

Dick and I might have booked up with some beach as life-guards, and there was always the possibility of Eddie getting on as a waiter in a summer hotel; but after figuring a bit we decided that that wouldn't do. Life-savers get very little, whether they operate in the surf or the dining-room.

"Well, what 'll we do?" Eddie piped up, after Dick and I had settled what not to do. Eddie never suggested; he always asked.

"We'll use a little sense," Dick said. Of course we didn't, but he said we would. "Who is it," he asked, "that makes the most money — the man who does things or the man who sells things?"

"Cinch!" I told him. "The winner is the man who sells things that other people produce. Am I right?"

You're as right as the city-hall clock," Dick complimented me. "We're going to sell things that other people produce."

"What things?" Eddie asked.

He was that way — a slave to petty details. He had no breadth of vision. His mind always dealt with little things.

"Anything," Dick told him. "It isn't the thing you have for sale that counts, it's the way you offer it. Now get that into your head, Eddie," he said. "It doesn't make any difference whether you've got ice in the Arctic or steam-heating plants in Panama. If you're a salesman, you'll sell 'em. If you're not a salesman, you couldn't sell gum-drops to an Eskimo. People don't buy what they need; they buy what the salesman makes them think they want. And if you can hypnotize them into buying one thing they haven't any use for, you can another. I don't know or particularly care what we're going to sell this summer; we're going to sell something to somebody for more than it cost us to buy it from somebody else. That's success!"

So we weren't as careful in selecting our article of commerce as we might have been. Dick suggested books, but I balked. I pointed out to Dick that while I was willing to practise ordinary business dishonesty to get along in the world, there were depths of deceit I didn't feel capable of dropping to. After three years in college, I knew I couldn't look a man in the eye and advise him to buy a book. That was too much!

Dick argued that there was no sentiment in business, and that we shouldn't allow our personal prejudices, or likes and dislikes, to color our salesmanship in any way, or to affect our choice of an article to sell.

"You know, we're not going to buy ourselves something to keep," Dick told me. "We're going to buy something to get rid of. Doesn't it seem reasonable to believe that you could more easily sell something you have an aversion to than something you like? You've had your nose in some sort of a book for so long that your idea of a perfectly happy man is one who doesn't know the letters of the alphabet. Suppose you had books with you this summer. Wouldn't you work all the harder to get rid of them, feeling as you do?"

It seemed reasonable to believe that, but I didn't. I thought it would be nice to arrange with some motor company to act as automobile salesmen, and have them furnish us a sample car to travel around the country in and demonstrate with. Dick agreed with me, but no motor-car company would; so we compromised on patent potato-peelers.