like the ones Kipling always asks, or the Japs when they’re taken through the Stock Yards.  But I never can think of any.  Well, we didn’t talk business much.  But I could see that they were interested.  They seemed to,”—­he faltered and blushed a little,—­“to like me, you know.  I played golf with Snyder that afternoon and he beat me.  Won two balls.  The next morning I found there’s been a couple of other advertising men there.  And while I was talking to Snyder—­he was telling me about the time he climbed up and muffled the chapel bell—­that fellow Flynn, of the Dowd Agency, came in.  Snyder excused himself, and talked to him for—­oh, half an hour, perhaps.  But that was all.  He was back again in no time.  After that it looked like plain sailing.  We got along wonderfully.  When I left I said, ’I expect to know you both better—­’”

“I guess,” interrupted the Old Man slowly, “that you’ll know them better all right.”  He reached out with one broad freckled hand and turned back the page of a desk memorandum.  “The Athena account was given to the Dowd Advertising Agency yesterday.”

It took Jock McChesney one minute—­one long, sickening minute—­to grasp the full meaning of it all.  He stared at the massive figure before him, his mouth ludicrously open, his eyes round, his breath for the moment suspended.  Then, in a queer husky voice: 

“D’you mean—­the Dowd—­but—­they couldn’t—­”

“I mean,” said Bartholomew Berg, “that you’ve scored what the dramatic critics call a personal hit; but that doesn’t get the box office anything.”

“But, Mr. Berg, they said—­”

“Sit down a minute, boy.”  He waved one great heavy hand toward a near-by chair.  His eyes were not fixed on Jock.  They gazed out of the window toward the great white tower toward which hundreds of thousands of eyes were turned daily—­the tower, four-faced but faithful.

“McChesney, do you know why you fell down on that Athena account?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” blurted Jock.  “Because I’m a double-barreled, corn-fed, hand-picked chump and—­”

“That’s one reason,” drawled the Old Man grimly.  “But it’s not the chief one.  The real reason why you didn’t land that account was because you’re too darned charming.”

“Charming!” Jock stared.

“Just that.  Personality’s one of the biggest factors in business to-day.  But there are some men who are so likable that it actually counts against them.  The client he’s trying to convince is so taken with him that he actually forgets the business he represents.  We say of a man like that that he is personality plus.  Personality is like electricity, McChesney.  It’s got to be tamed to be useful.”

“But I thought,” said Jock, miserably, “that the idea was not to talk business all the time.”

“You’ve got it,” agreed Berg.  “But you must think it all the time.  Every minute.  It’s got to be working away in the back of your head.  You know it isn’t always the biggest noise that gets the biggest result.  The great American hen yields a bigger income than the Steel Trust.  Look at Miss Galt.  When we have a job that needs a woman’s eye do we send her?  No.  Why?  Because she’s too blame charming.  Too much personality.  A man just naturally refuses to talk business to a pretty woman unless she’s so smart that—­”