“There is one respect in which a live business man isn’t like a tree.”
“What is that?”
“If he remains rooted to the spot, he can’t branch out.”
During a campaign preceding the election of a Missouri Congressman it was suggested that, since he posed as a good business man, he might be willing to tell just what a good business man is.
“That’s easy,” he explained. “A good business man is one who can buy goods from a Scotchman and sell them to a Jew—at a profit!”
EDITH—“Dick, dear, your office is in State street, isn’t it?”
DICKEY—“Yes; why?”
EDITH—“That’s what I told papa. He made such a funny mistake about you yesterday. He said he’d been looking you up in Bradstreet.”
FIRST MERCHANT (as reported in the New York “Trade Record")—“How’s business?”
SECOND MERCHANT—“Picking up a little. One of our men got a $5,000 order yesterday.”
“Go away. I don’t believe that.”
“Honest he did—I’ll show you the cancellation.”
BUSINESS ENTERPRISE
The story of the rival boot-makers, which appeared recently, is matched by a correspondent of an English paper with another story, equally old but equally worth repeating. It concerns two rival sausage-makers. Again, they lived on opposite sides of a certain street, and, one day, one of them placed over his shop the legend:
“We sell sausages to the gentry and nobility of the country.”
The next day, over the way, appeared the sign:
“We sell sausages to the gentry and nobility of the whole country.”
Not to be outdone, the rival put up what he evidently regarded as a final statement, namely:
“We sell sausages to the King.”
Next day there appeared over the door of the first sausage-maker the simple expression of loyalty:
“God save the King.”
“Biddy,” remarked the newly wed Irishman, “go down and feed the pigs.”
“Faith and I will not,” replied the bride.
“Don’t be after contradicting me, Biddy,” retorted the husband. “Haven’t I just endowed you with all my worldly goods, and if you can not feed your own property, then it’s ashamed of you I am.”
This was a new point of view, so off Biddy went.
Presently she returned.
“Have you fed the pigs, Biddy?” demanded her husband, sternly.
“Faith, and I have not,” she answered. “I have done a great deal better. As they were my property I have sold them, and shall not be bothered with them again.”
A business man advertised for an office boy. The next morning there were some fifty boys in line. He was about to begin examining the applicants when his stenographer handed him a card on which was scribbled:
“Don’t do anything until you see me. I’m the last kid in line, but I’m telling you I’m there with the goods.”