Life — November 9, 1911 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LINE er The Stock-Broker Standard ENTLEMEN bring ladies to the retired res taurant where I often go to lunch. All sorts of gentlemen bring several sorts of ladies there, They all are decorous ladies and a large proportion of the good many of them are obviously and un questionably respectable and a good many are—well—as you might say—" speculative.” I suppose the handsome girl who came in there one day last June with big Jack Bowden, and took the table in the far corner, woul! have to be classed as speculative. Hac quaintance with big J: h to have felt it to be manners not to look at him there, or scrutinize his companion except in the mirror, but I couldn't help taking notice and couldn’: help happening to see the two cocktails that went over to that corner, or the Scotch and siphon that presently followed with the food. The mirror wirclessed to me now and then that the lady was vivacious and charming, and I hope she was as dis erect and well conducted as she was pleasing to the eye But bachelor Jack, as he sat there, obliquely visible in th mirror to a starboard eye that was not looking at him, came somehow to embody and shape forth an item of contemp life which had clothed itself in my consciousness as The Stock- Broker Standard of life I should be very loath on some accounts to contend that the clothing necessarily belongs on the item. Jack, for one thing, is not a stock-broker at all; and for another thing bound in duc proportion among the stock-brokers—good husbands, good sons, goo: fathers, upright and generous men whom one’s heart goes out So it is, I understand, with the bar-keeps. There are lovely bar-keeps—marvels of kindness and of solicitude for human infirmity—who live largely for the sake of mankind and incidentally ‘tend bar because it happened so. Neverthe- less, I shall have to let the item keep the name that it has put on beeause T cannot thinle of any other that fits it better HAT, then, is the S$ what ails it? n are decorative. \ I have some sm kk, enou; ry exemplary domestic characters a ock-Broker Standard of life, and lot of valuable elements. It It is a gentle It is neither material. As I see it, it includes quite a respects int man's standard, but its gentleman is dwarfed. moral nor immoral, but it is depressing! objects of regard are money, sport, pleasure, and all kinds of possessions. Almost any kind of money look: to it, but easy money looks best. It instinctively uses money standards of measurement; doesn’t always want to, but has to. Success is so many millions without indictment or serious loss of social or professional esteem. The fruits of success are yachts, houses, country places, pictures, rare books and objects of art, race-horses that can win, children that are good in sports and can marry rich, ease, popularity, finan- cial power. The measure of a man by this standard is what he has, can get, can do in sport, can do in business—all inter esting details, but all a little to one side of the most vital point of all, which is what a man is, and whether his weight is going to count on the side of light or on the side of dark ness. . To have defined the standard is sufficiently to have diag nosed its ailment. It dwarfs life by exaggerating money. It minimizes the value of service by exaggerating the importance of profits. Profits are mighty handy. Honestly earned and honestly distributed they better life and advance civilization grity. It has a code of honor. Its special goods They are an admirable incidemt of work, a very comiorting incident of life, but not ht no sufficient to be the controlling of either life or work. There are many employments in which men make profits, but in the stock-broker industry it seems to be the profits that make the man. There are many eiploymenis in which profits result from labor, contrivance or administration which confer portion benefit uy ore th fect of the stock-broking em society pro + and sometimes much the sum of the profits, but the d nh proporti ite, to ploy ment is that its profits bear so slight and uncertain a relation to benefits conferre A man should be more than a mouth and poe pliances for filling them. The Stock- to overestimate the nerd that the mouth and the pockets shall be filled and to overvalue the skillful use of the appliances for filling them. Full mouths and full pockets may keep company with appalling emptinesses and contractions in other regions of the ana ds empty’ « destitute of inspirations. dreams ar biker Standard seems f consideral thoughts, spirits 1 dreany h heir dreams and The stock-hrokers do inde r-tape is apt into sce visions, but the tick ron throu them all and to we: I marke ve bi panics into their vi: ns. pod and responsible man, who TKINS Joes m is a coachman, a nk, is Personally and as a representative 0 When all the coachimnen have become chauffeurs and the ennobling »sso 1 nd to horses and firm get 1 his gov ernment of grooms, waning profession, I respect him. ations with peratc and generous horses have been exchanyed for fu miliarity with gasoline, valves and automobile owners, there will surely have to be a great closing of saloons of new jails iety is to be made Atk of the links between them and me, him about them, It amuses me to sce how nearly identical is his estimation of men and life with the Stock-Broker Stand ard. He has a definite idea of what a gentleman should In and how he should conduct himself, He has no prejudic wwainst living for pleasure, or an unwise indulgence in stir Jants, or in anything else that belongs to the pleasure. But he insists that his gentleman shall be game and open-handed. He cannot endure to have him too careful about the price of a horse, or intrusive about the private profits of coachmen and grooms in horse-trades. (Continued on page 833) 1 openiny: for its inmates ‘t set and is one nd I like to talk with pparatus of He wants POKER comicbooks.com