ARE YOU AN ENTREPRENEUR? - VICTOR KIAM

Text for III Semester B. A. / B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English  

ARE YOU AN ENTREPRENEUR?

VICTOR KIAM

When I was eight, The Streetcar Named Desire ran only four blocks from my home in New Orleans. But the sound of eager Desire racing through the night did not inspire me – as it did Tennessee Williams – to spin a passionate tale. Instead, it invited the entrepreneurial muse to whisper the suggestions that guided me to the path I’m still travelling.

That summer I noticed that people getting off the Streetcar at the end of the day looked as if they would pass out if they had to go another step without a cool drink. I didn’t realize it then, but I had responded to the first precept of an entrepreneur: I had recognized a need.

My grandfather gave me five dollars to buy 100 bottles of Coca-Cola. But before I could take my first step into the world of high finance, I had to set a price for my goods. With naïve boldness, I settled on a mark-up of 100 per cent!

Business was brisk the first day and got better as the week progressed. You would have thought I was a pint-size millionaire. My grandfather was of that opinion. So you can imagine his shock when, having sold my entire sock, I had only four dollars to show for my efforts.

Few of my customers could afford to pay ten cents for a bottle. Many couldn’t even afford the five cents I needed to break even. It was so hot that I couldn’t bear to let anyone go away empty-handed, so I just gave away my merchandise. My first business was a financial failure, but it sure built up a lot of good will.

Entrepreneurs can be found everywhere – from fellows with outdoor lunch wagons to people within the corporate mainstream. Their common bond is that they are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or stake their reputations in support of an idea or a project. They’re following their visions, and have decided to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve success.

In 1968, after 18 years at Lever Brothers and Playtex, I left my job. I had long thought of doing something on my own, but it was talking with friends and attending a seminar on entrepreneurship that gave me the push I needed. I bought into the watch manufacturer Benrus Corporation. Then in 1979 I acquired the Remington Company.

Thirty-five years of experience has given me a good idea of the entrepreneur’s profile. To find out if you have what it takes, ask yourself.

1.      Do I have enough self-confidence? You must believe in yourself. In a company, you want the people working for you to follow your lead; you want your superiors to respect your judgement. If you’re running your own business, you want investors to place their money and trust behind you. You want your clients to catch your enthusiasm and to believe in your product or service. How can you inspire them if you don’t believe in yourself?

If you lack self-confidence, find some. Lack of confidence isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom. Self-perceived negatives can rob you of a healthy ego.

Every six months, I do a personal balance sheet. I make a list of my pluses and minuses. For example, I was once a procrastinator. Confronting this helped me to overcome it. I started making it a point to tackle distasteful jobs first. In a short time, procrastination disappeared from my list of minuses.

There is nothing on my list I can’t overcome if I make the effort. Try a balance sheet of your own.

2.   Do I have confidence in my venture? I’ve been asked, ‘When you make an investment, are you backing the idea or the people behind it?’ Both. No entrepreneur is a miracle worker. You can work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, but if your product is lousy, you’ve wasted your time.

A friend of mine is a terrific shoe salesman. When management of the business changed, the quality of the stock dropped off. A customer complained that the expensive shoe she was about to buy was too tight. He offered to stretch it. ‘I gripped the shoe and pulled’, he told me. ‘It tore in half. What had been a finely crafted shoe was now a piece of junk. I told the customer the truth, then I resigned.

The lesson is simple: you can’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy.

3.    Am I willing to make sacrifices? Body-builders have a saying, ‘No pain, no gain’. I should be the credo of every entrepreneur. Forget the clock.  Nine-to five doesn’t exist.

Saturday became part of my regular work schedule as a young salesman. And when a snowstorm hit my region, it was an opportunity, not an obstacle. The idea that my rivals would be hiding from the elements gave me the impetus to push my product. It’s amazing how receptive a buyer could be when the snow was waist-deep and I was the only friendly face he’d seen all day. If you’re opening your own business, you’ll lose the security of a regular salary and the company benefits you take for granted. And there will be other changes. You might not get home for dinner; relaxing week-ends may be few and far between. I’ve even seen entrepreneurs whose marriages fell apart because they forgot about their spouses. That’s one sacrifice I don’t recommend!

4.    Do I recognize opportunity? This is essential. Get used to examination all angles of a proposition. Ask, ‘How can this work for me?’

I learnt this the hard way. When I was with Playtex I met an inventor who showed me two pieces of nylon fabric and demonstrated how they adhered without hooks, zips of buttons. All I could think about was the lack of applicability for our brassiere business.

That product was Velcro. And not a day goes by when I don’t see it used somewhere.

5.   Am I decisive? You’d better be. As an entrepreneur, you’re on your own. And you’re going to encounter situations where time isn’t on your side. At Lever Brothers we were launching a new product, an improved wrinkle cream. We planned a major promotion in Ohio stores, with a famous make-up man flying in from New York to apply the stuff. But he suddenly became ill and couldn’t come.

What do I do now? I thought. So I spent the next 24 hours in a crash course in make-up, using a secretary as a guinea pig. Poor woman. I practised until her face was raw.

My moment of truth came with my first customer, the wife of a store president. I applied the product and she left without comment. Two days later she came back. Her husband had liked the results so much that she wanted more. Developing a quick positive response to adversity had saved an important promotion campaign.

6.      Am I willing to lead by example? You can’t ask. Your workers to give their all if your idea of a rough day is two hours in the office and six on the golf course. I never ask an employee to do something I’m not willing to so, and I work even harder than they do.

By now you should have some idea if you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. So I’ll mention some of the rewards for your sacrifices. You’ll find satisfaction in creating something out of nothing. You’ll gain a positive sense of self. And of course, there are financial rewards.

But it’s not easy. Nothing worthwhile is! If David had slain a dwarf instead of Goliath, who would have remembered?

****

Glossary:

entrepreneur:   person who undertakes business with a chance of profit or loss.

muse:               inspiring goddess

pass out:          colloquial phrase meaning faint, lose consciousness

precept:           moral instruction; rule or guide, especially for behavior

naïve:               natural or innocent in behavior (because of being young or inexperienced}

pint:                 one-eighth of a gallon

merchandise:   goods bought and sold, trade goods

corporate:        belonging to a corporation (i.e. group of people recognized in law as a single entity, especially in business)

self-perceived: regard oneself mentally in a specified manner

procrastinator: one who delays actions

venture:           undertaking in which there is a risk

credo:              a statement of belief

impetus:           driving force

adversity:         trouble

spouse:            husband or wife

Tennessee Williams: Famous American playwright (1911 – 1983)

‘A Street Car Named Desire’: Tennessee Williams’ classic play, produced in 1947

‘David and Goliath’: Reference to the Biblical story in which David in his youth slew the Philistine giant Goliath

 *****

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN - WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

Text for III Semester B. A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN

                                                       To JS/07/M 378

This marble Monument is erected by the State

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, 

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A Phonograph, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinion are for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Glossary:

Bureau:           Government or Municipal department of office

Fudge Motors: an imaginary motor company

Inc.:                 Short form of ‘Incorporated’; American equivalent of Ltd. (Limited)

Scab:               workman who refuses to join a strike or who takes a striker’s place; blackleg

Health Card:   a card issued by a doctor or hospital on which the patient’s illnesses and treatments are recorded.

Producers Research and High-Grade Living: Imaginary names of two firms which conduct research to find out the customer’s reactions to various products.

Eugenist:         A student of Eugenics; a study of the factors which lead to the birth of fine children and improvement of human genetic stock.

*****

UNLOCK YOUR OWN CREATIVITY - ROGER VON OECH (TEXT)

Text for III Semester B.A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English 

UNLOCK YOUR OWN CREATIVITY

ROGER VON OECH

If I held up a sheet of white paper and put a black dot on it with my pen, what would you see? I’ve used this demonstration on thousands of adults in the seminars I run, and invariably I get the same answer: ‘A black dot.’ When I tried it on a kindergarten class, a bunch of hands shot up. ‘A Mexican hat,’ called out one kid. ‘No, that’s a burnt hamburger’, said another. ‘A squashed insect,’ observed another. 

When young, we’re naturally creative because we let our minds run free. But as we’re taught to follow the rules, our thinking narrows. For much of life this can be a blessing: it wouldn’t do to create a new way home from work if it meant driving down the wrong side of the road.

But in many areas of our lives, creativity can be a matter of survival. Things are changing too fast to get along simply with old ideas. When I was working for IBM ten years ago, half of what any technical engineer had learnt became obsolete in only three years; it happens even sooner now. And what about our home lives? With, for instance, more and more women opting for careers and independence, couples have to be more creative about their relationships to avoid conflicts. 

Fortunately creativity isn’t all that mysterious. One important creative trait was well-defined by Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Szent-Gyorgyi when he said, ‘Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.’

‘Mental Locks’

How do we start ‘thinking what nobody has thought’? Usually it takes a whack on the head, like Sir Isaac Newton supposedly has when an apple striking his skull awakened him to the laws of gravity. |Whacks can range from something as major as losing a job to something as trivial as wanting an unusual dish for a dinner party. We’re more likely to respond creatively – which is to say, think of a new ideas – if we’ve already been chipping away at the mental locks’ that close our minds.

What are these locks? As I said in my book A whack in the Side of the Head, for the most part they are our uncritical acceptance of seven common statements:

1.   Find the right answer. Almost from the first day of school, we’re taught that there’s one right answer to every problem. But many important issues are open-ended. Take the question, ‘What do I do now that I’ve lost my job?’ the obvious right answer is: ‘Look for another job.’ There is also a second right answer: ‘Go back to school and learn a new trade.’ Or a third: Start your own business.’

The mere act of looking for a second answer will often produce the new idea you need. As French philosopher Emile Chartier said, ‘Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one we have.’

2.  That’s not logical. Hard, logical thinking can be death to a new idea because it eliminates alternatives that seem contradictory. New ideas germinate faster in the loose soil of soft thinking, which finds similar ties and connections among different things or situations.

In my workshops, I ask people to create metaphors to unlock their thoughts. A manager had been thinking logically about what was wrong with his company, but couldn’t get a grip on it until he came up with his metaphor: ‘Our company is a galley ship without a drummer. We’ve got some people rowing at full beat, some at one-half beat, and some dead beats.’ This man made himself the missing ‘drummer’, with the result that the operation smoothed out.

3.   Follow the rules. To get an idea, you often have to break rules that no longer make sense. My friend Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari Inc. And inventor of the first video game, is a dedicated rule breaker. Once Bushnell was trying to make coin-operated games more fun. For a long time he followed the rule that the playing field had to be 66 cm wide. Only when he threw away that rule and made the field 76 cm was he able to increase the game’s possibilities.

4.    Be practical. To grow, ideas initially need the wide realm of the possible, rather than the narrow one of the practical. You can enter this realm by asking, ‘What if……?’

An engineer in a chemical company startled his colleagues by asking, ‘What if we put gunpowder in our house paint? When it starts peeling in a few years, we just put a match to it and blow it off.’  The house might blow up with such a paint, but this engineer was talking to ‘idea’ men who brushed aside the impracticality and started thinking. Eventually they came up with the idea of an additive that could later be activated and cause paint to be easily stripped off walls. The company is now developing the process.

5.   Don’t be foolish. Humour can show is the ambiguity of situations, revealing a second and often startling answer.

Being foolish is a form of play. If necessity is the mother of invention, play is its father. When faced with a problem, let yourself play, risk being foolish. And write down the ideas that then come to you.

6.    That’s not my area. Fresh ideas almost invariably come from outside one’s field of specialization. Creative people have to be generalists, interested in everything and aware that what they learn in one field might prove useful in another. We’re all generalists at home – chefs, decorators, teachers, gardeners, handymen – and home is where to start being creative. The average homemaker is confronted daily with more creative opportunities than the middle manager in a company sees in a month. 

7.   I’m not creative. Most of us retain the idea that creativity is only for artists and inventors. And when we criticize ourselves as not creative, we set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person who thinks he’s not creative in his everyday life won’t try a creative solution to an important problem.

Self-esteem is essential to creativity because any new idea makes you a pioneer. Once you put an idea into action, you’re out there alone taking risks of failure and ridicule.

As management consultant Roy Blitzer had said, ‘The only person who likes change is a wet baby.’ But we need change – the type of change that comes through the creative thinking of all people, not just geniuses.  

Glossary

obsolete:          no longer used; out of date.

trait:                 distinguishing quality or characteristic

Sir Isaac Newton: the Physicist, credited with the formulation of the law of gravity

whack:             strike with a hard blow

trivial:              of small value or importance

germinate:       (cause to) start growth

metaphor:        a descriptive term which is imaginatively but not literally applicable e.g. Ranjit Singh, The Lion of Punjab.

galley:              a long, low-built ship with one deck, propelled by oars; a state barge; a kind of boat attached to a ship of war.

realm:              a sphere or domain

ambiguity:       uncertainty or dubiousness of meaning

esteem:            to have a good opinion of

*****

A TALK ON ADVERTISING - HERMAN WOUK (TEXT)

Text for III Semester B.A./ B. Com./ B. Sc. Additional English 

A TALK ON ADVERTISING

HERMAN WOUK

An after-Dinner Oration by the Artist

Marquis, while you were talking I looked around this table and saw that (nearly) everyone here earns a living through the activity called advertising. Now, I realize that you invited me in the absence, enforced by your sedentary ways, of stuffed tiger heads or other trophies on your walls, a live artist being the equivalent of a dead beast as a social ornament. I will not question your motive because it has given me a chance to do a beautiful and good thing. I should like to entreat all these gentlemen to redeem the strange, bittersweet miracle of their lives, while there is yet time, by giving up the advertising business at once.

Has it ever occurred to any of you gentlemen to examine the peculiar fact that you find bread in your mouths daily? How does this happen? Who is it that you have persuaded to feed you? The obvious answer is that you buy your food, but this just states the question in another, less clear way, because money is nothing but a token of exchange. Drop the confusing element of money from the whole process, and the question I’ve posed must confront you bleakly. What is it that you do, that entitles you to eat?

A shoemaker gives shoes for his bread. Well. A singer sings for her supper, well. A capitalist leads a large enterprise. Well. A pilot flies, a coal-miner digs, a sailor moves things, a mister preaches, an author tells stories, a laundryman washes, an auto worker makes cars, a painter makes pictures, a street-car conductor moves people, a stenographer writes down words, a lumberjack saws, and a tailor sews. The people with the victuals appreciate these services and cheerfully feed the performers. But what does an advertising man do?

He induces human beings to want things they don’t want.

Now, I will be deeply obliged if you will tell me by what links of logic anybody can be convinced that your activity – the creation of want where want does not exist – is a useful one and should be rewarded with food. Doesn’t it seem, rather, the worst sort of mischief, deserving to be starved into extinction?

None of you, however, is anything but well-fed; yet I am sure that until this moment it has never occurred to you on what a dubious basis your feeding is accomplished. I shall tell you exactly how you eat. You induce people to use more things than they naturally desire – the more useless and undesirable the article, the greater the advertising effort needed to dispose of it – and in all the profit from that unnatural purchasing, you share. You are fed by the makers of undesired things, who exchange these things for food by means of your arts and give you your share of the haul.  

Lest you think I oversimplify, I gave you an obvious illustration. People naturally crave meat; so the advertising of meat is on a negligible scale. However, nobody is born craving tobacco, and even its slaves instinctively loathe it. So the advertising of tobacco is the largest item of expense in its distribution. It follows, of course, that advertising men thrive most richly in the service of utterly useless most richly in the service of utterly useless commodities like tobacco or underarm pastes, or in a field where there is a hopeless plethora of goods, such as soap or whisky.  

But the great evil of advertising is not that it is unproductive and wasteful; were it so, it would be no worse than idleness. No. Advertising blasts everything that is good and beautiful in this land with a horrid spreading mildew. It has tarnished Creation. What is sweet to any of you in this world? Love? Nature? Art? Language? Youth? Behold them all, yoked by advertising in the harness of commerce.

Aurora Dawn! Has any of you enough of a ear for English to realize what a crime against the language is that (trade) name? Aurora is the dawn! The redundancy should assail your ears like the shriek of a bad hinge. But you are so numbed by habit that it conveys no offence. So it is with all your barbarities. Shakespeare used the rhyming of ‘double’ and ‘bubble’ to create two immortal lines in Macbeth. You use it to help sell your Dubl-Bubl Shampoo, and you have not the slightest sense of doing anything wrong. Should lifts man above the animals and that you are smothering the flame in mud, you would stare. You are staring. Let me tell you without images, then, that you are cheapening speech until it is ceasing to be an honest method of exchange, and commercial is meant to be a lie and the English in the President’s speech which follows, a truth, will in the end fall into a paralyzing scepticism in which all utterance will be disbelieved.

God made a great green wonderland when he spread out the span of the United States. Where is the square mile inhabited by men wherein advertising has not drowned out the land’s meek hymn with the blare of billboards? By what right do you turn Nature into a painted hag crying ‘Com buy’?

A few heavenly talents brighten the world in each generation. Artistic inspiration is entrusted to weak human beings who can be tempted with gold. Has advertising scrupled to buy up the holiest of these gifts and set them to work peddling?

And the traffic in lovely youth! By the Lord, gentlemen, I would close every advertising agency in the country tomorrow, if only to head off the droves of silly girls, sufficiently cursed with beauty, who troop into the cities each month, most of them to be stained and scarred, a few to find ashy success in the hardening life of a model! When will a strong voice call a halt to this dismal pilgrimage, this Children’s Crusade to the Unholy Land? When will someone denounce the snaring allurements of the picture magazines? When will someone tell these babies that for each girl who grins on a magazine cover a hundred weep in back rooms, and that even the grin is a bought and forced thing that fades with the flash of the photographer’s bulb, leaving a face grim with scheming or heartbreak?

To what ends is all this lying, vandalism and misuse? You are trying to sell; never mind what, never mind how, never mind to whom – just sell, sell, sell! Small wonder that in good old American slang ‘sell’ means ‘fraud’! Come now! Do you hesitate to promise requited love to miserable girls, triumph to failures virility to weaklings, even prowess to little children, for the price of a mouth wash or a breakfast food? Does it ever occur to you to be ashamed to live by preying on the myriad little tragedies of unfulfilment which make your methods pay so well?

I trust that I am offending everybody very deeply. An artist has the privileges of the court fool, you know. I paint because I see with a seeing eye, an eye that familiarity never glazes. Advertising strikes me as it would a man from Mars and as it undoubtedly appears to the angels: an occupation the aim of which is subtle prevarication for gain, and the effect of which is the blighting of everything fair and pleasant in our time with the garish fungus of greed. If I have made all of you, or just one of you, repent of this career and determine to seek decent work, I will not have breathed in vain today.

-----

Glossary

oration:            a formal speech

sedentary ways: spending much of the time seated

lumberhjack:   a person who cuts down trees for a living

extinction:       ruin or destruction

dubious:           doubtful or questionable

plethora:          plenty or excess

mildew:             destructive growth of tiny fungi forming on plants, leather, food, etc. in warm and damp conditions

behold:             look, notice

yoked:              bound, linked or tied to

Prometheus:      a mythical character who stole fire from heaven

smothering:       suffocating, suppressing

paralyzing:        rendering helpless

scepticism:        doubt

hymn:               sacred song or music

bill boards:        advertisements displayed on boards

traffic:               immoral and illegal trade

crusades:          religious battles in the Middle Ages led by Christian rulers to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims

prevarication:    evading the truth

****

    

The Cop and the Anthem - O.Henry

The Cop and the Anthem - O.Henry

On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.

A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself info a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigor. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.

The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies or drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and blue Coats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.

For years the hospitab1e Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurring fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy.

There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs. I Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then, after declaring Insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing; with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demitasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.

But as Soapy set foot in side the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of.At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, arid smiled at the sight of brass buttons.

"Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer, excitedly.

"Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?" said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune.

The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a cat. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and he were strangers.

"Now, get busy and call a cop,' said Soapy, "And don't keep a gentleman waiting."

"No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. "Hey, Con!"

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the lust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street.

Five blocks Soapy traveled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously termed to himself a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanor leaned against a water plug.

It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle

Soapy straightened the lady missionary's ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said:

"Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?"

The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already be imagined he could feel tile cozy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy's Coat sleeve.

"Sure, Mike," she Said, joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner' but the cop was watching."

With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.

At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and librettos. Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it' and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of "disorderly conduct."

On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved, and otherwise disturbed the welkin.

The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen.

"Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy, but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be."

Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.

"My umbrella," he said, sternly.

"Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella? Why don't you call a cop? There stands one on the corner."

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously.

"Of course," said the umbrella man, "that is...;well, you know how these mistakes occur...; I...;if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me...;I picked it up this morning in a restaurant...;If you recognize it as yours, why...;I hope you'll --

"Of course it's mine," said Soapy, viciously.

The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.

But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves; for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence.

And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet: he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would --Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.

"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.

"Nothin'," said Soapy.

"Then come along," said the policeman.

"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

 ****