THE boy who sold me the New York Times on the train at Altoona last week short-changed me consciously, intentionally, with a guileless innocent look on his face and a "Thank you" on his lips as he tried to disappear without being caught. He was as polite as an Italian waiter when he handed back my money.
When I was a boy of fifteen on the farm I sold a load of hay to an old neighbor who had been my teacher in the country school and for whom I had had great respect. When the hay was loaded upon the wagon and he was ready to drive away he put his hand into his pocket, looked surprised, and said, "There, I forgot my pocketbook; I'll pay you the next time I see you." Even with my boyish inexperience I saw through his subterfuge and realized that he was simply short-changing me. He had had no intention of paying me when he left home, nor did he do so for months afterward. I never had any confidence in him again.
It is the same sort of dishonesty that we see about us. Jones borrows ten dollars of you, agrees to pay it on the fifteenth, and you never see him until commencement; Smith goes to the Orpheum, does not get his paper done, and tells the professor that he forgot to bring it, but that he will hand it in at the next recitation; Brown gets an excuse for cutting classes because he was ill when in fact he was strolling on the back campus with a girl. After every vacation a large number of spurious checks come in from the merchants about the campus drawn by students who had no money in the bank and who knew when they drew them that they did not have.
The boy who cuts his term papers short or slights his assigned reading or fails to attend class exercises is in the same category as the fellow who hands you counterfeit coin or who gives you short change for his own profit. He is a poor business man; he has a short sighted view of his own best interests.
Ultimately a man will fail unless he plays the game squarely. To do otherwise is to short-change one's self.
December