Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jock Dionne

The tree that never had to fight For sun and sky and air and light That stood out in the open plain And always got its share of rain Never became a forest king But lived and died, a common thing.

Business is dull at " "olrrraly 1.,"r, ", dull as a day in Heaven.

'Why do you -"", ,.rJouJgtlru"r" asked the customer of the barber. "To keep this hair tonic frorn growing hair on my hands" replied the advertising barber.

An insurance concern lr*l ail" following slick balance sheet for advertising purposes: THE PROPERTY VALUE OF A WIFE

Liabilities: 4 children and the uncertainties of the future.

Assets: One husband, age 35, good but thoughtless, annual salary $10,00O; life expectancy 30 years; potential cash value $3OO,0OO; carries $10,000 life insurance. (The wife and children carry the other 929O,000 risk.) ***

Five good Commandments of Selling are: .,Be SquareBe Fair-Be Courteous-Be Considerate-Be Kindly.,,

Confucius, the Chineseini".lon* who lived hundreds of years before Christ, likewise talked merchandising. He said: "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop."

And when you slam ;;J breaks and puu that car to an unnecessarily quick stop with its attendant loss of tire coverage, remember that it takes two full grown rubber trees a whole year to produce enough rubber for a single tire.

Wc speak of a man b"Jg;..Jilig.r,t worker,,, and what do we mean? Diligent is from the Latin ..diligere," meaning "to love." So a diligent worker is a man who loves to work.

Color plays a very i-pJr,"lr, f,"rt in our tives. We even use it to describe certain people. If a man has no ..punch" we say he is "colorless." When he is mad, we say he ,.sees red." When he is a coward we call him ..yellow.', 'When he is straight, we call him ..white.,' When he is loyal, we say he is "true blue." When he is dumb we call him "green." When he is bad we call him a "black sheep."

"What do the people ".] "io,rl my candidacy for office?" asked the budding politician to the man about town. .,Why, they don't say anything much," said the man about town; "just sorta laugh." ***

This being the wedding season it is timely to observe that most of the wedding rites that you see solemnized in our best Christian churches are of pagan origin. Sure. Ever stop to think why the bride wears the wedding ring on the fourth finger of her left hand? You probably never considered the matter. But they all do. The old pagan Romans believed very sincerely that there was a nerve directly connecting that finger with the human heart. That's why. Throwing rice is an old eastern custom, done as a wish that the newlyweds would always have plenty of their favorite food. The veil is an old pagan custom from the East. It used to be the rule that the bride should wear a veil through the ceremony, and that the bridegroom should be the first to see the features of the bride, after the wedding ceremony. The wedding cake is from pagan Rome. The couple used to eat of the wedding cake as part of the ceremony itself. Neady every other fixed process that has to do with modern weddings came directly frorn the pagans of old.

There are two strong ;r":, lt "t o,ort mightily for the well being of the lumber industry every day of the year, and they are not on the payroll, either. The first is twelve hundred thousand marriages annually. The second is the continual deterioration of tens of thousands of homes, drifting every day from old to obsolete.

Put your personality *";; business. Don,t have a business just like the other fellow. Don't do things just like he does, and just like you yourself have always done. Your best chance to progress is to get your business out of the rut, and your best method of doing that is to put your personality behind it. Make it a personality business. See what you've got ! Put it to work ! ,F,t*

I have always advocated-and always shalt-that the lumber dealer and particularly the rural lumber dealer, (Continued on Page 8)