Of course, I don’t mean that you want to go rampaging along, trampling on people’s feelings and goring every one who sticks up a head in your path.  But there’s no use shilly-shallying and doddering with people who ask questions and favors they have no right to ask.  Don’t hurt any one if you can help it, but if you must, a clean, quick wound heals soonest.

When you can, it’s better to refuse a request by letter.  In a letter you need say only what you choose; in a talk you may have to say more than you want to say.

With the best system in the world you’ll find it impossible, however, to keep a good many people who have no real business with you from seeing you and wasting your time, because a broad-gauged merchant must be accessible.  When a man’s office is policed and every one who sees him has to prove that he’s taken the third degree and is able to give the grand hailing sign, he’s going to miss a whole lot of things that it would be mighty valuable for him to know.  Of course, the man whose errand could be attended to by the office-boy is always the one who calls loudest for the boss, but with a little tact you can weed out most of these fellows, and it’s better to see ten bores than to miss one buyer.  A house never gets so big that it can afford to sniff at a hundred-pound sausage order, or to feel that any customer is so small that it can afford not to bother with him.  You’ve got to open a good many oysters to find a pearl.

You should answer letters just as you answer men—­promptly, courteously, and decisively.  Of course, you don’t ever want to go off half-cocked and bring down a cow instead of the buck you’re aiming at, but always remember that game is shy and that you can’t shoot too quick after you’ve once got it covered.  When I go into a fellow’s office and see his desk buried in letters with the dust on them, I know that there are cobwebs in his head.  Foresight is the quality that makes a great merchant, but a man who has his desk littered with yesterday’s business has no time to plan for to-morrow’s.

The only letters that can wait are those which provoke a hot answer.  A good hot letter is always foolish, and you should never write a foolish thing if you can say it to the man instead, and never say it if you can forget it.  The wisest man may make an ass of himself to-day, over to-day’s provocation, but he won’t tomorrow.  Before being used, warm words should be run into the cooling-room until the animal heat is out of them.  Of course, there’s no use in a fool’s waiting, because there’s no room in a small head in which to lose a grievance.

Speaking of small heads naturally calls to mind a gold brick named Solomon Saunders that I bought when I was a good deal younger and hadn’t been buncoed so often.  I got him with a letter recommending him as a sort of happy combination of the three wise men of the East and the nine muses, and I got rid of him with one in which I allowed that he was the whole dozen.