Paying for Reputation.
I was buying a bottle of Toothklene the other day. Toothklene is my favorite toothwash. I was getting it at one of these cut-price drug-stores where they try to sell their own convections because they can make a profit on them; and I do not at all blame them for that. The clerk did what he always does when I buy anything of him except lime water and a few other things of the sort—he urged me to get something better and cheaper, of the firm's own manufacture. “Our toothwash," he declared, "is just the same, essentially. Indeed, it is a little better. And it costs five cents a bottle less. When you buy Toothklene, you pay for reputation."
I told him I was willing to pay for reputation, that I wanted to pay for reputation, that the reputation of Toothklene was really worth five cents to me, because it had the reputation with me of fitting my mouth precisely, on warding off the dentist and canker and the toothache and neuralgia, and that if he would kindly accept the extra five cents and give me the Toothklene, I would be obliged to him. Which he did, grumbling all the while about paying for reputation.
But really I have learned that in everything it is better to pay a little for reputation. I have found it that way in typewriters, and I have discarded my old machine, made by a very ingenious firm and warranted to combine all the excellences of all the former machines, and I rejoice in a staid old Ritewell. I had to pay for reputation, for the new machine cost more than twice what the old one had cost; but I have made the difference in time and temper. It is that way with soap and tooth brushes and carpets and picture frames and cameras and pretty much everything. I will let the other folks make the experiments. I will stick to the staples.
And now I did think I should get through one talk without a moral, but I find it has to come. Honestly, I did not start out with any such intention. But—did you ever stop to think that the greatest staple in the world, the article most widely commended by strong, wide-awake, intelligent people, is the Christian religion?
Lost!
He had lost it, and knew he had lost it; but the more he looked for it the farther he was from finding it. It was the most precious thing he owned, and everyone knew he had lost it, yet no one helped him look for it. Indeed, the more persons knew he had lost it, the more hopeless became his search for it.
He had spent many years in getting it, but he was only a minute in losing it.
He did not get it by himself; indeed, it was the joint gift to him of many persons, though he really earned it. And he alone lost it, though all men took it from him.
He grieved over the loss of it, but not over the way he lost it. If he had grieved over the way he lost it, he might have found it.
His loss was widely discussed, but the more widely it was talked about the greater became his loss, and the more evident it became that he would not recover it.
The newspapers were full of accounts of his loss, but he never paid for the advertisements. He would have given much money to keep them out of the papers.
His nearest and dearest friends had an abundance of what he had lost, and yet, though he was in desperate need, they did not share it with him; indeed, they could not.
His mother alone gave it to him, and gave it to him willingly and fully; but, for all her giving, he did not get it back again.
He wanted it back badly, and continually went where he lost it, and did over and over what he was doing when he lost it. If he had gone to an entirely different place, and done something entirely different, he would have found it.
Strangely, he would have found it if he had only gone to work and paid no more attention to it, and had persuaded others to forget that he had lost it. But they always bore his loss in mind, and so it continued to be a loss.
His comrades had suffered the same loss, and you would think that they would have helped him, but it was the reverse. If his comrades had never lost it, they might have helped him find it.
At last he got so that he did not care about losing it, and other folks forgot that he ever had had it. Not until then did his loss become final and hopeless.
Only his mother remembered, and only his mother tried pitifully to force it back upon him.
But not even a mother can work the miracle of restoring to a good-for-nothing his good name.