at sixty. But just because you see a lot of bald-headed sinners lined
up in the front row at the show, you don't want to get humorous with
every bald-headed man you meet, because the first one you tackle may
be a deacon. And because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen
times, you don't want to set him down as a failure--unless he takes
failing too easy. No man's a failure till he's dead or loses his
courage, and that's the same thing. Sometimes a fellow that's been
batted all over the ring for nineteen rounds lands on the solar plexus
of the proposition he's tackling in the twentieth. But you can have a
regiment of good business qualities, and still fail without courage,
because he's the colonel, and he won't stand for any weakening at a
critical time.

I learned a long while ago not to measure men with a foot-rule, and
not to hire them because they were young or old, or pretty or homely,
though there are certain general rules you want to keep in mind. If
you were spending a million a year without making money, and you hired
a young man, he'd be apt to turn in and double your expenses to make
the business show a profit, and he'd be a mighty good man; but if you
hired an old man, he'd probably cut your expenses to the bone and show
up the money saved on the profit side; and he'd be a mighty good man,
too. I hire both and then set the young man to spending and the old
man to watching expenses.

Of course, the chances are that a man who hasn't got a good start at
forty hasn't got it in him, but you can't run a business on the law of
averages and have more than an average business. Once an old fellow
who's just missed everything he's sprung at gets his hooks in, he's a
tiger to stay by the meat course. And I've picked up two or three of
these old man-eaters in my time who are drawing pretty large salaries